Voltaire was the first person in France who spoke of Shakspeare's genius; and although he spoke of him merely as a barbarian genius, the French public were of opinion that Voltaire had said too much in his favor. Indeed, they thought it nothing less than profanation to apply the words genius and glory to dramas which they considered as crude as they were coarse.

At the present day, all controversy regarding Shakspeare's genius and glory has come to an end. No one ventures any longer to dispute them; but a greater question has arisen, namely, whether Shakspeare's dramatic system is not far superior to that of Voltaire.

This question I do not presume to decide. I merely say that it is now open for discussion. We have been led to it by the onward progress of ideas. I shall endeavor to point out the causes which have brought it about; but at present I insist merely upon the fact itself, and deduce from it one simple consequence, that literary criticism has changed its ground, and can no longer remain restricted to the limits within which it was formerly confined.

Literature does not escape from the revolutions of the human mind; it is compelled to follow it in its course—to transport itself beneath the horizon under which it is conveyed; to gain elevation and extension with the ideas which occupy its notice, and to consider the questions which it discusses under the new aspects and novel circumstances in which they are placed by the new state of thought and of society.

My readers will not, therefore, be surprised that, in order properly to appreciate Shakspeare, I find it necessary to make some preliminary researches into the nature of dramatic poetry and the civilization of modern peoples, especially of England. If we did not begin with these general considerations, it would be impossible to keep pace with the confused, perhaps, but active and urgent ideas, which such a subject originates in all minds.

A theatrical performance is a popular festival; that it should be so is required by the very nature of dramatic poetry. Its power rests upon the effects of sympathy—of that mysterious force which causes laughter to beget laughter; which bids tears to flow at the sight of tears, and which, in spite of the diversity of dispositions, conditions, and characters, produces the same impression on all upon whom it simultaneously acts. For the proper development of these effects, a crowd must be assembled; those ideas and feelings which would pass languidly from one man to another, traverse the serried ranks of a multitude with the rapidity of lightning; and it is only when large masses of men are collected together that we observe the action of that moral electricity which the dramatic poet calls into such powerful operation.

Dramatic poetry, therefore, could originate only among the people. At its birth it was destined to promote their pleasures; in their festivities it once performed an active part; and with the first songs of Thespis the chorus of the spectators invariably united.

But the people are not slow to perceive that the pleasures with which they can supply themselves are neither the best, nor the only pleasures which they are capable of enjoying. To those classes which spend their days in toil, complete repose seems to be the first and almost the sole condition of pleasure. A momentary suspension of the efforts or privations of daily life, an interval of movement and liberty, a relative abundance; this is all that the people seek to derive from those festivities which they are able to provide for themselves—these are all the enjoyments which it is in their power to procure. And yet these men are born to experience nobler and keener delights; they are possessed of faculties which the monotony of their existence has allowed to lie dormant in inactivity. If these faculties be awakened by a powerful voice; if an animated narrative, or a stirring scene stimulate these drowsy imaginations, these torpid sensibilities, they will gain an activity which they could never have imparted to themselves, but which they will rejoice to receive; and then will arise, without the co-operation of the multitude, but in its presence and for its amusement, new games and new pleasures which will speedily become necessities.

To such festivities as these the dramatic poet invites the assembled people. He undertakes to divert them, but the amusement which he supplies is one of which they would have been ignorant without his assistance. Æschylus relates to his fellow-citizens the victories of Salamis, the anxieties of Atossa, and the grief of Xerxes. He charms the people of Athens, but it is by raising them to a level with emotions and ideas which Æschylus alone could exalt to so high a point; and he communicates to the multitude impressions which they are capable of feeling, but which Æschylus alone is able to awaken. Such is the nature of dramatic poetry; for the people it calls its creations into being, to the people it addresses itself; but it is in order to ennoble their character, to extend and vivify their moral existence, to reveal to them faculties which they unconsciously possess, and to procure for them enjoyments which they eagerly seize, but which they would not even seek after, if a sublime art did not reveal to them their existence by making them minister to their gratification.

And this work the dramatic poet must necessarily pursue; he must elevate and civilize, as it were, the crowd that he summons to hear his performance. How can he act upon the assembled multitude, except by an appeal to the most general and elevated characteristics of their nature? It is only by going out of the narrow circle of common life and individual interests that the imagination becomes exalted and the heart enlarged, that pleasures become disinterested and the affections generous, and that men can sympathize in those common emotions the expression of which causes the theatre to resound with transports of delight. Religion has, therefore, universally been the source and furnished the primitive materials of dramatic art; at its origin, it celebrated, among the Greeks, the adventures of Bacchus, and, in Northern Europe, the mysteries of Christ. This arises from the fact that, of all human affections, piety most powerfully unites men in common feelings, because it most thoroughly detaches them from themselves; it is also less dependent for its development upon the progress of civilization, as it is powerful and pure even in the most backward state of society. From its very beginning, dramatic poetry has invoked the aid of piety, because, of all the sentiments to which it could address itself, piety was the noblest and the most universal.

Originating thus among the people and for the people, but destined to elevate them by affording them delight, the dramatic art speedily became, in every age and country, and by reason of this very characteristic of its nature, the favorite pleasure of the superior classes.

This was its natural tendency; and in this, also, it has encountered its most dangerous quicksands. More than once, allowing itself to be led astray by its high fortune, dramatic art has lost or compromised its energy and liberty. When the superior classes can fully give themselves up to their position, they fall into the error or misfortune of isolating themselves from their fellows, and ceasing, as it were, to share in the general nature of man, and the public interests of society. Those universal feelings, natural ideas, and simple relationships which constitute the basis of humanity and of life, become changed and enervated in a social condition which consists entirely of exceptions and privileges. In such a state of society, conventionalisms take the place of realities, and morals become factitious and feeble. Human destiny ceases to be known under its most salient and general aspects. It has a thousand phases, it leads to a host of impressions and relations of which the higher classes are utterly ignorant, unless they are compelled to enter frequently into the public atmosphere. Dramatic art, when devoted to their pleasure, finds its domain greatly diminished and impoverished; it is invaded by a sort of monotony; events, passions, characters, all those natural treasures which it lays under contribution, no longer supply it with the same originality and wealth. Its independence is imperiled as well as its variety and energy. The habits of elegant society, as well as those of the multitude, are characterized by their littlenesses, and it is much more capable of imposing these littlenesses as laws. It is stimulated by tastes rather than by necessities; it rarely introduces into its pleasures that serious and ingenuous disposition which abandons itself with transport to the impressions which it receives; and it very frequently treats genius as a servant who is bound to please it, and not as a power that is capable of governing it by the enjoyments which it can supply. If the dramatic poet does not possess, in the suffrages of a larger and more simple public, the means of defending himself against the haughty taste of a select coterie—if he can not arm himself with public approbation, and rely for support upon the universal feelings which he has been able to arouse in all hearts—his liberty is lost; the caprices which he has attempted to satisfy will weigh upon him like a chain, from which he will be unable to free himself; talent, which is entitled to command all, will find itself subject to the minority, and he who ought to guide the taste of the people, will become the slave of fashion.

Such, then, is the nature of dramatic poetry that, in order to produce its most magical effects, and to preserve, during its growth, its liberty as well as its wealth, it must not separate from the people, to whom its earliest efforts were addressed. It languishes, if it is transplanted from the soil in which it first took root. Popular at its origin, it must continue to be national, and it must not cease to comprehend beneath its sway, and to charm with its productions, all classes that are capable of experiencing the emotions from which it derives its power.

All ages of society, and all states of civilization are not equally favorable to calling the people to the aid of dramatic poetry, and insuring its prosperity under their influence. It was the happy lot of Greece that the whole nation grew and developed itself together with literature and the arts, keeping always on a level with their progress, and acting as a competent judge of their glory. That same people of Athens, who had surrounded the chariot of Thespis, thronged to hear the master-pieces of Sophocles and Euripides; and the most splendid triumphs of genius were always, in that city, popular festivals. So brilliant a moral equality has not presided over the destiny of modern nations; their civilization, displaying itself upon a far more extended scale, has undergone many more vicissitudes, and presented much less unity. During more than ten centuries, nothing was easy, general, or simple in our Europe. Religion, liberty, public order, literature—nothing has been developed among us without long-continued effort, in the midst of incessantly-renewed struggles, and under the most diversified influences. Amid this mighty and agitated chaos, dramatic poetry did not possess the privilege of an easy and rapid career. It was not its fate to find, almost at its birth, a public at once homogeneous and various, the constituent members of which, both great and small, rich and poor, in fine, all classes of citizens, should be equally eager for, and worthy of its most brilliant solemnities. Neither epochs of great social disorder nor periods of severe necessity are times in which the masses can devote themselves with enthusiasm to the pleasures of the stage. Literature prospers only when it is so intimately united with the tastes, habits, and entire existence of a people as to be regarded at once as an occupation and a festivity, an amusement and a necessity. Dramatic poetry, more than any other branch of literature, depends upon this deep-seated and general union of the arts with society. It is not satisfied with the tranquil pleasures of enlightened approbation, but it requires the quick impulses of passion; it does not seek men in leisure and retirement that it may furnish agreeable occupation for their hours of repose, but it requires men to hasten and throng around it. A certain degree of mental development and simplicity, a certain community of ideas and habits between the different classes of society, greater ardor than fixity of imagination, greater movement of soul than of existence, a strongly-excited moral activity destitute of any imperious and determined object, liberty of thought and repose of life—these are the circumstances of which dramatic poetry has need, in order to shine with its full splendor. These circumstances never combined so completely or so harmoniously among modern peoples as among the Greeks. But wherever their leading characteristics have been found to exist, the drama has become elevated; and neither have men of genius been failing to the public, nor has the public proved wanting to men of genius.

The reign of Elizabeth, in England, was one of those decisive epochs, so laboriously attained by modern peoples which terminate the empire of force and inaugurate the reign of ideas. Original and fruitful epochs are these, when the nations flock to mental enjoyments as to a new kind of gratification, and when thought prepares, in the pleasures of youth, for the discharge of those functions which it will be called upon to exercise at a riper age.

Scarcely recovered from the storms with which it had been ravaged by the alternate successes and reverses of the Red and White Roses, before it was again distracted and exhausted by the capricious tyranny of Henry VIII. and the malevolent despotism of Mary, England demanded of Elizabeth, at her accession, nothing but order and peace; and this was precisely what Elizabeth was most disposed to bestow. Naturally prudent and reserved, though haughty and strong-willed, she had been taught by the stern necessities of her youth never to compromise herself. When upon the throne, she maintained her independence by asking little of her people, and staked her policy upon running no risks. Military glory could not seduce a distrustful woman. The sovereignty of the Netherlands, notwithstanding the efforts of the Dutch to induce her to accept it, did not tempt her wary ambition. She resignedly determined to make no attempt to recover Calais, or to retain Havre; and all her desires of greatness, as well as all the cares of her government, were concentrated upon the direct interests of the country which she had to restore to repose and prosperity.

Surprised at so novel a state of things, the people reveled in it with the intoxication of returning health. Civilization, which had been destroyed or, suspended by their dissensions, revived or progressed on every side. Industry brought wealth in its train, and notwithstanding the shackles imposed by the oppressive proceedings of the government, all the historians and all the documents of this period bear testimony to the rapid progress of popular luxury. The chronicler Harrison informs us that he had heard many old men express their surprise at "the multitude of chimneys lately erected, whereas in their young days there were not above two or three, if so many, in most uplandish towns of the realm (the religious houses and manor-places of their lords always excepted). 'Our fathers,' they said, 'lay full oft upon straw pallets, on rough mats covered only with a sheet, and a good round log under their heads instead of a bolster or pillow; and if the good man of the house had, within seven years after his marriage, purchased a mattress or stock-bed, and thereto a sack of chaff to rest his head upon, he thought himself to be as well lodged as the lord of the town.'" [Footnote 1]

[Footnote 1: Harrison's Description of England, prefixed to Holinshed's Chronicles, vol. i., p. 188.]

But Elizabeth ascended the throne, and Shakspeare tells us that the busiest employment of the elves and fairies was to pinch "black and blue" those servants who neglected to cleanse the hearth-stone with due regularity. And Harrison informs us that the farmers' houses in his time were well supplied "with three or four feather-beds, as many coverlids and carpets of tapestry, besides a fair garnish of pewter on the cupboard, with a silver salt-cellar, a bowl for wine, and a dozen of spoons to furnish up the suit." [Footnote 2]

[Footnote 2: Ibid. p. 189.]

More than one generation will pass away before a people will have exhausted the novel enjoyments of such unusual good fortune. The reigns of both Elizabeth and her successor were scarcely sufficient to wear out that taste for comfort and repose which had been fostered by long-continued agitations; and that religious ardor, the explosion of which subsequently revealed the existence of new forces which had lain hid in the bosom of society during the tranquillity of these two reigns, was then spreading itself silently among the masses, without as yet giving birth to any general and decisive movement.

The Reformation, though treated with hostility by the great sovereigns of the Continent, had received from Henry VIII. enough encouragement and support to lessen its ambition and retard its progress for a time. The yoke of Rome had been cast off, and monastic life abolished. By thus granting satisfaction to the primary desires of the age, and turning the first blows of the Reformation to the advantage of material interests, Henry VIII. deterred many minds from inquiring more thoroughly into the purely theological dogmas of Catholicism, which no longer shocked them by the exhibition of its most obnoxious abuses. Faith, it is true, was in a tottering state, and could no longer cling firmly to disputed doctrines. These doctrines, therefore, were fated one day to fall; but the day of their rejection was delayed. At a time when the Catholic defender of the real presence was burned at the stake for maintaining the supremacy of the Pope, and the Reformer who denied the papal supremacy suffered the same punishment for refusing to admit the real presence, many minds necessarily remained in suspense. Neither of the two conflicting opinions afforded to cowardice, which is so plentifully manifested in difficult times, the refuge of a victorious party. The dogma of political obedience was the only one which docile consciences could adopt with any zeal; and among the sincere adherents of either party, the hopes of triumph which so singular a position allowed each to entertain still kept in activity those timidly courageous individuals whom tyranny is obliged to pursue into their last retrenchments, in order to force them to offer any resistance.

The vicissitudes experienced by the religious establishment of England, during the reigns of Edward VI. and Mary, tended to maintain this disposition. Anxiety for martyrdom had not time, in either party, to nourish and diffuse itself; and though the party of the Reformation—which was already more influential over the public mind, more persevering in its exertions, and more remarkable for the number and courage of its martyrs—was proceeding evidently toward a final victory, yet the success which it had obtained at the accession of Elizabeth had supplied it rather with leisure to prepare for new conflicts than with power to engage in them at once, and to render them decisive.

Though connected, by her position, with the doctrines of the Reformers, Elizabeth had, in common with the Catholic clergy, a strong taste for pomp and authority. Her first regulations in regard to religious matters were, consequently, of such a character that most of the Catholics felt no repugnance to attend the divine worship with which the Reformers were satisfied; and the establishment of the Anglican Church, which was intrusted to the hands of the existing clergy, met with very little resistance, and at the same time very little encouragement, from the general body of ecclesiastics. Religion continued to be regarded, by a great many persons, as a merely political matter. The disputes of England with the Court of Rome and with Spain, a few internal conspiracies and the severities with which they were repressed, successively created new causes for animosity between the two parties. Religious interest, however, had so little influence over public feeling, that in 1569, Elizabeth, the daughter of the Reformation, but far more precious to her people as the pledge of public repose and prosperity, found most of her Catholic subjects zealous to assist her to crush the Catholic rebellion of a part of the north of England.

For still stronger reasons, they willingly agreed to that joyous forgetfulness of all great subjects of dispute which Elizabeth encouraged them to entertain. It is true that, in the depths of the masses of the people, the Reformation, which had been flattered, but not satisfied, murmured indistinctly; and even that voice which was destined soon to shake all England to its centre was heard gradually rising to utterance. But amid that movement of youthful vigor, which had, as it were, carried away the whole nation, the stern severity of the Reformers was still regarded as importunate, and those who had bestowed on it a passing glance quickly turned their eyes in some more agreeable direction; so that the accents of Puritanism, united with those of liberty, were repressed without effort by a power under whose protection the people had too recently been sheltered to entertain any great fear of its encroachments.

No periods are perhaps more favorable to the fertility and originality of mental productions than those times at which a nation already free, but still ignorant of its own position, ingenuously enjoys what it possesses without perceiving in what it is deficient: times full of ardor, but very easy to please, before rights have been narrowly defined, powers discussed, or restrictions agreed upon. The government and the public, proceeding in their course undisturbed by fears or scruples, exist together without any distrustful observance of each other, and even come into communication but rarely. If, on the one side, power is unlimited, on the other liberty will be great; for both parties will be ignorant of those general forms, those innumerable and minute duties to which actions and minds are more or less subjected by a scientifically constructed despotism, and even by a well-regulated liberty. Thus it was that the age of Richelieu and Louis XIV. consciously possessed that amount of liberty which has furnished us with a literature and a drama. At that period of our history, when even the name of public liberties seemed to have been forgotten, and when a feeling of the dignity of man served as the basis neither of the institutions of the country nor of the acts of the government, the dignity of individual positions still existed wherever power had not yet found it necessary to crush it. Beside the forms of servility, we meet with forms, and sometimes even with manifestations of independence. The grand seigneur, though submissive and adoring as a courtier, could nevertheless proudly remember on certain occasions that he was a gentleman. Corneille the citizen could find no terms sufficiently humble to express his gratitude to, and dependence upon, Cardinal Richelieu; but Corneille the poet disdained the authority which assumed to prescribe rules for the guidance of his genius, and defended, against the literary pretensions of an absolute minister, those "secret means of pleasing which he might have found in his art." In fine, men of vigorous mind evaded in a thousand ways the yoke of a still incomplete or inexperienced despotism; and the imagination soared freely in every direction within the range of its flight.

In England, during the reign of Elizabeth, the supreme power, though far more irregular and less skillfully organised than it was in France under Louis XIV., had to treat with much more deeply-rooted principles of liberty. It would be a mistake to measure the despotism of Elizabeth by the speeches of her flatterers, or even by the acts of her government. In her still young and inexperienced court, the language of adulation far exceeded the servility of the adulator; and in the country, in which ancient institutions had by no means perished, the government was far from exercising universal sway. In the counties and chief towns, an independent administration maintained habits and instincts of liberty. The queen imposed silence upon the Commons when they pressed her to appoint a successor, or to grant some article of religious liberty. But the Commons had met, and spoken; and the queen, notwithstanding the haughtiness of her refusal, took great care to give no cause for complaints that might have increased the authority of their words. Despotism and liberty, thus avoiding a meeting instead of seeking a battle, manifested themselves without feeling any hatred for each other, with that simplicity of action which prevents those collisions and banishes those bitter feelings which are occasioned on both sides by continual resistance. A Puritan had had his right hand cut off as a punishment for having written a tract against the proposed marriage of Elizabeth to the Duke of Anjou; and immediately after the sentence had been executed, he waved his hat with his left hand, and shouted, "God save the Queen!" When loyalty is thus deeply rooted in the heart of a man exposed to such sufferings for the cause of liberty, liberty in general must necessarily think that it has no great reason for complaint.

This period, then, was deficient in none of the advantages which it was capable of desiring. There was nothing to prevent the minds of the people from indulging freely in all the intoxication natural to thought when it has reached the age of development—an age of follies and miracles, when the imagination revels in its most puerile as well as in its noblest manifestations. Extravagantly luxurious festivities, splendor of dress, addiction to gallantry, ardent conformity to fashion, and sacrifices to favor, employed the wealth and leisure of the courtiers of Elizabeth. More enthusiastic temperaments went to distant lands in search of adventures, which, in addition to the hope of fortune, offered them the livelier pleasure of perilous encounters. Sir Francis Drake sailed forth as a corsair, and volunteers thronged on board his ship; Sir Walter Raleigh announced a distant expedition, and scions of noble houses sold their goods to join his crew. Spontaneous ventures and patriotic enterprises followed each other in almost daily succession; and, far from becoming exhausted by this continual movement, the minds of men received from it fresh vigor and impulse. Thought claimed its share in the supply of pleasures, and became, at the same time, the sustenance of the most serious passions. While the crowd hurried on all sides into the numerous theatres which had been erected, the Puritan, in his solitary meditations, burned with indignation against these pomps of Belial, and this sacrilegious employment of man, the image of God upon earth. Poetic ardor and religious asperity, literary quarrels and theological controversies, taste for festivities and fanaticism for austerities, philosophy and criticism, sermons, pamphlets, and epigrams, appeared simultaneously, and jostled each other in admired confusion. Amid this natural and fantastic conflict of opposite elements, the power of opinion, the feeling and habit of liberty, were silently in process of formation: two forces, brilliant at their first appearance and imposing in their progress, the first-fruits of which belong to any skillful government that is able to use them, but the maturity of which is terrible to any imprudent government that may attempt to reduce them to servitude. The impulse which has constituted the glory of a reign, may speedily become the fever which will precipitate a people into revolution. In the days of Elizabeth, the movement of the public mind summoned England only to festivities; and dramatic poetry sprang into full being under the master-hand of Shakspeare.

Who would not delight to go to the fountain-head of the first inspirations of an original genius; to penetrate into the secret of the causes which guided his nascent powers; to follow him step by step in his progress; and, in a word, to behold the whole inner life of a man who, after having in his own country opened to dramatic poetry the road which she has never since quitted, still reigns pre-eminent, and with almost undivided sway? Unfortunately, Shakspeare is one of these superior men whose life was but little noticed by his contemporaries, and it has therefore remained obscure to succeeding generations. A few civil registers in which traces of the existence of his family have been preserved, a few traditions connected with his name in the district in which he was born, and the splendid productions of his own genius, are the only means which we possess of supplying the deficiencies of his personal history.

The family of Shakspeare resided at Stratford-upon-Avon, in the county of Warwick. His father, John Shakspeare, derived the greater part of his income, as it would appear, from his business as a wool-stapler. It is probable, however, that he connected with this several other branches of trade; for in some anecdotes collected at Stratford—fifty years, it is true, after Shakspeare's death—Aubrey [Footnote 3] represents him to have been the son of a butcher.

[Footnote 3: A writer who lived about fifty years after Shakspeare, and who made a collection of anecdotes and traditions regarding the time in which he flourished.]

At such a distance of time, recollections handed down through two or three generations might have become somewhat confused in the memory of Shakspeare's fellow-townsmen; but professions were not then so distinct or so numerous as they have become in our times, and nothing could have been less strange, at this period, and especially in a small town, than the union of the various trades connected with the sale of cattle. However this may be, Shakspeare's family belonged to that bourgeoisie which early acquired so much importance in England. His great-great-grandfather had received from Henry VII., "for his valiant and faithful services," a grant of land in Warwickshire. His father filled the office of high bailiff of Stratford in the year 1569; but, ten years afterward, it would seem that he experienced a reverse of fortune, for in 1579 we find, from the registers of Stratford, that two aldermen, of whom John Shakspeare was one, were exempted from paying a small tax paid by their colleagues. In 1586 he was removed from his office of alderman, the duties of which he had for some time ceased to perform. Other causes besides his poverty may have led to his removal. It has been said that Shakspeare was a Catholic; and it appears at least to be certain that such was the faith of his father. In the year 1770, a bricklayer, while mending the roof of the house in which Shakspeare was born, found, between the rafters and the tiling, a manuscript, which had doubtless been hidden there in a time of persecution, and which contained a profession of the Catholic faith in fourteen articles, all of which began with the words: "I, John Shakspeare." The ever-increasing power of the doctrines of the Reformation had, perhaps, rendered the duties of an alderman more difficult of performance to a Catholic, who, as he advanced in age, may also have become more scrupulous in the observance of the rules of his faith.

William Shakspeare was born on the 23d of April, 1564. He was the third or fourth of the nine, ten, or perhaps eleven children who constituted the family of John. William, there is reason to believe, was the first son, the eldest of his father's hopes. Prosperity and respectability undoubtedly belonged, at this period, to his family, as its head became chief magistrate of his native town five years afterward. We may therefore admit that Shakspeare's education, in his earlier years, was in conformity with the circumstances of his father; and when a change in his fortunes, from whatever cause it may have arisen, occasioned an interruption of his studies, he had probably acquired those first elements of a liberal education which are quite sufficient to free the mind of a superior man from the awkwardness of ignorance, and to put him in possession of those forms which he will need for the suitable expression of his thoughts. This is more than enough to explain how it was that Shakspeare was deficient in those acquirements which constitute a good education, although he possessed the elegance which is its usual accompaniment.

Shakspeare was scarcely fifteen years old when he was taken from school to assist his impoverished father in his business. It was then that, according to Aubrey, William exercised the sanguinary functions of a butcher's assistant. This supposition is considered revolting by commentators on the poet at the present day; but a circumstance related by Aubrey does not permit us to doubt its correctness, and at the same time reveals to us that his young imagination was already incapable of subjecting itself to so vile an employment without connecting therewith some ennobling idea or sentiment. "When he killed a calf," said the people of the neighborhood to Aubrey, "he would do it in a high style, and make a speech." Who can not catch a glimpse, in this story, of the tragic poet inspired by the sight of death, even in an animal, and striving to render it imposing or pathetic? Who can not picture to himself the scholar of thirteen or fourteen years of age, with his head full of his first literary attainments, and his mind impressed, perhaps, by some theatrical performance, elevating, in poetic transport, the animal about to fall beneath his ax to the dignity of a victim, or perhaps even to that of a tyrant?

