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FIVE LECTURES 
 
 ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 BY 
 
 / 
 
 BERNHARD TEN BRINK 
 
 TRANSLATED BY 
 
 JULIA FRANKLIN 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 1895 
 
■^73 
 
 Copyright, 1895, 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY HOLT & CO. 
 
 THE MERSHON COMPANY PRESS, 
 KAHWAY, N. J. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 3ffrst Xecture. 
 
 The Poet and the Man, - - - 3 
 
 Second Xecture. 
 
 The Chronology of Shakespeare's Works, 49 
 
 XLbitt) Xecture. 
 
 Shakespeare as Dramatist, - - - 105 
 
 jfourtb Xecture. 
 
 Shakespeare as Comic Poet, - - - 155 
 
 3fiftb Xecture. 
 
 Shakespeare as Tragic Writer, - - 199 
 
 Index to Works Mentioned, - - - 247 
 
FIRST LECTURE 
 
 THE POET AND THE MAN 
 
FIVE LECTURES ON 
 SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 THE POET -AND THE MAN. 
 
 My intention to speak of Shakespeare 
 in a series of five lectures, to an audience 
 until now unfamiliar to me, is so bold a 
 one that now, when I am about to put it 
 into execution, it really astonishes me. 
 Everyone who has given more than a 
 superficial study to the mighty poet will 
 be able to sympathize with me in this 
 feeling. The greatness of the subject, 
 the wealth of material, the multitude of 
 problems arising, and the innumerable 
 variety of attempts to solve them — how 
 can I dare hope to do justice to all this, 
 to master such wealth and variety, at 
 least to so master them in five short 
 
4 7he Toet and the (Man. 
 
 hours that you may receive an approxi- 
 mate idea of my conception of the sub- 
 ject ? Greatly do I need your forbearance 
 and that sympathetic response, that fine 
 and subtle accord, which, perhaps, I could 
 expect from a promiscuous audience only 
 in the city of Goethe. 
 
 My plan in these lectures is to touch, 
 in their order, upon the important prob- 
 lems to which the phenomenon of Shakes- 
 peare gives rise. We will attempt to 
 force our way right into the heart of the 
 subject — the development of the poet, 
 and the many sides which his developed 
 thought, will, and power open to our 
 observation. 
 
 First in order we have to discuss a 
 question which has now for a number 
 of years been a burning one : " the re- 
 lation between the poet and the man," 
 or, as we might also formulate the ques- 
 tion, the possibility of the identity of 
 the poet and the man Shakespeare. 
 
 It is not merely since yesterday that a 
 
The Toet and the DAan. 5 
 
 Shakespeare myth has been spoken of ; 
 but whoever uses this expression to-day 
 has an entirely different thing in his mind 
 from what was meant by it thirty or forty 
 years ago. When that worthy German 
 Shakespeare scholar, my honored teacher, 
 Nicolas Delius, issued a publication in 
 1851 under the title "The Myth of 
 Shakespeare," the thought of ventilating 
 the problem which shall engage us to-day 
 was far from his mind. His object was 
 simply to examine the mass of reports and 
 stories which had found their way into 
 the traditional biographies of Shakespeare, 
 with regard to the testimony brought to 
 bear upon them and their inner worth ; 
 to separate the true from the false, the 
 established from the doubtful, in order 
 to obtain a reliable, if meager, sketch of 
 Shakespeare's life. 
 
 Such was the case then. And how is 
 it to-day? Were Delius in a position to 
 publish his work anew, he would perhaps 
 begin it with a chapter entitled : " Shakes- 
 
6 The T^oet and the [Man. 
 
 peare no Myth." You are no doubt well 
 aware that at present not one, but a great 
 number of authors, chiefly in England 
 and America, maintain that the great 
 poet whom we study and revere falsely 
 bears the name of Shakespeare — that 
 Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, Lear, and the 
 other creations that bear the stamp of 
 this unique genius, and have been handed 
 down to us as Shakespeare's work, are the 
 creations of an entirely different being 
 from the William Shakespeare of whom 
 the parish register and other documents 
 tell us. The Shakespeare who was born 
 in the year 1564 in Stratford-on-Avon, 
 married there at an early age and begot 
 children, who afterward went to London 
 and made a success as actor and theat- 
 rical manager, and who died in his native 
 place in the year 1616 — that personality, 
 sufficiently authenticated historically, can- 
 not be regarded as the creator of those 
 glorious dramas which form the delight 
 of both the learned and unlearned. He 
 
The "Poet and the [Man, 7 
 
 may, at most, have somewhat rearranged 
 these plays for the stage, but he gave his 
 name only to conceal their true author. 
 
 The view of which I speak is not an 
 entirely new one. Karl Miiller-Mylius 
 reports that as early as 1843 the well- 
 known Catholic historian Professor Gforrer, 
 then librarian in Stuttgart, privately ex- 
 pressed the opinion that it was impossible 
 that the historical Shakespeare should 
 have composed the Shakespeare dramas. 
 In the fifties there arose nearly simul- 
 taneously in America and England the 
 notion that the famous statesman and 
 philosopher Lord Bacon, Shakespeare's 
 contemporary, was the real author of 
 these plays. The publications of Miss 
 Delia Bacon and of Judge Nathaniel 
 Holmes in America, as well as those of 
 the Englishman William Henry Smith, 
 then began to represent and defend this 
 view in wider circles. But it was still pos- 
 sible to dismiss the whole affair as a mere 
 freak not worthy of serious refutation. 
 
8 The T^oet and the [Man. 
 
 At the present day the matter stands 
 somewhat differently. The number of 
 followers of this strange view has of late 
 increased very considerably ; the Bacon- 
 Shakespeare controversy has developed a 
 whole literature, which at the beginning 
 of the year 1882 counted 255 books and 
 dissertations (of which 161 belong to 
 America, and 69 to England), and can 
 now no longer be so easily overlooked. 
 But, beyond this, the American-English 
 theory has by this time found advo- 
 cates even in Germany. We are not 
 at liberty, therefore, simply to ignore it, 
 but must attempt briefly to explain our 
 position in regard to it. 
 
 The theory is made up of two elements : 
 Shakespeare's right to the works which 
 bear his name is contested ; the author- 
 ship of those works is attributed to Lord 
 Bacon. He who maintains the first of 
 these propositions is not by any means 
 bound to uphold the second ; and there 
 are those who content themselves for the 
 
The Toet and the zMan. 9 
 
 present with the simple negation, leaving 
 open the question of the real authorship 
 of the Shakespeare productions. Among 
 these there are some who entertain the 
 idea of a multiplicity of authors, and are 
 disposed to consider the Shakespeare 
 question as analogous to the Homeric 
 one. By far the most important and the 
 fundamental question, the solution of 
 which might render the investigation of 
 the other superfluous, is evidently that 
 which can be condensed into the words : 
 Shakespeare or not Shakespeare ? There- 
 fore we shall consider that first and fore- 
 most. 
 
 When we maintain that the historical 
 William Shakespeare is the author of the 
 works which bear his name, we do so in 
 accordance with a tradition of nearly three 
 hundred years — a tradition based upon a 
 wealth of authentic contemporary testi- 
 mony such as but few facts in early 
 literary history can produce. The new 
 Shakespeare mythologists find, of course, 
 
lo The ^Poet and the zMan. 
 
 an easy means of disposing of this testi- 
 mony. The contemporaries of the poet, 
 they say, concerned themselves but little 
 about the authorship of the plays. They 
 could, therefore, easily fall prey to a de- 
 ception in which a number of them were 
 accomplices. As to the motives of that 
 deception, opinions are greatly divided. 
 Enough that in Shakespeare's time a 
 grand conspiracy was organized with the 
 object of bringing him forward as the 
 writer of a series of masterpieces which 
 originated from an entirely different 
 author or authors. The most remark- 
 able thing is that no one should have 
 been found, either at that time or after 
 Shakespeare's death, to let out the secret, 
 notwithstanding the numerous anecdotes 
 otherwise connected with the personality 
 of William Shakespeare. On the con- 
 trary, not a particle of evidence can be 
 produced, either from Shakespeare's time 
 or that succeeding, to sustain the opinion 
 that Shakespeare did not write these 
 
The Toet and the (Man. ii 
 
 works. You see that it is impossible to 
 argue this matter seriously, and we will, 
 therefore, just briefly touch upon the sec- 
 ond element of the theory, the supposi- 
 tion of Bacon's authorship. And here I 
 must say plainly: he who thinks it ^even 
 conceivable that Bacon could have written 
 the works which appear under Shakes- 
 peare's name can know neither Bacon 
 nor Shakespeare. One who has a 
 thorough knowledge of Shakespeare 
 needs but a slight acquaintance Avith 
 Bacon to become convinced that in 
 Shakespeare is manifest a different spirit, 
 a different heart, a different character. 
 And the student of Bacon need but read 
 a page of Shakespeare to reach the con- 
 clusion that the statesman-philosopher, 
 though his life had been at stake, could 
 not have produced that page. 
 
 The whole agitation, much ado as is 
 made over it, strikes me as nothing more 
 than a mere curiosity, a morbid phenom- 
 enon of the time. It is no doubt very 
 
12 The Toet and the D4an. 
 
 interesting to study such a phenomenon, 
 but it is not the problem which I pro- 
 pose to discuss in this lecture. Do not, 
 therefore, expect to hear from me any- 
 thing like a direct refutation of the 
 theory referred to. But, although it is 
 not my aim, these lectures will serve as an 
 indirect refutation should I be success- 
 ful in attaining my object. To explain 
 myself : 
 
 He who studies the creations of a poet, 
 not merely considering each one as an 
 isolated work of art, but seeking in those 
 works the man who created them, sets 
 himself no easy task — the task, namely, 
 of discovering the spiritual unity of those 
 works. This unity is not a fixed, rigid 
 thing ; it is unstable, mobile. The differ- 
 ent works of the same poet reveal him to 
 us from different sides, upon different 
 stages of intellectual and moral develop- 
 ment, filled with different ideas, subject 
 to different moods. If to the picture of 
 the poet which his works reveal we add 
 
The Toet and the D4an. 13 
 
 what we know of the outward circum- 
 stances of his Hfe, — of the conditions, the 
 influences, which shaped his develop- 
 ment, — then the problem becomes more 
 complicated, but at the same time more 
 satisfactory: it is to find the accord 
 between his life and his works. The 
 solution, in so far as it can be reached, 
 consists in an intuitive insight into the 
 development of a definite intellectual 
 personality. 
 
 This undertaking, when applied to 
 Shakespeare, is complicated with extraor- 
 dinary difficulties, chiefly for two rea- 
 sons: first, on account of the great- 
 ness of his genius, and secondly, because 
 we know so little of his life, and that 
 which we do know is of a character 
 which seems to bear no sort of propor- 
 tion to the overwhelming spiritual im- 
 portance of the man. To a coarse per- 
 ception, to one who can conceive of 
 spiritual greatness only in the powerful of 
 the earth, this circumstance is doubly em- 
 
14 ^he Toet and the DAan. 
 
 barrassing. Shakespeare's outward life 
 had none of that splendor and- distinction 
 which we should like to associate with 
 the originator of his works ; but one for- 
 gets that innumerable passages in these 
 works themselves teach the lesson that 
 the most unseemly covering often hides 
 the richest treasure: think, for instance, 
 of the choosing of the casket, in " The 
 Merchant of Venice." And it is over- 
 looked, too, that the most powerful im- 
 pression left upon the discriminating 
 reader of these masterpieces is that 
 they give us far more than they promise, 
 and that their author, too, can only be 
 conceived as a man in whose appearance, 
 bearing, position in life, his true great- 
 ness found a very imperfect expression. 
 Yet it is owing mainly to this fact, to 
 this difficulty of reconciling Shakespeare's 
 life and his works, that, I will not say the 
 Bacon theory had its origin, but that it 
 could become so widespread. And now 
 we shall offer some reflections upon this 
 
The Toet and the tMan. 15 
 
 point. We will attempt to find a path 
 which shall lead us to see that this unity 
 of the poet and his creations is at least 
 a possible, a conceivable one. We dare 
 never hope to lift the veil which envelops 
 the mystery of genius. The miracle 
 presented to us by the phenomenon of 
 Shakespeare will never be cleared up. 
 But is it not so in all cases of a similar 
 nature ? Does not the real miracle, after 
 all efforts at explanation, remain an un- 
 solved mystery? Let us take Goethe, 
 so near to us in time, concerning whose 
 life we have such a wealth of knowledge 
 — Goethe, who has himself deigned to 
 give us an account of his development, 
 and who in Dichtiing und Wahrheit 
 has presented a work which William 
 Scherer once characterized as the " causal 
 explanation of genius." '' Causal expla- 
 nation of genius"! If one could but 
 speak of the causal explanation of even 
 this one particular genius ! But do we 
 find this in DicJitu7tg tind Wahrheit} 
 
1 6 The T^oet and the tMan. 
 
 Do we learn from it anywhere how 
 Goethe's genius arose ? No ; at most we 
 learn of certain conditions under which 
 his genius developed in a particular 
 direction. This is all ; the real, the 
 fundamental secret remains unrevealed. 
 And likewise in regard to Shakespeare 
 we must not raise our expectations too 
 high. All that we can hope to attain is 
 this: the knowledge that the inner 
 development of the poet,. as disclosed to 
 us through his works, harmonizes with 
 what we know of the historical Shakes- 
 peare ; that, indeed, many of the circum- 
 stances of his life decidedly advanced 
 his development. In my attempt to 
 demonstrate this I shall not, of course, 
 repeat in detail the biography of the 
 poet ; I will bring into prominence only 
 those elements in it which are of signifi- 
 cance for our purpose. 
 
 William Shakespeare was the oldest son 
 and the first surviving child of his parents ; 
 he was, therefore, no doubt reared with 
 
The Toet and the (Man. 17 
 
 special love and solicitude. He grew up 
 in a family which, upon a foundation of 
 honest toil, had attained a comfortable 
 prosperity, and must have enjoyed high 
 esteem in Stratford. His father, John 
 Shakespeare, both farmer and merchant, — 
 not an unusual combination in such pro- 
 vincial towns, — was high bailiff in Stratford 
 from Michaelmas, 1568, to Michaelmas, 
 1569. Again, in September, 1571, he was 
 chosen first alderman. His mother, Mary 
 Arden, was a member of one of the most 
 highly respected families of the county of 
 Warwick, one which distinctly belonged 
 to the gentry. 
 
 Shakespeare grew up amid simple, 
 rather primitive, surroundings ; he could 
 not look for the higher spiritual training 
 to his parents. At the grammar school 
 of his native city, which, according 
 to the thoroughly credible testimony of 
 one of his first biographers, he attended, 
 he is said to have been initiated into 
 the knowledge of Latin, the elements 
 
1 8 The T^oet and the D^an. 
 
 of logic and rhetoric, and various other 
 branches. 
 
 Most of his knowledge of such things 
 was probably self-taught later on. And 
 we may assume that during his school life 
 he learned more from his communion . 
 with nature and with the little world of 
 Stratford than he did upon the school 
 bench. 
 
 Was this a misfortune ? Can we assume 
 that it would have been conducive to his 
 development to have received a scholarly 
 education, to have associated at an early 
 age with men of wide culture, and to have 
 had his attention turned to literature in 
 his tender youth ? In order to enable us 
 to answer these questions we must try to 
 present before us the spiritual physiog- 
 nomy of Shakespeare as it is revealed to 
 us by his writings. 
 
 There has rarely been a man at once 
 so finely and so powerfully organized, so 
 healthy, as Shakespeare. I speak of 
 fineness of organization in the widest 
 
7he Toet and the zMan. 19 
 
 possible sense : delicacy of the inward 
 and outward sense, the highest suscepti- 
 bility materially and spiritually, ethically 
 and aesthetically. He was open to out- 
 ward influences on every side of his 
 nature, and every impression woke an 
 echo within him. Nothing escaped his 
 eye, his ear, and nothing was indifferent 
 to him ; he sought to comprehend every- 
 thing; everything aroused in him pleas- 
 ure or aversion, and, when more deeply 
 stirred, joy or sorrow. He had a univer- 
 sal sympathy for all created things, above 
 all, for man — a sympathy not stopping at 
 the surface of things, but penetrating to 
 their innermost being ; a sympathy which 
 animates the inanimate in nature, and 
 which in human life enables him com- 
 pletely to put himself into another's 
 place, and to judge humanly of his 
 motives and actions. All that is beauti- 
 ful in art or in nature finds in him a 
 joyous, an ardent response ; no noble 
 action, no spark, however feeble, of noble 
 
20 The Toet and the cMan. 
 
 human endeavor, leaves him unmoved. 
 The forms of social intercourse in their 
 relation to the feelings and to character — 
 who has ever so keenly felt their infinitely 
 delicate shades ? Nothing that offends 
 good taste or shocks the aesthetic sense 
 remains unnoticed by him. He has com- 
 prehension for every individual pecuHar- 
 ity, every idiosyncrasy, every manner- 
 ism, and can trace them to their source. 
 In no poet, therefore, is the sense of the 
 ludicrous so highly developed. But he 
 does not content himself with a mere 
 surface picture of even his most irre- 
 sistibly laughable characters ; not even 
 they are too insignificant for him to 
 sympathize with them, to enter into their 
 nature, into their life. Toward them, too, 
 he shows the good will he bears all crea- 
 tures ; in them, too, he honors humanity. 
 No ring of scorn or mockery is heard in 
 his laughter. 
 
 The influences for good that a youth 
 spent in ever-renewed and intimate con- 
 
The Toet and the (Man. 21 
 
 tact with nature must have exerted upon 
 a being so organized, seem evident. 
 Country Hfe, with its refreshing, invigor- 
 ating air, could maintain the health and 
 develop the strength, which, with a more 
 artificial system of education, might have 
 degenerated at an early age. The quiet 
 content of what might be called a patri- 
 archal life guarded this all too fine-strung 
 spirit, this all too sensitive being, from a 
 premature development of his instincts 
 and talents — a development which in all 
 probability would have led to a feverish 
 exaltation, and have been his ruin, as it 
 was of so many others of that time, par- 
 ticularly those dramatically gifted. 
 
 And, furthermore, that intimate inter- 
 course with nature to which life in Strat- 
 ford was so conducive was the best school 
 for his mind, for his yet slumbering genius. 
 Not only did it sharpen his senses, his 
 powers of observation : he owes to it in- 
 finitely more. To a contemplative mind, 
 one capable of high development, nature 
 
2 2 The l^oet and the zMan. 
 
 presents wonders on every hand — wonders 
 of a primitive kind, and therefore more in 
 consonance with a child's spirit -than those 
 that are achieved by the intellect. Ques- 
 tions are suggested at every step ; even 
 the minutest, the most insignificant object 
 reveals itself to the loving observer as a 
 complete creation, one perfect within its 
 limitations ; and, again, in the contempla- 
 tion of nature one recognizes more easily 
 the connection between all beings, their 
 dependence upon each other. 
 