In the year 1576, the brilliant Leicester celebrated the visit of Queen Elizabeth to Kenilworth by festivities, whose extraordinary magnificence is attested by all the chronicles of the time. Shakspeare was then twelve years old, and Kenilworth is only a few miles from Stratford. It is difficult to doubt that the family of the young poet participated, with all the population of the surrounding country, in the pleasure and admiration excited by these pompous spectacles. What an impulse would the imagination of Shakspeare not fail to receive! Nevertheless, the early years of the poet have transmitted to us, as the only sign of those singularities which may announce the presence of genius, the anecdote which I have just related; and the information which we possess regarding the amusements of his youth gives no hint whatever of the tastes and pleasures of a literary life.

We live in times of civilization, and progress, when every thing has its place and rule, and when the destiny of every individual is determined by circumstances more or less imperious, but which manifest themselves at an early period. A poet begins by being a poet; he who is to become one knows it almost from infancy; poetry has been familiar to his earliest contemplation; it may have been his first taste, his first passion when the movement of the passions awakened in his heart. The young man has expressed in verse that which he does not yet feel; and when feeling truly arises within him, his first thought will be to express it in verse. Poetry has become the object of his existence—an object as important as any other—a career in which he may obtain fortune as well as glory, and which may afford an opening to the serious ideas of his future life, as well as to the capricious sallies of his youth. In so advanced a state of society, a man can not be long ignorant, or spend much time in search of his own powers; an easy way presents itself to the view of that youthful ardor which would probably wander far astray before finding the direction best suited to it; those forces and passions from which talent will issue soon learn the secret of their destiny; and, summed up in speeches, images, and harmonious cadences, the illusions of desire, the chimeras of hope, and sometimes even the bitterness of disappointment, are exhaled without difficulty in the precocious essays of the young man.

In times when life is difficult and manners coarse, this is rarely the case in regard to the poet, who is formed by nature alone. Nothing reveals him so speedily to himself; he must have felt much before he can think he has any thing to portray; his first powers will be spent in action—in such irregular action as may be provoked by the impatience of his desires—in violent action, if any obstacle intervene between himself and the success with which his fiery imagination has promised to crown him. In vain has fate bestowed on him the noblest gifts; he can employ them only upon the single object with which he is acquainted. Heaven only knows what triumphs he will achieve by his eloquence, in what projects and for what advantages he will display the riches of his inventive faculty, among what equals his talents will raise him to the first rank, and of what society the vivacity of his mind will render him the amusement and the idol! Alas for this melancholy subjection of man to the external world! Gifted with useless power if his horizon be less extensive than his capacity of vision, he sees only that which lies around him; and Heaven, which has bestowed treasures upon him with such lavish munificence, has done nothing for him if it does not place him in circumstances which may reveal them to his gaze. This revelation commonly arises from misfortune; when the world fails the superior man, he falls back upon himself, and becomes aware of his own resources; when necessity presses him, he collects his powers; and it is frequently through having lost the faculty of groveling upon earth that genius and virtue rise in triumph to the skies.

Neither the occupations in which Shakspeare seemed destined to spend his life, nor the amusements and companions of his leisure hours, afforded him any materials adapted to affect and absorb that imagination, the power of which had begun to agitate his being. Rushing into all the excitements which he met on his way, because nothing could satisfy him, the youth of the poet gave admission to pleasure, under whatever form it presented itself. A tradition of the banks of the Avon, which is in strict accordance with probability, gives us reason to suppose that he had only a choice of the most vulgar diversions. The anecdote is still related, it is said, by the men of Stratford and of Bidford, a neighboring village, renowned in past ages for the excellence of its beer, and also, it is added, for the unquenchable thirst of its inhabitants.

The population of the neighborhood of Bidford was divided into two classes, known by the names of Topers and Sippers. These fraternities were in the habit of challenging to drinking-bouts all those who, in the surrounding country, took credit to themselves for any merit of this kind. The youth of Stratford, when challenged in its turn, valiantly accepted the defiance; and Shakspeare, who, we are assured, was no less a connoisseur in beer than Falstaff in Canary sack, formed a part of the joyous band, from which, doubtless, he rarely separated. But their strength was not equal to their courage. On arriving at the place of meeting, the champions of Stratford found out that the Topers had set out for a neighboring fair. The Sippers, who, to all appearance, were less formidable opponents, remained alone, and proposed to try the fortune of war. The offer was accepted; but in a short time the Stratford party were thoroughly knocked up, and reduced to the sad necessity of employing their little remaining reason in using their legs as they best might to effect a retreat. The operation was difficult, and soon became impossible. They had hardly gone a mile, when their strength failed, and the whole party bivouacked for the night under a crab-tree, which, travelers tell us, is still standing on the road from Stratford to Bidford, and is known by the name of Shakspeare's Tree. On the following morning, his comrades, refreshed and invigorated by rest and sleep, endeavored to induce him to return with them to avenge the affront they had received on the previous evening; but Shakspeare refused to go back, and, looking round on the villages which were to be seen from the point on which he stood, exclaimed, "No, I have had enough drinking with

'Piping Pebworth, dancing Marston,
Haunted Hillborough, hungry Grafton,
Dudging [Footnote 4] Exhall, Papist Wicksford,
Beggarly Broom, and drunken Bidford.'" [Footnote 5]

[Footnote 4: Sulky, stubborn, in dudgeon.]
[Footnote 5: Several of these villages still retain the reputation ascribed to them by Shakspeare in this quatrain.]

This conclusion of the adventure gives rise to the presumption that debauchery had less share than gayety in these excursions of Shakspeare's youth, and that verse, if not poetry, was already the natural language in which he gave expression to his feelings. Tradition has handed down to us some other impromptus of the same kind, but they are connected with anecdotes of less significance. All that we know, however, combines to portray to us his merry and quick imagination disporting itself with complacency amid the uncouth objects of his amusements; and we behold the future friend of Lord Southampton charming the rustic inhabitants of the banks of the Avon with that graceful animation, that joyous serenity of temper, and that benevolent openness of character which every where found or made for itself pleasures and friends.

Meanwhile, amid these grotesque follies, a serious event took place, and that was the marriage of Shakspeare. At the time when he contracted this important engagement, Shakspeare was not more than eighteen years of age, for his eldest daughter came into the world just a month after he had completed his nineteenth year. What motive led him thus early to undertake responsibilities which he seemed as yet but ill calculated to discharge? Anne Hathaway, his wife, the daughter of a farmer, and therefore a little inferior to him in rank, was eight years older than himself. She may, perhaps, have surpassed him in fortune, or perhaps the parents of the poet were anxious to attach him, by an advantageous marriage, to some settled occupation; it does not appear, however, that Shakspeare's marriage added to his worldly prosperity; the contrary, indeed, was the case. Perhaps love led to the union of the young couple; perhaps even it constrained their families to hasten the legitimate accomplishment of their wishes. However this may be, in less than two years after the birth of Susanna, the first-fruit of their marriage, twins were born, a boy and a girl—the last proof of a conjugal intimacy which had at first announced itself under such favorable appearances. According to some indications, which are, in truth, doubtful and obscure, the wife of Shakspeare, who, as we shall presently see, was remembered, or rather forgotten, in a strange manner in his will, was only rarely present to his thoughts in the after part of his life; and this irrevocable engagement, so hastily contracted, seems to have been one of the most fleeting fancies of his youth.

Among the facts and conjectures which have been stored up in reference to this period of Shakspeare's life, we must place the tradition related by Aubrey, which represents him as having for some time filled the office of schoolmaster, though the truth of this anecdote is denied by nearly all his biographers. Some writers, basing their supposition upon passages contained in his works, are inclined to believe that the poet of Elizabeth attempted to subject the powers of his mind to the routine duties of a lawyer's office. According to their conjectures, the new duties of paternity compelled him to seek this employment for his talents, whereas Aubrey places his brief experience as a schoolmaster before his marriage. Nothing is, however, certain or important on these points. Of one thing only we may speak with certainty, and that is, the constant disposition of the husband of Anne Hathaway to vary, by diversions of every kind, whatever occupations might be imposed upon him by necessity. The occurrence which forced Shakspeare to leave Stratford, and gave to England her greatest poet, proves that his position as the father of a family had not effected any great alteration in the irregularity of his habits as a young man.

Jealous preservers of their game, like all gentlemen who are not engaged in war, the possessors of parks were continually under the necessity of defending them against invasions, which, in places so open and unprotected, were as frequent as they were easy. Danger does not always diminish temptation, but frequently even makes it appear less illegitimate. A band of poachers carried on their depredations in the neighborhood of Stratford, and Shakspeare, who was eminently sociable, never refused to engage in any thing that was done in common. He was caught in the park of Sir Thomas Lucy, locked up in the keeper's lodge, where he passed the night in no very agreeable manner, and taken the next morning before Sir Thomas, in whose presence, according to all appearance, he did not extenuate his fault by submission and repentance. Shakspeare seems to have retained too merry a recollection of this circumstance of his life for us to suppose that it caused him any thing more than amusement. Sir Thomas Lucy, whom he brought on the stage some years afterward as Justice Shallow, had doubtless taken hold of his imagination less as an object of ill humor than as a pleasant caricature. Whether, in their interview, Shakspeare exercised the vivacity of his wit at the expense of his powerful adversary, and consoled himself by his success for his ill luck, or whether he enjoyed the scene with that mocking pride which is so amusing to the person who displays it, and so offensive to him who has to submit to it, we do not know, but such a supposition is in itself very probable; and the scene in the "Second Part of Henry IV.," in which Falstaff treats with witty insolence Justice Shallow, who threatens to prosecute him for just such an offense, evidently conveys to us some of the repartees of the young poacher. They were not intended, and could not have availed, to mollify the resentment of Sir Thomas. In whatever manner he may have vented his wrath upon the offender who was then in his power, the necessity for vengeance had become reciprocal. Shakspeare composed, and posted on Sir Thomas's gates, a ballad which was quite bad enough to thoroughly divert the public, to whom he then looked for triumph, and to excite to the last degree the anger of the man whose name it held up to popular ridicule. A criminal prosecution was commenced against the young man with such violence, that he found it necessary to provide for his own safety; so he left his family, and traveled to London in search of an asylum and the means of subsistence.

Some of Shakspeare's biographers have supposed that pecuniary difficulties may have occasioned this flight from home. Aubrey attributes it only to his desire to find in London some opportunity for the display of his talent. But, whatever may have been the ulterior results of the poet's adventure with Sir Thomas Lucy, the fact itself can not be called in question. Shakspeare seems to have taken particular pains to state it. Of all Falstaff's follies, the only one for which he is not punished is having "beaten the men and killed the deer" of Shallow—an exploit in far greater conformity to the idea which Shakspeare may have retained of his own youth, than to the description he has given us of the old knight, who is generally vanquished instead of victorious. All the advantage, however, remains with Falstaff in this affair; and Shallow, who is so clearly designated by the arms of the Lucy family, is nowhere so ridiculous as in the scene in which he vents his wrath against the robber of his game. The poet, indeed, takes no further notice of him, but leaves him, when he gets out of Falstaff's hands, as if he had obtained from him all that he intended to extract. The friendly care and complacency with which Shakspeare reproduces in the piece, in reference to Shallow's armorial bearings, the play upon words which formed the basis of his ballad against Sir Thomas Lucy, have quite the appearance of a tender recollection; and assuredly, few historical anecdotes can produce in favor of their authenticity such conclusive moral evidence.

It is unfortunate that we can not say as much with regard to the employment of the early part of Shakspeare's residence in London, to the circumstances which led to his connection with the stage, and to the part which consciousness of his talent may have had in forming the resolution which directed the flight of his genius. But even the best authenticated traditions on these points are deficient alike in probability and in proofs. That craving after astonishment, which is the source of marvelous beliefs, and which will almost always make our faith incline toward the stranger of two narratives, disposes us in general to seek, for all important events, an accidental cause in what we call chance. We then admire, with singular delight, the miraculous shrewdness of that chance which we suppose to be blind, because we are blind ourselves; and our imagination rejoices in the idea of an unreasoning force presiding over the destiny of a man of genius. Thus, according to the most accredited tradition, misery alone determined the choice of Shakspeare's first occupation in London, and the care of holding horses at the door of the theatre was his first connection with the stage—his first step toward dramatic life. But the extraordinary man is always revealed by some outward sign: such was the gracefulness manifested by the newcomer in his humble duties, that soon no one would trust his horse into other hands than those of William Shakspeare or his assistants. Extending his business, this favored servant of the public hired boys to wait under his inspection, who, when Will Shakspeare was summoned, were immediately to present themselves, as they were certain to be preferred when they declared themselves "Shakspeare's boys"—a title which, it is said, was long retained by the waiters that held horses at the doors of the theatres.

Such is the anecdote related by Johnson, who had it, he said, from Pope, to whom it was communicated by Rowe. Nevertheless, Rowe, Shakspeare's first biographer, has not mentioned it in his own narrative, and Johnson's authority is supported only by Cibber's "Lives of the Poets," a work to which Cibber contributed nothing but his name, and of which one of Johnson's own amanuenses was almost the sole author.

Another tradition, which had been preserved among the actors of the time, represents Shakspeare to us as filling at first the lowest position in the theatrical hierarchy, namely, that of call-boy, whose duty it was to summon the actors, when their time came to appear upon the stage. Such, in fact, would have been the gradual promotion by which the horse-holder might have raised himself to the honor of admission behind the scenes. But, when turning his idea to the theatre, is it likely that Shakspeare would have stopped short at the door? At the time of his arrival in London, in the year 1584 or 1585, he had a natural protector at the Blackfriars' Theatre; for Greene, his townsman, and probably his relative, figured there as an actor of some reputation, and also as the author of several comedies. According to Aubrey, it was with a positive intention to devote himself to the stage that Shakspeare came to London; and, even if Greene's influence had not been able to secure his reception in a higher character than that of call-boy, it is easy to understand the rapid strides with which a superior man reaches the summit of any career into which he has once obtained admission. But it would be more difficult to conceive that, with Greene's example and protection, a theatrical career, or, at least, a desire to try his powers as an actor, would not have been Shakspeare's first ambition. The time had come when mental ambitions were kindling on every side; and dramatic poetry, which had long been numbered among the national pleasures, had at length acquired in England that importance which calls for the production of master-pieces.

Nowhere on the Continent has a taste for poetry been so constant and popular as in Great Britain. Germany has had her Minnesingers, France her Troubadours and TrouvÈres; but these graceful apparitions of nascent poetry rapidly ascended to the superior regions of social order, and vanished before long. The English minstrels are visible, throughout the history of their country, in a position which has been more or less brilliant according to circumstances, but which has always been recognized by society, established by its acts, and determined by its rules. They appear as a regularly-organized corporation, with its special business, influence, and rights, penetrating into all ranks of the nation, and associating in the diversions of the people as well as in the festivities of their chiefs. Heirs of the Breton bards and the Scandinavian Scalds, with whom they are incessantly confounded by English writers of the Middle Ages, the minstrels of Old England retained for a considerable length of time a portion of the authority of their predecessors. When afterward subjugated, and quickly deserted, Great Britain did not, like Gaul, receive a universal and profound impression of Roman civilization. The Britons disappeared or retired before the Saxons and Angles; after this period, the conquest of the Saxons by the Danes, and of the united Danes and Saxons by the Normans, only commingled upon the soil a number of peoples of common origin, of analogous habits, and almost equally barbarous character. The vanquished were oppressed, but they had not to humiliate their weakness before the brutal manners of their masters; and the victors were not compelled to submit by degrees to the rule of the more polished manners of their new subjects. Among a nation so homogeneous, and throughout the vicissitudes of its destiny, even Christianity did not perform the part which devolved upon it elsewhere. On adopting the faith of Saint Remi, the Franks found in Gaul a Roman clergy, wealthy and influential, who necessarily undertook to modify the institutions, ideas, and manner of life, as well as the religious belief of the conquerors. The Christian clergy of the Saxons were themselves Saxons, long as uncouth and barbarous as the members of their flocks, but never estranged from, or indifferent to, their feelings and recollections. Thus the young civilization of the North grew up, in England, in all the simplicity and energy of its nature, and in complete independence of the borrowed forms and foreign sap which it elsewhere received from the old civilization of the South. This important fact, which perhaps determined the course of political institutions in England, could not fail to exercise great influence over the character and development of her poetry also.

A nation that proceeds in such strict conformity to its first impulse, and never ceases to belong entirely to itself, naturally regards itself with looks of complacency. The feeling of property attaches, in its view, to all that affects it, and the joy of pride to all that it produces. Its poets, when inspired to relate to it its own deeds, and describe its own customs, are certain of never meeting with an ear that will not listen or a heart that will not respond; their art is at once the charm of the lower classes of society, and the honor of the most exalted ranks. More than in any other country, poetry is united with important events in the ancient history of England. It introduced Alfred into the tents of the Danish leaders; four centuries before, it had enabled the Saxon Bardulph to penetrate into the city of York, in which the Britons held his brother Colgrim besieged; sixty years later, it accompanied Anlaf, king of the Danes, into the camp of Athelstan; and, in the twelfth century, it achieved the honor of effecting the deliverance of Richard Coeur-de-Lion. These old narratives, and a host of others, however doubtful they may be supposed, prove at least how present to the imagination of the people were the art and profession of the minstrel. A fact of more modern date fully attests the power which these popular poets long exercised over the multitude: Hugh, first Earl of Chester, had decreed, in the foundation-deed of the Abbey of St. Werburgh, that the fair of Chester should be, during its whole duration, a place of asylum for criminals, excepting in the case of crimes committed in the fair itself. In the year 1212, during the reign of King John, and at the time of this fair, Ranulph, last Earl of Chester, traveling into Wales, was attacked by the Welsh, and compelled to retire to his castle of Rothelan, in which they besieged him. He succeeded in informing Roger, or John de Lacy, the constable of Chester, of his position; this nobleman interested the minstrels who had come to the fair in the cause of the earl; and they so powerfully excited, with their songs, the multitude of outlawed persons then collected at Chester beneath the safeguard of the privilege of St. Werburgh, that they marched forth, under the command of young Hugh Button, the steward of Lord De Lacy, to deliver the earl from his perilous situation. It was not necessary to come to blows, for the Welsh, when they beheld the approach of this troop, thought it was an army, and raised the siege; and the grateful Ranulph immediately granted, to the minstrels of the county of Chester, various privileges, which they were to enjoy under the protection of the Lacy family, who afterward transferred this patronage to the Duttons and their descendants. [Footnote 6]

[Footnote 6: During the reign of Elizabeth, when fallen from their ancient splendor, but still of such importance that the law, which would no longer protect them, was obliged to pay attention to them, the minstrels were, by an act of Parliament, classed in the same category with beggars and vagabonds; but an exception was made in favor of those protected by the Dutton family, and they continued freely to exercise their profession and privileges, in honorable remembrance of the service by which they had gained them.]

Nor do the chronicles alone bear witness to the number and popularity of the minstrels; from time to time they are mentioned in the acts of the Legislature. In 1315, during the reign of Edward II., the Royal Council, being desirous to suppress vagabondage, forbade all persons, "except minstrels," to stop at the houses of prelates, earls, and barons, to eat and drink; nor might there enter, on each day, into such houses, "more than three or four minstrels of honor," unless the proprietor himself invited a greater number. Into the abodes of persons of humbler rank even minstrels might not enter unless they were invited; and they must then content themselves "with eating and drinking, and with such courtesy" as it should please the master of the house to add thereto. In 1316, while Edward was celebrating the festival of Whitsuntide, at Westminster, with his peers, a woman, "dressed in the manner of minstrels," and mounted on a large horse, caparisoned "according to the custom of minstrels," entered the banqueting-hall, rode round the tables, laid a letter before the king, and, quickly turning her horse, went away with a salute to the company. The letter displeased the king, whom it blamed for having lavished liberalities on his favorites to the detriment of his faithful servants; and the porters were reprimanded for having allowed the woman to come in. Their excuse was, "that it was not the custom ever to refuse to minstrels admission into the royal houses." During the reign of Henry VI., we find that the minstrels, who undertook to impart mirth to festivals, were frequently better paid than the priests who came to solemnize them. To the festival of the Holy Cross, at Abingdon, came twelve priests and twelve minstrels; each of the former received "fourpence," and each of the latter "two shillings and fourpence." In 1441, eight priests, from Coventry, who had been invited to Maxtoke Priory to perform an annual service, received two shillings each; but the six minstrels who had been appointed to amuse the assembled monks in the refectory had four shillings a piece, and supped with the sub-prior in the "painted chamber," which was lighted up for the occasion with eight large flambeaux of wax, the expense of which is set down in due form in the accounts of the convent.

Thus, wherever festivities took place, wherever men gathered together for amusement, in convents and fairs, in the public highways and in the castles of the nobility, the minstrels were always present, mixing with all classes of society, and charming, with their songs and tales, the inhabitants of the country and the dwellers in towns, the rich and the poor, the farmers, the monks, and the nobles of high degree. Their arrival was at once an event and a custom, their intervention a luxury and a necessity; at no time, and in no place, could they fail to collect around them an eager crowd; they were protected by the public favor, and Parliament often had them under consideration, sometimes to recognize their rights, but more frequently to repress the abuses occasioned by their wandering life and increasing numbers.

What, then, were the manners of the people who took such enthusiastic delight in these amusements? What leisure had they for the indulgence of their taste? What opportunities, what festive occasions collected these men so frequently together, and provided these popular bards with a multitude ever ready to listen and applaud? That, beneath the brilliant sky of the South, free from the necessity of striving against natural hardships, invited by the mildness of the climate and the genial warmth of the sun to live in the open air beneath the cooling shade of their olive-trees, devolving upon their slaves the performance of all laborious duties, and uncontrolled by any domestic habits, the Greeks should have thronged around their rhapsodists, and, at a later period, crowded their open theatres, to yield their imagination to the charm of the simple narratives or pathetic delineations of poetry; or that even in our own day, under the influence of their scorching atmosphere and idle life, the Arabs, gathering round an animated story-teller, should spend entire days in following the course of his adventures—all this we can understand and explain; there the sky is not inclement, and material life requires none of those efforts which prevent men from giving themselves up to pleasures of this kind; nor are their institutions opposed to their indulgence in such enjoyments, but all things combine, on the contrary, to render their attainment easy and natural, and to occasion numerous meetings, frequent festivities, and protracted periods of leisure. But it was in a northern climate, beneath the sway of a cold and severe nature, in a society partially subject to the feudal system, and among a people living a difficult and laborious life, that the English minstrels found repeated opportunities for the exercise of their art, and were always sure that a crowd would collect to witness their performance.

The reason of this is, that the habits of England, being formed by the influence of the same causes that led to the establishment of her political institutions, early assumed that character of agitation and publicity which calls for the appearance of a popular poetry. In other countries, the general tendency was to the separation of the various social conditions, and even to the isolation of individuals. In England, every thing combined to bring them into contact and connection. The principle of common deliberation upon matters of common interest, which is the foundation of all liberty, prevailed in all the institutions of England, and presided over all the customs of the country. The freemen of the rural districts and the towns never ceased to meet together for the discussion and transaction of their common affairs. The county courts, the jury, corporate associations, and elections of all kinds, multiplied occasions of meeting, and diffused in every direction the habits of public life. That hierarchical organization of feudalism, which, on the Continent, extended from the poorest gentleman to the most powerful monarch, and was incessantly stimulating the vanity of every man to leave his own sphere and pass into the rank of suzerain, was never completely established in Great Britain. The nobility of the second order, by separating themselves from the great barons, in order to take their place at the head of the commons, returned, so to speak, into the body of the nation, and adopted its manners as well as assumed its rights. It was on his own estate, among his tenants, farmers, and servants, that the gentleman established his importance; and he based it upon the cultivation of his lands and the discharge of those local magistracies which, by placing him in connection with the whole of the population, necessitated the concurrence of public opinion, and provided the adjacent district with a centre around which it might rally. Thus, while active rights brought equals into communication, rural life created a bond of union between the superior and his inferior; and agriculture, by the community of its interests and labors, bound the whole population together by ties, which, descending successively from class to class, were in some sort terminated and sealed in the earth, the immutable basis of their union.

Such a state of society leads to competence and confidence; and where competence reigns and confidence is felt, the necessity of common enjoyment soon arises. Men who are accustomed to meet together for business will meet together for pleasure also; and when the serious life of the land-owner is spent among his fields, he does not remain a stranger to the joys of the people who cultivate or surround them. Continual and general festivals gave animation to the country life of Old England. What was their primary origin? What traditions and customs served as their foundation? How did the progress of rustic prosperity lead gradually to this joyous movement of meetings, banquets, and games? It is of little use to know the cause; the fact itself is most worthy of our observation; and in the sixteenth century, when civil discord had been brought to a term, we may follow it in all its brilliant details. At Christmas, before the gates of the castles, the herald, bearing the arms of the family, thrice shouted Largesse!

"Then opened wide the baron's hall
To vassal, tenant, serf, and all;
Power laid his rod of rule aside,
And ceremony doffed his pride.
The heir, with roses in his shoes,
That night might village partner choose;
The lord, underogating, share
The vulgar game of 'post and pair.'" [Footnote 7]

[Footnote 7: Scott's "Marmion," introduction to Canto sixth.]

Who shall describe the general joy and hospitality, the roaring fire in the hall, the well-spread table, the beef and pudding, and the abundance of good cheer which was then to be found in the house of the farmer as well as in the mansion of the gentleman. The dance, when the head began to swim with wassail; the songs of minstrels, and tales of by-gone days, when the party had become tired of dancing, were the pleasures which then reigned throughout England, when

"All hail'd, with uncontroll'd delight
And general voice, the happy night,
That to the cottage, as the crown,
Brought tidings of salvation down.
* * * *
'Twas Christmas broach'd the mightiest ale;
'Twas Christmas told the merriest tale;
A Christmas gambol oft could cheer
The poor man's heart through half the year." [Footnote 8]

[Footnote 8: Ibid.]

These Christmas festivities lasted for twelve days, varied by a thousand pleasures, kindled by the good wishes and presents of New Year's Day, and terminated by the Feast of Kings on Twelfth Day. But soon after came Plow Monday, the day on which work was resumed, and the first day of labor also was marked by a feast.

"Good housewives, whom God has enriched enough, Forget not the feasts that belong to the plow,"

says old Tusser, in his quaint rural poems. [Footnote 9]

[Footnote 9: Thomas Tusser, a poet of the sixteenth century, was born about 1515, and died in 1583. He was the author of some English Georgies, under the title of "Five hundreth points of good husbandry, united to as many of good huswifery."]

The spindle also had its festival. The harvest feast was one of equality, and an avowal, as it were, of those mutual necessities which bring men into union. On that day, masters and, servants collected round the same table, and, mingling in the same conversation, did not appear to be brought into contact with each other by the complaisance of a superior desirous of rewarding his inferior, but by an equal right to the pleasures of the day:

"For all that clear'd the crop or till'd the ground
Are guests by right of custom—old and young;
* * * *
Here once a year distinction low'rs its crest,
The master, servant, and the merry guest,
Are equal all; and round the happy ring
The reaper's eyes exulting glances fling,
And, warm'd with gratitude, he quits his place,
With sun-burn'd hands and ale-enliven'd face,
Refills the jug his honor'd host to tend,
To serve at once the master and the friend;
Proud thus to meet his smiles, to share his tale,
His nuts, his conversation, and his ale.
Such were the days—of days long past I sing." [Footnote 10]

[Footnote 10: Bloomfield's "Farmer's Boy," p. 40, ed 1845.]

Sowing-time, sheep-shearing, indeed, every epoch of interest in rural life, was celebrated by similar meetings and banquets, and by games of all kinds. But what day could equal the first of May, brilliant with the joys of youth and the hopes of the year? Scarce had the rising sun announced the arrival of this festive morn, than the entire youthful population hastened into the woods and meadows, to the river-bank and hill-side, accompanied by the sounds of music, to gather their harvest of flowers; and, returning laden with hawthorn and verdure, adorned the doors and windows of their houses with their spoils, covered with blossoms the May-pole which they had cut in the forest, and crowned with garlands the horns of the oxen which were to drag it in triumph through the village. Herrick, a contemporary of Shakspeare, thus invites his mistress to go a Maying:

The elegance of the cottages on May morning was imitated by the castles; and the young gentlefolks, as well as the lads and maidens of the village, went forth into the fields in search of flowers. Joy is sure to introduce equality into pleasures; the symbols of joy never vary, and are changed as little by difference of rank as by difference of season. Here enjoyment, led by abundance, seems to spend the year in continual festivities. Just as the first of May displays its profusion of verdure, as sheap-shearing fills the streets with flowers, and harvest-home is adorned with ears of corn, so Christmas will decorate the walls with ivy, holly, and evergreen. Just as dances, races, shows, and rustic sports cause the sky of spring to resound with their joyous tones, so games in which

"White shirts supplied the masquerade,
And smutted cheeks the visors made,"

will waken the echoes, on the cold December nights, with shouts of gayety; and the May-pole and Christmas log will alike be borne in triumph and extolled in song.

Amid these games, festivals, and banquets, at these innumerable friendly meetings, and in this joyous and habitual conviviality (to use the national expression), the minstrels took their place and sang their songs. The subjects of these songs were the traditions of the country, the adventures of popular heroes as well as of noble champions, the exploits of Robin Hood against the sheriff of Nottingham, as well as the conflicts of the Percies with the Douglas clan. Thus the public manners called for poetry; thus poetry originated in the manners of the people, and became connected with all the interests, and with the entire existence, of a population accustomed to live, to act, to prosper, and to rejoice in common.

How could dramatic poetry have remained unknown to a people of such a character, so frequently assembling together, and so fond of holidays? We have every reason to believe that it was more than once introduced into the games of the minstrels. The ancient writers speak of them under the names of mimi, joculatores, and histriones. Women were frequently connected with their bands; and several of their ballads, among others that of "The Nut-brown Maid," are evidently in the form of dialogue. The minstrels, however, rather formed the national taste, and directed it to the drama, than originated the drama itself. The first attempts at a true theatrical performance are difficult and expensive. The co-operation of a public power is indispensable; and it is only in important and general solemnities that the effect produced by the play can possibly correspond to the efforts of imagination and labor which it has cost. England, like France, Italy, and Spain, was indebted for her first theatrical performances to the festivals of the clergy; only they were, it would appear, of earlier origin in that country than elsewhere. The performance of Mysteries in England can be traced back as far as the twelfth century, and probably originated at a still earlier period. But in France, the clergy, after having erected theatres, were not slow to denounce them. They had claimed the privilege in the hope of being able, by the means of such performances, to maintain or stimulate the conquests of the faith; but ere long they began to dread their effects, and abandoned their employment. The English clergy were more intimately associated with the tastes, habits, and diversions of the people. The Church, also, took advantage of that universal conviviality which I have just described. Was any great religious ceremony to be celebrated? or was any parish in want of funds? A Church-ale [Footnote 11] was announced; the church-wardens brewed some beer, and sold it to the people at the door of the church, and to the rich in the interior of the church itself.

[Footnote 11: Also called Whitsun-ale. Beer was so intimately connected with the popular festivals that the word ale had become synonymous with holiday.]

Every one contributed his money, presence, provisions, and mirth to the festival; the joy of good works was augmented by the pleasures of good cheer, and the piety of the rich rejoiced to exceed, by their gifts, the price demanded. It often happened that several parishes united to hold the Church-ale by turns for the profit of each. The ordinary games followed these meetings; the minstrel, the morris-dance, and the performance of Robin Hood, with Maid Marian and the Hobby-horse, were never absent. The seasons of confession, Easter and Whitsuntide, also furnished the Church and the people with periodical opportunities for common rejoicings. Thus familiar with the popular manners, the English clergy, when offering new pleasures to the people, thought less of modifying them than of turning them to account; and when they perceived the fondness of the people for dramatic performances, whatever the subject might be, they had no idea of renouncing so powerful a means of gaining popularity. In 1378, the choristers of St. Paul's complained to Richard II. that certain ignorant fellows had presumed to perform histories from the Old Testament, "to the great prejudice of the clergy." After this period, the Mysteries and Moralities never ceased to be, both in churches and convents, a favorite amusement of the nation, and a leading occupation of the ecclesiastics. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, an Earl of Northumberland, who was a great protector of literature, established, as a rule of his household, that the sole business of one of his chaplains should be to compose interludes. Toward the end of his reign, Henry VIII. forbade the Church to continue these performances, which, in the wavering state of his belief, were displeasing to the king, and offended him sometimes as a Catholic and sometimes as a Protestant. But they reappeared after his death, and were sanctioned by such high authority, that the young king, Edward VI., himself composed a piece against the Papists, entitled "The Whore of Babylon;" and Queen Mary, in her turn, commanded the performance; in the churches, of popular dramas favorable to Popery. Finally, in 1569, we find the choristers of St. Paul's, "clothed in silk and satin," playing profane pieces in Elizabeth's chapel, in the different royal houses; and they were so well skilled in their profession, that, in Shakspeare's time, they constituted one of the best and most popular troops of actors in London.

Far, therefore, from opposing or seeking to change the taste of the people for theatrical representations, the English clergy hastened to gratify it. Their influence, it is true, gave to the works which they brought on the stage a more serious and moral character than was possessed in other countries by compositions dependent upon the whims of the public, and cursed by the anathemas of the Church. Notwithstanding its coarseness of ideas and language, the English drama, which became so licentious in the reign of Charles II., appears chaste and pure in the middle of the sixteenth century, when compared to the first essays of dramatic composition in France. But it did not the less continue to be popular in its character, ignorant of all scientific regularity, and faithful to the national taste. The clergy would have lost much by endeavoring to suppress theatrical performances. They possessed no exclusive privilege; and numerous competitors vied with them for applause and success. Robin Hood and Maid Marian, the Lord of Misrule and the Hobby-Horse, had not yet disappeared. Traveling actors, attached to the service of the powerful nobles, traversed the counties of England under their auspices, and obtained, by favor of a gratuitous performance before the mayor, aldermen, and their friends, the right of exercising their profession in the various towns, the court-yards of inns usually serving as their theatre. As they were in a position to give greater pomp to their exhibitions, and thus to attract a larger number of spectators, the clergy struggled successfully against their rivals, and even maintained a marked predominance, but always upon condition of adapting their representations to the feelings, habits, and imaginative character of the people, who had been formed to a taste for poetry by their own festivals and by the songs of the minstrels.

Such were the condition and tendency of dramatic poetry, when, at the commencement of the reign of Elizabeth, it appeared threatened by a two-fold danger. As it daily became more popular, it at last awakened the anxiety of religious severity and fired the ambition of literary pedantry. The national taste found itself attacked, almost simultaneously, by the anathemas of the Reformers and the pretensions of men of letters.

If these two classes of enemies had united in their opposition to the drama, it would, perhaps, have fallen a victim to their attacks. But while the Puritans wished to destroy it, men of letters only desired to get it into their own hands. It was, therefore, defended by the latter when the former inveighed against its existence. Some influential citizens of London obtained from Elizabeth the temporary suppression of stage-plays within the jurisdiction of the civic authorities; but, beyond that jurisdiction, the Blackfriars' Theatre and the court of the Queen still retained their dramatic privileges. The Puritans, by their sermons, may have alarmed some few consciences, and occasioned some few scruples; and perhaps, also, some sudden conversions may here and there have deprived the May-day games of the performance of the Hobby-Horse, their greatest ornament, and the special object of the wrath of the preachers. But the time of the power of the Puritans had not yet arrived, and, to obtain decisive success, it was too much to have to overcome at once the national taste and the taste of the court.

Elizabeth's court would well have liked to be classical. Theological discussions had made learning fashionable. At that time it was an essential part of the education of a noble lady to be able to read Greek, and to distill strong waters. The known taste of the queen had added to these the gallantries of ancient mythology. "When she paid a visit at the house of any of her nobility," says Warton, "at entering the hall she was saluted by the Penates, and conducted to her privy-chamber by Mercury. The pages of the family were converted into wood-nymphs, who peeped from every bower; and the footmen gamboled over the lawns in the figure of Satyrs. When she rode through the streets of Norwich, Cupid, at the command of the mayor and aldermen, advancing from a group of gods who had left Olympus to grace the procession, gave her a golden arrow, which, under the influence of such irresistible charms, was sure to wound the most obdurate heart: 'a gift,' says Holinshed, 'which her majesty, now verging to her fiftieth year, received very thankfully.'" [Footnote 12]

[Footnote 12: Warton's "History of English Poetry," vol. iii., p. 492, 493.]

But the court may strive in vain; it is not the purveyor of its own pleasures; it rarely makes choice of them, invents them even less frequently, and generally receives them at the hands of men who make it their business to provide for its amusement. The empire of classical literature, which was established in France before the foundation of the stage, was the work of men of letters, who derived protection from, and felt justly proud of, the exclusive possession of a foreign erudition which raised them above the rest of the nation. The court of France submitted to the guidance of the men of letters; and the nation at large, undecided how to act, and destitute of those institutions which might have given authority to its habits and influence to its tastes, formed into groups, as it were, around the court. In England the drama had taken precedence of classic lore; ancient history and mythology found a popular poetry and creed in possession of the means of delighting the minds of the people; and the study of the classics, which became known at a late period, and at first only by the medium of French translations, was introduced as one of those foreign fashions by which a few men may render themselves remarkable, but which take root only when they fall into harmonious accordance with the national taste. The court itself sometimes affected, in evidence of its attainments, exclusive admiration for ancient literature; but as soon as it stood in need of amusement, it followed the example of the general public; and, indeed, it was not easy to pass from the exhibition of a bear-baiting to the pretensions of classical severity, even according to the ideas then entertained regarding it.

The stage, therefore, remained under the almost undisputed government of the general taste; and science attempted only very timid invasions of the prerogative. In 1561, Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, procured the representation, in presence of Elizabeth, of his tragedy of "Grorboduc," or "Forrex and Porrex," which critics have considered as the dramatic glory of the time preceding Shakspeare. This was, in fact, the first play which was properly divided into acts and scenes, and written throughout in an elevated tone; but it was far from pretending to a strict observance of the unities, and the example of a very tiresome work, in which every thing was done by means of conversation, did not prove very alluring either to authors or actors. About the same period, other pieces appeared on the stage, in greater conformity to the natural instincts of the country, such as "The Pinner of Wakefield," and "Jeronimo, or the Spanish Tragedy;" and for these the public openly demonstrated their preference. Lord Buckhurst himself was able to exercise no influence over the dominant taste, except by remaining faithful to it. His "Mirrour for Magistrates," a collection of incidents from the history of England, narrated in a dramatic form, passed rapidly into the hands of all readers, and became an inexhaustible mine for poets to draw from. Works of this kind were best suited to minds educated by the songs of the minstrels; and this was the erudition most relished by the majority of the gentlefolks of the country, whose reading seldom extended beyond a few collections of tales, ballads, and old chronicles. The drama fearlessly appropriated to itself subjects so familiar to the multitude; and historical plays, under the name of "Histories," delighted the English with the narrative of their own deeds, the pleasant sound of national names, the exhibition of popular customs, and the delineation of the mode of life of all classes, which were all comprised in the political history of a people who have ever taken part in the administration of their national affairs.

Beside these national histories, some few incidents from ancient histories, or the annals of other nations, took their place, commonly disfigured by the mixture of fabulous events. But neither authors nor public felt the slightest anxiety with regard to their origin and nature. They were invariably overloaded with those fantastic details, and those forms borrowed from the common habits of life, with which children so often decorate the objects which they are obliged to picture to themselves by the aid of their imagination alone. Thus Tamburlaine appeared in his chariot drawn by the kings whom he had conquered, and complaining bitterly of the slow pace and miserable appearance of his team. On the other hand, Vice, the usual buffoon of dramatic compositions, performed, under the name of Ambidexter, the principal part in Preston's tragedy of "Cambyses," which was thus converted into a Morality which would have been intolerably tedious if the spectators had not had the gratification of seeing a prevaricating judge flayed alive upon the stage, by means of "a false skin," as we are duly informed by the author. The performance, though almost entirely deficient in decorations and changes of scenery, was animated by material movement, and by the representation of sensible objects. When tragedies were performed, the stage was hung with black; and in an inventory of the properties of a troop of comedies, we find enumerated, "the Moor's limbs, four Turks' heads, old Mahomet's head, one wheel and frame in the siege of London, one great horse with his legs, one dragon, one rock, one cage, one tomb, and one hell's mouth." [Footnote 13] This is a curious specimen of the means of interest which it was then thought necessary to employ upon the stage.

[Footnote 13: Malone's Shakspeare, vol. iii., p. 309-313 ed. 1821.]

And yet, at this period, Shakspeare had already appeared! and, before Shakspeare's advent, the stage had constituted, not only the chief gratification of the multitude, but the favorite amusement of the most distinguished men! Lord Southampton went to the theatre every day. As early as 1570, one, and probably two, regular theatres existed in London. In 1583, a short time after the temporary victory gained by the Puritans over the performance of stage-plays in that city, there were eight troops of actors in London, each of whom performed three times a week. In 1592, that is, eight years before the time when Hardy at length obtained permission to open a theatre in Paris, which had previously been impossible on account of the useless privilege possessed by the "Brethren of the Passion," an English pamphleteer complained most indignantly of "some shallow-brained censurers," who had dared "mightily to oppugn" the performance of plays, which, he says, are frequented by all "men that are their own masters—as gentlemen of the Court, the Inns of Court, and the number of captains and soldiers about London." [Footnote 14] Finally, in 1596, so vast a multitude of persons went by water to the theatres, which were nearly all situated on the banks of the Thames, that it became necessary considerably to augment the number of boatmen.

[Footnote 14: See Nash, "Pierce Penniless's Supplication to the Devil," p. 59, reprinted by the Shakspeare Society in 1842.]

A taste so universal and so eager could not long remain satisfied with coarse and insipid productions; a pleasure which is so ardently sought after by the human mind, calls for all the efforts and all the power of human genius, This national movement now stood in need only of a man of genius, capable of receiving its impulse, and raising the public to the highest regions of art. By what stimulus was Shakspeare prompted to undertake this glorious task? What circumstance revealed to him his mission? What sudden light illumined his genius? These questions we can not answer. Just as a beacon shines in the nighttime without disclosing to our view the prop by which it is supported, so Shakspeare's mind appears to us, in his works, in isolation, as it were, from his person. Scarcely, throughout the long series of the poet's successes, can we discern any traces of the man, and we possess no information whatever regarding those early times of which he alone was able to give us an account. As an actor, it does not appear that he distinguished himself above his fellows. The poet is rarely adapted for action; his strength lies beyond the world of reality, and he attains his lofty elevation only because he does not employ his powers in bearing the burdens of earth. Shakspeare's commentators will not consent to deny him any of those successes to which he could possibly lay claim, and the excellent advice which Hamlet gives to the actors at the court of Denmark has been quoted in support of a theory that Shakspeare must have executed marvelously well that which he so thoroughly understood. But Shakspeare showed equal acquaintance with the characters of great kings, mighty warriors, and consummate villains, and yet no one would be likely to conclude from this that he was capable of being a Richard the Third or an Iago. Fortunately, we have reason to believe that applause, which was then so easily obtained, was not bestowed in a sufficient degree to tempt an ambition which the character of the young poet would have rendered it too easy for him to satisfy; and Rowe, his first historian, informs us that his dramatic merits "soon distinguished him, if not as an extraordinary actor, yet as an excellent writer."

Years nevertheless elapsed before Shakspeare made his appearance on the stage as an author. He arrived in London in 1584, and is not known to have engaged in any employment unconnected with the theatre during his residence in the metropolis; but "Pericles," his first work, according to Dryden, though many of his other critics and admirers have rejected it as spurious, did not appear until 1590. How was it possible that, amid the novel scenes that surrounded him, his active and fertile mind, whose rapidity, according to his contemporaries, "equaled that of his pen," could have remained for six years without producing any thing? In 1593, he published his poem of "Venus and Adonis," which he dedicated to Lord Southampton as "the first heir of his invention;" and yet, during the two preceding years, two dramas which are now ascribed to him had achieved success upon the stage. The composition of the poem may have preceded them, although the dedication was written subsequently to their production; but if the "Venus and Adonis" is anterior to all his dramas, we must come to the conclusion that, in the midst of his theatrical life, Shakspeare's eminently dramatic genius was able to engage in other labors, and that his first productions were not intended for the stage. A more probable supposition is that Shakspeare spent his labor, at first, upon works which were not his own, and which his genius, still in its novitiate, has been unable to rescue from oblivion. Dramatic productions, at that time, were less the property of the author who had conceived them than of the actors who had received them. This is always the case when theatres begin to be established; the construction of a building and the expenses of a performance are far greater risks to run than the composition of a drama. To the founder of the theatre alone is dramatic art indebted, at its origin, for that popular concourse which establishes its existence, and which the talent of the poet could never have drawn together without his assistance. When Hardy founded his theatre at Paris, each troop of actors had its poet, who was paid a regular salary for the composition of plays, just in the same way as the chaplain of the Earl of Northumberland. In the time of Shakspeare, the English stage had made much greater progress, and already enjoyed the facility of selection and the advantages of competition. The poet no longer disposed of his labor beforehand, but he sold it when completed; and the publication of a piece, for permission to perform which an author had been paid, was regarded, if not as a robbery, at least as a want of delicacy which he found it difficult to defend or excuse. While dramatic property was in this state, the share which the self-love of an author might claim in it was held in very low account the success of a work which he had sold did not belong to him, and its literary merit became, in the hands of the actors, a property which they turned to account by all the improvements which their experience could suggest. Transported suddenly into the midst of that moving picture of human vicissitudes which even the paltriest dramatic productions then heaped upon the stage, the imagination of Shakspeare doubtless beheld new fields opening to its view. What interest, what truthfulness might he not infuse into the store of facts presented to him with such coarse baldness! What pathetic effects might he not educe from all this theatrical parade! The matter was before him, waiting for spirit and life. Why had not Shakspeare attempted to communicate them to it? However confused and incomplete his first views may have been, they were rays of light arising to disperse the darkness and disorder of chaos. Now a superior man possesses the power of making the light which illumines his own eyes evident to the eyes of others. Shakspeare's comrades doubtless soon perceived what new successes he might obtain for them by remodeling the uncouth works which composed their dramatic stock; and a few brilliant touches imparted to a ground-work which he had not painted—a few pathetic or terrible scenes intercalated in an action which he had not directed—and the art of turning to account a plan which he had not conceived, were, in all probability, his earliest labors, and his first presages of glory. In 1592, a time at which we can scarcely be certain that a single original and complete work had issued from his pen, a jealous and discontented author, whose compositions he had probably improved too greatly, speaks of him, in the fantastic style of the time, as an "upstart crow, beautified with our feathers; an absolute Johannes Factotum, who is, in his own conceit, the only Shakescene in the country." [Footnote 15]

[Footnote 15: Greene's "Groatsworth of Wit," published in 1592.]

It was, we are inclined to believe, while engaged in these labors, more conformable to the necessities of his position than to the freedom of his genius, that Shakspeare sought to recreate his mind by the composition of his "Venus and Adonis." Perhaps even the idea of this work was not then entirely new to him; for several sonnets, relating to the same subject, occur in a volume of poems published in 1596, under Shakspeare's name, and the title of which, "The Passionate Pilgrim," is expressive of the condition of a man wandering, in affliction, far from his native land. The amusement of a few melancholy hours, from which the age and character of the poet had not availed to preserve him at his entrance upon a painful or uncertain destiny—these little works are doubtless the first productions which Shakspeare's poetic genius allowed him to avow; and several of them, as well as the poem of "Venus and Adonis," need to be excused, it must be confessed, by the effervescence of a youth too much addicted to dreams of pleasure not to attempt to reproduce them in all their forms. In "Venus and Adonis," the poet, absolutely carried away by the voluptuous power of his subject, seems entirely to have lost sight of its mythological wealth. Venus, stripped of the prestige of divinity, is nothing but a beautiful courtesan, endeavoring unsuccessfully, by all the prayers, tears, and artifices of love, to stimulate the languid desires of a cold and disdainful youth. Hence arises a monotony which is not redeemed by the simple gracefulness and poetic merit of many passages, and which is augmented by the division of the poem into stanzas of six lines, the last two of which almost invariably present a jeu d'esprit. But a metre singularly free from irregularities, a cadence full of harmony, and a versification which had never before been equaled in England, announced the "honey-tongued poet," and the poem of "Lucrece" appeared soon afterward to complete those epic productions which for some time sufficed to maintain his glory.

After having, in "Venus and Adonis," employed the most lascivious colors to depict the pangs of unsatisfied desire, Shakspeare has described, in "The Rape of Lucrece," with the chastest pen, and by way of reparation, as it were, the progress and triumph of criminal lust. The refinement of the ideas, the affectation of the style, and the merits of the versification, are the same in both works: the poetry in the second is less brilliant, but more emphatic, and abounds less in graceful images than in lofty thoughts; but we can already discern indications of a profound acquaintance with the feelings of man, and great talent in developing them in a dramatic form, by means of the slightest circumstances of life. Thus Lucrece, weighed down by a sense of her shame, after a night of despair, summons a young slave at dawn of day, to dispatch him to the camp with a letter to call her husband home; the slave, being of a timid and simple character, blushes on appearing in the presence of his mistress; but Lucrece, filled with the consciousness of her dishonor, imagines that he blushes at her shame; and, under the influence of the idea that her secret is discovered, she stands trembling and confused before her slave.

One detail in this poem seems to indicate the epoch at which it was written. Lucrece, to while away her grief, stops to contemplate a picture of the siege of Troy; and, in describing it, the poet complacently refers to the effects of perspective:

"The scalps of many, almost hid behind,
To jump up higher seem'd to mock the mind."

This is the observation of a man very recently struck with the wonders of art, and a symptom of that poetic surprise which the sight of unknown objects awakens in an imagination capable of being moved thereby. Perhaps we may conclude, from this circumstance, that the poem of "Lucrece" was composed during the early part of Shakspeare's residence in London.