 Shakespeare penetrated deep into the 
 book of nature in his native place. Not 
 only was his aesthetic sense captivated by 
 the beauties of the surrounding land- 
 scape ; not only did he retain all that pre- 
 sented itself before him as a harmonious 
 whole, so that we find repeatedly in his 
 works recollections of his home, of the 
 Avon, gently winding its way through 
 green meadows, dark woodland, pretty 
 orchards : he also learned to observe 
 every detail of the picture ; every flower, 
 
The "Poet and the (Man. 23 
 
 every plant, every animal, aroused his 
 interest ; he grew intimately acquainted 
 with everything about him. Here was 
 developed and brought into active play 
 the poet's all-embracing sympathy ; here, 
 also, was laid the foundation of that ex- 
 tensive knowledge of nature of which his 
 works bear proof, and which command the 
 wonder and admiration of the botanist, 
 the zoologist, the physiologist, and leads 
 them to the conjecture that Shakespeare 
 must have devoted himself to a special 
 study of each of these branches of science. 
 He would hardly have gained that deep 
 understanding of the life of nature had 
 he grown up in a noisy, contracted town, 
 in an atmosphere of high literary culture. 
 For Shakespeare looks upon nature as 
 a poet, a child, as every nation in its in- 
 fancy looks upon it. The change of the 
 seasons, which influences even our moods, 
 making us sad or gay, is regarded by the 
 child of nature as the withdrawal or re- 
 turn of a great blessing : it is the propi- 
 
24 The 'Poet and the [Man. 
 
 tious gods who part from us and die 
 away, to be resurrected in the spring. 
 Every child's mind conceives myths of 
 this nature, but above all a child who is 
 destined to become a Shakespeare or a 
 Goethe. For the historical significance 
 and national importance of men of the 
 highest order of genius consists in this: 
 that, while developing the spirit peculiar 
 to a people, they are, at the same time, its 
 most perfect representatives ; so that 
 their life appears a miniature of that of 
 their people — its past, its present, and its 
 future are mirrored in them. We cannot 
 doubt, then, that Shakespeare, too, in his 
 childhood, reveled in myths. He sought 
 to give a human significance to every 
 manifestation of nature ; everything was 
 to him a picture, a symbol. And when, 
 later, he had learned to distinguish the 
 differences between similar things more 
 sharply, the impressions received in child- 
 hood still clung to him ; the habit, nay, 
 the necessity, of thinking in pictures, of 
 
The Toet and the OAan. 25 
 
 expressing himself in pictures, still re- 
 mained. And from the habit of compar- 
 ing was developed the faculty of deduc- 
 ing a general truth from the observation 
 of a single phenomenon by rapid analysis 
 and combination. Thus his deep insight 
 of later years into the relations of things 
 should be taken in connection with the 
 myth-making of his childhood. 
 
 The great advantage of a simple, primi- 
 tive mode of life is that it guards a per- 
 son from developing one side of his talents 
 at the expense of the others. The di- 
 vision of labor, the chief factor in the 
 progress of culture for humanity at large, 
 has the necessary consequence that the 
 individual perfects himself in one direc- 
 tion, and remains undeveloped in many 
 others ; that he is a giant in his own 
 field, while in other fields he is infinitely 
 more helpless than the child of nature. 
 The unpractical scholar, the professor so 
 childishly inexperienced in matters of 
 everyday life, is a familiar figure to 
 
26 The Toet and the Ovian. 
 
 everyone, if only from the pages of the 
 comic newspapers. But how inexperi- 
 enced do we often find the scholar even 
 in domains of knowledge only slightly re- 
 moved from his own ! Shakespeare was 
 preserved from such one-sidedness both 
 by his nature and his education. He lived 
 in a little town where rural work was 
 combined with town occupations. His 
 father was a farmer and merchant. Al- 
 ready in early youth he was brought into 
 close contact with various forms of human 
 activity. He accustomed himself to ob- 
 serve them all, to inquire into the aims, 
 the methods, the implements, of each. 
 And this habit he retained in later life. 
 Thus it is that he knows the technical 
 name of every object in every field of 
 activity, that he can represent with such 
 exactness every detail of work, compli- 
 cated though it may be, in any trade. 
 Hence the traditions or the hypotheses 
 according to which Shakespeare is now 
 a butcher, now a wool merchant, or. 
 
The T^oet and the OAan. 27 
 
 again, a typesetter, a physician, or a 
 soldier. 
 
 His powers of observation and combi- 
 nation thus exercised were, no doubt, 
 turned by Shakespeare at an early age 
 upon his own proper domain, the study 
 of man. The little world which sur- 
 rounded him, and the world within his 
 own breast, offered him perfectly ample 
 material for this study, and as his needs 
 grew greater so also did the circle of his 
 experiences widen. 
 
 The saying of Goethe is familiar : 
 " Einen Blick ins Buch hinein und zwei 
 ins Leben, das muss die rechte Form 
 dem Geiste geben." 
 
 If there be any great poet or thinker in 
 modern ages who was formed on this 
 principle, it is Shakespeare. We have at- 
 tempted to indicate how he may have 
 gained his knowledge of life in Stratford. 
 Of what significance books were to him 
 we shall have occasion to learn in the 
 course of our investigations. 
 
28 The Toet and the (Man. 
 
 The intellectual possessions of an age, 
 of a people, are not limited to what is 
 found in their literature. There is, and 
 was particularly at that time, a fund of 
 tradition transmitted through the customs 
 and manners of the people, through their 
 songs and their sayings, having the same 
 underlying character, but assuming a 
 multiplicity of different forms in differ- 
 ent parts of the land. These things, too, 
 form a prominent, an essential feature 
 of the intellectual atmosphere surround- 
 ing man. 
 
 In the sixteenth century England still 
 fully deserved the name of merry Eng- 
 land. Puritan austerity of manners had 
 not yet begun to scorn the gay, light- 
 hearted festivals of the people, nor 
 silence their merry songs. Old customs 
 and ceremonies were observed with par- 
 ticular faithfulness in the country ; at 
 stated times of the year processions, 
 games, dances, were organized, many of 
 which had their origin in the dim, hoary 
 
The Toet and the OAan. 29 
 
 past, some echoing the spirit of the Teu- 
 tonic myths. Among these belongs the 
 May festival, and the morris dance which 
 formed a part of it. Among them also 
 belongs St. George's Day, the sheep- 
 shearing festival, and many other feasts 
 and games of which Shakespeare de- 
 lighted to make mention in his dramas. 
 Warwickshire must have been one of 
 those English counties in which old 
 usages, old traditions, maintained their 
 strongest hold. It was a region where 
 from the dawn of English history different 
 races or different nationalities were 
 brought into contact : first the West- 
 Saxons and the Celts, then the West- 
 Saxons and the Angles, the latter of 
 whom conquered the former. Under 
 Alfred the Great, after the descisive vic- 
 tory over the Danes, the boundary line 
 between the West-Saxon-Mercian and 
 the Danish dominion passed through 
 Warwickshire. Old English records es- 
 tablish the fact that paganism here main- 
 
3© The l^oet and the cMaii. 
 
 tained a long life ; the neighborhood of 
 the Danes, the comparatively great dis- 
 tance from the great centers of culture, 
 must later have been favorable to the 
 preservation of vestiges of heathen tradi- 
 tions. 
 
 Warwickshire was, also, according to all 
 appearances, one of those districts where 
 the old English national epic received its 
 most powerful development. In the lit- 
 erary ages, on the contrary, we hear little 
 or nothing of Warwickshire up to the 
 second half of the sixteenth century. 
 Scarcely on-e poet of eminence of the Old 
 or Middle English period can be claimed 
 with certainty for the heart of England, 
 as Michael Drayton, a contemporary of 
 Shakespeare, himself a native of Warwick- 
 shire, calls it. All the more vigorous was 
 the growth of popular poetry. Here 
 arose, as a consequence of the mingling of 
 Danes and Saxons, the legend of Guy of 
 Warwick, which, in the beginning of the 
 thirteenth century, received a literary 
 
The "Poet and the cMan. 31 
 
 form in the Norman tongue. Old 
 charms, ballads, and such other forms of 
 poetry as fall within the domain of folk- 
 songs, may well have survived longer in 
 Warwickshire than in many other coun- 
 ties, and had a relatively richer develop- 
 ment. Poetry of this kind that found its 
 way to Warwickshire from other regions, 
 particularly such as came from northern 
 England, was eagerly welcomed. The 
 beautiful songs and legends of Robin 
 Hood, in which the Old German storm god 
 Woden assumes the national heroic form 
 of an outlaw, of an archer and poacher, 
 making the woods his home, and the 
 kindred ballads of Adam Bell, William of 
 Cloudesly, Clym o* the Clough — all filled 
 with a fresh, woody odor, a primitive, 
 light-hearted way of looking at life — found 
 congenial soil in Warwickshire. Shakes- 
 peare's dramas are full of allusions to 
 these ballads, as, indeed, no other poet of 
 his time has drawn so deep as he from 
 the well of national songs and legends. 
 
32 The Toet and the {Man. 
 
 Neither was there a lack of historical 
 reminiscences in Warwickshire. Mighty- 
 remains of the Roman period, which in 
 the sixteenth century were looked upon 
 as the work of the Britons ; cities and 
 places associated with the names of 
 famous races of men, with the history of 
 great events, of terrible battles, were here 
 found in abundance. Particularly did 
 the sad time when the houses of Lan- 
 caster and York, engaged in a bloody 
 feud, decimated the English aristocracy 
 and desolated the land, — the time of the 
 Wars of the Roses, — still live most vividly 
 in the memory of the inhabitants of that 
 county. The great hero of the Wars of 
 the Roses, whom history and poetry have 
 made familiar to us as the king-maker, 
 was Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick. 
 
 Is it astonishing that Shakespeare 
 should at the very outset of his dramatic 
 career have been drawn to represent and 
 artistically master that period of history 
 of which he heard above all others in his 
 
The Toet and the (Man. 2>2f 
 
 home ? We must remember, too, that 
 this was the period treated by Edward 
 Hall in his chronicle. 
 
 It is not a matter of indifference where 
 a man, especially a genius, is born — 
 whether he is descended from a vigor- 
 ous or a degenerate stock, what air he 
 breathed in his childhood, what songs 
 were sung to him in his cradle. 
 
 And so it may be no mere chance that 
 Shakespeare was born in Warwickshire ; 
 there may be a connection between his 
 origin and the particular direction taken by 
 his genius. Shakespeare is the first among 
 the great English poets since the Old 
 English period in whom the Teutonic 
 spirit again overpoweringly asserts itself, 
 and presses into its service all those 
 elements of foreign culture which were 
 assimilated by the national character. 
 In him we find again that soul-stirring 
 note of deep feeling, that simple bold- 
 ness of poetic expression, which plunges 
 us, without preparation or mediation, — 
 
34 'The Toet and the DAan. 
 
 apparently without any effort at artistic 
 effect, — into the very heart of the subject; 
 in short, he has that genuineness of senti- 
 ment which is a chief characteristic of 
 Germanic poesy. 
 
 Shakespeare's boyhood seems to have 
 been a very happy one. Later in Hfe he 
 looked back as to a lost paradise upon 
 those days of innocence, of youthful joys 
 and youthful friendships, upon the time 
 when he looked no deeper into the future 
 than to think "■ to-morrow will be another 
 day like to-day, and I shall always be a 
 boy," when he and his playfellows " gave 
 innocence for innocence," and when it 
 entered not their dreams that " men do 
 evil " in the world. 
 
 About the time when Shakespeare, a 
 boy of fourteen, may be supposed to have 
 left school the horizon of his life began 
 gradually to darken. In the first place, 
 the hitherto prosperous circumstances of 
 his family grew straitened, and then 
 sank to lower and still lower depths. We 
 
The T^oet and the [Man. 35 
 
 can follow clearly enough, in Stratford 
 documents of the years 1578 to 1587, the 
 sad development of affairs which plunged 
 the Shakespeare family into poverty, led 
 to the loss of their position, deprived its 
 head, John Shakespeare, of the dignified 
 office of alderman, and finally robbed him 
 of his liberty, until, in the latter year, 
 their misfortunes had reached a climax, 
 but not yet their end. 
 
 The crisis in Shakespeare's life, the 
 time which marks the transition from 
 boyhood to youth, falls just within this 
 period : the awakening of youthful long- 
 ings and passions ; first love, with its 
 dreams, its rapture — here, alas! with its 
 errors also, with its consequences that 
 were to determine his whole life. 
 X In November, 1582, we find William 
 Shakespeare on the point of getting 
 married — he, a lad of eighteen, to a girl 
 eight years older than himself ; on the 
 point of getting married, as it appears, 
 without the consent of his parents; en- 
 
36 The l^oet and the OAan. 
 
 deavoring to obtain permission for his 
 union from the Bishop of Worcester 
 after a single proclamation of the banns. 
 The marriage must have taken place soon 
 after this. Already under the date of 
 the 26th of May, 1583, the Stratford 
 parish register records the baptism of 
 Susanna, daughter of William Shakes- 
 peare. 
 
 And now picture to yourself this youth- 
 ful head of a family in the first years suc- 
 ceeding his union : how the incompati- 
 bility between him and his wife, the 
 difference in age itself forming a barrier, 
 gradually dawns upon him ; how he sees 
 clearly the many prospects life and the 
 world would have held out to him, feels 
 the chains which render the struggle for 
 existence so hard, and which he himself 
 has forged ; how, from day to day, the 
 difficulty of satisfying the needs of his 
 little family grows greater, and how the 
 increasing disorder of his father's finan- 
 cial affairs at length makes his position 
 
The Toet and the DAan. 37 
 
 intolerable. It may well be that the 
 young husband, overwhelmed by repent- 
 ance, mortification, and despair, — a despair 
 which rendered him utterly reckless, — 
 may have attempted to shake off now and 
 then the heavy burdens weighing upon 
 him, and have taken part, in the com- 
 pany of wild fellows, in the maddest 
 pranks. The tradition according to 
 which Shakespeare led a dissolute life in 
 Stratford with gay companions, and com- 
 mitted all kinds of mischief, particularly 
 poaching, exaggerated and inexact as it is 
 in some particulars, may contain a kernel 
 of truth. The essential thing for us is 
 this : if we seek to bring Shakespeare's 
 condition during the years in question 
 vividly before our minds, we come to the 
 conclusion that it has in a comparatively 
 short space of time passed through the 
 whole compass of moods and feelings, 
 from the most glowing ecstasy of passion 
 to the chilling grief of blank disappoint- 
 ment, from the highest bliss to deepest 
 
38 7he Toet and the DAan. 
 
 woe ; and that we must date from this 
 period the epoch when his knowledge of 
 the world and of the human heart, and 
 likewise his sympathy with human joys 
 and sorrows, began to deepen. 
 
 And now followed Shakespeare's de- 
 parture, or, if you will, his flight, to Lon- 
 don. At the beginning of 1585 his 
 family had been increased by a pair of 
 twins, Hamnet and Judith, who were 
 baptized on the 2d of February. It may 
 be presumed that Shakespeare left his 
 home soon after this to try his fortunes 
 in the capital. We have no more pre- 
 cise knowledge of the time of that hegira, 
 for in this part of the poet's biography 
 there is a great gap. Up to the year 
 1592 we have no account of him what- 
 ever, and the first thing we then hear of 
 him is that he has secured a perfectly 
 firm footing in London and in his new 
 sphere of action. The period between 
 Shakespeare's arrival in the English 
 capital and the year 1592, which we are 
 
The Toet and the iMan. 39 
 
 enabled to fill out only by conjecture 
 and imagination, must have been of the 
 highest import and greatest consequence 
 in the poet's life. This is the time of his 
 real struggle with the world, with des- 
 tiny ; the time, too, doubtless, of new 
 and hard struggles with himself — all of 
 them crises out of which he came forth 
 not unscathed, it is true, but with a spirit 
 matured and strengthened. It was at 
 this period that the poet's spiritual 
 horizon was so vastly widened, a conse- 
 quence of being transplanted from the 
 narrow, quiet life of Stratford to the busy 
 mart of London. 
 
 And here we must try to realize the 
 great historical era when England became 
 conscious of her mission in Europe, and 
 when, at the same time, she began to 
 stretch out her arms toward the new 
 transatlantic world ; the time when the 
 tide of English national life rose so high, 
 and the spirit of nationality received so 
 powerful an impulse ; the time when 
 
40 The Toet and the {Man. 
 
 England, too, began to conquer a place 
 for herself in the new domains of 
 science, opened up by the intellectual 
 awakening of Europe, and when English 
 poesy ventured upon more daring flights 
 than it had ever attempted before, and 
 soared to heights which it has never, in- 
 deed, again attained. We must picture 
 to ourselves the young provincial trans- 
 ferred at such an epoch to the streets of 
 the great capital, with his unsophisticated 
 ways, his fresh, alert mind, his keen pow- 
 ers of observation, rich, too, in a wealth of 
 inner experiences, with his ardor for learn- 
 ing, his powers of assimilation and capac- 
 ity for enthusiasm — above all, with that 
 unconquerable strength, that versatility 
 and perseverance, which in life's conflict 
 never allowed him to succumb, stumble 
 though he might. His interest in history 
 and politics was then first really awak- 
 ened ; it was then that the gaps in his 
 literary education were filled up, that he 
 made the acquaintance of writers not only 
 
The Toet and the cMan. 41 
 
 of his own country, but of some of the 
 great spirits of the ancient world and of 
 foreign countries, notably of Italy, though 
 in great part only at second-hand, through 
 translations and adaptations. It was then 
 that Shakespeare became conscious of 
 his true vocation, and was introduced to 
 that institution whose future was to be 
 inseparably bound up with his own. 
 Shakespeare did, no doubt, as tradition 
 teaches us, begin at the very bottom of 
 the ladder, and only gradually raised him- 
 self, as actor and dramatist, to a higher 
 position. As early as 1592 he figures as 
 the factotum of the company to which he 
 belonged. 
 
 Of the many follies of which the 
 Baconians are guilty the greatest is that 
 they find it incongruous in a man of 
 Shakespeare's position — an actor and 
 dramatic manager — to have written works 
 of such depth and grandeur. As if we 
 could conceive of the greatest dramatist 
 of all times without the most intimate 
 
42 The 'Poet and the [Man. 
 
 knowledge of the stage, such as can only 
 be acquired by years of experience. And 
 how inseparably united with the stage 
 does Shakespeare show himself to be! 
 how he loves to look at life through the 
 scenes of the play, and, again, to see a 
 play in the shifting scenes of life ! How 
 well he knows the capabilities of the actor 
 and the requirements of the spectator! 
 Why do we not find any thankless roles 
 in Shakespeare? Why do even his 
 luxuriant diction and the intricate course 
 of profound thought produce dramatic 
 effect ? Because he knows the stage ; 
 because, while writing his scenes, he not 
 only beholds his personages living and 
 breathing before him, hears their voices, 
 sees their changing expressions, but also 
 because these figures often appear before 
 his mental vision with the familiar linea- 
 ments of particular actors. 
 
 That which stamps the works of 
 Shakespeare as unique, that combination 
 of deep and imperishable matter with the 
 
The Toet and the [Man. 43 
 
 most intense immediate effect, finds an 
 explanation in the very fact that he be- 
 longed to the stage heart and soul, that 
 be began his life's calling by connecting 
 himself with the theater, while his 
 thoughts and reflections soared far be- 
 yond the narrow horizon of the flimsy 
 boards. And here, again, we find char- 
 acteristic features in his biography which 
 offer us a glimpse into his inner life. We 
 see the poet rising between the year 1592 
 and the year 1599 to the pinnacle of his 
 art, and, at the same time, conquering for 
 himself an assured and generally acknowl- 
 edged position in the world of art and of 
 society. Then in the first decade of the 
 seventeenth century he produced his 
 most profound, his grandest works. But 
 before he had reached this highest point 
 we see him taking the first steps toward 
 securing a peaceful home for his future 
 years in his native town. Shakespeare 
 had never while in London lost sight of 
 his home ; as soon as he was able he had 
 
44 The Toet and the [Man, 
 
 his people share in the dawn of his good 
 fortunes ; doubtless, too, he paid them 
 frequent visits of longer or shorter dura- 
 tion. But already in the year 1597 he 
 began to buy land in Stratford, to pre- 
 pare the plan which he never afterward 
 abandoned. And about the year 1609, — 
 it may be somewhat sooner or later, — the 
 long-cherished idea was at length realized. 
 The poet left the stage and the capital 
 and returned to his quiet home, to wood 
 and meadow, to wife and child and 
 grandchild, to pass his remaining days in 
 noble leisure and the enjoyment of tran- 
 quil contemplation. Thus was the close 
 of his life joined to its beginning, the 
 circuit made beautifully complete. 
 
 The difference between the life of 
 Shakespeare and that of his dramatic 
 contemporaries is as great as that be- 
 tween their works. 
 
 He was the only one among them who 
 did not receive an academic education, 
 who was reared in modest circumstances. 
 