But whatever may be the date of these two poems, their place among Shakspeare's works is at a period far more remote from us than any of those which filled up his dramatic career. In this career he marched forward, and drew his age after him; and his weakest essays in dramatic poetry are indicative of the prodigious power which he displayed in his last works. Shakspeare's true history belongs to the stage alone; after having seen it there, we can not seek for it elsewhere; and Shakspeare himself no longer quitted it. His sonnets—fugitive pieces which the poetic and sprightly grace of some lines would not have rescued from oblivion but for the curiosity which attaches to the slightest traces of a celebrated man—may here and there cast a little light on the obscure or doubtful portions of his life; but, in a literary point of view, we have in future to consider him only as a dramatic poet.

I have already stated what was the first employment of his talents in this kind of composition. Great uncertainty has resulted therefrom with regard to the authenticity of some of his works. Shakspeare had a hand in a vast number of dramas; and probably, even in his own time, it would not have been always easy to assign his precise share in them all. For two centuries, criticism has been engaged in determining the boundaries of his true possessions; but facts are wanting for this investigation, and literary judgments have usually been influenced by a desire to strengthen some favorite theory on the subject. It is, therefore, almost impossible, at the present day, to pronounce with certainty upon the authenticity of Shakspeare's doubtful plays. Nevertheless, after having read them, I can not coincide with M. Schlegel—for whose acumen I have the highest respect—in attributing them to him. The baldness which characterizes these pieces, the heap of unexplained incidents and incoherent sentiments which they contain, and their precipitate progress through undeveloped scenes toward events destitute of interest, are unmistakable signs by which, in times still rude, we may recognize fecundity devoid of genius; signs so contrary to the nature of Shakspeare's talent, that I can not even discover in them the defects which may have disfigured his earliest essays. Among the multitude of plays which, by common consent, the latest editors have rejected as being at least doubtful, "Locrine," "Thomas, Lord Cromwell," "The London Prodigal," "The Puritan," and "The Yorkshire Tragedy," scarcely present the slightest indications of having been retouched by any hand superior to that of their original author. "Sir John Oldcastle," which is more interesting, and composed with greater good sense than any of the foregoing, is animated in some scenes by a comic humor akin to that of Shakspeare. But if it be true that genius, even in its lowest abasement, gives forth some luminous rays to betray its presence; if Shakspeare, in particular, bore that distinctive mark which, in one of his sonnets, makes him say, in reference to his writings,

"That every word doth almost tell my name," [Footnote 16]

assuredly he had not to reproach himself with the production of that execrable accumulation of horrors which, under the name of "Titus Andronicus," has been foisted upon the English people as a dramatic work, and in which, Heaven be thanked! there is not a single spark of truth, or scintillation of genius, which can give evidence against him.

[Footnote 16: Sonnet 76, Knight's Library edition, vol. xii., p. 152.]

Of the doubtful plays, "Pericles" is, in my opinion, the only one to which the name of Shakspeare can be attached with any degree of certainty; or at least, it is the only one in which we find evident traces of his co-operation, especially in the scene in which Pericles meets and recognizes his daughter Marina, whom he believed dead. If, during Shakspeare's lifetime, any other man could have combined power and truth in so high a degree in the delineation of the natural feelings, England would then have possessed another poet. Nevertheless, though it contains one fine scene and many scattered beauties, the play is a bad one; it is destitute of reality and art, and is entirely alien to Shakspeare's system: it is interesting only as marking the point from which he started; and it seems to belong to his works as a last monument of that which he overthrew—as a remnant of that anti-dramatic scaffolding for which he was about to substitute the presence and movement of vitality.

The spectacles of barbarous nations always appeal to their sense of vision before they attempt to influence their imagination by the aid of poetry. The taste of the English for those pageants, which, during the Middle Ages, constituted the chief attraction of public solemnities throughout Europe, exercised great influence over the stage in England. During the first half of the fifteenth century, the monk Lydgate, when singing the misfortunes of Troy with that liberty of erudition which English literature tolerated to a greater extent than that of any other country, describes a dramatic performance which, he says, took place within the walls of Troy. He describes the poet, "with deadly face all devoid of blood," rehearsing from a pulpit "all the noble deeds that were historical of kings, princes, and worthy emperors." At the same time,

"Amydde the theatre, shrowded in a tent
There came out men, gastful of their cheres,
Disfygured their faces with vyseres,
Playing by signes in the people's sight
That the poete songe hath on height."

Lydgate, a monk and poet, equally ready to rhyme a legend or a ballad, to compose verses for a masquerade or to sketch the plan of a religious pantomime, had probably figured in some performance of this kind; and his description certainly gives us an accurate idea of the dramatic exhibitions of his time. When dialogue-poetry had taken possession of the stage, pantomime remained as an ornament and addition to the performance. In most of the plays anterior to Shakspeare, personages of an almost invariably emblematical character appear between the acts, to indicate the subjects of the scenes about to follow. An historical or allegorical personage is introduced to explain these emblems, moralize the piece, that is, to point out the moral truths contained in it. In "Pericles," Gower, a poet of the fourteenth century—celebrated for his "Confessio Amantis," in which he has related, in English verse, the story of Pericles as told by more ancient writers—comes upon the stage to state to the public, not that which is about to happen, but such anterior facts as require to be explained, that the drama may be properly understood. Sometimes his narrative is interrupted and supplemented by the dumb representation of the facts themselves. Gower then explains all that the mute action has not elucidated. He appears not only at the commencement of the play and between the acts, but even during the course of an act, whenever it is found convenient to abridge by narrative some less interesting part of the action, in order to apprise the spectator of a change of place or a lapse of time, and thus to transport his imagination wherever a new scene requires its presence. This was decidedly a step in advance; a useless accessory had become a means of development and of clearness. But Shakspeare speedily rejected this factitious and awkward contrivance as unworthy of his art and ere long he inspired the action with power to explain itself, to make itself understood on appearance, and thus to give dramatic performances that aspect of life and reality which could never be attained by a machinery which thus coarsely displayed its wheel-works to public view. Among Shakspeare's subsequent dramas, "Henry V." and the "Winter's Tale" are the only ones in which the chorus intervenes to relieve the poet in the difficult task of conveying his audience through time and space. The chorus of "Romeo and Juliet," which was retained perhaps as a relic of ancient usage, is only a poetic ornament, quite unconnected with the action of the play. After the production of "Pericles," dumb pageants completely disappeared; and if the three parts of "Henry VI." do not attest, by their power of composition, a close relationship to Shakspeare's system, nothing, at least in their material forms, is out of harmony with it.

Of these three pieces, the first has been absolutely denied to Shakspeare; and it is, in my opinion, equally difficult to believe that it is entirely his composition, and that the admirable scene between Talbot and his son does not bear the impress of his hand. Two old dramas, printed in 1600, contain the plan, and even numerous details of the second and third parts of "Henry VI." These two original works were long attributed to our poet, as a first essay which he afterward perfected. But this opinion will not bear an attentive examination; and all the probabilities, both literary and historical, unite in granting to Shakspeare, in the last two parts of "Henry VI.," no other share than that of a more important and extensive remodeling than he was able to bestow upon other works submitted to his correction. Brilliant developments, imagery conceived with taste and followed up with skill, and a lofty, animated, and picturesque style, are the characteristics which distinguish the great poet's work from the primitive production which he had merely beautified with his magnificent coloring. As regards their plan and arrangement, the original pieces have undergone no change; and even after the composition of the three parts of "Henry VI.," Shakspeare might still speak of the "Venus and Adonis" as the "first heir of his invention."

But when will this invention finally display itself in all its freedom? When will Shakspeare walk alone on that stage on which he is to achieve such mighty progress? Some of his biographers place the "Comedy of Errors," and "Love's Labor Lost"—the first two works the honors and criticisms of which he has to share with no one—before "Henry VI." in order of time. In this unimportant discussion, one fact alone is certain, and becomes a new subject of surprise. The first dramatic work which the imagination of Shakspeare truly produced was a comedy; and this comedy will be followed by others: he has at last taken wing, but not as yet toward the realms of tragedy. Corneille also began with comedy, but he was then ignorant of his own powers, and almost ignorant of the drama. The familiar scenes of life had alone presented themselves to his thoughts; and the scenes of his comedies are laid in his native town, in the Galerie du Palais and in the Place Royale. His subjects are timidly borrowed from surrounding circumstances; he has not yet risen above himself, or transcended his limited sphere; his vision has not yet penetrated into those ideal regions in which his imagination will one day roam at will. But Shakspeare is already a poet; imitation no longer trammels his progress; and his conceptions are no longer formed exclusively within the world of his habits. How was it that the frivolous spirit of comedy was his first guide in that poetic world from which he drew his inspiration? Why did not the emotions of tragedy first awaken the powers of so eminently tragic a poet? Was it this circumstance which led Johnson to give this singular opinion: "Shakspeare's tragedy seems to be skill; his comedy to be instinct?"

Assuredly, nothing can be more whimsical than to refuse to Shakspeare the instinct of tragedy; and if Johnson had had any feeling of it himself, such an idea would never have entered his mind. The fact which I have just stated, however, is not open to doubt; it is well deserving of explanation, and has its causes in the very nature of comedy, as it was understood and treated by Shakspeare.

Shakspeare's comedy is not, in fact, the comedy of MoliÈre; nor is it that of Aristophanes, or of the Latin poets. Among the Greeks, and in France, in modern times, comedy was the offspring of a free but attentive observation of the real world, and its object was to bring its features on the stage. The distinction between the tragic and the comic styles is met with almost in the cradle of dramatic art, and their separation has always become more distinctly marked during the course of their progress. The principle of this distinction is contained in the very nature of things. The destiny and nature of man, his passions and affairs, characters and events—all things within and around us—have their serious and their amusing sides, and may be considered and described under either of these points of view. This two-fold aspect of man and the world has opened to dramatic poetry two careers naturally distinct; but in dividing its powers to traverse them both, art has neither separated itself from realities, nor ceased to observe and reproduce them. Whether Aristophanes attacks, with the most fantastic liberty of imagination, the vices or follies of the Athenians; or whether MoliÈre depicts the absurdities of credulity and avarice, of jealousy and pedantry, and ridicules the frivolity of courts, the vanity of citizens, and even the affectation of virtues, it matters little that there is a difference between the subjects in the delineation of which the two poets have employed their powers; it matters little that one brought public life and the whole nation on the stage, while the other merely described incidents of private life, the interior arrangements of families, and the nonsensicality of individual characters; this difference in the materials of comedy arises from the difference of time, place, and state of civilization. But in both Aristophanes and MoliÈre realities always constitute the substance of the picture. The manners and ideas of their times, the vices and follies of their fellow-citizens—in a word, the nature and life of man—are always the stimulus and nutriment of their poetic vein. Comedy thus takes its origin in the world which surrounds the poet, and is connected, much more closely than tragedy, with external and real facts.

The Greeks, whose mind and civilization followed so regular a course in their development, did not combine the two kinds of composition, and the distinction which separates them in nature was maintained without effort in art. Simplicity prevailed among this people; society was not abandoned by them to a state of conflict and incoherence; and their destiny did not pass away in protracted obscurity, in the midst of contrasts, and a prey to dark and deep uneasiness. They grew and shone in their land just as the sun rose and pursued its course through the skies which overshadowed them. National perils, intestine discord, and civil wars agitated the life of a man in those days, without disturbing his imagination, and without opposing or deranging the natural and easy course of his thoughts. The reflex influence of this general harmony was diffused over literature and the arts. Styles of composition spontaneously became distinguished from each other, according to the principles upon which they depended and the impressions which they aspired to produce. The sculptor chiseled, isolated statues or innumerous groups, and did not aim at composing violent scenes or vast pictures out of blocks of marble. Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides undertook to excite the people by the narration of the mighty destinies of heroes and of kings. Cratinus and Aristophanes aimed at diverting them by the representation of the absurdities of their contemporaries or of their own follies. These natural classifications corresponded with the entire system of social order, with the state of the minds of the age, and with the instincts of public taste—which would have been shocked at their violation, which desired to yield itself without uncertainty or participation to a single impression or a single pleasure, and which would have rejected all those unnatural mixtures and uncongenial combinations to which their attention had never been called or their judgment accustomed. Thus every art and every style received its free and isolated development within the limits of its proper mission. Thus tragedy and comedy shared man and the world between them, each taking a different domain in the region of realities, and coming by turns to offer to the serious or mirthful consideration of a people who invariably insisted upon simplicity and harmony, the poetic effects which their skill could derive from the materials placed in their hands.

In our modern world, all things have borne another character. Order, regularity, natural and easy development, seem to have been banished from it. Immense interests, admirable ideas, sublime sentiments, have been thrown, as it were, pell-mell with brutal passions, coarse necessities, and vulgar habits. Obscurity, agitation, and disturbance have reigned in minds as well as in states. Nations have been formed, not of freemen and slaves, but of a confused mixture of diverse, complicated classes, ever engaged in conflict and labor; a violent chaos, which civilization, after long-continued efforts, has not yet succeeded in reducing to complete harmony. Social conditions, separated by power, but united in a common barbarism of manners; the germ of loftiest moral truths fermenting in the midst of absurd ignorance; great virtues applied in opposition to all reason; shameful vices maintained and defended with hauteur; an indocile honor, ignorant of the simplest delicacies of honesty; boundless servility, accompanied by measureless pride; in fine, the incoherent assemblage of all that human nature and destiny contain of that which is great and little, noble and trivial, serious and puerile, strong and wretched—this is what man and society have been in our Europe; this is the spectacle which has appeared on the theatre of the world.

In such a state of mind and things, how was it possible for a clear distinction and simple classification of styles and arts to be effected? How could tragedy and comedy have presented and formed themselves isolatedly in literature, when, in reality, they were incessantly in contact, entwined in the same facts, and intermingled in the same actions, so thoroughly, that it was sometimes difficult to discern the moment of passage from one to the other. Neither the rational principle, nor the delicate feeling which separate them, could attain any development in minds which were incapacitated from apprehending them by the disorder and rapidity of different or opposite impressions. Was it proposed to bring upon the stage the habitual occurrences of ordinary life? Taste was as easily satisfied as manners. Those religious performances which were the origin of the European theatre, had not escaped this admixture. Christianity is a popular religion; into the abyss of terrestrial miseries, its divine founder came in search of men, to draw them to himself; its early history is a history of poor, sick, and feeble men; it existed at first for a long while in obscurity, and afterward in the midst of persecutions, despised and proscribed by turns, and exposed to all the vicissitudes and efforts of a humble and violent destiny. Uncultivated imaginations easily seized upon the triviality which might be intermingled with the incidents of this history; the Gospel, the acts of martyrs, and the lives of saints, would have struck them much less powerfully if they had seen only their tragic aspect or their rational truths. The first Mysteries brought simultaneously upon the stage the emotions of religious terror and tenderness, and the buffooneries of vulgar comicality; and thus, in the very cradle of dramatic poetry, tragedy and comedy contracted that alliance which was inevitably forced upon them by the general condition of nations and of minds.

In France, however, this alliance was speedily broken off. From causes which are connected with the entire history of our civilization, the French people have always taken extreme pleasure in drollery. Of this, our literature has from time to time given evidence. This craving for gayety, and for gayety without alloy, early supplied the inferior classes of our countrymen with their comic farces, into which nothing was admitted that had not a tendency to excite laughter. In the infancy of the art, comedy in France may very possibly have invaded the domain of tragedy, but tragedy had no right to the field which comedy had reserved to itself; and in the piteous Moralities and pompous Tragedies which princes caused to be represented in their palaces, and rectors in their colleges, the trivially comic element long retained a place which was inexorably refused to the tragic element in the buffooneries with which the people were amused. We may therefore affirm that in France comedy, in an imperfect but distinct form, was created before tragedy. At a later period, the rigorous separation of classes, the absence of popular institutions, the regular action of the supreme power, the establishment of a more exact and uniform system of public order than existed in any other country, the habits and influence of the court, and a variety of other causes, disposed the popular mind to maintain that strict distinction between the two styles which was ordained by the classical authorities, who held undisputed sway over our drama. Then arose among us true and great comedy, as conceived by MoliÈre; and as it was in accordance with our manners, as well as with the rules of the art, to strike out a new path—as, while adapting itself to the precepts of antiquity, it did not fail to derive its subjects and coloring from the facts and personages of the surrounding world, our comedy suddenly rose to a pitch of perfection which, in my opinion, has never been attained by any other country in any other age. To place himself in the interior of families, and thereby to gain the immense advantage of a variety of ideas and conditions, which extends the domain of art without injuring the simplicity of the effects which it produces; to find in man passions sufficiently strong, and caprices sufficiently powerful to sway his whole destiny, and yet to limit their influence to the suggestion of those errors which may make man ridiculous, without ever touching upon those which would render him miserable; to describe an individual as laboring under that excess of preoccupation which, diverting him from all other thoughts, abandons him entirely to the guidance of the idea which possesses him, and yet to throw in his way only those interests which are sufficiently frivolous to enable him to compromise them without danger; to depict, in "Tartuffe," the threatening knavery of the hypocrite, and the dangerous imbecility of the dupe, in such a manner as merely to divert the spectator, without incurring any of the odious consequences of such a position; to give a comic character, in the "Misanthrope," to those feelings which do most honor to the human race, by condemning them to confinement within the dimensions of the existence of a courtier; and thus to reach the amusing by means of the serious; to extract food for mirth from the inmost recesses of human nature, and incessantly to maintain the character of comedy while bordering upon the confines of tragedy—this is what MoliÈre has done, this is the difficult and original style which he bestowed upon France; and France alone, in my opinion, could have given dramatic art this tendency, and MoliÈre.

Nothing of this kind took place among the English. The asylum of German manners, as well as of German liberties, England pursued, without obstacle, the irregular, but natural course of the civilization which such elements could not fail to engender. It retained their disorder as well as their energy, and, until the middle of the seventeenth century, its literature, as well as its institutions, was the sincere expression of these qualities. When the English drama attempted to reproduce the poetic image of the world, tragedy and comedy were not separated. The predominance of the popular taste sometimes carried tragic representations to a pitch of atrocity which was unknown in France, even in the rudest essays of dramatic art; and the influence of the clergy, by purging the comic stage of that excessive immorality which it exhibited elsewhere, also deprived it of that malicious and sustained gayety which constitutes the essence of true comedy. The habits of mind which were entertained among the people by the minstrels and their ballads, allowed the introduction, even into those compositions which were most exclusively devoted to mirthfulness, of some touches of those emotions which comedy in France can never admit with out losing its name, and becoming melodrama. Among truly national works, the only thoroughly comic play which the English stage possessed before the time of Shakspeare, "Gammer Grurton's Needle," was composed for a college, and modeled in accordance with the classic rules. The vague titles given to dramatic works, such as play, interlude, history, or even ballad, scarcely ever indicate any distinction of style. Thus, between that which was called tragedy and that which was sometimes named comedy, the only essential difference consisted in the denouement, according to the principles laid down in the fifteenth century by the monk Lydgate, who "defines a comedy to begin with complaint and to end with gladness, whereas tragedy begins in prosperity and ends in adversity."

Thus, at the advent of Shakspeare, the nature and destiny of man, which constitute the materials of dramatic poetry, were not divided or classified into different branches of art. When art desired to introduce them on the stage, it accepted them in their entirety, with all the mixtures and contrasts which they present to observation; nor was the public taste inclined to complain of this. The comic portion of human realities had a right to take its place wherever its presence was demanded or permitted by truth; and such was the character of civilization, that tragedy, by admitting the comic element, did not derogate from truth in the slightest degree. In such a condition of the stage and of the public mind, what could be the state of comedy, properly so called? How could it be permitted to claim to bear a particular name, and to form a distinct style? It succeeded in this attempt by boldly leaving those realities in which its natural domain was neither respected nor acknowledged; it did not limit its efforts to the delineation of settled manners or of consistent characters; it did not propose to itself to represent men and things under a ridiculous but truthful aspect; but it became a fantastic and romantic work, the refuge of those amusing improbabilities which, in its idleness or folly, the imagination delights to connect together by a slight thread, in order to form from them combinations capable of affording diversion or interest, without calling for the judgment of the reason. Graceful pictures, surprises, the curiosity which attaches to the progress of an intrigue, mistakes, quid-pro-quos, all the witticisms of parody and travestie, formed the substance of this inconsequent diversion. The conformation of the Spanish plays, a taste for which was beginning to prevail in England, supplied these gambols of the imagination with abundant frame-works and alluring models. Next to their chronicles and ballads, collections of French or Italian tales, together with the romances of chivalry, formed the favorite reading of the people. Is it strange that so productive a mine and so easy a style should first have attracted the attention of Shakspeare? Can we feel astonished that his young and brilliant imagination hastened to wander at will among such subjects, free from the yoke of probabilities, and excused from seeking after serious and vigorous combinations? The great poet, whose mind and hand proceeded, it is said, with such equal rapidity that his manuscript scarcely contained a single erasure, doubtless yielded with delight to those unrestrained gambols in which he could display without labor his rich and varied faculties. He could put any thing he pleased into his comedies, and he has, in fact, put every thing into them, with the exception of one thing which was incompatible with such a system, namely, the ensemble which, making every part concur toward the same end, reveals at every step the depth of the plan and the grandeur of the work. It would be difficult to find in Shakspeare's tragedies a single conception, position, act, or passion, or degree of vice or virtue, which may not also be met with in some one of his comedies; but that which in his tragedies is carefully thought out, fruitful in result, and intimately connected with the series of causes and effects, is in his comedies only just indicated, and offered to our sight for a moment to dazzle us with a passing gleam, and soon to disappear in a new combination. In "Measure for Measure," Angelo, the unworthy governor of Vienna, after having condemned Claudio to death for the crime of having seduced a young girl whom he intended to marry, himself attempts to seduce Isabella, the sister of Claudio, by promising her brother's pardon as a recompense for her own dishonor; and when, by Isabella's address in substituting another girl in her place, he thinks he has received the price of his infamous bargain, he gives orders to hasten Claudio's execution. Is not this tragedy? Such a fact might well be placed in the life of Richard the Third, and no crime of Macbeth's presents this excess of wickedness. But in "Macbeth" and "Richard III.," crime produces the tragic effect which belongs to it, because it bears the impress of probability, and because real forms and colors attest its presence: we can discern the place which it occupies in the heart of which it has taken possession: we know how it gained admission, what it has conquered, and what remains for it to subjugate: we behold it incorporating itself by degrees into the unhappy being whom it has subdued: we see it living, walking, and breathing with a man who lives, walks, and breathes, and thus communicates to it his character, his own individuality. In Angelo, crime is only a vague abstraction, connected en passant with a proper name, with no other motive than the necessity of making that person commit a certain action which shall produce a certain position, from which the poet intends to derive certain effects. Angelo is not presented to us at the outset either as a rascal or as a hypocrite; on the contrary, he is a man of exaggeratedly severe virtue. But the progress of the poem requires that he should become criminal, and criminal he becomes; when his crime is committed, he will repent of it as soon as the poet pleases, and will find himself able to resume without effort the natural course of his life, which had been interrupted only for a moment.

Thus, in Shakspeare's comedy, the whole of human life passes before the eyes of the spectator, reduced to a sort of phantasmagoria—a brilliant and uncertain reflection of the realities portrayed in his tragedy. Just when the truth seems on the point of allowing itself to be caught, the image grows pale, and vanishes; its part is played, and it disappears. In the "Winter's Tale," Leontes is as jealous, sanguinary, and unmerciful as Othello; but his jealousy, born suddenly, from a mere caprice, at the moment when it is necessary that the plot should thicken, loses its fury and suspicion as suddenly, as soon as the action has reached the point at which it becomes requisite to change the situation. In "Cymbeline"—which, notwithstanding its title, ought to be numbered among the comedies, as the piece is conceived in entire accordance with the same system—Iachimo's conduct is just as knavish and perverse as that of Iago in "Othello;" but his character does not explain his conduct, or, to speak more correctly, he has no character; and, always ready to cast off the rascal's cloak, in which the poet has enveloped him, as soon as the plot reaches its term, and the confession of the secret, which he alone can reveal, becomes necessary to terminate the misunderstanding between Posthumus and Imogen, which he alone has caused, he does not even wait to be asked, but, by a spontaneous avowal, deserves to be included in that general amnesty which should form the conclusion of every comedy.

I might multiply these examples to infinity; they abound not only in Shakspeare's early comedies, but also in those which succeeded the composition of his best tragedies. In all, we should find characters as unstable as passions, and resolutions as changeful as characters. Do not expect to find probability, or consecutiveness, or profound study of man and society; the poet cares little for these things, and invites you to follow his example. To interest by the development of positions, to divert by variety of pictures, and to charm by the poetic richness of details—this is what he aims at; these are the pleasures which he offers. There is no interdependence, no concatenation of events and ideas; vices, virtues, inclinations, intentions, all become changed and transformed at every step. Even absurdity does not always continue to characterize the individual whom it distinguishes at the outset. In "Cymbeline," the imbecile Cloton becomes almost proud and noble when opposing the independence of a British prince to the threats of a Roman ambassador; and in "Measure for Measure," Elbow the constable, whose nonsensicalities furnish the diversion of one scene, speaks almost like a man of sense when, in a subsequent scene, another person is appointed to enliven the dialogue. Thus negligent and truant is the flight of the poet through these capricious compositions! Thus fugitive are the light creations with which he has animated them!

But, then, what gracefulness and rapidity of movement, what variety of forms and effects, what brilliancy of wit, imagination, and poetry—all employed to make us forget the monotony of their romantic frame-work! Doubtless, this is not comedy as we conceive it, and as MoliÈre wrote it; but who but Shakspeare could have diffused such treasures over so frivolous and fantastic a style of comedy? The legends and tales upon which his plays are founded have given birth, both before and after him, to thousands of dramatic works which are now plunged in well-merited oblivion. A king of Sicily, jealous, without knowing why, of a king of Bohemia, determines to put his wife to death, and to expose his daughter; this child, left to perish on the shore of Bohemia, but saved by a shepherd from her cruel fate, becomes, after sixteen years have elapsed, a marvelous beauty, and is beloved by the heir to the crown. After all the obstacles naturally opposed to their union, arrives the ordinary denouement of explanations and recognitions. This story truly combines all the most common and least probable features of the romances, tales, and pastorals of the time. But Shakspeare takes it, and the absurd fable that opens the "Winter's Tale" becomes interesting by the brutal truthfulness of the jealous transports of Leontes, the amiable character of little Mamillius, the patient virtue of Hermione, and the generous inflexibility of Paulina; and, in the second part, the rural festival, with its gayety and joyous incidents, and, amid the rustic scene, the charming figure of Perdita, combining with the modesty of an humble shepherdess the moral elegance of the superior classes, assuredly present the most piquant and graceful picture that truth could furnish to poetry. What particular charm is there in the nuptials of Theseus and Hippolyta, and the hackneyed incident of two pairs of lovers rendered unhappy by one another? It is only a worn-out combination, destitute alike of interest and truth. Yet Shakspeare has made of it his "Midsummer Night's Dream;" and in the midst of the dull intrigue, he introduces Oberon with his elves and fairies, who live upon flowers, run upon the blades of grass, dance in the rays of the moon, play with the light of the morning, and fly away, "following darkness like a team," as soon as Aurora's first doubtful rays begin to glimmer in the sky. Their employments, pleasures, and tricks occupy the scene, participate in all its incidents, and entwine in the same action the mournful destinies of the four lovers and the grotesque performances of a troop of artisans; and after having fled away at the approach of the sun, when Night once more enshrouds earth in her sombre mantle, they will resume possession of that fantastic world into which we have been transported by this amazing and brilliant extravaganza.

In truth, it would be acting very rigorously toward ourselves, and very ungratefully toward genius, to refuse to follow it somewhat blindly when it invites us to a scene of such attraction. Are originality, simplicity, gayety, and gracefulness so common that we shall treat them severely because they are lavished on a slight foundation of but little value? Is it nothing to enjoy the divine charm of poetry amid the improbabilities, or, if you will, the absurdities of romance? Have we, then, lost the happy power of lending ourselves complacently to its caprices? and do we not possess sufficient vivacity of imagination and youthfulness of feeling to enjoy so delightful a pleasure under whatever form it may be offered to us?

Five only of Shakspeare's comedies, the "Tempest," the "Merry Wives of Windsor," "Timon of Athens," "Troilus and Cressida," and the "Merchant of Venice," have escaped, at least in part, from the influence of the romantic taste. Some will, perhaps, be surprised to find this merit ascribed to the "Tempest." Like the "Mid-summer Night's Dream," the "Tempest" is peopled with sylphs and sprites, and every thing is done under the sway of fairy power. But after having laid the action in this unreal world, the poet conducts it without inconsistency, complication, or languor; none of the sentiments are forced, or ceaselessly interrupted; the characters are simple and well sustained; the supernatural power which disposes the events undertakes to supply all the necessities of the plot, and leaves the personages of the drama at liberty to show themselves in their natural character, and to swim at ease in that magical atmosphere by which they are surrounded, without at all injuring the truthfulness of their impressions or ideas. The style is fantastic and sprightly; but, when the supposition is once admitted, there is nothing in the work to shock the judgment and disturb the imagination by the incoherence of the effects produced.

In the system of intrigued comedy, the "Merry Wives of Windsor" may be said to be almost perfect in its composition; it presents a true picture of manners; the denouement is as piquant as it is well-prepared; and it is assuredly one of the merriest works in the whole comic repertory. Shakspeare evidently aspired higher in "Timon of Athens." It is an attempt at that scientific style in which the ridiculous is made to flow from the serious, and which constitutes la grande comedie. The scenes in which Timon's friends excuse themselves, under various pretexts, from rendering him assistance, are wanting neither in truthfulness nor effect. But, then, Timon's misanthropy, as furious as his confidence had previously been extravagant—the equivocal character of Apemantus—the abruptness of the transitions, and the violence of the sentiments, form a picture more melancholy than true, which is scarcely softened down enough by the fidelity of the old steward. Though far inferior to "Timon," the drama of "Troilus and Cressida" is nevertheless skillfully conceived; it is based upon the resolution taken by the Grecian chiefs to flatter the stupid pride of Ajax, and make him the hero of the army, in order to humble the haughty disdainfulness of Achilles, and to obtain from his jealousy that which he had refused to their prayers. But the idea is more comic than its execution, and neither the buffooneries of Thersites nor the truthfulness of the part played by Pandarus are sufficient to impart to the piece that mirthful physiognomy without which comedy is impossible.

These four works, which are less akin than his other comedies to the romantic system, also belong more completely to Shakspeare's invention. The "Merry Wives of Windsor" is an original creation; no tale has been discovered from which Shakspeare could have borrowed the subject of the "Tempest;" the composition of "Timon of Athens" is indebted in no respect to Plutarch's account of that misanthrope; and in "Troilus and Cressida" Shakspeare has copied Chaucer in a very few particulars.

The story of the "Merchant of Venice" is of an entirely romantic character, and was selected by Shakspeare, like the "Winter's Tale," "Much Ado about Nothing," "Measure for Measure," and other plays, merely that he might adorn it with the graceful brilliancy of his poetry. But one incident of the subject conducted Shakspeare to the confines of tragedy, and he suddenly became aware of his domain; he entered into that real world in which the comic and the tragic are commingled, and, when depicted with equal truthfulness, concur, by their combination, to increase the power of the effect produced. What can be more striking, in this style of dramatic composition, than the part assigned to Shylock? This son of a degraded race has all the vices and passions which are engendered by such a position; his origin has made him what he is, sordid and malignant, fearful and pitiless; he does not think of emancipating himself from the rigors of the law, but he is delighted at being able to invoke it for once, in all its severity, in order to appease the thirst for vengeance which devours him; and when, in the judgment scene, after having made us tremble for the life of the virtuous Antonio, Shylock finds the exactitude of that law, in which he triumphed with such barbarity, turned unexpectedly against himself—when he feels himself overwhelmed at once by the danger and the ridicule of his position, two opposite feelings—mirth and emotion—arise almost simultaneously in the breast of the spectator. What a singular proof is this of the general disposition of Shakspeare's mind! He has treated the whole of the romantic part of the drama without any intermixture of comedy, or even of gayety; and we can discern true comedy only when we meet with Shylock—that is, with tragedy.

It is utterly futile to attempt to base any classification of Shakspeare's works on the distinction between the comic and tragic elements; they can not possibly be divided into these two styles, but must be separated into the fantastic and the real, the romance and the world. The first class contains most of his comedies; the second comprehends all his tragedies—immense and living stages, upon which all things are represented, as it were, in their solid form, and in the place which they occupied in a stormy and complicated state of civilization. In these dramas, the comic element is introduced whenever its character of reality gives it the right of admission and the advantage of opportune appearance. Falstaff appears in the train of Henry V., and Doll Tear-Sheet in the train of Falstaff; the people surround the kings, and the soldiers crowd around their generals; all conditions of society, all the phases of human destiny appear by turns in juxtaposition, with the nature which properly belongs to them, and in the position which they naturally occupy. The tragic and comic elements sometimes combine in the same individual, and are developed in succession in the same character. The impetuous preoccupation of Hotspur is amusing when it prevents him from listening to any other voice than his own, and substitutes his sentiments and words in the place of the things which his friends are desirous to tell him, and which he is equally anxious to learn; but it becomes serious and fatal when it leads him to adopt, without due examination, a dangerous project which suddenly inspires him with the idea of glory. The perverse obstinacy which renders him so comical in his dealings with the boastful and vainglorious Glendower, will be the tragical cause of his ruin when, in contempt of all reason and advice, and unaided by any succor, he hastens to the battle-field, upon which, ere long, left alone, he looks around and sees naught but death. Thus we find the entire world, the whole of human realities, reproduced by Shakspeare in tragedy, which, in his eyes, was the universal theatre of life and truth.

In the year 1595, at latest, "Romeo and Juliet" had appeared. This work was succeeded, almost without interruption, until 1599, by "Hamlet," "King John," "Richard II.," "Richard III.," the two parts of "Henry IV.," and "Henry V." From 1599 to 1605, the chronological order of Shakspeare's works contains none but comedies and the play of "Henry VIII." After 1605, tragedy regains the ascendant in "King Lear," "Macbeth," "Julius Caesar," "Antony and Cleopatra," "Coriolanus," and "Othello." The first period, we perceive, belongs rather to historical plays; and the second to tragedy properly so called, the subjects of which, not being taken from the positive history of England, allowed the poet a wider field, and permitted the free manifestation of all the originality of his nature. Historical dramas, generally designated by the name of Histories, had enjoyed possession of popular favor for nearly twenty years. Shakspeare emancipated himself but slowly from the taste of his age; though always displaying more grandeur, and gaining greater approbation in proportion as he abandoned himself with greater freedom to the guidance of his own instinct—he was nevertheless always careful to accommodate his progress to the advancement of his audience in their appreciation of his art. It appears certain, from the dates of his plays, that he never composed a single tragedy until some other poet had, as it were, felt the pulse of the public on the same subject; just as though he were conscious that he possessed within himself a superiority which, before it could be trusted to the taste of the multitude, required the exercise of a vulgar caution.

It can not be doubted that, between historical dramas and tragedies, properly so called, Shakspeare's genius inclined in preference toward the latter class. The general and unvarying opinion which has placed "Romeo and Juliet," "Hamlet," "King Lear," "Macbeth," and "Othello" at the head of his works, would suffice to prove this. Among his national dramas, "Richard III." is the only one which has attained the same rank, and this is an additional proof of the truth of my assertion; for it is the only work which Shakspeare was able to conduct, in the same manner as his tragedies, by the influence of a single character or idea. Herein resides the fundamental difference between the two kinds of dramatic works; in one class, events pursue their course, and the poet accompanies them; in the other, events group themselves around a man, and seem to serve only to bring him into bold relief. "Julius CÆsar" is a true tragedy, and yet the progress of the piece is framed in accordance with Plutarch's narrative, just as "King John," "Richard II.," and "Henry IV." are made to coincide with Holinshed's Chronicles; but in the first-named piece, Brutus imparts to the play the unity of a great individual character. In the same manner, the history of "Richard III." is entirely his own history, the work of his design and will; whereas, the history of the other kings with whom Shakspeare has peopled his dramas is only a part, and frequently the smallest part, of the picture of the events of their time.

This arises from the fact that events were not what chiefly occupied Shakspeare's mind; his special attention was bestowed upon the men who occasioned them. He establishes his domain, not in historical, but in dramatic truth. Give him a fact to represent upon the stage, and he will not inquire minutely into the circumstances which accompanied it, or into the various and multiplied causes which may have combined to produce it; his imagination will not require an exact picture of the time or place in which it occurred, or a complete acquaintance with the infinite combinations of which the mysterious web of destiny is composed. These constitute only the materials of the drama; and Shakspeare will not look to them to furnish it with vitality. He takes the fact as it is related to him; and, guided by this thread, he descends into the depths of the human soul. It is man that he wishes to resuscitate; it is man whom he interrogates regarding the secret of his impressions, inclinations, ideas, and volitions. He does not inquire, "What hast thou done?" but, "How art thou constituted? Whence originated the part thou hast taken in the events in which I find thee concerned? What wert thou seeking after? What couldst thou do? Who art thou? Let me know thee; and then I shall know in what respects thy history is important to me."

Thus we may explain that depth of natural truth which reveals itself, in Shakspeare's works, even to the least practiced eyes, and that somewhat frequent absence of local truth which he would have been able to delineate with equal excellence if he had studied it with equal assiduity. Hence, also, arises that difference of conception which is observable between his historical dramas and his tragedies. Composed in accordance with a plan more national than dramatic, written beforehand in some sort by events well known in all their details, and already in possession of the stage under determinate forms, most of his historical plays could not be subjected to that individual unity which Shakspeare delighted to render dominant in his compositions, but which so rarely holds sway in the actual narratives of history. Every man has usually a very small share in the events in which he has taken part; and the brilliant position which rescues a name from oblivion has not always preserved the man who bore it from sinking into a nullity. Kings especially, who are forced to appear upon the stage of the world independently of their aptitude to perform their part upon it, frequently afford less assistance than embarrassment to the conduct of an historical action. Most of the princes whose reigns furnished Shakspeare with his national dramas, undoubtedly exercised some influence upon their own history; but none of them, with the exception of Richard III., wrought it out entirely for himself. Shakspeare would have sought in vain to discover, in their conduct and personal nature, that sole cause of events, that simple and pregnant truth, which was called for by the instinct of his genius. While, therefore, in his tragedies, a moral position, or a strongly conceived character, binds and confines the action in a powerful knot, from whence the facts as well as the sentiments of the drama issue to return thither again, his historical plays contain a multitude of incidents and scenes which are destined rather to fill up the action than to facilitate its progress. As events pass in succession before his view, Shakspeare stops them to catch some few details, which suffice to determine their character; and these details he derives, not from the lofty or general causes of the facts, but from their practical and familiar results. An historical event may originate in a very exalted source, but it always descends to a very low position; it matters little that its sources be concealed in the elevated summits of social order, it ever reaches its consummation in the popular masses, producing among them a widely-diffused and manifest effect and feeling. At this point, Shakspeare seems to wait for events, and here he takes his stand to portray them. The intervention of the people, who bear so heavy a part of the weight of history, is assuredly legitimate, at least in historical representations. It was, moreover, necessary to Shakspeare. Those partial pictures of private or popular history, which lie far behind its great events, are brought by Shakspeare to the front of the stage, and placed in prominent relief; indeed, we feel that he relies upon them to impart to his work the form and coloring of reality. The invasion of France, the battle of Agincourt, the marriage of a daughter of France to a king of England, in whose favor the French monarch disinherits the dauphin, are not sufficient, in his opinion, to occupy the whole of the historical drama of "Henry V.;" so he summons to his aid the comic erudition of the brave Welshman, Fluellen, the conversations of the king with the soldiers, Pistol, Nym, and Bardolph, all the subaltern movement of an army, and even the joyous loves of Catharine and Henry. In the two parts of "Henry IV.," the comedy is more closely connected with the events, and yet it does not emanate from them. Even if Falstaff and his crew occupied less space, the principal facts would not be less determinate, and would not follow another course; but these facts have only supplied Shakspeare with the external conformation of the drama; the incidents of private life, the comic details, Hotspur and his wife, and Falstaff and his companions, give it life and animation.

In true tragedy, every circumstance assumes another character and another aspect; no incident is isolated, or alien to the very substance of the drama; no link is slight or fortuitous. The events grouped around the principal personage present themselves to view with the importance which they derive from the impression that he receives of them; to him they address themselves, and from him they proceed; he is the beginning and the end, the instrument and the object of the decrees of God, who, in the world which He has created for man, wills that every thing should be done by the hands of man, and nothing according to his designs. God employs the human will to accomplish intentions which man never entertained, and allows him to proceed freely toward a goal which he has not selected. But though man is exposed to the influence of events, he does not fall into subjection to them; if impotence be his condition, liberty is his nature; the feelings, ideas, and wishes with which he is inspired by external objects emanate from himself alone; in him resides an independent and spontaneous power which rejects and defies the empire to which his destiny is subjected. Thus was the world constituted, and thus has Shakspeare conceived tragedy. Give him an obscure and remote event; let him be bound to conduct it toward a determinate result, through a series of incidents more or less known; amid these facts he will place a passion or a character, and put all the threads of the action into the hands of the creature of his own origination. Events follow their course, and man enters upon his; he employs his power to divert them from the direction which he does not wish them to pursue, to conquer them when they thwart him, and to elude them when they embarrass him; he subjects them for a moment to his authority, to find them soon acting with greater hostility toward him in the new course which he has forced them to take; and at last he succumbs entirely in the struggle in which his destiny and his life have gone to wreck.

The power of man in conflict with the power of fate—this is the spectacle which fascinated and inspired the dramatic genius of Shakspeare. Perceiving it for the first time in the catastrophe of "Romeo and Juliet," he felt his will suddenly terror-struck at the aspect of the vast disproportion which exists between the efforts of man and the inflexibility of destiny—between the immensity of our desires and the nullity of our means. In "Hamlet," the second of his tragedies, he reproduces this picture with a sort of shuddering dread. A feeling of duty has prescribed to Hamlet a terrible project; he does not think that any thing can permit him to evade it; and from the very outset, he sacrifices every thing to it—his love, his self-respect, his pleasures, and even the studies of his youth. He has now only one object in the world—to prove and punish the crime which had caused his father's death. That, in order to accomplish this design, he must break the heart of her he loves; that, during the course of the incidents which he originates in order to effect his purpose, a mistake renders him the murderer of the inoffensive Polonius; that he himself becomes an object of mirth and contempt—he cares not, does not even bestow a thought upon it; these are the natural results of his determination, and in this determination his whole existence is concentrated. But he is desirous to accomplish his plan with certainty; he wishes to feel assured that the blow will be legitimate, and that it will not fail to strike home. Henceforward accumulate in his path those doubts, difficulties, and obstacles which the course of things invariably sets in opposition to the man who aims at subjecting it to his will. By bestowing a less philosophical observation upon these impediments, Hamlet would surmount them more easily; but the hesitation and dread which they inspire form part of their power, and Hamlet must undergo its entire influence. Nothing, however, can shake his resolution, nothing divert him from his purpose: he advances, slowly it is true, with his eyes constantly fixed upon his object; whether he originates an opportunity, or merely appropriates one already existing, every step is a progress, until he seems to border on the final term of his design. But time has had its career; Providence is at its limit; the events which Hamlet has prepared hasten onward without his co-operation; they are consummated by him, and to his own destruction; and he falls a victim to those decrees whose accomplishment he has insured, destined to show how little man can avail to effect, even in that which he most ardently desires.

Already more inured to the contemplation of human life, Richard III., at the commencement of his sanguinary career, contemplates, with steady gaze, that immense disproportion before which the thought of the courageous but inexperienced Hamlet had incessantly quailed. Richard merely promises himself greater pride and pleasure from the subjugation of this hostile power; and resolves to give the lie to fate, which appeared to have destined him to abasement and contempt. In fact, we behold him ruling, like a conqueror, the chances of his life; events spring from his hands bearing the impress of his will; just as his thought conceives them, his power accomplishes them; he completes what he has projected, raises his existence to a level with his ambition, and falls at the moment appointed by inflexible destiny, to render the punishment of his crimes more striking, by inflicting it in the midst of his successes. Macbeth, Othello, Coriolanus, all equally active and blind in the conduct of their destiny, bring down upon themselves, in the same manner, with all the force of a passionate will, the event which is fated to crush them.

Brutus dies in consequence of the death of Caesar; no one desired more than himself the blow which killed him; no one resolved on his death by a freer choice of his reason; he had not, like Hamlet, a ghost to dictate to him his duty; in himself alone he found that severe law to which he sacrificed his repose, his affections, and his inclinations; no one is more thoroughly master of himself; and yet, like all the rest, he dies, powerless to resist fate. With him perishes the liberty which he aspired to save; the hope of rendering his death useful does not even flash across his mind; and yet Shakspeare does not make him exclaim, when dying, "Virtue, thou art only an empty name!" And why not? Because above this terrible conflict of man against necessity soars his moral existence, independent and sovereign, free from all the perils of the combat. The mighty genius whose view had embraced the whole destiny of man could not have failed to recognize its sublime secret; a sure instinct revealed to him this final explanation, without which all is darkness and uncertainty. Furnished, therefore, with the moral thread which never breaks in his hands, he proceeds with firm steps through the embarrassments of circumstances and the perplexities of varied feelings; nothing can be simpler at bottom than Shakspeare's action; nothing less complicated than the impression which it leaves upon our minds. Our interest is never divided, and still less does it waver between two opposite inclinations, or two equally powerful affections. As soon as the characters become known, and their position is developed, our choice is made; we know what we desire and what we fear, whom we hate and whom we love. There is also as little conflict of duties as of interests; and the conscience wavers no more than the affections. In the midst of political revolutions, in times when society is at war with itself, and can no longer guide individuals by those laws which it has imposed upon them for the maintenance of its unity, then alone does Shakspeare's judgment hesitate, and allow ours to hesitate also; he can himself no longer accurately determine on which side lies the right, or what duty requires, and he is therefore unable to tell us. "King John," "Richard II.," and the three parts of "Henry VI.," furnish examples of this. In every other drama, the moral position is evident, free from ambiguity, and undisguised by complaisance; the characters are not represented as deceiving or deceived, hovering between vice and virtue, weakness and crime; what they are, they are frankly and openly; their actions are depicted in vigorous outlines, so that even the weakest eyesight can not mistake them. And yet—so admirable is his perception of truths—in these actions, so positive, complete, and consistent, all the inconsistencies and fantastic mixtures of human nature exist and are displayed. Macbeth has fully made up his mind to crime; no link binds his conduct any longer to virtue; and yet who can doubt that, in the character of Macbeth, side by side with the passions which stimulate him to crime, there still exist those inclinations which constitute virtue? The mother of Hamlet has set no bounds to her incestuous love; she knows her crime and boldly commits it; her position is that of a shameless culprit; but her soul is that of a woman capable of loving modesty, and finding happiness within the bounds of duty. Even Claudius himself, the wretch Claudius, would wish to be able still to pray; he can not do so, but he wishes he could. Thus the keen vision of the philosopher enlightens and directs the imagination of the poet; thus man appears to Shakspeare only when fully furnished with all that belongs to his nature. The truth is always there, before the eyes of the poet: he looks down and writes.

But there is one truth which Shakspeare does not observe in this manner, which he derives from himself, and without which all the external truths which he contemplates would be merely cold and sterile images; and that is, the feeling which these truths excite within him. This feeling is the mysterious bond which unites us to the outer world, and makes us truly know it; when our mind has taken realities into consideration, our soul is moved by an analogous and spontaneous impression; but for the anger with which we are inspired by the sight of crime, whence should we obtain the revelation of that element which renders crime odious? No one has ever combined, in an equal degree with Shakspeare, this double character of an impartial observer and a man of profound sensibility. Superior to all by his reason, and accessible to all by sympathy, he sees nothing without judging it, and he judges it because he feels it. Could any one who did not detest Iago have penetrated, as Shakspeare has done, into the recesses of his execrable character? To the horror with which he regards the criminal must be ascribed the terrible energy of the language which he puts into his mouth. Who could make us tremble, so much as Lady Macbeth herself, at the action for which she prepares with so little fear? But when it becomes needful to express pity or tenderness, the unrestraint of love, the extravagance of maternal apprehension, or the stern and deep grief of manly affection—then the observer may quit his post, and the judge his tribunal. Shakspeare himself develops all the abundance of his nature, and gives expression to those familiar feelings of his soul which are set in motion by the slightest contact with his imagination. Women, children, old men—who has described them with such truthfulness as he? Where the ingenuousness of requited affection given birth to a purer flower than Desdemona? Has old age, when shamefully deserted, and driven to madness by the weakness of senility and the violence of grief, ever given utterance to more pathetic lamentations than in "King Lear?" Who has not felt his heart assailed by all the emotions of anguish which childhood can inspire, on beholding the scene in which Hubert, in performance of his promise to King John, is about to burn out the eyes of young Arthur? And if this barbarous project were carried into execution, who could endure it? But in such a case Shakspeare would not have described the scene. There is an excess of grief in presence of which he pauses; he takes pity on himself, and repels impressions too powerful to be borne. Scarcely does he permit Juliet to utter any words between Romeo's death and her own; Macduff is silent after the massacre of his wife and children; and Constance dies before we are allowed to behold the death of Arthur. Othello alone approaches the whole of his sufferings without mitigation; but his misfortune was so horrible, when he was ignorant of it, that the impression which he receives from it, after the discovery of his error, becomes almost a consolation.

Thus moved by all that moves us, Shakspeare obtains our confidence; we yield ourselves in security to that open soul in which our feelings have already reverberated, and to that ready imagination which is as much illumined by the splendid sun of Italy as darkened by the sombre fogs of Denmark. Dramatic in the portraiture of a mother's gambols with her child, and simple in the terrible apparition which opens the first scene of "Hamlet," the poet is never unequal to the realities which ho has to delineate, or the man to the emotions with which he wishes to imbue our hearts.