The Toet and the OAan. 45 
 
 in intimate intercourse with nature, being 
 indebted more to life than to school for 
 his education. At an earlier age than 
 any of the others Shakespeare had, ap- 
 parently, shaped his future in a way that 
 warranted no hopes of greatness. But 
 that which would have dragged another 
 to his ruin acted upon him only as a spur 
 to turn a new leaf in life with undi- 
 minished courage. Shakespeare entered 
 into closer relations with the life of the 
 theater in London than any of his rivals. 
 But, far from ruining himself body and 
 soul in this dissolute whirl, as did so many 
 others, he grew to be a man, an artist 
 and poet, spiritually and materially self- 
 sufficient and independent. Prosperous, 
 honored, famous, he then abandoned the 
 stage and the capital, to end his life as a 
 country gentleman in his native home. 
 
SECOND LECTURE 
 
 THE CHRONOLOGY 
 OF SHAKESPEARE'S WORKS 
 
THE CHRONOLOGY 
 OF SHAKESPEARE'S WORKS. 
 
 The very natural and justifiable desire 
 to learn something of the real qualities 
 and habits of a poet, to observe him in 
 n^glig^, as it were, after having become 
 acquainted with the ideal side of his 
 nature — this desire can, in the case of 
 Shakespeare, as we have already intimated 
 in our previous lecture, be but very im- 
 perfectly satisfied. Of the outward life of 
 Shakespeare we know very little ; but we 
 know so much the more of his inner life. 
 Though the sources of what is generally 
 termed the biography of a poet flow but 
 in a very scanty stream, we find in his 
 works ample pages of his spiritual life 
 unrolled before us. We see in them not 
 only how the poet cultivated and per- 
 fected himself in his art, not only how his 
 
50 Chronology of Shakespeare' s Works, 
 
 view of man and the world grew more and 
 more profound : we see in them what 
 problems occupied him at different 
 periods, what ideas filled his mind, by 
 what moods he was swayed ; and we are 
 enabled to infer, to a certain degree, the 
 experiences which preceded and gave 
 direction to his successive creations. 
 
 Here, of course, one enters upon a field 
 in which it is difficult to avoid a certain 
 exaggeration. One generally sways too 
 much to one side or the other of the 
 golden mean. A most remarkable con- 
 ception of what was termed Shakespeare's 
 objectivity was formerly very widespread 
 in Germany, and is perhaps not yet quite 
 extinct. This objectivity was said to con- 
 sist in this : that the poet in his creations 
 always pictured certain definite personali- 
 ties — Ophelia, Brutus, Othello, Falstaff — 
 never his own struggles and strivings. 
 Some, indeed, went so far as to think that 
 even Shakespeare's sonnets threw no cer- 
 tain light upon his experiences. This 
 
Chronology of Shakespeare' s IVorks. 51 
 
 opinion rests upon an obscured perception 
 of the process of poetic creation. Does 
 not the poet himself enter into the work, 
 as he lives and has his being, Avith all the 
 feelings that agitate or oppress his heart? 
 And the greater the poet the more ear- 
 nestly he regards his work, the more 
 clearly does he reveal himself in his pro- 
 ductions; the more perfectly, therefore, 
 will his individuality be stamped upon 
 them. Where, indeed, shall the poet seek 
 the stuff wherewith to furnish forth his 
 characters if not in his own breast? Can 
 it, then, be a matter of indifference what 
 feelings agitate him at any given time? 
 Is it possible to suppose, for instance, that 
 Falstaff, as he appears in the first part of 
 "Henry IV.," and Thersites, in "Troilus 
 and Cressida," were conceived at the same 
 time, born under the same auspices? 
 
 Let us not be deceived by words : the 
 most objective poet is at the same time 
 the most subjective. For his objective- 
 ness consists only in his own inner wealth 
 
52 Chronology of Shakespeare' s JVorks. 
 
 and in his complete abandonment to every 
 effort he undertakes. This sacred earnest- 
 ness is the pre-eminent characteristic of 
 Shakespeare's art. He enters so deeply 
 into the problem before him, and into the 
 objects which are to make that problem 
 clear to himself, that he becomes merged 
 in his own characters, and it is only then 
 that his characters grow tangible and 
 instinct with life. Shakespeare puts his 
 own feelings into harmony with the dispo- 
 sitions, the circumstances, the moods, of 
 his creations, so that he is able to speak 
 in their name — in their name, and with 
 their feelings, but in his own speech, from 
 his own experience, and from the inmost 
 depths of his own heart. 
 
 From this standpoint we can more 
 readily avoid the other extreme to which 
 one may be led in interpreting the poet's 
 works. There have been commentators 
 who have proceeded upon the theory that 
 Shakespeare must himself have lived 
 through all the things which he depicts 
 
Chronology of Shakespeare' s JVorks. 53 
 
 with such matchless reality, or that, at 
 least, they came under his immediate 
 observation. We need not dwell upon 
 this very singular view. To us it seems 
 self-evident that the real relationship exist- 
 ing between Shakespeare's own experi- 
 ences and his creations lies much less in 
 the events or subjects of either than in 
 the kind of emotions aroused by them. 
 And it is further evident that we can 
 gather far more valuable revelations 
 regarding the spiritual life of the poet by 
 a connected study of all his works than 
 by a microscopic analysis of a single one 
 of his dramas. The esential thing, there- 
 fore, is not to restrict ourselves and con- 
 sider each one of Shakespeare's produc- 
 tions as an isolated organism, but to 
 regard them all as members of a greater 
 organism. Only in this way shall we be 
 able to force even a particular creation to 
 disclose its individuality. 
 
 Such an inquiry naturally presupposes 
 a general knowledge of the order in 
 
54 Chronology of Shakespeare' s Works. 
 
 which Shakespeare produced his works. 
 Without chronology history is a chaos; 
 and how could Shakespeare's writings 
 appear to us as a great organism did we 
 not know what place to assign to each? 
 
 But neither the poet himself nor any 
 of his earlier editors has given us any 
 intimation of the chronological sequence 
 of his works. The determination of this 
 sequence has long been and still remains 
 a task for research. The learned English- 
 man Malone achieved some very meri- 
 torious work in this field about a hun- 
 dred years ago. Since then the Germans 
 have, on the whole, devoted more atten- 
 tion to the chronological inquiry than the 
 English; and it is only in the last fifteen 
 years, since the founding of the New 
 English Shakespeare Society, that this 
 study has, so to say, become the fashion 
 in England. 
 
 Not upon all points do the scholars 
 agree. In what matter, indeed, have 
 they ever done so? Upon fundamental 
 
Chronology of Shakespeare' s IVorks. 55 
 
 points, however, competent scholars are 
 in essential accord ; and this should in- 
 spire in the layman a certain confidence 
 in the method by which the results have 
 been obtained. Allow me to initiate you 
 to some extent into this method by 
 briefly answering the following question : 
 What materials have we at our command 
 to enable us to determine the chronology 
 of Shakespeare's plays? It is usual to 
 begin with the distinction between inter- 
 nal and external evidence. I prefer to 
 draw the distinction between relative and 
 absolute chronology. 
 
 If I can prove that a certain work must 
 be assigned to a certain year, or at least 
 to a certain definite period of time, as, 
 for instance, "Julius Caesar" to the year 
 1601, then I have determined an absolute 
 time. I have determined a relative time 
 when I have established that a certain 
 work must have been produced sooner or 
 later than a certain other, or at about the 
 same time. For example, "The Winter's 
 
56 Chronology of Shakespeare' s Works. 
 
 Tale" considerably later than "A Mid- 
 summer Night's Dream"; "Hamlet" not 
 long before "Othello." To ascertain the 
 relative time is the more important for 
 us — it is what we are really seeking ; but 
 it is clear that the absolute time fully 
 ascertained would include the relative. 
 If we knew the exact year when each one 
 of Shakespeare's works was produced, 
 there would naturally be nothing left to 
 investigate regarding their sequence. 
 
 But, in reality, we are compelled to 
 deal in a combination of both elements — 
 absolute and relative time — in order to 
 obtain a comprehensive view. Let me 
 give an example : Suppose we know 
 the years which limit Shakespeare's pro- 
 ductive period — let us assume from 1586 
 to 1613. If I know also that "Julius 
 Caesar" was written in 1601, I know, at 
 the same time, that this piece belongs 
 to the middle of Shakespeare's creative 
 period, when his art reached its climax. 
 On the other hand, if the whole struc- 
 
Chronology of Shakespeare' s Works. 57 
 
 ture of "The Comedy of Errors" shows 
 me that this work must belong among 
 the first creations of Shakespeare's muse, 
 I am justified in concluding that it was 
 written somewhere between 1580 and 
 1590. 
 
 It can be readily perceived that the 
 means employed to determine absolute 
 time are, as a rule, of a different kind 
 from those which we use to ascertain 
 relative time. 
 
 Here we have, first in order, the so- 
 called external evidence. 
 
 A number of Shakespeare's works 
 appeared separately during the poet's 
 lifetime. We possess most of these old 
 editions, which are variously dated. 
 
 More exact data are afforded us by the 
 register of the "Company of Stationers," 
 in which books that were to be printed had 
 to be recorded, to protect the property 
 rights of the publisher. Thus we have, in 
 many cases at least, a very definite time 
 limit before which a given work must have 
 
58 Chronology of Shakespeare' s IVorks. 
 
 been written. But sometimes circum- 
 stances are added which make it prob- 
 able that the publication of a particular 
 work occurred not long after its com- 
 pletion. 
 
 We gather similar information from the 
 eulogistic or other reference to Shakes- 
 peare's writings by contemporary authors. 
 Sometimes we have a distinct mention of 
 the poet or his work, at other times an 
 allusion more or less clear. 
 
 Particularly welcome are occasional 
 dated accounts or even bare mentions of 
 the representation of Shakespeare's plays, 
 and the commonplace books and diaries 
 of amateurs of the theater or of a theater 
 director like Henslowe. 
 
 Precisely of the same service to us as 
 an allusion to any of Shakespeare's works 
 by his contemporaries is the use they 
 made of them, in so far as it can be proved 
 beyond doubt. It is, of course, here pre- 
 sumed that the contemporaneous mention 
 or imitation is itself correctly dated. 
 
Chronology of Shakespeare' s Works. 59 
 
 In the opposite direction, but producing 
 the same effect as the instances just cited, 
 is the perception that Shakespeare on his 
 side has made use of the work of a con- 
 temporary, praises it, ridicules it, makes 
 allusions to it. In certain cases this may- 
 occur in such a way as to create a positive 
 impression that the contemporary work 
 in question must have just become known 
 when it gave rise to Shakespeare's words. 
 This applies above all in the case of polit- 
 ical or other events of the time, to which 
 the poet now and then makes reference ; 
 as a rule, such an allusion was only com- 
 prehensible and effective while the im- 
 pression created by the event in question 
 was still a general and powerful one. 
 
 As to determining the relative chro- 
 nology, that is, the sequence in which 
 Shakespeare's works were produced, we 
 have criteria at our command which, on 
 the whole, are of a more subtle nature, 
 somewhat less tangible, than those just 
 indicated, but the investigation of which 
 
6o Chronology of Shakespeare' s Works. 
 
 will, for that very reason, be of greater 
 interest to you. 
 
 Let us begin with a remark which 
 sounds somewhat paradoxical : the poet 
 makes use not only of others, but more 
 particularly of himself, his own writings, 
 and he likewise makes allusions in his 
 later works to his earlier ones. This is 
 not always done so palpabl}^- as to be at 
 once apparent to a dull perception. When 
 we see "The Merry Wives," the Falstaff 
 who appears in that piece necessarily 
 reminds us of the character of the same 
 name in "Henry IV." and no one can 
 doubt that the comedy of "The Merry 
 Wives" presupposes "Henry IV.," and 
 that, therefore, it must have been pro- 
 duced later, but yet not much later. The 
 matter is, however, not always so clear ; in- 
 deed, the poet himself may be unconscious 
 that one of his former creations is exer- 
 cising a subtle influence upon his mind. 
 The following appears to me to exem- 
 plify what I have in my mind : 
 
Chronology of Shakespeare' s Works. 6i 
 
 In one of those fateful monologues 
 spoken by Macbeth before his awful 
 deed — the one which begins with the 
 words : 
 
 " If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well 
 It were done quickly " — 
 
 he weighs the consequences of his intend- 
 ed crime: 
 
 " But in these cases 
 We still have judgment here ; that we but teach 
 Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return 
 To plague the inventor : this even-handed justice 
 Commends the ingredients of our poison'd chalice 
 To our own lips." 
 
 "He who for others lays a snare is 
 caught in it himself," is a familiar proverb. 
 But why was it just the poisoned chalice 
 that occurred to Shakespeare? The case, 
 surely, is not a usual one that a person 
 with the intention of killing another 
 should poison a cup and then in some way 
 be put in a position to drink it himself. 
 It is hardly to be doubted that a scene of 
 one of his own dramas passed before his 
 mind. You remember the highly symbol- 
 
62 Chronology of Shakespeare' s Works. 
 
 ical concluding scene in "Hamlet" where 
 the crime contrived by the king in con- 
 junction with Laertes recoils upon its 
 originators, and where Hamlet finally 
 forces the king to drink the cup which the 
 latter had prepared for him, and of which 
 the queen through some mistake had 
 already drunk. "Here, thou incestuous, 
 murderous, damned Dane, drink off this 
 potion"; whereupon the dying Laertes 
 says: "He is justly served; it is a poison 
 tempered by himself." It is not probable 
 that in making Macbeth speak those lines 
 it was Shakespeare's object to allude to 
 the catastrophe in "Hamlet." Involun- 
 tarily, however, justice presented itself to 
 him in the image of that scene. 
 
 This example may serve for many. 
 An event, a scene, becomes condensed, 
 in course of time, into a single idea, an 
 image. And it is this very factor, allow 
 me to remark in passing, upon which the 
 intellectual progress of mankind essen- 
 tially depends. The thought toward 
 
Chronology of Shakespeare' s Works. 63 
 
 which one generation has painfully 
 struggled becomes the assured posses- 
 sion of the next — expressed without 
 effort in a single word, and used as a 
 basis for the discovery of new truths. 
 
 Another but kindred case is where the 
 poet having made use of a certain motive 
 in a former creation, recurs to it in a 
 later work, conceiving it from a new 
 point of view, presenting it under new 
 circumstances. Call to mind, for in- 
 stance, jealousy as portrayed in "Othello," 
 "The Winter's Tale," and 'Xymbeline,'* 
 regicide pictured in "Julius Caesar," 
 "Hamlet," "Macbeth." In very many 
 cases it will be possible to determine 
 where a given motive was first employed, 
 where it is repeated. 
 
 What has been said in regard to 
 motives is applicable in its widest sense 
 to situations, passions, problems, types 
 of character. The infinite wealth and 
 variety of Shakespeare's characters may 
 be divided into groups, within which a 
 
64 Chronology of Shakespeare's Works. 
 
 certain kinship is perceptible. We can 
 find forerunners to nearly all the impor- 
 tant figures of Shakespeare's maturest 
 dramas in some sketch or preparatory 
 study in a former work. 
 
 Everything, finally, points to the con- 
 clusion that we are enabled to show in 
 Shakespeare's works more clearly than in 
 the productions of many other great 
 poets a twofold development. It is the 
 growth, the perfection, of two things, 
 which Goethe expresses when he says: 
 
 " Der Gehalt in deinem Busen 
 Und die Form in deinem Geist" — 
 
 "the substance in thy heart, the form in 
 thy mind." 
 
 If we look upon Shakespeare's crea- 
 tions as a whole, we see clearly how, on 
 the one hand, his experience, his knowl- 
 edge of men and the world, grow always 
 richer, his intuition keener, and, on the 
 other hand, how his style is constantly 
 being perfected. Let us linger a moment 
 over this second point. In studying a 
 
Chronology of Shakespeare' s Works. 65 
 
 poet or an artist one must, of course, 
 give some attention to his style; indeed 
 without this it is difficult and often 
 impossible to comprehend the true sig- 
 nificance of his works. 
 
 When I speak of Shakespeare's style, 
 I mean, in the broadest possible sense of 
 the words, the form in which he ex- 
 presses what he has to say, — the com- 
 position of his works, the structure of his 
 scenes, no less than his expressions con- 
 sidered individually, his language sensu- 
 ous and figurative, his verse with its 
 melodious flow and its dramatic motion. 
 If we attempted to characterize Shakes- 
 peare's style in a word, we should have 
 to say: Abundance, directness, reality. 
 Shakespeare's spiritual vision is at once 
 most comprehensive and exceedingly 
 keen. He distinguishes the details of 
 a group, sees things never flat, but always 
 plastic; he penetrates into their in- 
 most depths. He has the most wonder- 
 ful faculty of seeing at once the essential 
 
66 Chronology of Shakespeare' s Works. 
 
 thing and its attendant circumstances, 
 and of reproducing the whole in his 
 mind. And what he sees he will and 
 must express, saying too much rather 
 than too little. To this must be added 
 that, although Shakespeare lays out the 
 great groundwork of his creations with a 
 firm hand, and after mature deliberation, 
 he relies for the details absolutely upon 
 the inspiration of the moment. He may 
 not at once find the right word ; often 
 must he wrestle with the genius of lan- 
 guage, wrestle as Jacob did with the 
 Lord, saying: *T will not let thee go 
 except thou bless me." Now what is 
 peculiar to Shakespeare is that if he has 
 used a word or a figure which does not 
 satisfy him, and then employs another, 
 he does not efface the first, but leaves it 
 .undisturbed in its place, and allows him- 
 self to drift on upon the swelling current 
 of his thoughts. We know from the col- 
 lected edition of his plays, and learn also 
 from Ben Jonson, that it was a fact 
 
Chronology of Shakespeare' s Works. 67 
 
 known to the actors who played with 
 Shakespeare that he never used to cross 
 out anything in his manuscripts; and we 
 can readily believe this: his whole diction 
 bears this stamp of natural growth. If 
 he wants to say: Your father is no more, 
 we have in "Macbeth": 
 
 " The spring, the head, the fountain of your blood 
 Is stopp'd ; the very source of it is stopped." 
 
 We see Shakespeare's style constantly 
 developing in all the directions we have 
 indicated; yet this development is not a 
 constant and unqualified advance toward 
 a greater perfection in art. On the con- 
 trary, the case may be stated somewhat 
 as follows: 
 
 From the style of his youthful produc- 
 tions, which are often more remarkable 
 for their richness and beauty than for 
 their spiritual significance, he rises to the 
 crowning point of his power, where form 
 and matter are most perfectly balanced. 
 The spiritual substance then grows ever 
 richer and mightier, and finally threatens 
 
68 Chronology of Shakespeare' s Works. 
 
 the sacrifice of form. More and more 
 do the thoughts and strivings of the poet 
 concenter themselves upon the very heart 
 of things, going far beyond the horizon of 
 the stage. His thoughts flow in an ever- 
 swifter stream, his expressions growing 
 always more pithy, always harder to in- 
 terpret ; his verse loses the even flow, the 
 harmonious sound, which formerly charac- 
 terized it, but it becomes always more 
 expressive, more stirring, more dramatic. 
 While before the rhythm appeared upon 
 the surface, it now lies deep below. The 
 verses in themselves are often broken and 
 disjointed. But through them all we 
 seem to hear the magnificent rhythm, the 
 sublime music, of Shakespeare's thought, 
 almost the very pulse-beats of his heart. 
 