Why, then, are we sometimes painfully compelled to pause while following him? Why does a sort of impatience and fatigue frequently disturb the admiration which we feel for his works? One misfortune happened to Shakspeare; though he was always lavish of his wealth, he was not always able to distribute it either opportunely or skillfully. This was frequently the misfortune of Corneille also. Ideas accumulated about Corneille, as about Shakspeare, confusedly and tumultuously, and neither of them had the courage to treat his own mind with prudent severity. They forgot the position of the character they were describing, in order to indulge in the thoughts which it awakened in the soul of the poet. In Shakspeare, especially, this excessive indulgence in his own ideas and feelings sometimes arrests and interrupts the emotions awakened in the breast of the spectator, in a manner which is fatal to the dramatic effect. It is not merely, as in Corneille, the ingenious loquacity of a rather talkative mind; but it is the restless and fantastic reverie of a mind astonished at its own discoveries, not knowing how to reproduce the whole impression which it has received from them, and heaping ideas, images, and expressions one upon another, in order to awaken in us feelings similar to those by which it is itself oppressed. The feelings developed at such length are not always, however, those which should properly occupy the personage by whom they are expressed; and not only is the harmony of the position injured by them, but we find ourselves compelled to undertake a certain labor which, in the end, diverts our attention from the subject on which it ought to be concentrated. Though always simple in their emotions, the heroes of Shakspeare are not always equally simple in their speeches; though always true and natural in their ideas, they are not as constantly true and natural in the combinations which they form from them. The poet's gaze embraced an immense field, and his imagination, traversing it with marvelous rapidity, perceived a thousand distant or singular relations between the objects which met his view, and passed from one to another by a multitude of abrupt and curious transitions, which it afterward imposed upon both the personages of the drama and the spectators. Hence arose the true and great fault of Shakspeare, the only one that originated in himself, and which is sometimes perceptible even in his finest compositions; and that is, a deceptive appearance of laborious research, which is occasioned, on the contrary, by the absence of labor. Accustomed, by the taste of his age, frequently to connect ideas and expressions by their most distant relations, he contracted the habit of that learned subtlety which perceives and assimilates every thing, and leaves no point of resemblance unnoticed; and this fault has more than once marred the gayety of his comedies, as well as destroyed the pathos of his tragedies. If meditation had taught Shakspeare to fall back upon himself, to contemplate his own strength, and to concentrate it by skillful management, he would soon have rejected the abuse which he has made of it, and would have speedily become conscious that neither his heroes nor his spectators could follow him in that prodigious movement of ideas, feelings, and intentions which, on every occasion, and under the slightest pretext, arose and obtruded themselves upon his own thought.

But so far as we are able, at the present day, to form any idea of Shakspeare's character, from the scattered and uncertain details which have reached us regarding his life and person, we have every reason to believe that he never bestowed so much care either on his labors or on his glory. More disposed to enjoy his own powers than to turn them to their best account—docile to the inspiration, rather than guided by the consciousness of his genius—vexed but little by a craving after success, and more inclined to doubt its value than attentive to the means of obtaining it—the poet advanced without measuring his progress, unvailing himself, as it were, at every step, and perhaps retaining, even at the end of his career, some remains of ingenuous ignorance of the marvelous riches which he scattered so lavishly in every direction. His sonnets alone, of all his works, contain a few allusions to his personal feelings, and to the condition of his soul and life; but we rarely meet in them with the idea, so natural to a poet, of the immortality which his works are destined to achieve. He could not have been a man who reckoned much upon posterity, or who cared at all about it, who ever displayed so little anxiety to throw light upon the only monuments of his private existence which posterity possesses concerning him.

Printed for the first time in 1609, these sonnets were, doubtless, published with Shakspeare's consent, although nothing seems to indicate that he took the slightest part in their publication. Neither his publisher nor himself has endeavored to impart to them an historical interest by naming the persons to whom they were addressed, or the occasions which inspired their composition. Thus the light which they throw upon some of the circumstances of his life is often so doubtful that it tends rather to perplex than to guide the biographer. The passionate style which pervades them all—even those which are evidently addressed merely to a friend—has thrown the commentators upon Shakspeare into great embarrassment. Of all the conjectures which have been hazarded in explanation of this fact, one alone, in my opinion, seems to possess any likelihood. At a time when the mind, tormented, as it were, by its youth and inexperience, tried all forms of expression, except simplicity—and at a court in which euphuism, the fashionable language, had introduced the most whimsical travesties, both of persons and ideas, into familiar conversation—it is possible that, in order to express real feelings, the poet may sometimes have assumed, in these fugitive compositions, the tone and language of conventionality. It is known, from a pamphlet published in 1598, that Shakspeare's "sugar'd sonnets," which were already celebrated, although they had not yet been printed, were the delight of his private circle of friends; and if it be remarked that the idea which terminates them is almost always repeated, with variations, in several successive sonnets, we shall feel strongly tempted to regard them as the simple amusements of a mind which could never resist the opportunity of expressing an ingenious idea. Not only, therefore, are Shakspeare's sonnets insufficient to explain the facts to which they allude, but it is only by a more or less logical process of induction that they can be made to supply any details regarding the occupations of Shakspeare's life during his residence in London, and during those thirty years, now so glorious, regarding which he has been at such pains to supply us with no information.

Perhaps his position, as well as his character, may have contributed to cause this silence. A feeling of pride, as much as a sentiment of modesty, may have induced Shakspeare to leave in oblivion an existence which gave him but little satisfaction. The condition of an actor then possessed, in England, neither consistency nor reputation. Whatever difference Hamlet may place between strolling players and those who belonged to an established theatre, the latter could not but bear the weight of the coarseness of the public upon whom they were dependent, as well as that of the colleagues with whom they shared the task of diverting the public.

The general fondness for theatrical amusements furnished employment to persons of every condition, from those who engaged in bear-baitings, to the choristers of St. Paul's and the players of Blackfriars. It was probably of some theatre holding a middle rank between these two extremes that Shakspeare gives us so amusing a description in the "Midsummer Night's Dream." But the means of illusion to which the artisan performers of this drama have recourse, are in no respect inferior to those of which the most distinguished theatres made use. The actor, covered "with lime and rough-cast," who represents the wall that separated Pyramus and Thisbe, and moves his fingers to provide "the chink through which the lovers whisper," and the man who, with his lantern, his dog, and his thorn-bush, "doth the horned moon present," did not require a much greater stretch of the imagination of the spectators than was necessary to regard the same scene as a garden full of flowers; then, without any changes, as a rock upon which a vessel has just suffered shipwreck; and, finally, as a field of battle, upon which "two armies fly in, represented with four swords and bucklers." [Footnote 17] There is reason to believe that all these performances collected together very nearly the same audience; at least, it is certain that Shakspeare's plays were performed both at Blackfriars and at the Globe, two different theatres, although both belonged to the same troop.

[Footnote 17: See the ironical description of the uncouth state of the stage, given by Sir Philip Sidney in his "Defense of Poesy."]

Strolling players were accustomed to give their performances in the court-yards of inns. The stage was erected in one corner, while the spectators occupied the remainder of the yard, standing, like the actors, in the open air; the lower rooms and the gallery which ran round the court, were doubtless opened to the public at a higher rate of admission. The London theatres were constructed upon this plan; and those which were called "public playhouses," in opposition to the "private theatres," kept up the custom of performing in the open air, without any other canopy than the sky. The Globe was a public theatre, and the Blackfriars a private one; these last establishments doubtless occupied a superior rank; and, at a later period, to frequent the Blackfriars theatre was regarded as a mark of elegant taste and superior discernment. But such distinctions are incapable of being clearly defined, and when Shakspeare appeared on the stage these shades of difference were probably very confused. In 1609, Decker wrote a pamphlet entitled "The Gul's Horne-booke," which contains a chapter, "How a gallant should behave himself in a play-house." We learn from this authority that a gentleman, on entering a public or private theatre, should walk at once on the stage, and sit down either on the ground or on a stool, as he found it convenient to pay for a seat or not. He must valiantly keep his post, in spite of the gibes and insults of the populace in the pit; because it becomes a gentleman to laugh at "the mews and hisses of the opposed rascality." However, if the multitude should begin to shout "Out with the fool!" the danger becomes sufficiently serious for good taste to permit the gentleman to withdraw. During the performance, the common people were supplied with beer and apples, of which the actors also frequently partook; while the gentlemen, on their side, smoked their pipes and played at cards; indeed, it was not at all unusual for the elegant habitues of the theatre to begin a game at cards before the commencement of the play. "The Gul's Horne-booke" recommends them to play with an appearance of great eagerness, even if they return the money to each other at supper-time; and nothing, says Decker, can give greater notoriety to a gentleman than to throw his cards on the stage, after having torn up three or four of them with every manifestation of rage. The duties of the spectators in possession of the honors of the stage were to speak, to laugh, and to turn their backs on the actors whenever they were displeased with either the author or the play. These pleasures of the gentlemen give a sufficient clue to those of the populace in the pit, whom contemporary writers usually designate by the name of "stinkards." The condition of the actors compelled to minister to the amusement of such an audience could not but be attended by more than one unpleasantness, and we may attribute to Shakspeare's experience of an actor's life that aversion for popular assemblies which is frequently displayed with great energy in his works.

Nor do the condition and habits of the poets who wrote for the stage give us a more honorable idea, in these two respects, of the actors with whom they associated; and, in order to suppose that Shakspeare, young, gay, and easy-tempered, could have escaped from the influence of his two-fold character of poet and actor, we need the assistance of that unshrinking faith which the commentators repose in their patron. Shakspeare himself leaves us little room to doubt that he fell into errors, which he at least has the merit of regretting. In one of his sonnets, he inquires why Fortune, whom he calls

"The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,"

should alone bear the reproach of the "public means" to which he has been obliged to resort for his subsistence. And he adds:

"Thence comes it that my name receives a brand;
And almost thence my nature is subdued
To what it works in, like the dyer's hand.
Pity me, then, and wish I were renewed,
While, like a willing patient, I will drink
Potions of eysel [Footnote 18] 'gainst my strong infection;
No bitterness that I will bitter think,
Nor double penance to correct correction."

[Footnote 18: Vinegar.]

In the next sonnet, addressing the same person, still in the same tone of confident yet respectful affection, he says:

"Your love and pity doth th' impression fill
Which vulgar scandal stamped upon my brow;
For what care I who calls me well or ill,
So you o'er-green my bad, my good allow?"

In another sonnet, he laments over the blot which had divided two lives united by affection, and says:

"I may not evermore acknowledge thee,
Lest my bewailed guilt should do thee shame;
Nor thou with public kindness honor me,
Unless thou take that honor from my name."

And in another sonnet, he complains that he is, if not calumniated, at least wrongly judged; and that the "frailties of his sportive blood" are spied out by censors, who are frailer than himself. It is easy to divine the nature of Shakspeare's frailties; and several sonnets on the infidelities, and even on the vices, of the mistress whom he celebrates, give sufficient proof that his errors were not always caused by persons capable of excusing them. However, how can we suppose that, in the state of morals in the sixteenth century, public severity could have looked with great rigor on such disorders? In order to explain the humiliation of the poet, we must suppose either that he had been guilty of some extraordinarily scandalous conduct, or that particular dishonor attached to the disorders and position of an actor. The latter hypothesis appears to me the most probable. No grave reproach can, at any time, have weighed upon a man whose contemporaries never speak of him without affection and esteem, and whom Ben Jonson declares to have been "truly honest," without deriving from this assertion either the opportunity or the right of relating some circumstance disgraceful to his memory, or some well-known error which the officious rival would not have failed to establish while excusing it.

Perhaps, on being brought into contact with the higher classes of society, struck by the display of a relative elegance of sentiments and manners of which he had previously had no idea, and becoming suddenly aware that his nature gave him a right to participate in these delicacies which had hitherto been foreign to his habits, Shakspeare felt himself oppressed, by his position, with painful shackles; perhaps even he was led to exaggerate his humiliation, by the natural disposition of a haughty soul, which feels itself all the more abased by an unequal condition, because it is conscious of its worthiness to enjoy equality. At all events, there can be no doubt that, with that measured circumspection which is as frequently the accompaniment of pride as of modesty, Shakspeare labored to overleap these humiliating differences of station, and succeeded in his attempt. His first dedication to Lord Southampton, that of "Venus and Adonis," is written with respectful timidity. That of the poem of "Lucrece," which was published in the following year, expresses grateful attachment, which feels sure of being well received; and he vows to his protector "love without end." The resemblance of the tone of this preface to that of a great many of the sonnets, the repeated benefits in which the friendship of Lord Southampton enabled their recipient to glory, and the lively affection with which the sensitive and confident Shakspeare was naturally inspired by the amiable and generous protection of a young man of such brilliant rank and merit—all these circumstances have led some of the commentators to suppose that Lord Southampton may have been the object of the poet's inexplicable sonnets. Without inquiring to what extent the euphuism then prevalent, the exaggeration of poetic language, and the false taste of the age, may have imparted to Lord Southampton the features of an adored mistress, we can not but admit that most of these sonnets are addressed to a person of superior rank, the devotion of the poet to whom bears the character of submissive but passionate respect. Several of them, also, seem to point to habitual and intimate literary connections. Sometimes Shakspeare congratulates himself on possessing the guidance and inspiration of his friend; and sometimes he complains that he has ceased to be the sole recipient of that inspiration, and says,

"I grant thou wert not married to my Muse;"

but yet the grief occasioned by this divided favor is expressed under all the forms of jealousy, sometimes resigned to its fate, and sometimes stimulated, by the bitterness of its feelings, to give utterance to strong reproaches, which, however, never transgress the bounds of respect. Elsewhere he accuses himself, as it would appear, of infidelity to "an old friend;" he has too "frequent been with unknown minds," and "given to time" the "dear-purchased rights" of an affection

"Whereto all bonds do tie me day by day;"

but he confesses his fault; and implores pardon in the name of the confidence with which he is always inspired by the affection he has neglected. Another sonnet speaks of mutual wrongs pardoned, but the sorrow of which is still present. If these are not mere forms of language, employed, perhaps, on occasions very different from those which they appear to indicate, the feeling which thus occupied the inner life of the poet must have been as tempestuous as it was passionate.

Externally, however, his existence seems to have pursued a tranquil course. His name is mixed up in no literary quarrel; and, but for the malicious allusions of the envious Ben Jonson, scarcely would a single criticism be associated with the panegyrics which bear witness to his superiority. All the documents which we possess exhibit Shakspeare to us placed at last in the position which he was rightfully entitled to occupy, and valued as much for the charm of his character as for the brilliancy of his talents, and the admiration due to his genius. A glance, too, at the affairs of the poet will prove that he was beginning to introduce into the details of his existence that order and regularity which are essential to respectability. We find him successively purchasing, in his native town, a house and various portions of land, which soon formed a sufficient estate to insure him a competent income. The profits which he derived from the theatre, in his double capacity of author and actor, have been estimated at two hundred pounds a year, a very considerable sum at that time; and if the liberalities of Lord Southampton were added to the economy of the poet, we may conclude that, at least, they were not unwisely employed. Rowe, in his Life of Shakspeare, seems to think that the gifts of Queen Elizabeth also had some share in building up the fortune of her favorite poet. The grant of an escutcheon which was made, or rather confirmed to his father in 1599, proves a desire to bestow honor on his family. But there is nothing to indicate that Shakspeare obtained from Elizabeth and her court any marks of distinction superior, or even equal to those conferred by Louis XIV. upon MoliÈre, like himself an actor and a poet. If we except his intimacy with Lord Southampton, Shakspeare, like MoliÈre, chose his habitual acquaintance chiefly among men of letters, whose social condition he had probably contributed to elevate. The Mermaid Club, founded by Sir Walter Raleigh, and of which Shakspeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, and many others were members, was long celebrated for the brilliant "wit-combats," which took place there between Shakspeare and Ben Jonson, and in which the vivacity of the former gave him an immense advantage over the laborious slowness of his opponent. The anecdotes which are quoted on this point are not worthy of being collected at the present day. Few bons-mots are sufficiently good to survive for two centuries.

Who would not suppose that a life which had become so honorable and pleasant would long have retained Shakspeare in the midst of society conformable to the necessities of his mind, and upon the theatre of his glory? Nevertheless, in 1613, or 1614 at the latest, three or four years after having obtained from James I. the direction of the Blackfriars Theatre, without having apparently incurred the displeasure of the king to whom he was indebted for this new mark of favor, or of the public for whom he had just produced "Othello" and "The Tempest," Shakspeare left London and the stage to take up his residence at Stratford, in his house at New Place, in the midst of his fields. Had he become anxious to taste the joys of family life? He might have brought his wife and children to London. Nothing seems to indicate that he was greatly grieved at separation from them. During his residence in London, he used, it is said, to make frequent journeys to Stratford; but he has been accused of having found, on the road, pleasures of a kind which may have consoled him, at least, for the absence of his wife; and Sir William Davenant used loudly to boast of the poet's intimacy with his mother, the pretty and witty hostess of the Crown, at Oxford, where Shakspeare always stopped on his way to Stratford. If Shakspeare's sonnets were to be regarded as the expression of his dearest and most habitual feelings, we might reasonably be astonished at not finding in them a single allusion to his native place, to his children, or even to the son whom he lost at twelve years of age. And yet Shakspeare could not have been ignorant of the power of paternal love. He who, in "Macbeth," has described pity as "a naked, new-born babe;" he who has put these words into the mouth of Coriolanus,

"Not of a woman's tenderness to be,
Requires nor child nor woman's face to see;"

he who has so well depicted the tender puerilities of maternal affection, could not have looked upon his own children without experiencing the fond emotions of a father's heart. But Shakspeare, as his character presents itself to our mind, had long been able to find, in the distractions of the world, enough to occupy the place, in his soul and life, which he was capable of giving up to family affections. However this may be, it is more difficult to discern the causes which led to his departure from London, than to perceive those which might have tended to prolong his residence in that city. Perhaps the arrival of infirmities may have warned him of the necessity of repose; and perhaps, also, the very natural desire of showing himself in his native place, under circumstances so different from those in which he had left it, made him hasten the moment of renouncing labors which no longer had the pleasures of youth for their compensation.

New pleasures could not fail to spring up for Shakspeare in his retirement. A natural disposition to enjoy every thing heartily rendered him equally adapted to delight in the calm happiness of a tranquil life, and to find enjoyment in the vicissitudes of an agitated existence. The first mulberry-tree introduced into the neighborhood of Stratford was planted by Shakspeare's hands, in a corner of his garden at New Place, and attested for more than a century the gentle simplicity of the occupations in which his days were spent. A competent fortune seemed to unite with the esteem and friendship of his neighbors to promise him that best crown of a brilliant life, a tranquil and honored old age, when, on the 23d of April, 1616, the very day on which he attained his fifty-second year, death carried him off from that calm and pleasant position, the happy leisure of which he would doubtless not have consecrated to repose alone.

We have no information regarding the nature of the disease to which he fell a victim. His will is dated on the 25th of March, 1616; but the date of February, effaced to make way for that of March, gives us reason to believe that he had commenced it a month previously. He declares that he had written it in perfect health; but the precaution taken thus opportunely, at an age still so distant from senility, leads to the presumption that some unpleasant symptom had awakened within him the idea of danger. There is no evidence either to confirm or to set aside this supposition; and Shakspeare's last days are surrounded by an obscurity even deeper, if possible, than that which enshrouds his life.

His will contains nothing very remarkable, with the exception of a new proof of the little estimation in which he held the wife whom he had so hastily married. After having appointed his daughter Susannah, who had married Mr. Hall, a physician at Stratford, his chief legatee, he bequeaths tokens of friendship to various persons, among whom he does not include his wife, but mentions her afterward, in an interlineation, merely to leave to her his "second best bed." A similar piece of forgetfulness, repaired in the same manner, is remarkable in reference to Burbage, Heminge, and Condell, the only ones of his theatrical friends of whom he makes mention; to each of these he bequeaths, also in an interlineation, thirty-six shillings, "to buy them rings." Burbage, the best actor of his time, had contributed greatly to the success of Shakspeare's plays; Heminge and Condell, seven years after his death, published the first complete edition of his dramatic works.

This singular omission of the name of Shakspeare's wife, repaired in so slight a manner, probably indicates something more than forgetfulness; and we are tempted to regard it as the sign of an aversion or dislike, the manifestation of which the poet was induced to modify, in a slight degree, by the approach of death alone.

Shakspeare's second daughter, Judith, had married a vintner, and received a much smaller share of her father's inheritance than her sister, Mrs. Hall. Was it in her quality of eldest daughter, or in consequence of some special predilection, that Shakspeare thus distinguished Susannah? An epitaph engraved upon her tomb, at her death in 1649, represents her as "witty above her sex," in which she had "something of Shakspeare," hut more because she was "wise to salvation," and "wept for all." About Judith we know nothing, except that she could not write; which fact is established by a deed still existing, to which she has affixed a cross, or some analogous sign, indicated by a marginal note as "Judith Shakspeare, her mark." Judith left three sons, who died childless. Susannah had one daughter, who married, first, Thomas Nash, and afterward Sir John Barnard, of Abington. No child was born of either of these marriages, and thus Shakspeare's posterity became extinct in the second generation.

It is somewhat remarkable that Shakspeare died on the same day as his great contemporary, Cervantes.

Shakspeare was buried in Stratford church, in which his tomb still exists. It represents the poet of the size of life, sitting under an arch, with a cushion before him, and a pen in his right hand. Like many other monuments of the time, the figure was originally colored after the life; the eyes being painted light brown, with hair and beard of a deeper tinge. The doublet was scarlet, and the gown black. The colors having become faded by time, were restored, in 1748, by Mr. John Ward, the grandfather of Mrs. Siddons and of Kemble, out of the profits of a performance of "Othello." But in 1793, Mr. Malone, one of the principal commentators upon Shakspeare, covered the statue with a thick coat of white paint; being doubtless led to do this by that exclusive prejudice in favor of modern customs which has so frequently led him into error in his commentaries. An indignant traveler, in some lines written in the Album of Stratford church, has called down the malediction of the poet upon Malone,

"Whose meddling zeal his barb'rous taste displays,
And smears his tombstone, as he marred his plays."

Without giving an absolute assent to these harsh expressions of legitimate anger, we can not refrain from a smile at observing, in Mr. Malone's coat of white paint, a symbol of the spirit which dictated his commentaries, as well as a type of the general character of the eighteenth century, held in servitude by its own tastes, and incapable of comprehending any thing that did not enter into the sphere of its ordinary habits and ideas.

Although this injudicious reparation effected a great change in the physiognomy of the portrait of Shakspeare, it was not able altogether to efface that expression of gentle serenity which appears to have characterized the countenance as well as the soul of the poet. On the sepulchral stone below the monument, the following inscription is engraved:

"Good friend, for Jesus sake forbear
To dig the dust inclosed here.
Bless'd be the man that spares these stones,
And cursed be he that moves my bones."

These lines are said to have been composed by Shakspeare himself, and were the cause which prevented the transference of his tomb to Westminster, as had once been intended. Some years ago, an excavation by the wall of Stratford church exposed to view the grave in which his body had been laid; and the sexton, who, in order to prevent the sacrilegious depredations of curiosity or admiration, kept guard by the opening until the vault had been repaired, having attempted to look inside the tomb, saw neither bones nor coffin, but only dust. "It seems to me," says the traveler who relates this circumstance, "that it was something to have seen the dust of Shakspeare."

This tomb now remains in sole possession of the honors which it once shared with Shakspeare's mulberry-tree. About the middle of last century, the Rev. Mr. Gastrell, a man of large fortune, became the proprietor of New Place. This house, which had remained for some time in the possession of the Nash family, had afterward passed through several hands, and undergone many alterations; but the mulberry-tree remained standing, the object of the veneration of the curious. Mr. Gastrell, annoyed at the number of visitors which it attracted, had it cut down, with a savage brutality in which indifference would probably not have indulged, but which frequently characterizes that furious pride of liberty and property which would deem itself compromised if it yielded in the slightest degree to public opinion. A few years afterward, this same Mr. Gastrell, in consequence of a dispute which he had had with the town of Stratford regarding a slight tax which he was required to pay on his house, swore that that house should never be taxed again, and he therefore had it pulled down, and sold the materials. As for the mulberry-tree, part of it was saved from the fire to which it had been consigned by Mr. Gastrell, by a clock-maker of Stratford, a man of sense, who gained a great deal of money by making it into snuff-boxes, toys, and other articles. The house in which Shakspeare was born still exists at Stratford, and is still shown as an object of interest to travelers, who may always see, and, it is said, are constantly able to purchase, either the chair or the sword of the poet, the lantern which he used in performing the part of Friar Lawrence in "Romeo and Juliet," or pieces of the arquebuse with which he killed the deer in Sir Thomas Lucy's park.