 A familiar example will illustrate my 
 remarks concerning his increasing terse- 
 ness of expression. I select two repre- 
 sentations of the same subject, between 
 which there is not even a long interval — 
 probably only about six years ; they are 
 
Chronology of Shakespeare' s Works. 69 
 
 not, therefore, characteristic either of his 
 youthful or of his latest work. In the 
 second part of "Henry IV." we hear the 
 sick and weary king thus bewail his ina- 
 bility to sleep : 
 
 " How many thousand of my poorest subjects 
 Are at this hour asleep ! O sleep, O gentle sleep, 
 Nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted thee, 
 That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down, 
 And steep my senses in forgetfulness ? 
 Why rather, sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs. 
 Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee. 
 And hush'd with buzzing night-flies to thy 
 
 slumber. 
 Than in the perfumed chambers of the great, 
 Under the canopies of costly state. 
 And lull'd with sound of sweetest melody ? 
 O thou dull god, why liest thou with the vile 
 In loathsome beds, and leav'st the kingly couch 
 A watch-case or a common 'larum-bell ? 
 Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast 
 Seal up the ship-boy's eyes, and rock his brains 
 In cradle of the rude imperious surge 
 And in the visitation of the winds, 
 Who take the ruffian billows by the top, 
 Curling their monstrous heads, and hanging them 
 With deafening clamor in the slippery clouds, 
 That, with the hurly, death itself awakes ? 
 Canst thou, O partial sleep, give thy repose 
 To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude, 
 
70 Chronology of Shakespeare' s Works. 
 
 And in the calmest and most stillest night, 
 With all appliances and means to boot, 
 Deny it to a king ? Then, happy low, lie down ! 
 Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown." 
 
 And in "Macbeth" we hear the regicide 
 immediately after the deed : 
 
 " Methought I heard a voice cry ' Sleep no more ! 
 Macbeth does murder sleep,' the innocent sleep. 
 Sleep that knits up the ravel'd sleave of care, 
 The death of each day's life, sore labor's bath, 
 Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course, 
 Chief nourisher in life's feast." 
 
 No fewer images in the second extract 
 than the first ; but there what picturesque 
 delineation! and here what compactness 
 and cogency! What experience of life 
 lies in this expression alone: "Sleep that 
 knits up the ravel'd sleave of care"! 
 
 We shall now endeavor to sketch in 
 outline the principal epochs in Shakes- 
 peare's development, especially as regards 
 the spiritual life of the poet. 
 
 The first epoch extends from the year 
 1586 or 1587 to the year 1593, or 
 somewhat beyond that time. Its close 
 
Chronology of Shakespeare's Works, 71 
 
 about coincides with the death of Mar- 
 lowe, Shakespeare's great predecessor in 
 tragedy. In the domain of tragedy — in 
 all his grave dramas^ — Shakespeare's pro- 
 ductions, particularly at the beginning, 
 are strongly under Marlowe's influence; 
 while in the domain of comedy, where he 
 likewise had his predecessors, he appears 
 to us thoroughly original from the first. 
 It is at this period that Shakespeare 
 gradually grows conscious of his own 
 powers, while testing them in the various 
 branches of his art. At the head of his 
 series of works stands a tragedy, "Titus 
 Andronicus," a drama bloody and full of 
 horrors, which one would gladly miss from 
 his Shakespeare, and whose authorship 
 English criticism would, therefore, gladly 
 deny the poet. But, nevertheless, it 
 proves to be his creation. When the 
 poet wrote "Titus Andronicus," he was 
 evidently but dimly conscious of his own 
 strength, and allowed himself to be influ- 
 enced in his production more by outward 
 
72 Chronology of Shakespeare' s Works. 
 
 impulses, by the tendency to imitation, 
 than by the powers and the needs of his 
 own inner nature. It was, in its way, a 
 premature effort. The young poet had, 
 indeed, a correct foreshadowing of the 
 development and expression of tragic 
 passion ; but tragedy seemed still to him 
 a thing entirely strange and unfamiliar; 
 he thought it demanded altogether pe- 
 culiar characters, abnormal conditions, 
 things of horror. His strong young 
 nature had, it is true, tasted much of the 
 earnestness and bitterness of life, but ex- 
 perience had not yet forced its tragic im- 
 press upon this burgher's son of Stratford. 
 He who wants to know what Shakes- 
 peare really was in the beginning of his 
 dramatic career must study him in his 
 earliest comedies. In them we have 
 indeed the spontaneous utterances of his 
 genius and his moods. In them is re- 
 vealed a fresh and vigorously hopeful 
 view of the world, a clear and already 
 delicate conception of life ; but the merry 
 
Chronology of Shakespeare' s Works. 73 
 
 scene is never without its serious back- 
 ground, such as experience, reflection, or 
 presentiment trace upon the poet's soul. 
 At first sad recollections seem to cast 
 their shadows like spring clouds about 
 him. They are dissipated, and all is again 
 bright. Yet new shadows appear upon 
 the horizon. New experiences, new pas- 
 sions, await the poet, and in battling with 
 them he grows conscious of his strength, 
 and from ever-deeper sources of his spirit 
 does he draw the treasures with which he 
 invests the children of his fancy. 
 
 In the "Comedy of Errors" the inter- 
 est centers more in the complication of 
 the action than in the characters, just as 
 the irresistibly comic elements in the 
 play are evolved almost entirely from the 
 situations. The poet's sympathies seem 
 most warmly enlisted in the doubtful 
 fortunes of the family torn asunder by 
 such strange circumstances, and finally 
 reunited. In the presentation of the 
 brother who seeks his brother and 
 
74 Chronology of Shakespeare' s Works. 
 
 mother, and who feels the danger of 
 being himself lost in the strange, great 
 city, lonely and forsaken in the wide 
 world, we seem to hear an echo of the 
 emotions Shakespeare himself must have 
 experienced after his arrival in London : 
 a drop in the ocean, in danger of losing 
 himself in its depths. Admirably has the 
 poet succeeded in depicting the some- 
 what faded, suspicious wife, who tor- 
 ments her husband with her jealousy. 
 He ventures forward but timidly in his 
 descriptions of love, yet the few love 
 passages are delicately interpreted. 
 
 In "Love's Labor's Lost" the plot is 
 reduced to a minimum ; he unrolls before 
 us a picture of character and manners in 
 which the culture and the false culture of 
 the time are represented with a great 
 deal of gayety, certain excrescences of 
 humanistic learning and of puritanic over- 
 zeal are effectually ridiculed, and in which 
 the inalienable rights of nature are de- 
 fended against arbitrary precepts. The 
 
Chronology of Shakespeare' s Works. 75 
 
 situations are here produced essentially 
 by the characters themselves, and it is 
 from them in great part that the comic 
 effects spring. The poet's wit and his 
 humor, too, begin here powerfully to un- 
 fold. A youthful, joyous love of life 
 forms the keynote of the comedy, a 
 decided pleasure and interest in the 
 things of this world, a naive, kindly 
 enjoyment of sport and jest; but all 
 these upborne by lofty sentiments and a 
 striving for the beautiful. We here find 
 the first of Shakespeare's ideal female 
 characters, and as the whole play teaches 
 the omnipotence of love, so does the 
 poet himself betray the secret of his 
 youthfully vigorous, aspiring art when he 
 puts this into the mouth of his favorite 
 character: 
 
 " And when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods 
 Makes heaven drowsy with the harmony. 
 Never durst poet touch a pen to write 
 Until his ink were temper'd with Love's sighs ; 
 O, then his lines would ravish savage ears, 
 And plant in tyrants mild humility." 
 
76 Chronology of Shakespeare' s Works. 
 
 A more serious note is struck in "The 
 Two Gentlemen of Verona," the first 
 one of the really romantic comedies. 
 Shakespeare here ventures to treat a 
 deeper moral problem : faith and incon- 
 stancy in love and friendship ; and he 
 succeeds in producing the vacillating 
 troteus, the noble, manly, self-sacrificing 
 Valentine, the queenly Sylvia, and, above 
 all, Julia, the touching image of womanly 
 grace and devotion. Yet there is an 
 impression of immaturity left upon the 
 mind, arising from the disproportion be- 
 tween the plot and its denouement. The 
 betrayer of friend and lover does not 
 expiate his guilt ; the faithful friend 
 develops an unreasonable generosity, the 
 consequences of which are frustrated only 
 by a lucky accident. We feel in Shakes- 
 peare's "Sonnets" how this may be ex- 
 plained. He could himself be as unselfish, 
 as passionately devoted in friendship, as 
 Valentine. The last scene in "The Two 
 Gentlemen of Verona" gives us a glimpse 
 
Chronology of Shakespeare' s Works. 77 
 
 into Shakespeare's state of feelings at 
 a time when his character was not yet 
 perfectly formed, while his great heart 
 overflowed with feelings of romantic, 
 self-sacrificing devotion. 
 
 And then a notable theme offered itself 
 to him — one which had already attracted 
 many poets, and which came to his hands 
 in quite a perfected shape. In the pa- 
 thetic tale of Romeo and Juliet Shakes- 
 peare found tragedy without having to 
 seek it; and he wrote his tragedy of 
 youth, the lofty song of love, a consum- 
 mate work of art. The transporting fire 
 of youthful passion which it breathes, the 
 glow of the springtide of life which irradi- 
 ates the whole, lend it an undying charm. 
 "I know but one tragedy which Love 
 itself has helped to create," says our own 
 Lessing, "and that is 'Romeo and Juliet.' " 
 Love coming into a world filled with 
 hate, inspiring and perfecting two noble 
 young beings, but at the same time 
 leading them to a tragic doom — such 
 
78 Chronology of Shakespeare' s Works. 
 
 is the old yet ever new burden of this 
 tragedy. 
 
 Soon after, a marriage celebration in- 
 cited the poet to present in the most dar- 
 ing symbols the mysterious power of love, 
 in his play of "A Midsummer Night's 
 Dream." Here he gave his fancy the 
 reins, and showed, as he created Titania 
 and Oberon, and then, again, a Bottom, 
 that nothing in the broad domain of poesy 
 was to him impossible or unattainable. 
 The moral maturity of the poet appears, 
 however, most strikingly in the figure 
 of Theseus, with his manly character, 
 his delicacy of feehng, and his broad 
 humanity. 
 
 In the meantime the dramatist had 
 already turned his attention to the 
 national domain of art — the dramas of 
 the English kings. 
 
 In "Henry VI." he had presented the 
 bloody Wars of the Roses — presented 
 them in a patriotic spirit, with a strong 
 intuitive grasp of history, with an art 
 
Chronology of Shakespeare' s Works. 79 
 
 which, though still imperfect, rises, as the 
 work progresses, to a higher level. And 
 now, at the end of this first epoch, he 
 created his "Richard III.," that demoni- 
 acal figure of a king who forms the close 
 of the English Middle Ages: half hero, 
 half demon, heir of the horrible civil wars 
 between the houses of York and Lancas- 
 ter, armed, like an embodied Fate, with 
 the flaming sword of Justice, to avenge 
 long heaped-up wrongs, and to make the 
 innocent suffer for the sins of their fathers. 
 Even this monstrous being has the poet 
 made us understand, brought him nearer 
 to us on the common ground of humanity. 
 On the confines between his first and 
 second periods Shakespeare rested from 
 his dramatic labors in order to devote 
 himself to epic-lyric poetry of the style 
 of the court. The poems "Venus and 
 Adonis" and " Lucrece," the first pub- 
 lished in 1593, the second in 1594, belong 
 to this category — both studies in a field 
 in which he does not feel at home, but in 
 
8o Chronology of Shakespeare' s Works. 
 
 which he displays, nevertheless, a great 
 deal of skill: "Venus and Adonis" breath- 
 ing a glowing sensuality, *' Lucrece " re- 
 vealing the greatest moral and spiritual 
 depth. 
 
 The second period of Shakespeare's 
 activity extends to the beginning of the 
 seventeenth century, and one of the char- 
 acteristics which at once distinguishes it 
 from the first is concentration. The poet 
 here limits his dramatic productions to 
 two kinds, comedy and historical plays, 
 and he carries both of these forms of art 
 to the highest point of their development. 
 
 The two works which stand at the head 
 of this period — "The Taming of the 
 Shrew" and "King John" — owe their 
 elaboration only to Shakespeare, and not 
 their rougher outlines — a proof of his 
 growing appreciation of art, as well as of 
 his increased estimation in the world of 
 letters. Both works show in a striking 
 manner how the poet, now in the pleni- 
 tude of his youthful strength and manhood, 
 
Chronology of Shakespeare' s Works. 8i 
 
 delighted in moral worth in uncouth, 
 nay, in coarse, forms. We meet charac- 
 ters of a more refined, more ideal type in 
 "The Merchant of Venice," whose central 
 figure is the high-spirited Portia, with the 
 sinister but imposing figure of Shylock as 
 a contrast. But the thought which runs 
 through the first two works — that it is 
 not outward show and appearance, but 
 genuine worth, that tells — is here again 
 dwelt upon with great emphasis, and 
 strikingly symbolized. 
 
 And that this thought continues to 
 occupy the poet's mind is evidenced by 
 his next great work, that stupendous 
 series of historical dramas which begins 
 with "Richard II." and ends with "Henry 
 V." — a work unmatched in its kind in 
 any other literature — with its prodigious 
 wealth of creations (I shall remind you 
 only of the figure of Sir John Falstaff) 
 and its wonderful political wisdom. We 
 see the poet concerned not only with the 
 past, but with the future of his country, 
 
82 Chronology of Shakespeare's Works. 
 
 and while he describes the characters and 
 fortunes of three of the EngHsh kings 
 with historical impartiality and the keen- 
 sighted vision of a prophet, he pictures 
 the youngest of them, Henry of Mon- 
 mouth (afterward Henry V.), as the ideal 
 of sturdy manhood on the throne, a type 
 of the simple, thoroughly human, God- 
 fearing, heroic German king of the 
 people. "Man should act, ear7t his 
 reward." Shakespeare felt this need, 
 too, especially now when he was rapidly 
 approaching the meridian of life. In 
 what does a man's worth consist? What 
 are the practical ideals toward which he 
 should strive? These are the questions 
 Shakespeare put, and answered in his 
 own way. It is nothing that his hero is 
 a king and he himself a poet and actor. 
 The attribute of real manhood they both 
 possess in common. And what it is that 
 constitutes true greatness, true honor, 
 the poet shows us in his favorite char- 
 acter among kings. 
 
Chronology of Shakespeare' s JVorks. Ss 
 
 From the serious, exhausting labor of 
 his historcial dramas Shakespeare, as if 
 in need of recreation, now turned again 
 to comedy. First he gave the great 
 series a mirthful afterpiece in "The 
 Merry Wives of Windsor," and then he 
 wrote those three immortal plays in 
 which his humor and his powers of comic 
 creation are at their highest, those deli- 
 cate flowers of his fancy, "Much Ado 
 about Nothing," "As You Like It," and 
 "Twelfth Night; or, What You Will." 
 They transport us to an Arcadian world, 
 amid charmingly romantic surroundings, 
 and among a people who live, — it being 
 virtually their only concern, — a life of 
 the emotions. 
 
 These three comedies bring us chrono- 
 logically to the threshold of a new cen- 
 tury. With the year 1601 begins a new 
 period in Shakespeare's development, a 
 glaring contrast to the one preceding it. 
 It is as if one stepped from a radiant, 
 sunlit landscape into a bleak mountain 
 
84 Chronology of Shakespeare' s Works. 
 
 region with its topmost summits shrouded 
 in mist. How can we account for this 
 complete change in Shakespeare's mood? 
 The history of the time and the occur- 
 rence of certain events give us the ex- 
 planation. At the beginning of the year 
 1601 London was agitated by the con- 
 spiracy and rebellion of the Earl of 
 Essex. What relations existed between 
 Shakespeare and the brilliant and once so 
 powerful favorite of the queen, is, indeed, 
 not quite clearly established. Every- 
 thing points to the fact, however, that 
 Essex took a very deep interest in the 
 poet's works, and that the poet followed 
 the eventful career of the earl with warm 
 and eager sympathy. It is, of course, 
 well known that Essex and many of his 
 followers expiated their desperate deed 
 upon the scaffold, and that the Earl 
 of Southampton, Shakespeare's friend, 
 although his life was spared, remained in 
 prison until the end of Elizabeth's reign. 
 The grave feelings aroused in Shakes- 
 
Chronology of Shakespeare' s Works. 85 
 
 peare by these events caused him to turn 
 his attention once more to affairs of 
 state. The ancient world with its sub- 
 lime figures, made familiar to him 
 through Plutarch (in Sir Thomas North's 
 translation), now recurred vividly to his 
 fancy, and as before he alluded in **The 
 Merchant of Venice" to the "ancient 
 Roman honor," and to "Cato's daughter, 
 Brutus' Portia," so now he brings this 
 Roman Portia herself upon the scene, 
 and in her husband pictures one of the 
 noblest representatives of Roman honor, 
 drawn by a tragic destiny into a fatal 
 conspiracy. The tragedy of "Julius 
 Caesar" forms the opening of the third 
 period and of the series of Roman plays, 
 which the editors of the Folio class among 
 the tragedies, rightly distinguishing them 
 from the historical dramas of the English 
 kings. From a more critical standpoint 
 they occupy an intermediate position be- 
 tween the two classes of plays, particu- 
 larly "Julius Caesar," which, therefore, 
 
86 Chronology of Shakespeare' s IVorks. 
 
 appropriately marks the close of the pre- 
 ceding and the opening of the third 
 period. 
 
 Immediately after "Julius Caesar" fol- 
 lowed a tragedy which also in its way 
 marks the beginning of a new epoch, 
 although it is closely connected in many 
 respects with the dramas just spoken of. 
 I mean "Hamlet." "Hamlet" marks the 
 moment when Shakespeare had reached 
 the fullest maturity and mastery in his 
 own most special domain, the domain of 
 tragedy. It stands deservedly at the 
 head of the dramas known under the name 
 of "the tragedies," those grandest crea- 
 tions of the tragic Muse in all literature. 
 Each one has its own peculiar excellences, 
 some points in which it surpasses the 
 others. None of them can rival **Ham- 
 let" in its truth to nature, and its wealth 
 of psychological delineation. "Othello," 
 which follows directly upon "Hamlet" 
 (1604), surpasses all the others in the 
 strength of its dramatic effects, culminat- 
 
Chronology of Shakespeare' s Works. 87 
 
 ing in the third act, which is indeed, dra- 
 matically, the most thrilling act in all 
 his writings. The succeeding tragedy, 
 ''Macbeth," stands alone by its grand 
 simplicity of conception and the orig- 
 inality of its execution, giving us in a few 
 bold strokes a consummate picture of the 
 strange workings of a human soul. But 
 it is in "King Lear" that the poet attains 
 the summit of his tragic powers. We 
 shall, later on, give more detailed atten- 
 tion to this play. 
 
 Higher than in "Lear" Shakespeare 
 could not rise. Yet the plays which he 
 next wrote show in no way a diminution 
 of his poetic powers. There is nothing 
 more amazing than Shakespeare's produc- 
 tiveness at this period, the first eight years 
 of the seventeenth century. Works of 
 richest content and most consummate art 
 follow each other, stroke upon stroke. 
 But before we continue to consider them 
 in their regular order we must retrace our 
 steps, and at least mention two plays 
 
88 Chronology of Shakespeare' s Works. 
 
 which we have overlooked, two comedies, 
 fraught with profound meaning — one, 
 written not long before, the other, not 
 long after, "Hamlet": "All's Well That 
 Ends Well" and "Measure for Measure," 
 in many respects closely related to each 
 other. A woman is the central figure in 
 both dramas ; in "All's Well That Ends 
 Well" the strong, high-minded Helena, 
 who loves the unworthy Bertram, and, 
 undaunted by his coldness and treacherous 
 disloyalty, does not rest until she has con- 
 quered his affections, when, from the van- 
 tage ground of love, she may make him 
 happy and a worthier man. In "Measure 
 for Measure," which, by its somber tone 
 no less than by the weight of the problem 
 it treats, oversteps the bounds of comedy 
 and suggests tragedy, we have Isabella, a 
 grave and impressive Portia, who preaches 
 the duty of mercy as well as justice, and 
 contrasts human and divine justice with 
 sublime irony ; who, to save her brother's 
 life would gladly sacrifice her own, but 
 
Chronology of Shakespeare' s Works. 89 
 
 who values virtue more than life itself, 
 more than the life of her brother. 
 
 In the tragedy which succeeds upon 
 "Lear," in "Coriolanus," we meet with a 
 new type of woman, though akin to the 
 character of Isabella: the type of the 
 Roman matron of the good old time, ele- 
 vated by the practice of womanly and 
 patriotic duties, rivaling, nay, surpassing, 
 men in their sense of honor, as exemplified 
 in the venerable figure, unbent by the 
 weight of years, of Volumnia, the mother 
 of Coriolanus. In Coriolanus himself the 
 poet represents the lofty aristocrat, the 
 proudly modest hero, glowing with fiery 
 patriotism, who loves glory above all else ; 
 who, infuriated by the coarse vulgarity 
 and the ingratitude of the populace, which 
 rewards his services by banishing him 
 from Rome, strikes at the very root of his 
 life's ideal, and joins the enemies of his 
 country. It is only his mother who suc- 
 ceeds in winning him back to the path of 
 duty, where, as he has foreseen, he meets 
 
90 Chronology of Shakespeare' s IVorks. 
 
 an inglorious death. We have in this 
 tragedy the same leading ideas as in 
 "Macbeth" and "Lear" — ambition and 
 the results of ingratitude, here blended 
 together, and transferred to the field of 
 history and politics. *'Coriolanus" is like- 
 wise remarkable for its depth of political 
 insight, its subtlety of psychological intui- 
 tion, and the living power of its dramatic 
 construction. 
 
 In "Antony and Cleopatra," the third 
 in the series of Roman dramas, we see, 
 for the first time since "Romeo and Ju- 
 liet," a woman share on an equal foot- 
 ing with the principal character in the 
 action of a Shakesperean tragedy. But 
 what a contrast between Juliet and Cleo- 
 patra: one, a young girl, scarce more 
 than a child, whom the might of a pure 
 and unselfish passion transforms into a 
 woman, whose whole being is absorbed 
 by this love which consummates her char- 
 acter and her life; the other, a courtesan 
 of genius, if I may say so, with experi- 
 
Chronology of Shakespeare' s Works. 91 
 
 ence of life and the world, devoted to 
 pleasure, practiced in all the arts of 
 seduction, endowed by nature with an 
 alluring witchery, to whom the fire of 
 her love for Antony alone lends a 
 glimmer of womanly dignity. Artistic- 
 ally considered, Cleopatra is, perhaps, the 
 masterpiece among Shakespeare's female 
 characters; given the problem, Shakes- 
 peare has solved it as no one else could 
 have done. But what conflicts must his 
 soul have endured, what bitter experi- 
 ences must he have passed through, to 
 have set himself such a problem, to have 
 created a woman so widely different from 
 all those he had pictured before — a 
 woman so devoid of the ideal womanly 
 graces, yet so irresistible, for whose sake 
 Antony sacrifices the dominion of the 
 world. 
 
 The poet's mood grows ever more 
 gloomy and bitter. Upon "Antony and 
 Cleopatra" follows "Troilus and Cressida," 
 neither tragedy nor comedy, but a sting- 
 
92 Chronology of Shakespeare' s Works. 
 
 ing satire. Here, too, the poet represents 
 a courtesan, but one devoid of Cleo- 
 patra's demonic fascination — an ordi- 
 nary coquette, a sensual, wanton, faith- 
 less woman, like so many of her kind. 
 With merciless hand Shakespeare rends 
 the rosy veil which Chaucer's optimism had 
 cast over this subject ; and as Cressida is 
 an ordinary courtesan, so is Trolius a mel- 
 ancholy, sensual, sentimental dreamer; 
 Pandarus, simply the common pander. 
 
 And just as ruthlessly does he demol- 
 ish the tradition nourished in the Middle 
 Ages regarding the legend of Troy and 
 its heroes, and dispel the glamour of chiv- 
 alry with which the mediaeval poets had 
 invested them. Even the simple great- 
 ness of Homer, as revealed to him 
 through Chapman's translation, cannot 
 convert him from his pessimism; on 
 the contrary, the character of Thersites, 
 which he takes from the Iliad, plays in 
 his drama a very different part from that 
 in the epic. 
 
Chronology of Shakespeare's Works. 93 
 
 In spite of the admirable characteriza- 
 tion in "Troilus and Cressida," and in 
 spite of the host of imperishable sayings 
 marked by a wealth of practical wisdom, 
 there is no other drama of Shakespeare 
 which appeals to us so little, which 
 creates so unpleasing an impression. 
 
 But this bitterness of spirit had not yet 
 reached its climax: it only culminates in 
 the Titanic outbursts of fury of Timon, 
 who, from being an unreasoning philan- 
 thropist, becomes a raging misanthrope — 
 becomes transformed into a Lear, and, if I 
 may so express it, into a systematic Lear, 
 to whose eyes all nature seems to partake 
 of the degenerateness of the human race, 
 and who includes in his curse, upon which 
 he rings so many changes with a grim 
 delight, all created things. 
 
 In the course of the year 1608 a reac- 
 tion takes place in the poet's mind. 
 With diffidence we question his biog- 
 raphy to see whether it can throw any 
 light on the matter. The answer we 
 
94 Chronology of Shakespeare' s Works. 
 
 receive is of great significance. In 
 December of the preceding year Shakes- 
 peare's youngest brother, the actor, died. 
 The death of this poor fellow, who had 
 chosen a vocation whose reproach Shakes- 
 peare had grown to feel more and more 
 intensely, and which he contemplated 
 soon leaving himself, may have been one 
 of the elements which roused him to the 
 mood in which "Timon" was written. 
 But already in the preceding June a joy- 
 ous event had taken place in the poet's 
 family: his oldest daughter, Susanna, 
 then twenty-four years of age, had been 
 married to a physician of Stratford, who 
 was held in high esteem and had a large 
 practice. The first and only fruit of this 
 union, Elizabeth Hall, Shakespeare's 
 granddaughter, was born in February, 
 1608. We can imagine how this event 
 helped to mark an era in the poet's inner 
 life. There is nothing so well calculated 
 to vanquish pessimism, to revive hope in 
 the future and pleasure in life, as the 
 
Chronology of Shakespeare' s Works. 95 
 
 actual experience of seeing our own life 
 renewed and rejuvenated in a new genera- 
 tion. Even the death of Shakespeare's 
 mother, which occurred in September of 
 the same year, painfully as it must have 
 affected the poet, must under the circum- 
 stances have been easier to bear; it may 
 have rendered him tender and brooding, 
 but not harsh. 
 
 The dramatic production of this epoch 
 is "Pericles," which, like "Timon," is only 
 partially the work of our poet; but how 
 different from "Timon" ! Joyless, gloomy, 
 at its inception, all here takes a favorable 
 turn. Marina, born upon the sea, richly 
 endowed by the gods, parted from her 
 parents, after passing through varied for- 
 tunes, and escaping victorious from try- 
 ing temptations, is by the grace of the 
 gods and her own maidenly dignity re- 
 united with her people. Thus does she 
 restore to the world herself and her father, 
 who, so long and so sorely tried, had been 
 plunged in deepest melancholy. It is 
 
96 Chronology of Shakespeare' s Works. 
 
 precisely this story of Marina that forms 
 Shakespeare's part of the play. 
 
 Soon after writing "Pericles" Shakes- 
 peare left London and returned to Strat- 
 ford. Perhaps he had the intention to 
 bid farewell to poetry as well. If such 
 was the case, he was soon to learn that an 
 old love cannot be discarded. As affairs 
 of business, — and perhaps not these 
 alone, — still often led him to make short 
 visits to London, so did the dramatic 
 Muse more than once appear to him in 
 his rural seclusion. 
 
 The three dramas which specially mark 
 this Stratford period — "The Tempest," 
 "Cymbeline," and "The Winter's Tale" — 
 bear distinct traces of the time and place of 
 their origin. They breathe the fresh scent 
 of wood and meadow, and a reflection of 
 the cheerful calm of rural life lies spread 
 over them. Of the requirements of the 
 stage these plays take less heed. Whether 
 they should be classed rather under 
 comedy or tragedy, it is difficult to say; 
 
Chronology of Shakespeare' s Works. 97 
 
 they are romantic dramas in which the 
 action, earnest, almost tragic, yet culmi- 
 nates happily. Passion does not here 
 reach the height it attained in the great 
 tragedies; but in psychological truth, in 
 poetical creative power, in profundity of 
 thought, these plays are in no wise in- 
 ferior. A development which is charac- 
 teristic of the poet's whole career here 
 reaches its climax: year by year we see 
 the substance, as opposed to the form, 
 assuming mightier proportions, decidedly 
 subordinating the latter. Here it has 
 come to a point where the substance 
 almost threatens the destruction of form. 
 Ideas crowd upon the poet so thick and 
 fast that he no longer pauses to express 
 each individual one clearly. Shakes- 
 peare's diction, which in the first period 
 bears a strong lyric stamp, in the great 
 historical plays a rhetorical coloring, and 
 which in the great tragedies grows more 
 and more terse and dramatic, assumes 
 here a form so condensed, frequently frag- 
 
98 Chronology of Shakespeare's Works. 
 
 mentary, with images and varied forms 
 of expression crowding upon each other, 
 that the meaning often becomes obscure 
 and enigmatical. And in a like manner 
 does his verse in these dramas of the last 
 period assume the greatest degree of free- 
 dom ; it has become an instrument which 
 he treats with a royal arbitrariness, which 
 he often shatters, but which still resounds 
 with the irresistible torrent of his 
 thoughts. 
 
 The spirit which animates these dramas 
 is that wisdom which finds a joy in living, 
 and accepts all things with cheerful resig- 
 nation, with a quiet faith in the higher 
 powers which guide the world, and an all- 
 embracing and all-forgiving love. Joy, 
 reconciliation, is the final accord in them 
 all. 
 
 That which was done by anticipation, 
 as one might say, in the three brilliant 
 comedies of the second period appears 
 here as the perfectly ripened fruit of a life 
 rich in experience, like gold that emerges 
 
Chronology of Shakespeare^ s JVorks. 99 
 
 tried and proved from the fire after a long 
 process of refinement. Here, too, are we 
 transported to Arcadia, but never more 
 to leave it. Thus we see some of the 
 motives of the comedies of the last period 
 reappear, but in variations of a richer, 
 graver character. We are reminded of 
 "As You Like It" in all three of the 
 dramas, but notably in "The Tempest," 
 where, in the exiled Prospero, living on 
 the lonely island, we have the good duke 
 of the forest of Arden in an idealized 
 form. The Hero of "Much Ado about 
 Nothing" rises in "A Winter's Tale" to 
 the lofty figure of Hermione, and Imogen, 
 in "Cymbeline," reminds us in many ways 
 of Viola in "Twelfth Night." All these 
 characters bear marks of having passed 
 the tests of the tragic period; and we 
 also have a return of personages and 
 ideas that figured in the great tragedies. 
 Prospero's mildness and wisdom shine 
 out in bright contrast to Lear and Timon. 
 Othello's jealousy reappears in Post- 
 
loo Chronology of Shakespeare' s Works. 
 
 humus and Leontes. And, to make the 
 circle quite complete, the poet recurs to 
 his first comedies. Everywhere the 
 miraculous interposition of the higher 
 powers, whether they reveal themselves 
 through the voice of an oracle, or, as to 
 the sleeping Posthumus, in "Cymbeline," 
 appear in a visible shape. The grave 
 passages in the "Comedy of Errors," that 
 has so miraculously happy an ending, are 
 symbolic of all these dramas. And "A 
 Midsummer Night's Dream," too, is re- 
 vived in "The Tempest," where the poet's 
 fancy soars with still mightier flights into 
 the regions of the spirit world, and pro- 
 duces, besides, in his Caliban, the most 
 daring creation of his genius, a being hov- 
 ering on the borderland between man and 
 beast. 
 
 After "The Tempest," "Cymbeline," 
 and "The Winter's Tale " Shakespeare 
 seized his pen once more, to write in 
 conjunction with the poet Fletcher the 
 play of "Henry VIII.," and there to 
 
Chronology of Shakespeare' s Works. loi 
 
 delineate, above all, the majestic figure of 
 Katharine. 
 
 These were the last utterances of his 
 poetic genius. In this gentle, lofty 
 spirit, this peaceful, tranquil mood, he 
 bade farewell to art. And thus must he 
 a few years later have closed his life. 
 
THIRD LECTURE 
 
 SHAKESPEARE AS DRAMATIST 
 
SHAKESPEARE AS DRAMATIST. 
 
 Much as judgments may differ regard- 
 ing Shakespeare, all critic^ may be said to 
 agree in acknowledging him to be pre- 
 eminent among dramatists, either of all 
 times, or at least of modern ages as con- 
 trasted with classic antiquity. And to 
 dispute this judgment would least of all 
 befit Germans, whose own classic writers, 
 and especially those distinguished for 
 dramatic power, have evidently learned 
 so much from Shakespeare; to whose 
 stage, since it cannot subsist upon the 
 novelties of the day alone, Shakespeare 
 is more indispensable than any other 
 poet. 
 
 If we want to see clearly at a glance 
 
 what Shakespeare signifies to us as a 
 
 dramatist, let us imagine the repertory of 
 
 our stage without " Hamlet," " Macbeth," 
 
 105 
 
io6 Shakespeare as 'Dramatist. 
 
 "Othello," "A Midsummer Night's 
 Dream/' " The Winter's Tale," " Julius 
 Caesar," " Coriolanus," '' The Taming of 
 the Shrew," '' Twelfth Night," and what- 
 ever other Shakespearean plays are pre- 
 sented to us ; imagine us without Schiller, 
 or at least with an entirely different, 
 much tamer Schiller in his place; imagine 
 that we had only half a Lessing, half a 
 Grillparzer, no Kleist, and no Hebbel; 
 then estimate what this would mean in 
 the development of our drama, of the 
 histrionic art, and, furthermore, in the 
 realm of poetry, of aesthetics, nay, in our 
 whole culture. 
 
 No modern dramatist can even 
 approach comparison with Shakespeare. 
 Just figure to yourself the prodigious 
 fertility of this poet, the multitude of his 
 dramatic productions ; and in this multi- 
 tude we find no' zeros, nor any mere 
 numbers,. pieces which the memory is in 
 danger of confounding one with another, 
 as may easily happen with the purely 
 
Shakespeare as 'Dramatist. 107 
 
 superficial Spanish writers, who were even 
 more proHfic than Shakespeare. For 
 each one of his dramas has a distinct 
 form and physiognomy which stamp 
 themselves indelibly upon the mind ; 
 each one represents a small world within 
 itself — and in each of these worlds what 
 teeming abundance of life! what rich 
 variety of characters ! Nothing enables 
 us to estimate so clearly the creative 
 power of a dramatist as the effort to bring 
 before our minds bodily, as it were, the 
 characters who owe him their being. No 
 poet can enable us to do this as readily as 
 Shakespeare ; no poet can summon up 
 such a host of spirits, with forms so pal- 
 pable, coloring so vivid. 
 
 It holds good of all works produced 
 from the depths of the human soul that 
 we think the work does not give the full 
 measure of the artist. The greatness of 
 the work leads us to imagine thie great- 
 ness of the artist, and we conceive him as 
 rising above it. High as his achievement 
 
io8 Shakespeare as 'Dramatist. 
 
 may have been, his design, or at least his 
 aim, was still higher. Much of what the 
 artist has seen and felt is lost on its ardu- 
 ous passage through the material at his 
 command — becomes, as it were, entan- 
 gled in it. This is true of the poet, 
 too, who for his representations has to 
 make use of the most volatile, the most 
 spiritual, of all substances — language. 
 This is true, too, of Shakespeare. We 
 conceive the poet Shakespeare greater 
 than what he has created. But he was 
 fortunate beyond many others in that he 
 could express so great a part of what he 
 felt in a form so entirely conformable to 
 his nature — the dramatic form. None of 
 our great poets was so wholly possessed 
 by the genius of the drama as Shakes- 
 peare. It is impossible to conceive of 
 him as other than a dramatist. 
 
 The loss would be irreparable were we 
 to be deprived of the sonnets, those little 
 masterpieces of art, like chiseled marble, 
 so clear cut, so delicately wrought. 
 
Shakespeare as 'Dramatist. 109 
 
 breathing such glowing life. But even 
 the sonnets recall the dramatic poet, not 
 only because taken in connection they 
 are related to a real and most moving 
 drama, but because at many points the 
 poem in its stormy course and its daring 
 use of metaphors betrays real dramatic 
 intensity. 
 
 But the dramatist appears much /more 
 clearly in his epic attempts, in '' Venus 
 and Adonis " and in " Lucrece," not to 
 the advantage of the effect produced by 
 these poems. The very thing that con- 
 stitutes the greatest strength of the poet 
 here appears as a weakness. The abun- 
 dance, the clearness, the intensity, of his 
 conceptions prove an injury to him here, 
 because the means to which he is accus- 
 tomed are not here at his disposal. The 
 stage he knows intimately ; he comes into 
 daily and closest contact with his audi- 
 ence ; he knows what will produce an 
 effect upon the stage, and what kind of an 
 effect ; all its artifices are at his command. 
 
no Shakespeare as T)ramatist. 
 
 If he wishes to represent a character, a 
 situation, he has the greatest variety of 
 means at his disposal, besides the speech, 
 the play of features, and the gestures of 
 the actors, to whom he need but give 
 hints. Here, furthermore, the meaning 
 of everything is brought out by its ac- 
 companiments — the cause by the effect it 
 produces, the character of a man by the 
 impression he makes upon others, the 
 speech by its answer. Shakespeare has 
 all the resources of theatrical illusion in 
 his mind when writing his dramas, and he 
 has complete command of them. In epic 
 poetry he must renounce the methods so 
 familiar to him. He knows this ; he 
 knows that it is his words alone which 
 must produce the effect upon the senses ; 
 he thinks, therefore, that he must give 
 more than mere allusions if he wants to 
 make his readers see things as he sees 
 them — and he always sees them vividly, 
 bodily, before him. He endeavors to ex- 
 press everything, and the consequence is 
 
Shakespeare as Tframatist. in 
 
 that we have an overwhelming abundance 
 of details which do not combine to give 
 us a comprehensive view of the whole ; 
 it is poetry which, in spite of the wonder- 
 ful beauty of its lavishly scattered details, 
 as a whole leaves us unmoved. 
 
 Nothing of epic delight in these poems ; 
 everywhere the most intense tension, 
 keeping the reader in almost breathless 
 suspense. Full of passionate sympathy 
 for his subject, the poet endeavors to 
 exploit all the elements of it, to illuminate 
 them on every side ; everywhere we wish 
 the action to proceed, and we feel it re- 
 tarded. And there is, besides, the true 
 dramatic striving to attribute a symbolic 
 significance to every part of the action, to 
 spiritualize every material detail. We 
 find this illustrated in the description of 
 Tarquin's passage in the night from his 
 own chamber to that of the heroine : 
 how he forces open the locks of the doors 
 through which he must pass, and how at 
 this every lock cries out indignantly; how 
 
112 Shakespeare as 'Dramatist. 
 
 the door creaks on its hinges to betray 
 him ; how the weasels prowling about at 
 night frighten him with their screeching ; 
 how the wind, penetrating through the 
 cracks and crannies, wages war with the 
 torch he holds in his hand, blowing the 
 smoke into his face, and extinguishing 
 the light ; but how he rekindles it with 
 the breath hot from his burning heart. 
 All this is conceived in a dramatic, by no 
 means in an epic, sense. 
 
 But here arises the question : How can 
 it be accounted for that Shakespeare, so 
 normal, healthy, and simple a nature, is 
 gifted so exclusively for the drama, not 
 at all for epic poetry, while it is pre- 
 cisely epic poetry that flourishes in 
 ages characterized by a simple, healthy 
 spirit? Let us pause a moment at this 
 question. 
 