It is not from the death of Shakspeare that we must date, in England, that worship, the devotedness of which, after having been maintained with such fervor for sixty years, seems now to have diffused a reflection of its heat over several countries of Europe. Though Shakspeare was dead, Ben Jonson still lived; and though Beaumont had lost his friend Fletcher, he still possessed his talent, the effects of which had been weakened, rather than fortified, by Fletcher. The necessities of curiosity too often overcome those of taste; and the pleasure of going again to admire Shakspeare could not fail to yield to the keener interest of going to judge the newest productions of his competitors. It was not to his dramatic pedantry that Ben Jonson was then indebted for the empire which, in Shakspeare's lifetime, he did not venture to aspire to share. The triumphs of classical taste were confined, in his case, to the unanimous eulogies of the literary men of his time, who were easily satisfied on the score of regularity, and were always glad of an opportunity to avenge science upon the disdain of the vulgar; but the tragedies and comedies of Ben Jonson were not the less coolly received by the public, and were sometimes even rejected with an irreverence for which he afterward took his revenge in his prefaces. But his masques, a kind of opera, obtained general success; and the more Ben Jonson and the erudite strove to render tragedy and comedy tiresome, the more strongly did the public fall back upon masques for their amusement. Several poets of Shakspeare's school also endeavored to satisfy the taste of the public for the kind of pleasure to which he had accustomed them. Their efforts, attended with varying success, but maintained with untiring activity, kept up that taste for the drama which survives the epoch of its master-pieces. About five hundred and fifty dramas, without reckoning those of Shakspeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, were printed before the Restoration of Charles II. Of these only thirty-eight can date from times anterior to Shakspeare; and it has been seen that, during his life, the custom was not to print those plays which were intended for representation on the stage. From 1640 to 1660, the Puritans closed nearly all the theatres; and most of these productions, therefore, belong to the twenty-five years which elapsed between the death of Shakspeare and the commencement of the civil wars. This was the weight beneath which the popularity of England's first dramatic poet succumbed for a time.

His memory, however, did not perish. In 1623, Heminge and Condell published the first complete edition of his dramas, thirteen of which only had been printed during his lifetime. His name was still held in respect; but for a finished reputation to inspire something beside respect, time must come to its aid, and must at first efface and suppress it, to give it at some future time the attraction of a neglected glory, and to stimulate the self-love and curiosity of inquiring minds to give it new life by a new examination, and to find in it the charm of a new discovery. A great writer rarely obtains, in the generation succeeding his own, the homage which posterity will lavish upon him. Sometimes even long spaces of time are necessary for the revolution commenced by a superior man to accomplish its course, and to bring the world to perceive its merits. Several causes combined to prolong the interval during which Shakspeare's works were regarded with coldness, and almost utterly forgotten.

The civil wars and the triumph of Puritanism occurred first, not only to interrupt all dramatic performances, but to destroy, as far as possible, every trace of amusement of this kind. The Restoration afterward introduced into England a foreign taste, which did not, perhaps, pervade the nation, but which held sway over the court. English literature then assumed a character which was not effaced by the new revolution of 1688; and French ideas, made honorable by the literary glory of the seventeenth century, and sustained by that of the eighteenth, retained in England a youthful and vigorous influence which had been lost by the old glories of Shakspeare. Fifty years after his death, Dryden declared that his idiom was a little "out of use." At the beginning of the eighteenth century, Lord Shaftesbury complained of his "natural rudeness, his unpolished style, and his antiquated phrase and wit;" and Shakspeare was then, for these reasons, excluded from several collections of the modern poets. In fact, Dryden did not understand Shakspeare, grammatically speaking; of this fact we have several proofs, and Dryden himself has proved, by recasting his pieces, that poetically he comprehended him as little. But not only was Shakspeare not understood, he soon became no longer known. In 1707, a poet named Tate produced a work entitled "King Lear," the subject of which, he said, he had borrowed from an obscure piece of the same name, recommended to his notice by a friend. This obscure piece was Shakspeare's "King Lear."

Distinguished writers, however, had not altogether ceased to allow Shakspeare a share in the literary glory of their country; but it was timidly and by degrees that they shook off the yoke of the prejudices of their time. If, in concert with Davenant, Dryden had recast the works of Shakspeare, Pope, in the edition which he published in 1725, contented himself with omitting all that he could not bring himself to regard as the work of the genius to whom he paid at least this homage. With regard to that which he was obliged to leave, Shakspeare, says Pope, "having at his first appearance no other aim in his writings than to procure a subsistence," wrote "for the people," without seeking to obtain "patronage from the better sort." In 1765, Johnson, waxing bolder, and gaining encouragement from the dawn of a return to the national taste, vigorously defended the romantic liberties of Shakspeare against the pretensions of classical authority; and though he made some concessions to the contempt of a more polished age for the vulgarity and ignorance of the old poet, he at least had the courage to remark that, when a country is "unenlightened by learning, the whole people is the vulgar."

Shakspeare's works, then, were reprinted and commentated; but the mutilations alone obtained the honors of the stage. The Shakspeare amended by Dryden, Davenant, and others, was the only one which actors ventured to perform; and the "Tattler," having to quote some lines from "Macbeth," copied them from Davenant's amended edition. It was Garrick who, finding nowhere so fully as in Shakspeare means to supply the requirements of his own talent, delivered him from this disgraceful protection, lent to his ancient glory the freshness of his own young renown, and restored the poet to possession of the stage as well as of the patriotic admiration of the English.

Since that period, national pride has daily extended and redoubled this admiration. It nevertheless remained barren of results, and Shakspeare, to use the language of Sir Walter Scott, "reigned a Grecian prince over Persian slaves, and they who adored him did not dare attempt to use his language." A new impulse can not be entirely due to old recollections; and an old epoch, that it may bear new fruit, needs to be again fertilized by a movement analogous to that which gave it its first fertility.

This movement has made itself felt in Europe, and England also is beginning to feel its impulse, as Sir Walter Scott's novels sufficiently demonstrate. But England will not be the only country indebted to Shakspeare for the new direction which is manifesting itself in her drama, as well as in other branches of her literature. In the literary movement by which it is now agitated, Continental Europe turns its eyes toward Shakspeare. Germany has long adopted him as a model rather than as a guide; and thereby it has, perhaps, suspended in their course those vivifying juices which impart their vigor and freshness only to fruits of native growth. Nevertheless, the path on which Germany has entered is leading to the discovery of true wealth; and if she will but work her own mines, a rich and fertile vein will not be wanting. The literature of Spain, a natural fruit of her civilization, already possesses its own original and distinct character. Italy alone and France, the fatherlands of modern classicism, are not yet recovered from their astonishment at the first shock given to those opinions which they have established with the rigor of necessity, and maintained with the pride of faith. Doubt presents itself to us as yet only as an enemy whose attacks we are beginning to fear; it seems as though discussion bears a threatening aspect, and that examination can not probe without undermining and overturning. In this position we hesitate, as if about to destroy that which will never be replaced; we are afraid of finding ourselves without law, and of discovering nothing but the insufficiency or illegitimacy of those principles upon which we were formerly wont to rely without disquietude.

This disturbance of mind can not cease so long as the question remains undecided between science and barbarism, the beauties of order and the effects of disorder; so long as men persist in seeing, in that system of which the first outlines were traced by Shakspeare, nothing but an allowance of unrestrained liberty and undefined latitude to the flights of the imagination, as well as to the course of genius. If the romantic system has beauties, it necessarily has its art and rules. Nothing is beautiful, in the eyes of man, which does not derive its effects from certain combinations, the secret of which can always be supplied by our judgment when our emotions have attested its power. The knowledge or employment of these combinations constitutes art. Shakspeare had his own art. We must seek it out in his works, examine into the means which he employs, and the results to which he aspires. Then only shall we possess a true knowledge of his system; then we shall know how far it is capable of increased development, according to the nature of dramatic art, considered in its application to modern society.

It is, in fact, nowhere else—neither in past times, nor among peoples unacquainted with our habits—but among ourselves, and in ourselves, that we must seek the conditions and necessities of dramatic poetry. Differing in this respect from other arts, in addition to the absolute rules imposed upon it, as on all others, by the unchangeable nature of man, dramatic art has relative rules which flow from the changeful state of society. In imitating the antique style, modern statuaries labor under no other constraint but the difficulty of equaling its perfection; and the most fervent and powerful adorer of antiquity would not venture to reproduce, even upon the most submissive stage, all that he admires in a tragedy of Sophocles. It is easy to discern the cause of this. When contemplating a statue or a picture, the spectator receives at first, from the sculptor or the painter, the first impression which occurs to him; but it rests with himself to continue the work. He stops and looks; his natural disposition, his recollections and thoughts, group themselves around the leading idea which is presented to his view, and gradually develop within him the ever-increasing emotion which will soon hold entire dominion over him. The artist has done nothing but awaken in the spectator the faculty of conceiving and feeling; it takes hold of the movement which has been communicated to it, follows it up in its own direction, accelerates it by its own strength, and thus creates for itself the pleasure which it enjoys. Before a picture of a martyrdom, one person is moved by the expression of fervent piety, another by the manifestation of resigned grief; some are filled with indignation at the cruelty of the executioners. A tinge of courageous satisfaction which is evident in the look of the victim, reminds the patriot of the joys of devotion to a sacred cause; and the soul of the philosopher is elevated by the contemplation of man sacrificing himself for truth. The diversity of these impressions is of little consequence; they are all equally natural and equally free; each spectator chooses, as it were, the feeling which suits him best, and when it has once entered into his soul, no external fact can disturb its supremacy, no movement can interrupt the course of that to which every man yields himself according to his inclination.

In the prolonged course of dramatic action, on the contrary, all becomes changed at every step, and each moment produces a new impression. The painter is satisfied with establishing one first and unvarying connection between his picture and the spectator. The dramatic poet must incessantly renew this relation, and maintain it through all the vicissitudes of the most various positions. All the acts in which human existence is manifested, all the forms which it assumes, and all the feelings which may modify it during the continuance of an always complicated event—these are the numerous and changeful objects which he presents to the public view; and he is never allowed to separate himself from his spectators, or to leave them for an instant alone and at liberty; he must be incessantly acting upon them, and must at every step excite in their souls emotions analogous to the ever-changing position in which he has placed them. How can he succeed in this, unless he carefully adapts himself to their dispositions and inclinations; unless he supplies the actual requirements of their mind; unless he addresses himself constantly to ideas which are familiar to them, and speaks to them in the language which they are accustomed to hear? Passion will not appear to us so touching if it be displayed in a manner contrary to our habits; and sympathy will not be awakened with the same vivacity in regard to interests of which we have ceased to be personally conscious. The necessity for appeasing the gods by a human sacrifice does not, in our mind, give that force to the speeches of Menelaus which it would have imparted to them among the Greeks, who were attached to their faith: the stern chastity of Hippolytus does not interest us in his fate: and virtue itself, in order to obtain from us that affectionate reverence which it has a right to expect, needs to connect itself with duties which our habits have taught us to respect and cherish.

Subject, therefore, at once to the conditions of the arts of imitation and to those of the purely poetical arts; bound, like epic poetry in its narratives, to set human life in motion; and called upon, like painting and sculpture, to present in its person and under its individual features—the dramatic poet is obliged to include, within the probabilities of one action, all the means which he requires to make it understood. His characters can only tell us what they would say if they were actually there, really occupied with the fact which they represent. The epic poet, as it were, does the honors, to his readers, of the edifice into which he introduces them; he accompanies them with his own speeches, assists them by his explanations, and, by the description of manners, times, and places, prepares them for the scene which he is about to disclose to their view, and opens to them in every sense the world into which he is desirous to transport them, and himself also. The dramatic personage comes forward alone, concerned with himself only; he places himself, without preliminary explanation, in communication with the spectator; and without calling or guiding them, he must make his audience follow him. Thus separated from one another, how can they succeed in coming into connection, unless a profound and general analogy already exists between them? Evidently those heroes, who do nothing for the public but speak and feel in their presence, will be understood and received by them only so far as they coincide with them in their mode of conceiving, feeling, and speaking; and dramatic effect can result only from their aptitude to unite in the same impressions.

The impressions of man communicated to man—this is, in fact, the sole source of dramatic effects. Man alone is the subject of the drama; man alone is its theatre. His soul is the stage upon which the events of this world come to play their part; it is not by their own virtue, but merely by their relations to the moral being whose destiny occupies our attention, that events take part in the action; every dramatic character abandons them as soon as they aspire to exercise a direct influence over us, instead of acting by the intermediary of a visible person, and by means of the emotion which we receive, in our turn, from the emotion which they have excited in him. Why is the narrative of Theramenes epic, and not dramatic? Because he addresses himself to the spectator, and not to Theseus. Theseus, being already aware of his son's death, is no longer capable of experiencing the impressions occasioned by the narrative; and if, while still in uncertainty, he were only to arrive at a knowledge of his misfortune through the anguish of such a recital, the poetical ornaments with which it is, perhaps, overloaded would not prevent it from being dramatic, for the impressions which it produces would be to us those of a person interested in the result: we should be conscious of them in the heart of Theseus.

In the heart of man alone can the dramatic fact take place; the event which is its occasion does not constitute it. The death of the lover is rendered dramatic by the grief of his mistress—the danger of the son by the terror of his mother; and however horrible may be the idea of the murder of a child, Andromache inspires us with greater solicitude than Astyanax. An earthquake and the physical convulsions which accompany it will furnish only a spectacle for contemplation, or the subject of an epic narrative; but the rain is dramatic upon the bald head of old Lear, and especially in the heart of his companions, racked by the pity which they feel for him. The apparition of a spectre would have no effect upon the audience unless some one on the stage were alarmed by it; and to produce the dramatic effect of Lady Macbeth's somnambulism, Shakspeare has taken care that it should be witnessed by a physician and a waiting-woman, whom he has employed to transmit to us the terrible impressions which it produces upon themselves.

Thus man alone occupies the stage; his existence is displayed upon it, animated and aggrandized by the events which are connected with it, and which owe their theatrical character to this connection alone. In comedy, events, being of less magnitude than the passion which they excite in man, derive a laughable importance from this passion; in tragedy, being more powerful than the means which man has at his disposal, they move us by the exhibition of his grandeur and his weakness. The comic poet invents them freely, for his art consists in originating, in man himself and his absurdities, those events by which man is agitated. This invention is rarely a merit in the tragic poet, for his work is to discern and exhibit man and his soul in the midst of the events to which he is subjected. If it be generally requisite that the subject of tragedy should be taken from the history of the great and powerful, it is because the strong impressions which it aims at producing upon us can only be communicated to us by strong characters, incapable of succumbing beneath the blows of an ordinary destiny. It is in the development of high fortune and its terrible vicissitudes that the whole man appears, with all the wealth and energy of his nature. Thus the spectacle of the world, concentrated in an individual, is revealed to us upon the stage; thus, by the medium of the soul which receives their impress, events reach us through sympathy, the source of dramatic illusion.

If material illusion were the aim of the arts, the wax-figures of Curtius would surpass all the statues of antiquity, and a panorama would be the ultimate effort of painting. If their object were to impose upon the reason, and to impart to the imagination a shock sufficiently powerful to pervert the judgment to such a degree that a theatrical representation could be taken for the accomplishment of a real and actual fact, a very few scenes would suffice to work up the spectators to such a pitch of excitement that its effect would soon be to interrupt the performance by the violence of their emotions. If even it were desired that, in presence of objects imitated by art of any kind, the soul, affected at least by the reality of the impressions which it receives from them, should really experience those feelings of which the image is produced in it by a fictitious representation, the labor of genius would have succeeded only in multiplying, in this world, the pains of life and the exhibition of human miseries. These feelings, however, occupy and pervade us, and on their existence depends the effect which the poet aims to produce upon us. We must believe in them in order to yield to them; and we could not believe in them unless we assigned to them a cause worthy to awaken them. When our tears flow before Raphael's picture of Christ bearing his cross, before we can allow them to flow, we must believe that we bestow them upon that sorrowful compassion which we should feel at really beholding such dreadful sufferings. If, in the emotions with which we are inspired by the sight of Tancred dying on the stage, we did not think we could recognize the emotions which we should feel for Tancred dying in reality, we should be displeased with ourselves for indulging in a pity which was not rendered legitimate by its application to sorrows that at least were possible. And yet we deceive ourselves; that which we then discern in our breasts is not that power which is awakened at the aspect of the suffering of our fellows—a power full of bitterness if reduced to inactivity, but full of activity if it be allowed liberty and hope to render assistance. It is not this power, but its shadow—the image of our features repeated with striking accuracy, but without life, in a mirror. Moved at the aspect of what we should be capable of experiencing, we give up our imagination to it without having any demands to make upon our will. No one is tormented with an irrepressible desire to shout out to Tancred, Orosmane, or Othello, that they are laboring under a mistake; no one suffers through not being able to rush to the assistance of Gloster against the execrable Duke of Cornwall. The unendurable painfulness of the position of the spectators of such a scene is removed by the idea that it is utterly unreal; an idea which is presented to our minds, and which we retain without clearly perceiving its presence, because we are absorbed by the contemplation of the more vivid impressions which crowd upon our brain. If this idea were clearly present to our thoughts, it would dissipate the whole cortÈge of illusions which surround us, and we should summon it to our assistance to deaden their effect, if they should change into a subject for real grief. Bat so long as the spectator takes delight in forgetting it, art should studiously avoid every thing that might remind him that the spectacle which he contemplates is not real. Hence arises the necessity of bringing all the parts of the performance into harmonious unison, and of not diffusing unequally the force of the illusion, which loses strength as soon, as it allows itself to be perceived. This is what would happen if, at the moment when he is indulging in feelings which are familiar to him, the spectator were disconcerted by the presentation of forms of manners entirely foreign to his experience. Hence also arises the necessity of giving a certain amount of attention to the accessories not in order to increase the illusion, but in order not to interfere with it. The actor alone is expected to produce that moral illusion which is aimed at by the drama. Where could we find means equal to those which he possesses for so doing? What imitation could stand beside his? What object in nature could be so well represented as man, when it is man himself who represents it? Let not dramatic art, therefore, seek assistance from other imitations which are far inferior to that which man can offer it; all that the machinist and the decorator have to do with the moral illusion is to remove every thing that might injure its effect. Perhaps even art would have reason to dread too great efforts on their part to do it service; who can tell whether a too brilliant magic of painting, employed to enhance the effect of the decorations, would not weaken the dramatic effect by diverting the attention to the enchantments of another art?

These accesssory imitations are dangerous auxiliaries, whether, by their perfection, they usurp the effect to which they ought merely to contribute, or whether they destroy it by their inefficiency. In England, as we have seen, the early stage was entirely unacquainted with the art of decoration, a recent homage paid to probability, which becomes really useful to the dramatic illusion when, without pretending to increase it, it simply prevents it from having to surmount obstacles of too uncouth a nature, and enables the mind of the spectator to picture to itself with greater distinctness the position into which it is required to transport itself. Imaginations more susceptible than they were delicate, and more easily affected than undeceived, had no need of that management which is now demanded by a restless reason, incessantly occupied in exercising surveillance over even our pleasures. Those spectators, who exacted so little with regard to the decoration of the theatre, exacted a great deal in reference to the material movement of the scene; though indulgent to the insufficiency and rudeness of theatrical imitations, they were fond of variety, and scarcely perceived the improprieties which resulted therefrom. Just as a man might, without diminishing their emotion, represent to them the sensitive Ophelia or the delicate Desdemona, they could see stationed at one end of the stage the cannon which was to kill the Duke of Bedford at the opposite end, and this great event did not strike them less forcibly on account of the poverty of the arrangement; indeed, they could receive with all the force of dramatic illusion the touching impression of the death of the two Talbots on a field of battle, which was animated, by the movements of four soldiers!

When the illusion becomes at once more difficult and more necessary to imaginations less quickly seduced, and to minds less easily amused, it is the study of art to remove every object that might prove injurious to it; and, as the representation of material objects becomes more perfect, it interferes less in the action of the drama, which is almost exclusively reserved for man, who alone can impart to it the appearance of reality. It was to man that, notwithstanding the habits of his time, Shakspeare felt that he must look for the production of this great effect. The movement of the stage, which, before his time, had constituted the chief interest of dramatic works, became in his plays a simple accessory which the taste of his age did not allow him to omit, and which, perhaps, his own taste did not require him to sacrifice, but which he reduced to its true value. It matters little, therefore, that, in his dramas, the moral illusion may still be sometimes disturbed by the imperfect representation of objects which theatrical imitation could not compass; Shakspeare did not the less discern the true source of this illusion, and did not seek the means of producing it elsewhere.

He was equally well acquainted with its nature also; he felt that an illusion of this kind, akin to no error of the senses or the reason, but the simple result of a disposition of the soul, which forgets all extraneous things in order to contemplate itself, could only be sustained by the perpetual consent of the spectator to the seduction which the poet is desirous to exercise over him, and that this seductive influence must therefore be maintained unintermittingly. Whatever might be the power of a dramatic representation, it could not, from the outset, obtain a sufficient hold upon us to deliver us over in a defenseless state to all the feelings which will take possession of us in proportion as we advance in the position in which it has placed us. The imagination must lend itself gradually to this new position, and the soul must accustom itself to it, and accept the sway of the impressions which must arise from it, just as, when we experience an unexpected piece of good or bad fortune, we require some time to bring our feelings to a level with our fate. But if, after having obtained our consent to this position, and after having moved us by the impressions which accompany it, the poet imprudently attempts to make us pass into a new position, attended by new impressions, the work must be begun over again, and will require all the more effort, because it will be necessary to efface the traces of a work already accomplished. Then the imagination becomes chilled and disturbed; the spectator refuses to lend himself to a movement from which he is diverted after having been desired to yield himself unresistingly to its influence. The illusion vanishes, and with it the interest also; for dramatic interest, in common with dramatic illusion, can only be attached to impressions which are continued and renewed in one and the same direction.

Unity of impression, that prime secret of dramatic art, was the soul of Shakspeare's great conceptions, and the instinctive object of his assiduous labor, just as it is the end of all the rules invented by all systems. The exclusive partisans of the classic system believed that it was impossible to attain unity of impression, except by means of what are called the three unities. Shakspeare attained it by other means. If the legitimacy of these means were recognized, it would greatly diminish the importance hitherto attributed to certain forms and rules, which are evidently invested with an abusive authority, if art, in order to accomplish its designs, does not need the restrictions which they impose upon it, and which often deprive it of a portion of its wealth.

The mobility of our imagination, the variety of our interests, and the inconstancy of our inclinations, have given to times, and even to places, a power which should not be lost sight of by the poet who is desirous to make use of the affections of man in order to excite the sympathy of his fellows. If he presents his hero to them at intervals too widely distant in the duration of his existence, they will inquire, "What has become of the man whom we knew six months ago?" just as naturally as, when meeting a friend six months after the occurrence of an event which has plunged him into grief, we begin by inquiring discreetly into the state of that grief which we once saw so painfully manifested, for fear lest we should enter into communication with his soul before we know what feeling we shall have to participate. If compelled to give an account of the changes which have occurred during the course of six months or a year, to spectators who, only a short time previously, saw him disappear from the stage, would not the tragic hero present a strange incongruity with himself? would not the thread of his identity be broken? and, far from feeling the same interest in him, should we not have some difficulty in avowing him to be the same person?

From this condition of human nature has been derived the true motive of the unities of time and place, which have often been most preposterously founded upon a pretended necessity of satisfying the reason by accommodating the duration of the real action to that of the theatrical representation; as if the reason could consent to believe that, during the interval of a few minutes between the acts, the persons of the drama had passed from evening to morning without having slept, or from morning to evening without having eaten; and as if it were more easy to take three hours for a day than for a week, or even for a month!

Nevertheless, it can not be denied that the mind feels a certain repugnance to behold intervals of time and place disappear before it, without its being able to account for their departure, or receiving any modification from it. The more these intervals are prolonged, the more does this discontent increase, for the mind feels that many things are thus concealed from its knowledge of which it is its province to dispose, and it would not like to be told too often, as Crispin says to GÉronte, "C'est votre lethargie." But these difficulties are not insurmountable by the skill of art; if the mind becomes easily alarmed at that which, without its consent, disturbs the settled habits of its character, it is easy to make it forget them. Place it in view of the object toward which you have succeeded in directing its desires, and, in its forward spring to reach it, it will no longer care to measure the space which you compel it to traverse. When reading an interesting work, our strongly-excited attention transports us without difficulty from one time to another; our thought concentrates itself upon the event at which we expect to arrive, and sees nothing in the interval which separates us from it; and as it enables us to reach it, without having, as it were, changed our place, we are scarcely conscious that we have been obliged to change the time. When Claudius and Laertes have agreed together upon the duel in which Hamlet is to be slain, between that moment and the consummation of their plans we care little to know whether two hours or a week have elapsed.

This arises from the fact that the chain of the impressions has not been broken, and the position of the characters has not been changed; their places have continued the same; their ardor is not less energetic; time has not acted upon them; it counts for nothing in the feelings with which they inspire us; it finds them, and us with them, in the same disposition of soul; and thus the two periods are brought together by that unity of impression which makes us say, when thinking of an event which occurred long ago, but the traces of which are still fresh in our memory, "It seems as though it had happened only yesterday."