 Real epic poetry proceeds from a 
 joyous love of life, and its effect is to 
 enhance that joy. A thorough optimism 
 characterizes the true epic bard, and he 
 
Shakespeare as ^Dramatist. 113 
 
 presupposes his readers to be endowed 
 with the same quality. He calculates 
 mainly upon their impulse to admire 
 great heroic figures, mighty deeds, strange 
 destinies ; even where deep sympathy is 
 aroused in the fate of the hero it is 
 grounded upon admiration : an Achilles 
 who dies an early death, a Siegfried who is 
 treacherously murdered. And how char- 
 acteristic of the ancient Homeridae that 
 they do not represent at all the death of 
 Achilles, but simply let us feel that it is 
 an event certain before long to take place. 
 To the epic poet almost all that he 
 describes is beautiful and worthy ; that 
 which is ugly or contemptible is only in- 
 troduced for the sake of contrast ; and 
 he knows how to idealize even what is 
 ugly and contemptible. He invests the 
 objects and concerns of everyday life 
 with a golden glow which makes them 
 appear attractive and important ; every 
 warrior becomes to him upon occasion 
 a hero ; the hero rises to a demigod, 
 
114 Shakespeare as 'Dramatist 
 
 nay, at times dares to engage in combat 
 with the gods themselves. 
 
 The epic poet is instinct with exuber- 
 ant life, and he enhances this feeling, and 
 the feeling of joy in existence, in his 
 hearers. Naturally he arouses a longing, 
 too, for a beautiful, vanished age ; but it 
 is longing of a kind which childhood, liv- 
 ing in a fairy world, experiences — a kind 
 that finds its gratification in the poem 
 itself. This is true of even so tragic an 
 epic as Milton's " Paradise Lost " ; here, 
 of course, the representation turns upon 
 the irrevocable loss, but very essentially, 
 too, upon a vivid presentment of what 
 was lost, upon a description of paradise. 
 
 How totally different the drama ! The 
 dramatist, also, leads us into an ideal 
 world, but never to show it to us in its 
 unclouded purity, always picturing it in 
 a state of conflict and confusion. The 
 drama, too, places heroes before us, but 
 what renders these heroes dramatically 
 effective is not the qualities which make 
 
Shakespeare as T>ramattst. 115 
 
 them heroes, but those which make them 
 men. The dramatic hero is, above all 
 else, a man — that is to say, a combatant. 
 Conflict is the essential thing in the 
 drama — conflict in all its detail, in its 
 origin and its development ; it does not 
 depend for its effect upon the strength 
 and the courage of the victor; on the 
 contrary, those dramatic struggles are the 
 most impressive where the hero is finally 
 vanquished. In the drama we do not 
 want to have our admiration aroused, but 
 to be stirred by a living sympathy ; even 
 if it move us to tears of intensest pity, if 
 it convulse the very depths of our being, 
 we want to share, within ourselves, in the 
 hero's struggle, whether it have a happy 
 or an unhappy issue, whether it be fol- 
 lowed by the hero's ruin, or only by his 
 punishment or mortification. But to this 
 end we must become most intimately 
 acquainted with the cause and the cir- 
 cumstances of the conflict, as well as with 
 the character of the hero. We must see 
 
ii6 Shakespeare as 'Dramatist 
 
 the inevitableness of the struggle, how it 
 is evolved through the action and reac- 
 tion between the character, desires, aims, 
 of the hero, on the one hand, and his 
 environment on the other. We must 
 feel convinced that the hero in a given 
 situation could, to be true to his nature, 
 have acted only as he did, and not other- 
 wise. Only then shall we see ourselves 
 pictured in him, only then put ourselves 
 in his place, identify ourselves with him, 
 suffer with his sorrow and rejoice in his 
 joy ; only then, too, will the laughter 
 which he compels be the outburst of a 
 full heart, affording us genuine spiritual 
 relief. 
 
 The drama, then, as opposed to the 
 epic, is at once more spiritual and more 
 effective. It allows us to penetrate more 
 deeply into the inner being of the charac- 
 ters ; cause and effect are closely linked 
 together ; we are more powerfully moved 
 by it to laughter or to tears. These high- 
 est effects of the drama are only attain- 
 
Shakespeare as ^Dramatist. 117 
 
 able, however, if we actually witness 
 the action; and, on the other hand, if 
 a dramatic performance were presented 
 before us without producing any such 
 effects, it would soon grow wearisome 
 and annoying. 
 
 The more ambitious, the more powerful, 
 the artistic means employed to impress 
 the sense, the more powerful should the 
 effect prove. Only an action that really 
 stirs us, and keeps us in vivid suspense, 
 should be dramatically represented. To 
 create this effect there must be a conso- 
 nance between the matter and the form 
 and between both and the theatrical 
 presentation. 
 
 As the epic is the poetry of the youth 
 of mankind, so is the drama the poetry of 
 its manhood. It flourishes in epochs 
 which no longer cherish much faith in 
 the golden age, among men who see life 
 as it is, as a struggle, and who, at the 
 same time, seek strength and refreshment 
 for this struggle in the contemplation of 
 
ii8 Shakespeare as ^Dramatist. 
 
 ideal conflicts which bring before them 
 an image of their own inmost Hfe. 
 
 To return to Shakespeare. His early 
 youth passed like an idyl replete with 
 epic joyousness, but without rousing 
 within him the desire to enhance that 
 joyousness artistically. To this simple 
 man the calm life in communion with 
 the nature which surrounded him was 
 sufficient ; no models pointed the way 
 toward epic creation ; no vision of literary 
 renown passed in alluring colors before 
 his soul. Perfect content needs no artis- 
 tic utterance ; great inner wealth is self- 
 sufficient. Scarce had he entered upon 
 manhood when the idyl drew to its close ; 
 his heart was stirred by mighty passions, 
 a tremendous conflict rent his soul, the 
 battle of life had begun for him, and 
 uninterruptedly through the best years 
 of his life, nay, beyond that period, he 
 had to fight this battle in many forms, 
 and was thus ever reminded of the limita- 
 tions of human nature. 
 
Shakespeare as T)ramatist 119 
 
 So it fell out that Shakespeare came to 
 London, became acquainted with the 
 stage, where Marlowe's art, then enjoy- 
 ing its first triumphs, took our poet's 
 fancy captive. Need we wonder that 
 Shakespeare became a dramatist, that he 
 developed with a certain exclusiveness 
 into a dramatic artist, since his outward 
 as well as his inward life, since the whole 
 time to which he belonged, impelled him 
 to it? 
 
 But it is time that we should observe 
 more accurately how Shakespeare con- 
 ceived and carried out his art. 
 
 It is the task of every art, in every in- 
 dividual instance, to so fashion an object 
 out of a given substance that it will 
 represent an idea or arouse a certain state 
 of feeling. The material, be it stone or 
 bronze, color or tone or word, determines 
 the manner of representation in one art 
 as distinguished from another. The 
 drama, like all poesy, has language as its 
 material to work in, but it commands, 
 
I20 Shakespeare as 'Dramatist. 
 
 besides this, the histrionic art. The 
 entire personality of the actors, the whole 
 stage apparatus, form a part of the dra- 
 matic artist's material ; he is thus not the 
 sole, but only the foremost, the leading 
 artist. Language is the stuff in which he 
 works, but he must picture to himself as 
 he labors the effect which the theatrical 
 presentation of his work is to produce. 
 
 The subject of the dramatic poet's 
 work consists in the story or plot. It 
 may be handed down by history, or be 
 based upon some event of the day ; it 
 may belong to myth or legend, or be the 
 result of pure invention. In the last case 
 the poet may himself have invented the 
 plot, but this rarely happens ; as a rule, 
 the story is handed down to the poet, 
 and it is indeed the greatest poets who 
 trouble themselves least with the inven- 
 tion of a new plot. 
 
 The reason of this may be easily com- 
 prehended. The story is the substance 
 which the dramatist shapes in accordance 
 
Shakespeare as T>ramattst 121 
 
 with his own ideas. Shall he, then, first 
 create this substance, and afterward 
 elaborate it to suit his higher purposes? 
 If so, it were much simpler for him to be 
 governed by these purposes in inventing 
 his plot ; that is, to take an idea which 
 he wishes to convey as a starting point, 
 and seek a concrete embodiment of that 
 idea. Many dramas are formed on this 
 principle, — the modern French stage 
 might offer us numerous examples, — and 
 such dramas may be very effective. Yet, 
 as a rule, there is something artificial 
 about them; they are apt to create an 
 impression, fatal to the success of any 
 poetic production, of something forced. 
 It appears too evident that the whole 
 thing is conceived merely to illustrate an 
 idea, that the action takes place only to 
 prove some abstract proposition — and the 
 consequence is that it is our intelligence 
 alone that is concerned, our hearts remain 
 cold ; we may be pleasantly animated, per- 
 haps excited, but we are not thrilled by it. 
 
122 Shakespeare as 'Dramatist. 
 
 The normal course is that some occur- 
 rence — in life, in history, in conversation — 
 or the substance of some tale, has so 
 powerfully wrought upon the poet that 
 it has stirred the creative vein within 
 him. 
 
 And so it was in the case of Shakes- 
 peare. Rarely, perhaps never, did he 
 invent his plot for himself, different as 
 the extent and the significance of what 
 he owes to his sources may be. He 
 shows himself most independent, per- 
 haps, in " Love's Labor's Lost," where, 
 although we can prove certain motives 
 and situations to be reminiscences of 
 older works, we can nowhere find a 
 model for the groundwork of the action 
 as a whole. Yet who knows but that 
 life itself offered what literature has so 
 far not disclosed to us ? As a rule, we are 
 able to authenticate his sources, be they 
 histories, novels, or dramas ; and a com- 
 parative study teaches us with what free- 
 dom, with what entire absence of timidity. 
 
Shakespeare as Dramatist. 123 
 
 he drew from those sources. Shakespeare 
 has been called the great adapter, and 
 with justice ; but he who thinks that by 
 this designation he can rob him of even 
 the smallest leaf of his laurel crown 
 knows not what poetic originality signifies 
 in the history of literature. '' Je prends 
 mon bien oicjeletroiive,'' said Moliere, and 
 this is the maxim that all great conquerors 
 in the realm of the mind have followed. 
 The essential question is not how much 
 one has appropriated, but what he makes 
 of the thing he appropriates. And who, 
 indeed, could urge grounds of complaint 
 against Shakespeare's proceeding? The 
 authors whom he has made use of ? But 
 did they not themselves likewise, nay, still 
 more comprehensively, make use of their 
 predecessors? And then — do not most 
 of them owe their immortality solely to 
 Shakespeare ? Who would now read 
 their writings were it not on account 
 of Shakespeare ? 
 The dramatist, then, must shape the 
 
124 Shakespeare as T>ramatist. 
 
 story handed down to him into dramatic 
 action. In this he is governed by the 
 ideas which possess his soul, often with- 
 out his full consciousness, as a vague im- 
 pulse, a compelling force. How does 
 Shakespeare proceed to mold the story 
 into dramatic action ? Regarded on the 
 surface, we observe the greatest variety 
 in his methods, and in vain should one 
 labor to extract from a study of his 
 dramas any sort of prescription for the 
 benefit of incipient dramatists. Now we 
 see Shakespeare following his sources as 
 closely as possible, deviating only in de- 
 tails, apparently in matters of no signifi- 
 cance, and again we find him transform- 
 ing the story in its most essential points ; 
 now endeavoring to simplify the story, 
 and again complicating it by combining it 
 with other tales and other motives. Al- 
 ready in one of his first dramas — " A 
 Comedy of Errors " — the poet makes use 
 of no less than four different sources in 
 order to produce a most highly involved 
 
Shakespeare as dramatist. 125 
 
 and yet readily comprehended action ; in 
 his next comedy the action is as simple 
 as possible, one might almost say inade- 
 quate. — What is it, then, that is common 
 to methods differing so widely from each 
 other, that is characteristic of them all ? 
 One might say : Shakespeare always con- 
 denses the dramatic action, draws it to- 
 gether more closely, in order to bring out 
 forcibly the chief elements of the play, 
 and glides lightly over the mere connect- 
 ing links. True as this may be, yet in 
 view of the fact that he frequently ampli- 
 fies the main plot, interweaves it with 
 others, or introduces some episode into 
 the action, the truth of the remark would 
 hardly be evident. One might, on the 
 other hand, say : Shakespeare is always in- 
 tent upon joining the members of the 
 action in closer union by strengthening 
 the motive, laying greater stress upon the 
 relation between cause and effect, impress- 
 ing upon the whole development of the 
 piece the stamp of necessity. This 
 
126 Shakespeare as ^Dramatist 
 
 might also be very true ; yet here, too, 
 individual instances can be cited in ap- 
 parent contradiction to that proposition. 
 We find that Shakespeare's plots, par- 
 ticularly toward the close of his dramas, 
 are occasionally somewhat loosely con- 
 structed. Or how else should we term it 
 when, in '* As You Like It," the usurper 
 Frederick, who has driven his brother, 
 the good duke, from the throne, toward 
 the end of the drama, as we are told (for 
 we see none of it), surrounds the wood 
 where the latter abides with his army, in- 
 tending to seize and kill him ; there he 
 meets with an old monk or hermit, who 
 after some talk converts him, so that he 
 not only abandons his purpose, but retires 
 from the world and restores to his brother 
 the crown of which he had robbed him. 
 Here Shakespeare has, indeed, been easy- 
 going in the matter of motive. 
 
 Did we wish to characterize Shakes- 
 peare's method in a manner that should 
 fitly apply to all cases, we should have to 
 
Shakespeare as T)ramatist. 127 
 
 make prominent, above all, the unfailing- 
 ness with which he seizes the gist of his 
 plot, and develops the whole from that 
 point ; the mastery with which he so 
 organizes it that, starting with very sim- 
 ple premises, all seems to follow with the 
 inevitableness of nature's laws ; that we 
 are prepared in advance for every inci- 
 dent, and that it, in its turn, prepares us 
 for what is to follow, all the wheels work- 
 ing into each other ; every feature, even 
 the most insignificant, contributes to the 
 development of the whole. All this, 
 however, is only to say that Shakespeare 
 is unapproached in the dramatic concep- 
 tion of a given material, in the genius 
 with which he molds the story in accord- 
 ance with his ideas. 
 
 Everything, therefore, depends upon 
 the idea which fills the poet's mind or 
 which is aroused by the story. What, 
 then, are we to understand by this idea 
 in Shakespeare? German aesthetics la- 
 bored many years to prove that there is 
 
128 Shakespeare as IDramatist. 
 
 in every Shakespearean drama a so-called 
 fundamental idea concealed behind the 
 action. Particularly in those plays where 
 the action is a complicated one, not easily 
 to be grasped as a unity, did they seek 
 with all the more ardor for a unity of 
 idea. By this they understood, as a rule, 
 some general proposition, or, at any rate, 
 an abstract formula : for instance, the 
 relation of man to possession ; or the 
 necessity of guarding against extremes 
 in passion — for instance, in love ; or the 
 inquiry as to the just balance between 
 reflection and action. Wearied by the 
 multitude of artificial deductions by 
 means of which they arrived at such 
 often very trivial results, they have, in- 
 deed, more recently gone over to the 
 other extreme, '' throwing out the child 
 along with the bath." Many deny the 
 necessity of a unity of idea for the drama, 
 and the existence of such an idea has, in 
 " Twelfth Night," for example, been even 
 lately disputed. 
 
Shakespeare as T)ramatist. 129 
 
 It all depends upon what is understood 
 by the dramatic idea. 
 
 In reality, this means nothing but the 
 point of view from which the poet regards 
 the plot. This point of view must be 
 unitary, yet we often feel the resulting 
 unity of action without distinctly recog- 
 nizing it. We are not always able to 
 trace it back to a general proposition. 
 
 Yet it were perhaps better to abandon 
 the field of abstractions, and make our 
 meaning clearer by taking a concrete ex- 
 ample. For this purpose let us select a 
 drama which is familiar to you all — one, 
 besides, where, regarded purely on the 
 surface, the dramatist owes apparently 
 almost everything to the source from 
 which he drew: "Romeo and Juliet." 
 Gustav Freytag has, in his " Technology 
 of the Drama," compared in a very 
 attractive manner the action in this 
 tragedy with the story upon which it is 
 founded ; yet his presentation contains 
 some errors, which are to be mainly 
 
130 Shakespeare as Tframatist. 
 
 attributed to his lack of acquaintance, or 
 at leas' to his insufficient acquaintance, 
 with the actual source of the drama. The 
 distinction between the mere action of 
 the play and the story which the poet 
 made use of is not nearly as great as 
 Freytag points out ; the difference, how- 
 ever, between the tragedy and the tale 
 upon which it is based is none the less 
 great ; but this difference does not lie 
 alone, nor even chiefly, in the construc- 
 tion of the plot, but in the treatment of 
 the characters, in the dramatic structure, 
 in the aptness of the language for the 
 stage — in short, in the execution in its 
 most comprehensive sense. The play 
 will, on that account, serve best to teach 
 us how all these elements are related to 
 each other. 
 
 The sources of the Romeo and JuHet 
 legend are, as is well known, Italian. 
 Shakespeare, however, became acquainted 
 with it through two English adaptations, 
 both of which can be traced back through 
 
Shakespeare as 'Dramatist. 131 
 
 a French medium to the Italian original : 
 the prose presentation by William 
 Paynter, which appeared in the year 
 1567, and especially the versified tale of 
 Arthur Brooke, which was printed as early 
 as 1562. Paynter's prose is essentially a 
 close reproduction of his French model, 
 whereas we find a considerable develop- 
 ment in Brooke's poetical version, the 
 details variously modified and enriched. 
 Notwithstanding its somewhat Old 
 Frankish tone, this poem evinces genuine 
 feeling and pronounced talent ; that 
 Shakespeare made it the groundwork of 
 his drama is its highest acknowledgment. 
 Shakespeare found his material in 
 Brooke's poem, by no means in a raw 
 state, but in a very advanced stage — 
 not only the chief characters, but nearly 
 all the minor ones, all the more impor- 
 tant and a great number of subordinate 
 motives, the plan of entire scenes, the 
 ideas of numerous passages. What re- 
 mained, then, for the poet to do, and 
 
132 Shakespeare as IDramattst 
 
 what was his share of the work ? Well, 
 Shakespeare has created an irresistibly 
 fascinating, thrilling tragedy out of an 
 interesting, touching romance, a work of 
 art of imperishable worth out of a poem 
 of ephemeral value. This, I think, were 
 enough. But how has he done it ? 
 
 He who would give a categorical, objec- 
 tive account of the contents of Shakes- 
 peare's tragedy, on the one hand, and of 
 Brooke's versified romance, on the other, 
 would present two tales which deviate 
 very little from each other, nay, which 
 superficial readers would regard as exactly 
 identical. But what a difference in their 
 way of looking at the story, in the idea 
 which each conceives of his subject ! 
 Both Shakespeare and Brooke have 
 taken the trouble to intimate briefly in 
 a sonnet the substance of their poems. 
 It is instructive to compare the two son- 
 nets with each other. 
 
 This is how Brooke conceives his sub- 
 ject : Love has enkindled two hearts at 
 
Shakespeare as 'Dramatist. 133 
 
 first sight, and they accomplish their 
 desires. They are secretly united by a 
 monk, and enjoy for a time the highest 
 bliss. Inflamed to fury by Tybalt's wrath, 
 Romeo kills him and is obliged to flee 
 into banishment. Juliet is to be forced 
 into another marriage ; to escape this she 
 takes a draught which has the effect of 
 making her appear as if dead ; while in 
 this sleep she is buried alive. Her hus- 
 band receives information of her death, 
 and takes poison. And she, when she 
 awakes, kills herself with Romeo's dagger. 
 This is all ; not a word about the feud 
 between the two houses of Verona, the 
 Montagues and Capulets ; although the 
 poem makes mention of all these things, 
 they are evidently of no real interest to 
 the poet ; he perceives no deeper connec- 
 tion between the family feud and the fate 
 of his main characters. It is a touching 
 love story to him, and nothing more. 
 And Shakespeare? I will not translate 
 here the familiar sonnet which precedes 
 
134 Shakespeare as ^Dramatist. 
 
 the tragedy. But this is his idea of the 
 story: Two young beings endowed by 
 Nature with her most charming gifts, 
 created as if for each other, glow with the 
 purest, most ardent love. But fate has 
 placed them in a rude, hostile world ; 
 their passion blossoms and grows in the 
 midst of the most inflamed party and 
 family hatred. A peaceful development, 
 one that would lead to a happy consum- 
 mation, is here impossible. Completely 
 possessed by their love, they forget the 
 hate which divides their families, enjoy 
 for a few brief moments a happiness 
 which transports them to the summit of 
 human experience. Then they are torn 
 asunder by the hostile powers. A last 
 flickering of hope, a daring attempt to 
 lead the Fates in accordance with their 
 desires, and immediately thereafter the 
 fatal error which plunges them in the 
 cold embrace of death. But in death 
 they are lastingly united, their burning 
 longing is now stilled forever ; and as 
 
Shakespeare as dramatist. 135 
 
 they themselves have found peace, so 
 does their blood quench the flames of 
 the hatred which has disunited their 
 families. Over their lifeless bodies the 
 fathers join their hands in a brotherly 
 grasp, and their monument becomes a 
 symbol of the love that conquered hate. 
 
 This is the way that Shakespeare re- 
 garded his subject ; this, the idea he 
 sought to impress upon his material ; 
 from this conception sprang all the devia- 
 tions from his model, sprang the entire 
 structure of the tragedy. 
 
 Shakespeare's object is to arouse the 
 deepest sympathy, the most heartfelt pity, 
 for his lovers, to thrill us with their tragic 
 destiny, but at the same time to lift us 
 to a point whence we can feel a reconcil- 
 ing element even in this cruel fate. 
 
 All that can serve this double purpose 
 is brought into play, all opposing ele- 
 ments are discarded. 
 
 Let us consider a few details. In 
 Brooke's narrative the action extends 
 
136 Shakespeare as 'Dramatist 
 
 over a greater period of time, over several 
 months ; Shakespeare has concentrated it 
 into a few days. Why this change ? It 
 was not the arrangements or the usages 
 of his stage which determined him to it. 
 In these respects, on the contrary, Shakes- 
 peare exercised the utmost freedom. He 
 was guided solely by his sure dramatic 
 instinct. For how was that long space of 
 time in the narrative filled up ? Three 
 months does Brooke allow the secretly 
 united pair to enjoy their happiness in 
 peace. Then only does the event occur 
 which parts them. Who does not feel 
 that the delicate bloom which clings to 
 Shakespeare's characters would be at once 
 dispelled by the admixture of this 
 feature ? Who does not feel that the in- 
 finite pathos of their fate, as well, would 
 sink to an everyday level? Besides, if 
 they could be secretly happy for three 
 months, why does not their happiness 
 last longer? It is mere chance which 
 brings it to an end. How different with 
 
Shakespeare as dramatist. 137 
 
 Shakespeare ! These two glorious crea- 
 tures are made for each other ; but the 
 world, the Fates, do not will them to be 
 united. And not for a moment does the 
 poet leave us in uncertainty about their 
 tragic destiny. They may enjoy their 
 love but a few short hours, and that only 
 when their fate is already sealed, when 
 Tybalt is dead and Romeo banished. 
 Not for a moment the feeling of undis- 
 turbed possession, and upon this brief 
 joy follows at once the eternal parting. 
 This is poetry, this is tragedy. You see 
 how infinitely much depends upon this 
 one little deviation In regard to time. 
 And still more depends on it. This con- 
 centration of the action is in most perfect 
 keeping with the condensed structure of 
 this dramatic gem. 
 
 This quicker tempo at the same time 
 attunes us to the heated atmosphere 
 which breathes in this tragedy, to the 
 sudden kindling, the rapid development, 
 pf glowing love, the rude outburst of wild 
 
138 Shakespeare as T>ramatist. 
 
 hatred. The striking truth to nature of 
 the tone and coloring of " Romeo and 
 Juliet " has long been commented upon. 
 One is everywhere reminded that the 
 action takes place under an Italian sky. 
 Neither does the poet neglect to bring 
 clearly before us the season in which the 
 tragedy develops, although some critics 
 have been mistaken about it. It was in 
 the hot summer days : 
 
 " I pray thee, good Mercutio, let's retire; 
 The day is hot, the Capulets abroad, 
 And if we meet, we shall not scape a brawl ; 
 For now, these hot days, is the mad blood stir- 
 ring." 
 
 The dawn follows close upon the twi- 
 light. In the scenes between the two 
 lovers we seem to breathe the air of the 
 brief Italian night. 
 
 Over this scene Shakespeare has 
 spread all the witchery of his art, infused 
 it with all the ardor of his young and 
 loving heart. Only three times does the 
 poet represent Romeo and Juliet to- 
 
Shakespeare as T>ramattst. 139 
 
 gether, living, and in a fully developed 
 scene : first, the decisive meeting at the 
 ball ; then the balcony scene immediately 
 following it ; finally, the farewell of the 
 young pair after their first and last night 
 of love. Nothing more touching or 
 beautiful has ever been written. The 
 climax, however, is perhaps reached in 
 the balcony scene. The fact alone that 
 here lay the most dangerous rock in the 
 path makes it pre-eminent, for there is 
 nothing more difficult and dangerous for 
 the dramatist than the attempt to rival 
 the musician and the lyric poet, to which 
 such extremely simple situations invite 
 him. Other great poets, — and Shakes- 
 peare as well, on certain occasions, — have 
 recourse to this or that artifice : they 
 allow the dialogue to be interrupted once 
 or even oftener, — I may remind you of 
 the celebrated garden scene in Goethe's 
 " Faust," — they intimate more than they 
 represent, allow the largest and best 
 part to be divined, while some attractive. 
 
I40 Shakespeare as 'Dramatist. 
 
 childish byplay lends animation to the 
 scene. The lovers do not entertain each 
 other with speaking of their emotions; 
 they relate incidents of their past, talk of 
 their everyday life. There is nothing of 
 all this in ''Romeo and Juliet." With 
 a genuine scorn of death Shakespeare 
 launches the ship of his fancy, with all 
 sails set, upon the high sea of emotion, 
 regardless of the perils which threaten its 
 course, but which cannot harm it. At 
 such points we ought to compare Brooke's 
 poem with the drama. In the poem 
 Juliet sees Romeo first, then he her; 
 both are elated with joy, yet she the 
 most; then she thinks of the danger 
 hovering over him, and begins to speak 
 amid her tears. In Shakespeare Romeo 
 beholds Juliet appear at the window, and 
 listens, unseen by her, to her monologue. 
 When he has thus learned her tender 
 secret, he discovers himself to her. 
 
 Admirable, too, is the art with which 
 Shakespeare shows how the character of 
 
Shakespeare as dramatist. 141 
 
 his lovers is developed in and through 
 their love. Admirable, yet not astonish- 
 ing ! For the conception of his charac- 
 ters is with him indissolubly united with 
 his conception of the dramatic action. 
 Therein lies his greatness : that just as 
 he regards all things in their connection, 
 so does he create them in their connec- 
 tion. The psychological depth and truth 
 of his characters, the fullness of life they 
 breathe, the consistency of their develop- 
 ment, the necessity with which their 
 actions follow from their nature and posi- 
 tion, are universally marveled at ; but the 
 greatest wonder, after all, is how these 
 characters in their gradations, in the way 
 they complement, and, by their contrast, 
 stand out in bold relief against each other, 
 are so totally controlled by the idea of 
 the action. Let us observe Romeo and 
 Juliet — what they were before their love, 
 and what love makes of them. 
 
 The greatest transformation takes place 
 in Romeo. A youth with noble senti- 
 
142 Shakespeare as ^Dramatist. 
 
 ments, fine culture, keen powers of obser- 
 vation, and ready wit, he seems at the be- 
 ginning of the play to be pining away 
 from a superabundance of emotion and 
 fancy. The world that surrounds him is 
 too rough and too sober for him. He 
 isolates himself from it entirely, beholds 
 it only as through a veil, and adapts him- 
 self more and more to his inner world — 
 a world of dreams, of imaginary joys and 
 sorrows. The poet has retained from 
 Brooke's poem Romeo's sentimental, un- 
 requited love for Rosaline, without pre- 
 senting Rosaline herself. Her personality 
 is of no concern to us — it might be she 
 or another. Her image is only meant 
 to fill a void in Romeo's inner world ; 
 she is merely the object toward which 
 Romeo's deep longing first turns until 
 the proper object appears. From the 
 moment when he beholds Juliet a trans- 
 formation takes place within him. He is 
 still the youthful dreamer, the poet, that 
 he was, but he begins to act. The con- 
 
Shakespeare as 'Dramatist. 143 
 
 sciousness that his love is returned re- 
 stores him to himself and to the world. 
 His changed being at once strikes his 
 friend : " Why, is not this better than 
 groaning for love ? Now art thou sociable, 
 now art thou Romeo ; now art thou what 
 thou art by art as well as by nature.'* 
 When he is hurled from the heaven of 
 bliss into the wretchedness of banish- 
 ment, he loses all self-control, breaks out 
 into unmeasured lamentations, into im- 
 potent rage against fate. Hope once 
 more revives him. Then, when he finally 
 learns that all is at an end, his decision 
 is at once taken ; all gone is his youthful 
 loquacity ; happiness and misfortune have 
 completed his education : he has become 
 a man. 
 
 In Shakespeare, Juliet is a girl of four- 
 teen, two years younger than in his 
 model. She is for that reason so much 
 more touching a figure : a child who 
 through a great, pure love becomes a 
 woman. She, too, stands isolated in the 
 
144 Shakespeare as Uramatist. 
 
 world, yet not, like Romeo, because she 
 is by nature a dreamer. She is at first 
 quite unconscious of her position ; it is 
 only her experiences after she has met 
 Romeo that reveal to her how foreign to 
 her her parents and surroundings really 
 are. Her nature is simpler, but stronger, 
 her love much more unselfish, than Ro- 
 meo's. Completely possessed by one 
 idea, she at once comes to a decision, is in- 
 tent upon practical action. The strength 
 of her love overcomes maidenly shyness, 
 womanly timidity, and allows her to 
 look death in the face. The unfolding of 
 her character in the course of the solil- 
 oquy before she takes the sleeping po- 
 tion is significant. In that nightly hour, 
 on the threshold of the decisive moment, 
 horrid visions rise up before her. Finally 
 she fancies she beholds the awful form 
 of the murdered Tybalt. We find this 
 feature also in Brooke's poem. But there 
 Juliet finally hastily drinks down the con- 
 tents of the vial, lest fear, after longer re- 
 
Shakespeare as 'Dramatist. 145 
 
 flection, should deter her. Shakespeare's 
 Juliet beholds her Romeo threatened by 
 Tybalt, and swiftly seizes the only means 
 of sharing his danger : 
 
 " Romeo, I come! this do I drink to thee." 
 
 Regarding the characters which group 
 themselves partly about the hero and 
 partly about the heroine, I shall speak 
 but briefly. Excellently drawn is the 
 figure of the old, hasty, passionate Capu- 
 let. His wife, very much younger than 
 himself, appeals very feebly to our 
 sympathies ; her relations to her husband 
 are in the main of a superficial nature, 
 and even to her child she is bound only 
 by the ties of blood, not by any soulful or 
 spiritual union. And then the nurse, a 
 type of the vulgar, garrulous female, her 
 individuality brought out with masterly 
 realism, and, in spite of Goethe's well- 
 known dictum, an indispensable figure to 
 the drama, serving as a foil to the char- 
 acter of Juliet, as well as to make us 
 
146 Shakespeare as 'Dramatist. 
 
 comprehend her total isolation in her 
 parents' house. 
 
 Romeo's parents, as befits the story, 
 remain more in the background. On the 
 other hand, we become acquainted with 
 his friends : the calm, moderate Ben- 
 volio ; the light-hearted, good-natured, 
 impudent, witty Mercutio. This last 
 figure is altogether Shakespeare's crea- 
 tion ; in Brooke's poem he is introduced 
 only once, and then merely by allusion. 
 Mercutio, — an image of the exuberance 
 of virile youth in the plenitude of its 
 strength ; a humorist who enjoys life and 
 is, at the same time, a shrewd observer, — 
 throws a bright radiance over the first 
 half of the drama. His figure is of the 
 greatest significance, not only in so much 
 as it elucidates Romeo's character, but 
 also on account of the manner in which 
 Shakespeare involves him in the drama 
 of the family feud. 
 
 To this side of his subject, to the 
 tragedy of hate, Shakespeare has devoted 
 
Shakespeare as T>ramatist. 147 
 
 scarcely less care than to the tragedy of 
 love, which, indeed, only becomes a 
 tragedy through the other. Shakespeare 
 does not content himself with presenting 
 to our minds the tragic end of his lovers 
 as a motive, strong as this motive, fur- 
 nished by the story, was. He is intent 
 from the first upon working upon our 
 feelings, prepares us at the outset for the 
 tragic result, knows how to produce in us 
 by a thousand artifices the impression 
 that this thing cannot now or ever reach 
 a happy consummation. Everything 
 must serve this purpose : the character of 
 his lovers, Juliet's youth, her complete 
 isolation, her ignorance of the world, the 
 fatal rapidity with which her love is de- 
 veloped, the dark presentiments which, 
 at the decisive moment, arise in her soul. 
 But this end is served above all by the 
 family feud, so vividly presented to our 
 view ; and here we see the art with which 
 Shakespeare constructs his drama, brings 
 his various motives before us. Already 
 
148 Shakespeare as dramatist. 
 
 in the first scene we are initiated into 
 these relations. From insignificant, nay, 
 ridiculous beginnings a serious, violent 
 quarrel is evolved. Only the interposi- 
 tion of the prince, who asserts his 
 authority in the most energetic manner, 
 is sufficient to ward off extremes. And 
 already in the first scene Shakespeare in- 
 troduces Tybalt, Juliet's cousin, the wild, 
 turbulent youth, who embodies most in- 
 tensely the family hatred. In the ball 
 scene Tybalt is again present, outraged at 
 Romeo's audacity, restrained only with 
 difficulty by his old uncle, and giving 
 vent to the wrath which he is now pre- 
 vented from satisfying in vows of ven- 
 geance : 
 
 " But this intrusion shall 
 Now seeming sweet convert to bitter gall." 
 
 Shakespeare's source introduces Tybalt 
 for the first time in the decisive scene, 
 and in a manner totally different, though 
 reminding one, indeed, of the scene in the 
 first act. A street fight has arisen, Tybalt 
 
Shakespeare as dramatist 149 
 
 is among the crowd ; Romeo appears upon 
 the scene, tries, like Benvolio in Shakes- 
 peare's first act, to separate the combat- 
 ants. Then Tybalt suddenly attacks 
 Romeo himself, forces him to defend him- 
 self, and in thus defending his life to kill 
 him. In Shakespeare the development 
 is an entirely different one, much more 
 significant and tragic. Tybalt seeks out 
 Romeo, challenges him to combat. 
 Romeo refuses to fight with Juliet's 
 cousin. All that is near to her is dear to 
 him. Astounded and enraged at the 
 gentle words with which his friend ad- 
 dresses the brawling fellow, Mercutio 
 then asks Tybalt to walk away with him. 
 Romeo again comes forward when the 
 fight is at its hottest, throws himself 
 between the two combatants, and thus 
 becomes the innocent cause of Mercutio's 
 death. The end of the sturdy humorist 
 is worthy of his life : " Ask for me to- 
 morrow, and you shall find me a grave 
 man. I am peppered, I warrant, for this 
 
150 Shakespeare as ^Dramatist, 
 
 world. A plague o' both your houses ! 
 'Zounds, a dog, a rat, a mouse, a cat, to 
 scratch a man to death ! a braggart, a 
 rogue, a villain, that fights by the book 
 of arithmetic ! Why the devil came you 
 between us ? I was hurt under your arm." 
 " I thought all for the best," replies 
 Romeo. With Mercutio the cheerful 
 glow of the zest of life vanishes from the 
 drama ; the approaching night heralds its 
 advent. The result has turned Romeo's 
 good intentions into a calamity. His 
 friend is killed for his sake, through his 
 fault. It is his to avenge his death — not 
 by accident, in the stress of self-defense, 
 as Brooke has it, but consciously, from a 
 feeling of duty, must he draw his sword 
 against Juliet's cousin, and strike him 
 down. He gives expression to his feel- 
 ings after the deed is accomplished as he 
 exclaims : ** Oh, I am fortune's fool ! " 
 With his own hand, because he could do 
 no otherwise, Romeo gives his dream of 
 love its death blow. Again, as in the 
 
Shakespeare as 'Dramatist. 151 
 
 first scene of the play, the prince appears, 
 then restraining and threatening, now pun- 
 ishing. The innocent ones, the lovers, 
 fall a sacrifice to justice; Romeo is ban- 
 ished. When the prince appears the 
 third time, the tragedy is closed. The 
 sacrifices which love demanded have ap- 
 peased the old hatred also ; the prince 
 stands there a woeful, sympathetic looker- 
 on, a witness of the peace concluded over 
 the open grave. 
 
FOURTH LECTURE 
 
 SHAKESPEARE AS COMIC 
 POET 
 
SHAKESPEARE AS COMIC POET. 
 
 The first collected edition of Shakes- 
 peare's plays, the folio of the year 1623, 
 is divided into three parts, and contains, 
 as well as was then possible, all the 
 material. First come the Comedies, then 
 the Histories, and lastly the Tragedies. 
 Later editors and commentators have 
 often preferred a different division : 
 Comedies, Tragedies, and Dramas \Schau- 
 spiele\'^ and the latter classification is 
 familiar to us. Now what relation does 
 this modern arrangement bear to the old 
 one ? Does what we term drama coincide 
 with the historical or chronicle play ? or, 
 if this be not the case, what is the reason 
 that in Shakespeare's time they found no 
 
 * There is no exact English equivalent for Schau- 
 spiel, which denotes something between tragedy and 
 comedy. 
 
 \ 
 
156 Shakespeare as Comic T^oet. 
 
 necessity of placing the drama in a differ- 
 ent category from comedy and tragedy ? 
 and how is it that we, on the other hand, 
 no longer recognize the " history " as a 
 subdivision of the drama ? The last ques- 
 tion is easily disposed of. 
 
 The history is primarily so called only 
 on account of the nature of its subject- 
 matter. By the term history or chronicle 
 play is understood a drama whose action 
 is taken from EngHsh history. The his- 
 tory of a foreign people, for instance, the 
 Roman, was not classed under that head ; 
 " Julius Caesar," " Coriolanus," " Antony 
 and Cleopatra," are accounted as trage- 
 dies. Neither does old Scottish history, 
 nor the accounts, so rich in fable, of the 
 old British kings, furnish material for the 
 histories : neither " Macbeth," nor, on the 
 other hand, '' Lear " or " Cymbeline," be- 
 longs to the chronicle plays. It is, then, 
 English history alone, in its narrower 
 signification, that is understood ; in reality, 
 only such periods of that history as were 
 
Shakespeare as Comic Toet. 157 
 
 not too far removed from that time ; 
 periods, finally, about which they pos- 
 sessed abundant sources of information, 
 and which were vividly brought before 
 Shakespeare's contemporaries by various 
 representations of a popular character. 
 
 Among no other nation at that time 
 was the knowledge of their own past so 
 generally diffused, so incorporated into 
 their very blood, so actively effective, as 
 among the English. And with one great 
 period of this past the Elizabethan age 
 was pre-eminently familiar. It is the 
 period which separates the Anglo-Nor- 
 man era from the era of the Tudors, the 
 time in which modern England, as re- 
 gards its speech, its manners, its constitu- 
 tion, was being evolved in ever more 
 , definite outlines : the thirteenth, four- 
 teenth, and fifteenth centuries. The 
 Elizabethan epic drew its subjects chiefly 
 from this period ; it likewise furnished 
 the material of the historical dramas. Al- 
 most all of Shakespeare's historical pieces, 
 
158 Shakespeare as Comic ^Poet. 
 
 too, play in this epoch, and notably in 
 the fifteenth century ; only in his ** Henry 
 VIII." does he finally venture to portray 
 more recent times. 
 