In fact, what care we about the time which elapses between the actions with which Macbeth fills up his career of crime? When he commands the murder of Banquo the assassination of Duncan is still present to our eyes, and seems as though it had been committed only yesterday; and when Macbeth determines upon the massacre of Macduff's family, we fancy we see him still pale from the apparition of Banquo's ghost. None of his actions has terminated without necessitating the action which follows it; they announce and involve each other, thus forcing the imagination to go forward, full of trouble and sad expectation. Macbeth, who, after having killed Duncan, is urged, by the very terror which he feels at his crime, to kill the chamberlains, to whom he intends to attribute the murder, does not permit us to doubt the facility with which he will commit new crimes whenever occasion requires. The witches, who, at the opening of the play, have taken possession of his destiny, do not allow us to hope that they will grant any respite to the ambition and the necessities of his crimes. Thus all the threads are laid open to our eyes from the beginning; we follow, we anticipate the course of events; we stint no haste to arrive at that which our imagination devours beforehand; intervals vanish with the succession of the ideas which should occupy them; one succession alone is distinctly marked in our mind, and that is, the succession of the events which compose the absorbing spectacle which sweeps us onward in its rapidity. In our view, they are as closely connected in time as they are intimately linked together in thought; and any duration that may separate them is a duration as empty and unperceived as that of sleep—as all those epochs in which the soul is manifested by no sensible symptom of its existence. What, in our mind, is the connection of the hours in comparison with this train of ideas? and what poet, subjecting himself to unity of time, would deem it sufficient to establish, between the different parts of his work, that powerful bond of union which can result only from unity of impression? So true is it that this alone is the object, whereas the others are only the means.

These means may, undoubtedly, sometimes have their efficiency; the rapidity of a great action executed, or a great event accomplished, within the space of a few hours, fills the imagination, and animates the soul with a movement to which it yields with ardor. But few actions really permit so sudden an action; few events are composed of parts so exactly connected in time and space; and, without alluding to the improbabilities which are consequent upon their forced cohesion, the surprises which result from it very often disturb the unity of impression, which is the rigorous condition of dramatic illusion. Zaire, passing suddenly from her devoted love for Orosmane to entire submission to the faith and will of Lusignan, has some difficulty in restoring to us, in her new position, as much illusion as she has made us lose by so abrupt a change. Voltaire sought his effects in the contrast of perfectly happy love with love in despair; a powerful means, it is true, but less powerful, perhaps, than the preoccupation of a constant and unchanging position, which develops itself only to redouble the feeling which it has at first inspired. When we have thoroughly established ourselves in an affection, it is far from prudent to attempt to move us in favor of an opposite affection. Corneille has not shown us Rodrigue and ChimÈne together before the quarrel between their fathers; he felt so little desire to impress us with the idea of their happiness, that ChimÈne, when told of it, can not believe it, and disturbs by her presentiments the too delightful position of which the poet is exceedingly careful not to put us in possession, lest we should afterward find it too difficult to sacrifice it to that duty which will soon command us to leave it. In the same manner we have become associated with the feelings of Polyeucte, and have trembled for him before becoming aware of the love of Pauline for SÉvÈre; if our first interest had been attached to this love, perhaps it would have been difficult for us afterward to feel much for Polyeucte, whose presence would be importunate. Thus, when Zaire has awakened our emotion as a lover, we are inclined to think that she abandons the position in which she has placed us rather too easily, in order to fulfill her duty as a daughter and a Christian. The philosophical indifference which Voltaire has imparted to her in the first scene, in order to facilitate her subsequent conversion, renders still more improbable the devotedness with which she so quickly enters upon a duty so recently discovered. If, on the other hand, at the outset, Voltaire had described her to us as troubled with scruples, and disquieted with regard to her happiness, fear would have prepared us beforehand to comprehend in all its extent, at its first appearance, the misfortune which threatens her, and to see her yield to it with that abandonment which is improbable because it is too sudden.

The employment of sudden changes of fortune, by which it is attempted to disguise, beneath a great alteration in circumstances, the too sudden transitions which the rule of unity in point of time may impose, frequently renders the inconveniences of this rule more striking, by depriving it of the means of making preparation for the different impressions which it accumulates within too limited a space. It is, on the contrary, by a single impression that Shakspeare, at least in his finest compositions, takes possession at the very outset, of our thought, and, by means of our thought, of space also. Beyond the magic circle which he has traced, he leaves nothing sufficiently powerful to interfere with the effect of the only unity of which he has need. Change of fortune may exist in reference to the persons of the drama, but never to the spectator. Before we are informed of Othello's happiness, we know that Iago is preparing to destroy it; the Ghost which is to devote the life of Hamlet to the punishment of a crime, appears on the stage before he does; and before we have seen Macbeth virtuous, the utterance of his name by the Witches tells us that he is destined to become guilty. In the same manner, in "Athalie," the whole idea of the drama is displayed, in the first scene, in the character and promises of the high-priest; the impression is begun, and it will continue and increase always in the same direction. Thus, who could say that an interval of eight days, interposed, if necessary, between the promises of Joad and their performance, would have broken the unity of impression which results from the invariable constancy of his plans?

To constancy of character, feelings, and resolutions exclusively belongs that moral unity which, braving time and distance, includes all the parts of an event in a compact action, in which the gaps of material unity are no longer perceptible. A violently excited passion could not aim at such an effect; it has its momentary storms, the course of which, being subject to external and variable causes, must in a short time reach its term. As soon as jealousy has seized upon the heart of Othello, if any interval separated that moment from the time which witnesses the death of Desdemona, the unity would be broken; nothing would attest to us the link which must unite the first transports of the Moor to his final resolution; the action must therefore hasten rapidly forward, and must hurry him onward to his destruction, which a day's reflection would perhaps prevent him from consummating. In the same manner, the simple description of events, unless the presence of a great individual character should, by dominating over them, impress upon them its own unity, will make us feel the want of the material unities; and the efforts which Shakspeare has made, in his historical dramas, to approximate to them, or to disguise their absence, are a new homage paid to that moral unity which is sufficient for every thing when the poet possesses it, and which nothing can replace when he has it not. In "Hamlet" and "Macbeth," Shakspeare, inattentive to the course of time, allows it to pass unnoticed. In his historical plays, on the other hand, he conceals and dissembles its lapse by all the artifices that can deceive us in reference to its duration; the scenes follow and announce each other in such a way, that an interval of several years seems to be included within a few weeks, or even a few days. All the probabilities are sacrificed to this theatrical unity, which time would break too easily between events which are not linked together by a uniform principle. The scene in which Richard II. learns from Aumerle the departure of Bolingbroke into exile, is that in which he announces that he is himself about to go to Ireland; and it is not yet thoroughly known at court whether he has actually embarked on this voyage, when the news is received of the disembarkation of Bolingbroke, returning with an army, under the pretext of asserting his rights to the succession of his father, who has died in the interval, but, in reality, to take possession of the crown; in which attempt he has almost succeeded before Richard, cast by a tempest upon the coasts of England, can have been informed of his arrival. And we are told at the end of the play, which, dating from the banishment of Bolingbroke, can not have lasted more than fifteen days, that Mowbray, who was exiled at the same time, has made several journeys to the Holy Land during the interval, and is at last dead in Italy.

These monstrous extravagances would assuredly not be numbered among the proofs of Shakspeare's genius, if they did not attest the empire assumed over him by the great dramatic thought to which he sacrificed all beside. Whether in his historical plays, he multiplies improbabilities and impossibilities in order to conceal the flight of time, or whether, in his finest tragedies, he allows it to pass without the slightest notice, he invariably pursues and attempts to maintain unity of impression, the great source of dramatic effect. We may see in "Macbeth," the true type of his system, with what art he overcomes the difficulties which arise from it, and links together in the soul of the spectator the chain of places and times which is constantly being broken in reality. Macbeth, when resolved on the destruction of Macduff, whom he fears, learns that he has taken flight into England; and he leaves the stage, announcing his intention to surprise his castle, and to put to death his wife, his children, and all who bear his name. The next scene opens in Macduff's castle, by a conversation between Lady Macduff and her relative, Rosse, who has come to inform her of her husband's departure, and to express his fears for her own safety. The two scenes, thus closely connected in thought, seem to be so in time also; distance has disappeared; and who would think of pointing out, as an interval of which some recount should be given, the leagues which separate Macduff's castle from Macbeth's palace, and the time that would be required to traverse them. We have entered without effort into this new part of the position; it follows its course; the assassins appear; the massacre commences. We pass into England; we behold the arrival of Macduff in that country; the terrible events of which he is ignorant fill up, for us, the interval which must separate his departure from his arrival. Rosse appears some time after him, and informs him of his misfortune. Both describe to Malcolm the desolation of Scotland, and the general hatred which Macbeth has incurred. The army which is destined to overthrow the tyrant is collected together, and the order for departure is given. But, while the army is on its road, the poet recalls our imagination toward Macbeth; with him we prepare for the approach of the troops, whose march is effected without any thing occurring to inform us of its duration, or to lead us to make inquiries about it. Scarcely ever, in Shakspeare, do the personages of the drama arrive immediately in the place for which they have set out; so abrupt a conjunction would be contrary to the natural order of the succession of ideas. We have seen Richard II. set out for the castle of John of Gaunt; it is therefore in John of Gaunt's castle that we await the arrival of Richard, whose journey has taken place without our mind being able to complain of not having been consulted with regard to the time which it occupied. In the same manner, between two events evidently separated by an interval long enough for us not to like to see it disappear without taking some part in it, Shakspeare interposes a scene which may belong with equal propriety to either the first or the second epoch, and he makes us pass from one to the other without shocking us by its intimate connection with the scene which immediately precedes or follows it. Thus, in "King Lear," between the time when Lear divides his kingdom among his daughters, and the moment when Goneril, already tired of her father's presence, determines to get rid of him, the scenes at Gloster's castle, and the commencement of Edmund's intrigue, are interposed. Guided by that instinct which is the science of genius, the poet knows that our imagination will traverse without effort both time and space with him, if he spares those moral improbabilities which could alone arrest its progress. With this view, he sometimes accumulates material unlikelihoods, and sometimes exhausts the ingenuity of his art; but, ever attentive to the object at which he aims, he can reduce to unity of action those artifices and preparatory means which he employs to remove every thing that could interfere with the dramatic illusion, and to dispose freely of our thought.

Unity of action, being indispensable to unity of impression, could not escape Shakspeare's notice. But how, it may be asked, could he maintain it in the midst of so many events of so changeful and complicated a nature—in that immense field which includes so many places, so many years, all conditions of society, and the development of so many positions? Shakspeare succeeded in maintaining it, nevertheless: in "Macbeth," "Hamlet," "Richard III.," and "Romeo and Juliet," the action, though vast, does not cease to be one, rapid and complete. This is because the poet has seized upon its fundamental condition, which consists in placing the centre of interest where he finds the centre of action. The character which gives movement to the drama is also the one upon which the moral agitation of the spectator is bestowed. Duplicity of action, or at least of interest, has been urged against Racine's tragedy of "Andromaque," and the charge is not without foundation; it is not that all the parts of the action do not work together toward the same end, but the interest is divided, and the centre of action is uncertain. If Shakspeare had had to treat of such a subject, which, it must be said, is not in great conformity to the nature of his genius, he would have made Andromache the centre of the action as well as of the interest. Maternal love would have pervaded the entire drama, displaying its courage as well as its fears, its strength as well as its sorrows. Shakspeare, indeed, would not have hesitated to introduce the child upon the stage, as Racine subsequently did in "Athalie," when he had grown more bold. All the emotions of the spectator would have been directed toward a single point: we should have beheld Andromache, with greater activity, trying other means to save Astyanax than "the tears of her mother," and constantly riveting upon her son and herself an attention which Racine has too often diverted to the means of action which he was constrained to derive from the vicissitudes of the destiny of Hermione. According to the system imposed upon our dramatic poets in the seventeenth century, Hermione should be the centre of the action; and so, in fact, she is. Upon a stage which daily became more subject to the authority of the ladies and of the court, love seemed destined to take the place of the fatality of the ancients: a blind power, as inflexible as fatality, and, like it, leading its victims toward an object defined from the very outset, love became the fixed point around which all things should revolve. In "Andromaque," love makes Hermione a simple personage, swayed by her passion, referring to it every thing that occurs beneath her view, and careful to bring events into subjection to herself, in order to make them serve and satisfy her affection. Hermione alone directs and gives movement to the drama; Andromaque only appears to suffer the agony of a position as powerless as it is painful. Such an idea may admit of admirable developments of the passive affections of the heart; but it does not constitute a tragic action; and in those developments which do not lead immediately to action, our interest runs the risk of wandering astray, and returns afterward with difficulty into the only direction in which it can be maintained.

When, on the contrary, the centre of action and the centre of interest are identical—when the attention of the spectator has been fixed upon the hero of the drama, at once active and unchanging, whose character, though it remains ever the same, will lead to incessant changes in his destiny—then the events in agitation around such a man strike us only by their relation to him, and the impression which we receive from them assumes the color which he has himself imparted to them. Richard III. proceeds from plot to plot; every new success redoubles the terror with which we are inspired at the outset by his infernal genius; the pity which each one of his victims successively awakes, becomes merged in the feelings of hate which accumulate upon their persecutor; none of these particular feelings diverts our impressions to its own advantage; they are directed incessantly, and always with increasing vigor, toward the author of so many crimes; and thus Richard, the centre of action, is at the same time the centre of interest also; for dramatic interest is not only the unquiet pity which we feel for misfortune, or the passionate affection with which we are inspired by virtue; it is also hatred, the thirst for vengeance, the invocation of Heaven's justice upon the malefactor, as well as the prayer for the salvation of the innocent. All strong feelings, capable of exciting the human soul, can draw us in their train, and inspire us with passionate interest, they have no need to promise us happiness, or to gain our attachment by tenderness: we can also raise ourselves to that sublime contempt for life which makes men heroes and martyrs, and to that noble indignation beneath which tyrants succumb.

Every element may enter into an action, thus reduced to one sole centre, from which emanate, and to which are related, all the events of the drama, and all the impressions of the spectator. Every thing that moves the heart of man, every thing that agitates his life, may combine to produce dramatic interest, provided that, being directed toward the same point, and marked with the same impress, the most various facts present themselves only as satellites of the principal fact, the brilliancy and power of which they serve to augment. Nothing will appear trivial, insignificant, or puerile, if it imparts greater vitality to the predominant position, or greater depth to the general feeling. Grief is sometimes redoubled by the aspect of gayety; in the midst of danger, a joke may increase our courage. Nothing is foreign to the impression but that which destroys it; it nourishes itself, and gains greater power from every thing that can mingle with it. The prattle of young Arthur with Hubert becomes heart-rending from the idea of the horrible barbarity which Hubert is about to practice upon him. We are filled with emotion by the sight of Lady Macduff lovingly amused by the witty sallies of her little son, while at her door are the assassins who have come to massacre that son, and her other children, and afterward herself. Who, but for these circumstances, would take a deep interest in this scene of maternal childishness? But, if this scene were omitted, should we hate Macbeth as much as we ought to do for this new crime? In "Hamlet," not only is the scene of the grave-diggers connected with the general idea of the piece by the kind of meditations which it inspires, but—and we know it—it is Ophelia's grave which they are digging in Hamlet's presence; and to Ophelia will relate, when he is informed of this circumstance, all the impressions which have been kindled in his soul by the sight of those hideous and despised bones, and the indifference which is felt for the mortal remains of those who were once beautiful and powerful, honored or beloved. No detail of these mournful preparations is lost to the feeling which they occasion; the coarse insensibility of the men devoted to the habits of such a trade, their songs and jokes, all have their effect; and the forms and means of comedy thus enter, without effort, into tragedy, the impressions of which are never more keen than when we see them about to fall upon a man who is already their unwitting subject, and who is amusing himself in presence of the misfortune of which he is unaware.

Without this use of the comic, and without this intervention of the inferior classes, how many dramatic effects, which contribute powerfully to the general effect, would become impossible! Accommodate to the taste of the pleasantry of our age the scene with Macbeth's porter, and there is no one who will not shudder at the thought of the discovery that will follow this exhibition of jovial buffoonery, and of the spectacle of carnage still concealed beneath these remnants of the intoxication of a festival. If Hamlet were the first brought into connection with his father's ghost, what preparation and explanations would be indispensable to place us in the state of mind in which a prince, a man belonging to the highest class of society, must be in order to believe in a ghost! But the phantom appears first to soldiers, men of simple a kind, who are more ready to be alarmed than astonished at it; and they relate the story to one another in the night-watch:

The effect of terror is produced, and we believe in the spectre before Hamlet has ever heard it mentioned.

Nor is this all; the intervention of the inferior classes furnishes Shakspeare with another means of effect, which would be impracticable in any other system. The poet who can take his actors from all ranks of society, and place them in all positions, may also bring every thing into action—that is to say, may remain constantly dramatic. In "Julius Caesar," the scene opens with a living picture of popular movements and feelings; what explanation or conversation could make us so well acquainted with the nature of the seductive influence exercised by the Dictator over the Romans, of the kind of danger to which liberty is exposed, and of the error, as well as the peril, of the republicans who hope to restore liberty by the death of Caesar? When Macbeth determines to get rid of Banquo, he has not to inform us of his project in the person of a confidant, or to receive an account of the execution of the deed in order to make us aware of it: he sends for the assassins and converses with them; we witness the artifices by which a tyrant renders the passions and misfortunes of man subservient to his designs; and we afterward see the murderers lie in wait for their victim, strike the fatal blow, and return, with blood-stained hands, to demand their reward. Banquo can then appear to us; the real presence of crime has produced all its effect, and we reject none of the terrors which accompany it.

When we desire to produce man upon the stage in all the energy of his nature, it is not too much to summon to our aid man as a whole, and to exhibit him under all the forms and in all the positions of which his existence admits. Such a representation is not merely more complete and striking, but it is also more truthful and accurate. We deceive the mind with regard to an event, if we present to it merely one salient part adorned with the colors of truth, while the other part is rejected and effaced in a conversation or a narrative. Thence results a false impression which, in more than one instance, has injured the effect of the finest works. "Athalie," that masterpiece of our drama, still finds us imbued with a certain prejudice against Joad and in favor of Athalie, whom we do not hate sufficiently to rejoice in her destruction, and whom we do not fear enough to approve the artifice which draws her into the snare. And yet Athalie has not only massacred her son's children, in order that she might reign in their stead; but she is a foreigner, maintained on the throne by foreign troops; the enemy of the God adored by her people, she insults and braves Him by the presence and pomp of a foreign worship, while the national religion, stripped of its power and honors, and clung to with fear and trembling by only "a small number of zealous worshipers," daily expects to fall a victim to the hatred of Mathan, the insolent despotism of the queen, and the avidity of her base courtiers. Here is, indeed, an exhibition of tyranny and misfortune; here is matter enough to drive the people to revolt, and to lead to conspiracies among the last defenders of their liberties. And all these facts are related in the speeches of Joad, of Abner, of Mathan, and even of Athalie herself. But they are displayed in speeches only; all that we behold in action is Joad conspiring with the means which his enemy still leaves at his disposal, and the imposing grandeur of the character of Athalie. The conspiracy is under our eyes; but we have only heard of tyranny. If the action had revealed to us the evils which oppression involves; if we had beheld Joad excited and stimulated to revolt by the cries of the unhappy victims of the vexations of the foreigner; if the patriotic and religious indignation of the people against a power "lavish of the blood of the defenseless," had given legitimacy to Joad's conduct in our eyes—the action, when thus completed, would leave no uncertainty in our minds; and "Athalie" would perhaps present to us the ideal of dramatic poetry, at least, according to our conception of it at the present time.

Though easily attained among the Greeks, whose life and feelings might be summed up in a few large and simple features, this ideal did not present itself to modern nations under forms sufficiently general and pure to receive the application of the rules laid down in accordance with the ancient models. France, in order to adopt them, was compelled to limit its field, in some sort, to one corner of human existence. Our poets have employed all the powers of genius to turn this narrow space to advantage; the abysses of the heart have been sounded to their utmost depth, but not in all their dimensions. Dramatic illusion has been sought at its true source, but it has not been required to furnish all the effects that might have been obtained from it. Shakspeare offers to us a more fruitful and a vaster system. It would be a strange mistake to suppose that he has discovered and brought to light all its wealth. When we embrace human destiny in all its aspects, and human nature in all the conditions of man upon earth, we enter into possession of an exhaustless treasure. It is the peculiar advantage of such a system, that it escapes, by its extent, from the dominion of any particular genius. We may discover its principles in Shakspeare's works; but he was not fully acquainted with them, nor did he always respect them. He should serve as an example, not as a model. Some men, even of superior talent, have attempted to write plays according to Shakspeare's taste, without perceiving that they were deficient in one important qualification for the task; and that was, to write as he did, to write them for our age, just as Shakspeare's plays were written for the age in which he lived. This is an enterprise, the difficulties of which have hitherto, perhaps, been maturely considered by no one. We have seen how much art and effort was employed by Shakspeare to surmount those which are inherent in his system. They are still greater in our times, and would unvail themselves much more completely to the spirit of criticism which now accompanies the boldest essays of genius. It is not only with spectators of more fastidious taste, and of more idle and inattentive imagination, that the poet would have to do, who should venture to follow in Shakspeare's footsteps. He would be called upon to give movement to personages embarrassed in much, more complicated interests, pre-occupied with much more various feelings, and subject to less simple habits of mind, and to less decided tendencies. Neither science, nor reflection, nor the scruples of conscience, nor the uncertainties of thought, frequently encumber Shakspeare's heroes; doubt is of little use among them, and the violence of their passions speedily transfers their belief to the side of their desires, or sets their actions above their belief. Hamlet alone presents the confused spectacle of a mind formed by the enlightenment of society, in conflict with a position contrary to its laws; and he needs a supernatural apparition to determine him to act, and a fortuitous event to accomplish his project. If incessantly placed in an analogous position, the personages of a tragedy conceived at the present day, according to the romantic system, would offer us the same picture of indecision. Ideas now crowd and intersect each other in the mind of man, duties multiply in his conscience, and obstacles and bonds around his life. Instead of those electric brains, prompt to communicate the spark which they have received—instead of those ardent and simple-minded men, whose projects, like Macbeth's, "will to hand"—the world now presents to the poet minds like Hamlet's, deep in the observation of those inward conflicts which our classical system has derived from a state of society more advanced than that of the time in which Shakspeare lived. So many feelings, interests, and ideas, the necessary consequences of modern civilization, might become, even in their simplest form of expression, a troublesome burden, which it would be difficult to carry through the rapid evolutions and bold advances of the romantic system.

We must, however, satisfy every demand; success itself requires it. The reason must be contented at the same time that the imagination is occupied. The progress of taste, of enlightenment, of society, and of mankind, must serve, not to diminish or disturb our enjoyment, but to render them worthy of ourselves, and capable of supplying the new wants which we have contracted. Advance without rule and art in the romantic system, and you will produce melodrames calculated to excite a passing emotion in the multitude, but in the multitude alone, and for a few days; just as, by dragging along without originality in the classical system, you will satisfy only that cold literary class who are acquainted with nothing in nature which is more important than the interests of versification, or more imposing than the three unities. This is not the work of the poet who is called to power and destined for glory; he acts upon a grander scale, and can address the superior intellects, as well as the general and simple faculties of all men. It is doubtless necessary that the crowd should throng to behold those dramatic works of which you desire to make a national spectacle; but do not hope to become national if you do not unite in your festivities all those classes of persons and minds whose well-arranged hierarchy raises a nation to its loftiest dignity. Genius is bound to follow human nature in all its developments; its strength consists in finding within itself the means for constantly satisfying the whole of the public. The same task is now imposed upon government and upon poetry; both should exist for all, and suffice at once for the wants of the masses and for the requirements of the most exalted minds. Doubtless stopped in its course by these conditions, the full severity of which will only be revealed to the talent that can comply with them, dramatic art, even in England, where, under the protection of Shakspeare, it would have liberty to attempt any thing, scarcely ventures at the present day to endeavor timidly to follow him. Meanwhile, England, France, and the whole of Europe demand of the drama pleasures and emotions that can no longer be supplied by the inanimate representation of a world that has ceased to exist. The classical system had its origin in the life of its time; that time has passed; its image subsists in brilliant colors in its works, but can no more be reproduced. Near the monuments of past ages, the monuments of another age are now beginning to arise. What will be their form? I can not tell; but the ground upon which their foundations may rest is already perceptible. This ground is not the ground of Corneille and Racine, nor is it that of Shakspeare; it is our own; but Shakspeare's system, as it appears to me, may furnish the plans according to which genius ought now to work. This system alone includes all those social conditions and all those general or diverse feelings, the simultaneous conjunction and activity of which constitute for us, at the present day, the spectacle of human things. Witnesses, during thirty years, of the greatest revolutions of society, we shall no longer willingly confine the movement of our mind within the narrow space of some family event, or the agitations of a purely individual passion. The nature and destiny of man have appeared to us under their most striking and their simplest aspect, in all their extent and in all their variableness. We require pictures in which this spectacle is reproduced, in which man is displayed in his completeness, and excites our entire sympathy. The moral dispositions which impose this necessity upon poetry will not change; but we shall see them, on the contrary, manifesting themselves more plainly, and receiving greater development, day by day. Interests, duties, and a movement common to all classes of citizens, will strengthen among them that chain of habitual relations with which all public feelings connect themselves. Never could dramatic art have taken its subjects from an order of ideas at once more popular and more elevated; never was the connection between the most vulgar interests of man and the principles upon which his highest destinies are dependent, more clearly present to all minds; and the importance of an event may now appear in its pettiest details as well as in its mightiest results. In this state of society, a new dramatic system ought to be established. It should be liberal and free, but not without principles and laws. It should establish itself like liberty, not upon disorder and forgetfulness of every check, but upon rules more severe and more difficult of observance, perhaps, than those which are still enforced to maintain what is called order against what is designated license.