 It is evident that, from the standpoint 
 of the aesthetic critic, there is no justifica- 
 tion for the existence of the historical 
 play as a separate species of dramatic 
 composition, much as it may signify from 
 the standpoint of the English patriot and 
 politician. But it is not a question 
 merely of names, of the fitness of the 
 term history, and the adoption of a third 
 species to be classed alongside of tragedy 
 and comedy. In reality, politics and 
 patriotism, — not aesthetics alone, — filled a 
 very important part in the historical 
 dramas of that time, and plays of this 
 kind cannot, for the most part, be judged 
 from the point of view of strict dramatic 
 theory. The necessity of paying alto- 
 gether unusual regard to the underlying 
 story, the refractory character of that 
 story, the abundance of facts and figures. 
 
Shakespeare as Comic T*oet, 159 
 
 the multitude of inevitable premises — all 
 this does not, in many ways, allow the 
 poet that symmetrical working out and 
 transparent combination of motives, that 
 intensifying of characteristics, above all, 
 that concentration of dramatic interest, 
 which theory justly demands of the 
 drama. The king who gives the name to 
 a piece is often not its real hero ; in many 
 cases we seek for one in vain, or find, in- 
 stead of one, two, three, or more, and 
 finally grow conscious that our sympa- 
 thies are enlisted less in the individuals 
 than in the fate of the personages as a 
 whole, that the unity of the work lies not 
 in the powers of attraction of an individ- 
 ual depicted as the central figure, but in 
 the idea which proceeds from the relations 
 between historical facts. 
 
 Among productions of this kind, how- 
 ever, two distinctly different types may 
 be distinguished : a freer and a stricter 
 art form, more or less strongly marked 
 according to the individuality of the poet 
 
i6o Shakespeare as Comic T^oet. 
 
 and the nature of the material. In the 
 freer form the poet seeks to replace the 
 dramatic advantages which he must dis- 
 pense with, especially concentration, by- 
 other qualities — by the charm produced 
 by the well-ordered abundance of varied 
 events and interesting personages; by 
 the blending of historical genre pictures, 
 humorous scenes, with affairs of state. 
 Historical plays constructed on this 
 type exhibit a certain resemblance to 
 the epic. The other form betrays the 
 endeavor, by its condensation of the 
 matter, by the energetic treatment and 
 close interlacing of the chief elements, 
 to approach the strictly dramatic form, 
 — tragedy, in fact, — as closely as possible. 
 In both forms Shakespeare has cre- 
 ated unparalleled models ; the freer cul- 
 minates in his " Henry IV." the stricter 
 in his '' Richard III." On the whole, 
 however, he favors the freer form, to 
 which the story, as a rule, more readily 
 lends itself. 
 
Shakespeare as Comic 'Poet. i6i 
 
 If we comprehend now why the 
 national historical play constitutes in 
 Shakespeare a class apart, it still remains 
 to be explained why he does not recog- 
 nize the drama \_Schaiispiel'\ in general as 
 a separate species, as distinguished from 
 tragedy and comedy. The reasons for 
 this fact will be evident to us when 
 we shall have become acquainted with 
 Shakespeare as a tragic and as a comic 
 poet. 
 
 When discussion turns upon the fa- 
 vorites of the comic Muse in modern 
 times, everyone at once thinks of Mo- 
 li^re ; Shakespeare's name will not so 
 directly occur even to connoisseurs and 
 worshipers. What is the cause of this ? 
 May it perhaps be that they are right 
 who assert that Shakespeare does not 
 equal the French poet in comic power? 
 But how can such an opinion be main- 
 tained in face of obvious facts? Allow 
 me to recall those facts to your minds. 
 
 If we review the different qualities 
 
1 62 Shakespeare as Comic Toet. 
 
 which constitute a comic poet, and ask 
 whether Shakespeare possessed them, we 
 shall find that he commanded them to as 
 great or even to a greater degree than 
 Moliere. Has there ever been one who 
 has so profoundly fathomed the human 
 heart, with its passions, its frailties, its 
 vices ? a more subtile observer of every 
 species of peculiarity, whether it spring 
 from the inmost fibers of the heart, or 
 appear merely on the surface? Where 
 has there been in modern times a poet 
 who conceived the ludicrous with such 
 keenness and represented it with so sure 
 a touch ? In what dramatist do we find 
 a greater wealth of genuinely comic fig- 
 ures — figures whose mere appearance suf- 
 fices to put us into the most jovial 
 humor, whose speech and action irresist- 
 ibly provoke us to laughter? And as 
 for wit and humor, who can deny that 
 Shakespeare's wit, though it may con- 
 tain far more that is antiquated than 
 Moliere's, who presupposed a more fas- 
 
Shakespeare as Comic T^oet. 163 
 
 tidious taste and a severer reasoning tend- 
 ency — who can deny that Shakespeare's 
 wealth is so great that, even after ab- 
 stracting all lighter and cheaper matter, 
 enough remains to make him dispute 
 Moliere's precedence ? while Shakes- 
 peare's humor in its depth as well as its 
 cheerful glow far surpasses that of the 
 Frenchman. In the art, too, with which 
 he prepares the way for significant situa- 
 tions of highly comic effect he is second 
 to no dramatist. Just recall the scene in 
 " Love's Labor's Lost " where the mem- 
 bers of the academy of Navarre, who 
 have all forsworn the love of woman and 
 have all perjured themselves, are in turn 
 unmasked each by another, till finally 
 each one, to his mortification, but, at the 
 same time, to his comfort, becomes con- 
 scious that he can cast no reproach at the 
 others nor they at him. The scene is 
 so capitally introduced, and so effectively 
 carried out with such simple means, that 
 it can complacently bear comparison with 
 
164 Shakespeare as Comic T^oet. 
 
 any similar scene in Moliere — for instance, 
 with the one which leads to the catastro- 
 phe in the '' Misanthrope." In one point 
 only does the English poet seem decid- 
 edly inferior to the French : in the firm 
 handling of the dramatic action, in the 
 unity of structure of the comic drama. 
 If we consider, however, that Shakes- 
 peare displays in a most eminent degree 
 in his tragedies precisely those qualities 
 which we sometimes miss in his comedies, 
 it appears to us most improbable that 
 this is a proof of inability. Such an 
 assumption becomes untenable, yes, ab- 
 surd, when we reflect that Shakespeare's 
 earliest comedies are far more regularly 
 and firmly constructed, are, indeed, in 
 many respects more effective as come- 
 dies, than those of his ripest period. 
 
 The highly complicated action in "The 
 Comedy of Errors " is managed with such 
 perfect knowledge of the technique of 
 the stage, and with so sure a hand, that 
 the suspense is increased with every scene 
 
Shakespeare as Comic Toet. 165 
 
 and is only removed in the catastrophe. 
 No French drama of intrigue is more 
 effectively constructed than is this, the 
 first effort of Shakespeare's pen. Per- 
 fectly true to art, also, is the development 
 of the first four acts of '' Love's Labor's 
 Lost," while in the last a certain diminu- 
 tion of suspense is, of course, noticeable. 
 In '' The Taming of the Shrew," where 
 he enters into the style of an older author, 
 and confines himself essentially to the 
 reconstruction of the main action, this 
 main action stands out in such powerful 
 relief, and is evolved with such true 
 logical sequence, and with so irresistible 
 an effect, from the characters of the par- 
 ticipants, that this play still forms a 
 powerful attraction of the dramatic rep- 
 ertory, though in some respects it was 
 already antiquated in Shakespeare's time. 
 Among the comedies of Shakespeare's 
 maturest period, ''The Merry Wives of 
 Windsor" exhibits the most regular 
 structure ; but those very comedies which 
 
1 66 Shakespeare as Comic T^oet 
 
 are richest in substance and in poetic 
 beauty lack the strict unity of a comedy 
 of Moliere. In Moliere's best works we 
 have either a strongly marked character 
 with some prominent peculiarity or pas- 
 sion, who forms the center of the action, 
 or this place is taken by some dominant 
 custom, that is to say, some dominant 
 abuse, of the time, to which a number of 
 the personages of the drama pay homage. 
 That character or custom controls the 
 whole action, and nearly all the dramatic 
 effects may in the last instance be traced 
 back to it. In Shakespeare's most im- 
 portant comedies we see two or even 
 three actions artfully interwoven, yet in 
 such a manner that, upon a purely super- 
 ficial view, the dramatic structure appears 
 in many ways somewhat loose, and is 
 held together chiefly by the poetic idea. 
 But, above all, that which here consti- 
 tutes the center of interest is, as a rule, 
 no comic action at all, whether it spring 
 from the faults of a character or the tend- 
 
Shakespeare as Comic Toet. 167 
 
 encies of a time ; the principal action, 
 indeed, has generally an earnest, touch- 
 ing, or, it may be, romantic coloring ; 
 while the really comic characters and 
 situations figure principally in the subor- 
 dinate action. 
 
 Our reflections, finally, lead us to the 
 following conclusions: If Shakespeare 
 as a comic poet has not found that uni- 
 versal and unqualified acknowledgment 
 which has been accorded to Moli^re, it 
 is not on account of any deficiency in 
 his powers as a comic writer, but rather 
 because of his too great inner wealth, 
 which leads him to bring into play too 
 great an abundance of motives and situa- 
 tions, which causes him to scatter his 
 wit in too prodigal a fashion and without 
 discrimination ; because of a certain joy- 
 ous light-heartedness and primitive fresh- 
 ness which finds pleasure in the simplest 
 jest, and does not painfully weigh the 
 effect of a witticism ; because of the im- 
 portant influence which, pre-eminently in 
 
1 68 Shakespeare as Comic Toet. 
 
 his comedies, he allows his fancy to exert, 
 while Moliere works far more with his 
 understanding ; but, above all, because 
 Shakespeare's designs were far less ex- 
 clusively comic than the Frenchman's. 
 This is connected with a difference be- 
 tween their conceptions of comedy, a 
 point which requires a somewhat closer 
 examination. 
 
 Moliere's conception of the comic is 
 more nearly allied to our own view of it, 
 as well as to that of the ancients, than 
 is Shakespeare's. The latter, indeed, is 
 also related to the ancient conception, 
 not directly, however, but only through 
 its mediaeval development. 
 
 The subject-matter of the comic 
 drama is the ludicrous, and this is de- 
 fined by Aristotle, in his *' Poetics," as a 
 kind of defect, as something ugly or bad, 
 which is not, however, associated with 
 anything painful, and which does not 
 prove pernicious. The philosopher, to 
 illustrate this by an example, cites most 
 
Shakespeare as Comic T^oet 169 
 
 happily the comic mask itself, which 
 represented something ugly and dis- 
 torted, without expressing pain. 
 
 But should we submit the best and 
 most celebrated of Moliere's comedies to 
 this test, we should find to our astonish- 
 ment that it is by no means applicable to 
 them. Let us take an unrivaled mas- 
 terpiece like ** L'Ecole des Femmes " : 
 Arnolph, the old egoist, who has reared a 
 young girl in utter isolation to absolute 
 inexperience and ignorance with the in- 
 tention of marrying her, and who must 
 now learn to his dismay that Love has 
 found a way even to his prisoner, and 
 that he proves a consummate teacher 
 even to this being so totally unde- 
 veloped ; Arnolph, who is kept con- 
 stantly informed of the progress of this 
 love, and yet is not in a position to check 
 it, whose fine-spun plans end in his own 
 ruin — Arnolph is certainly a capitally 
 comic, a decidedly ridiculous figure. 
 But does that which is faulty, ugly, in 
 
lyo Shakespeare as Comic Toet. 
 
 him not prove painful ? Arnolph under- 
 goes positive torture, and, much as he 
 may deserve it, the sympathetic reader 
 feels with him. And the misanthrope, 
 that noble, but too frank and heedless, 
 character, who, while believing he hates 
 and despises the world, becomes entan- 
 gled in the snares of a coquette, from 
 which he finally releases himself at the 
 expense of a deep heart-wound, and then 
 buries himself in solitude — is not painful 
 the fate of this man, of which Goethe 
 says it produces an absolutely tragic ef- 
 fect? And the miser: the fiendish pas- 
 sion which possesses Harpagon, which 
 has killed all that is divine in him, and 
 destroyed every filial emotion in his 
 children — who would regard this passion 
 as not pernicious ? And finally Tartuffe, 
 the hypocrite, who undermines the hap' 
 piness of a whole family, a family that 
 has heaped benefits upon him — is the 
 nature, the conduct, of this man not per- 
 nicious ? 
 
Shakespeare as Comic T^oet. 171 
 
 We see, then, how it is the greatest 
 masterpieces of the comic Muse that 
 transgress the limits of the comic, and if, 
 nevertheless, all these works succeed in 
 creating a comic effect, it is owing to the 
 art of the poet, who knows how to man- 
 age it so that the spectator does not be- 
 come too vividly conscious of the painful 
 and hurtful side of the ridiculous material 
 presented to him. It seems clear to us 
 that the question whether a certain fail- 
 ing or a certain evil appears ludicrous, 
 depends not only upon the kind and de- 
 gree of the evil and the extent of its in- 
 fluence, but very essentially upon the 
 standpoint of those who happen to be the 
 spectators at the time. 
 
 Upon this rests the development which 
 took place in the conception of the comic 
 in the Middle Ages, and which, in spite 
 of its apparent naivete, conceals a great 
 deal of depth. What can there be more 
 childish and uncultured than the idea 
 that a tragedy is a play in which the 
 
172 Shakespeare as Comic Toet. 
 
 people become unhappy and die? a 
 comedy, one that has a happy termina- 
 tion ? And yet but little need be added 
 to bridge the way to the profoundest con- 
 ception. The tragic conflict is of such a 
 nature that it must have a bad ending; 
 the comic, of a kind that can end happily 
 and consequently should. By reflecting 
 upon this definition we might easily 
 arrive at a complete theory of both 
 classes of plays. Likewise, if we examine 
 the naive definition in Dante's letter to 
 Can Grande, or in the " Catholicon " of 
 Giovanni Balbi of Genoa. According to 
 them comedy is distinguished from trag- 
 edy in that a tragedy is great and calm 
 at the beginning, but at the end grows 
 horrible and ghastly ; while a comedy al- 
 lows the beginning of the action to be 
 painful in order to lead it to a happy 
 conclusion. 
 
 This view has been scoffed at a hun- 
 dred times, yet only by superficial critics. 
 Let us try to look into the matter a little 
 
Shakespeare as Comic T^oet. 173 
 
 more thoroughly. Is not the tragic fate 
 the more tragic the greater the height of 
 bhss from which the hero is hurled ? and 
 — to go deeper — is not the effect of the 
 tragedy greatest in those cases where the 
 error which finally causes the hero's ruin 
 appears at first perfectly harmless, par- 
 ticularly if the fatal error he commits be 
 linked with his inmost nature, his noblest 
 qualities? And comedy — is it not then 
 most effective when the evil which it 
 brings before us is most agitating, and 
 is, nevertheless, happily overcome in an 
 easy, natural way? It is this that is 
 really characteristic of the mediaeval con- 
 ception of the comic. The harmlessness, 
 the immunity from pain, of the ugly 
 and the bad which are presented on the 
 scene are based upon the fact that the 
 evil is conquered in the course of the 
 action. The development leads the par- 
 ticipants in the action as well as the 
 audience up to a higher plane, to a 
 height whence they behold the vicious 
 
174 Shakespeare as Comic T^oet 
 
 and the ugly far beneath them and pene- 
 trate their hollowness, whence the evil 
 veritably appears like an abandoned stand- 
 point, and in so far like something ridicu- 
 lous. This conception, in its profound- 
 "est sense, is embodied in the grandest 
 comedy of all time — in Dante's Divine 
 Comedy. As Dante urges his painful 
 upward way through hell and purgatory 
 to paradise, and here through all the 
 heavenly spheres to a vision of the un- 
 created, he learns to regard divine justice, 
 which at first appears to him as the ven- 
 geance of the Almighty, upon a higher 
 plane, as a manifestation of the All-wise 
 intent upon the bettering of mankind, 
 until finally he recognizes infinite love 
 as its real essence — the love which moves 
 sun and stars. 
 
 This, of course, is not a comedy in the 
 ancient sense, and just as little in ours. 
 A play animated by such an idea would 
 much rather realize our ideal of the 
 drama \Schauspiet\. But this apprehen- 
 
Shakespeare as Connie l^oet. 175 
 
 sion of comedy is closely related to that 
 of Shakespeare. 
 
 Shakespeare sees that in the world 
 good and evil, the sublime and ridiculous, 
 joy and sorrow, stand close together, 
 jostle each other, nay, are entwined with 
 each other. The most innocent thing 
 may prove noxious, and that which is 
 pernicious be changed to good. Upon 
 laughter follows weeping ; upon weeping, 
 laughter ; the very occurrence, indeed, 
 which draws tears from one may provoke 
 another to mirth ; according to the stand- 
 point of the observer will an action or a 
 situation appear pathetic or laughable ; 
 and even one and the same person may 
 weep tears of laughter or smile amid 
 tears. 
 
 Acting upon this comprehensive per- 
 ception of the world around him, Shakes- 
 peare creates the world of his dramas. 
 This is why he likes to interweave comic 
 figures and motives into his tragic action, 
 and why, conversely, he generally gives a 
 
176 Shakespeare as Comic Toet. 
 
 serious background to his comic actions, 
 or allows a graver note to be heard 
 through the noisy outbursts of uncon- 
 trolled merriment. This is why his char- 
 acters, like those of real life, do not ap- 
 pear simple, but complex, a compound of 
 good and evil, of strength and weakness. 
 None of the types, so easily interpreted, 
 of the ancient or even of the classic 
 French stage are to be found among 
 Shakespeare's great tragic figures ; but 
 his comic characters, also, are, as a rule, 
 richer, endowed with more individual 
 traits, than those that owe their origin to 
 the genius of Moliere. 
 
 If in all this we have a high degree of 
 realism, we find in closest union with this 
 realism the ideality which characterizes 
 Shakespeare's art. And to the poet's 
 ideal conception of the world there is 
 added a decidedly optimistic quality — a 
 quality which, appearing now in a weaker, 
 now in a stronger, form, and for a while 
 disappearing altogether, still, in the end. 
 
Shakespeare as Comic Toet. 177 
 
 proves itself indestructible. Shakespeare 
 believes in the beautiful and the good, he 
 believes that they are realized in the souls 
 of men ; he believes in the value of this 
 world and of this life. He has preserved 
 his faith, even though not without hard 
 struggles, even though not unshaken, in 
 the eventual triumph of the good in the 
 development of the destinies of the world. 
 This optimism is not absent from Shakes- 
 peare's historical dramas, or even his 
 tragedies, but it appears above all in 
 his comedies. They are, as it were, 
 moments of relaxation in which he in- 
 dulges his inward tendency to optimism 
 and trustful faith. He deals largely with 
 such human conflicts, such human errors, 
 as are capable of the most disastrous, the 
 most fatal consequences, but which, 
 through a happy chain of events, are led 
 to a favorable issue. One cannot always 
 see in this fortunate turn of affairs a 
 logical sequence of the actions of the 
 characters concerned ; the heroes in 
 
178 Shakespeare as Comic T^oet. 
 
 Shakespeare's comedies are often ren- 
 dered happy beyond their deserts, let us 
 say, without their own efforts — and where 
 does this not occur upon the stage, where 
 does it not occur in the world ? This, 
 then, were chance ; but can the poet con- 
 tent himself with bare chance ? Where 
 the poet cannot see, he can at least dimly 
 feel. Let us observe what terms he 
 makes with chance in one of his earliest 
 comedies, " The Comedy of Errors." 
 
 Shakespeare took the underlying mo- 
 tive of this play from the " Menaechmi " 
 of Plautus. 
 
 The dramatic interest of the Roman 
 comedy is centered, as is well known, 
 in the consequences ensuing from the 
 perfect resemblance in face and form and 
 the identity of name of the heroes, twin 
 brothers, who, by a strange destiny, are 
 parted from each other at a tender age ; 
 one seeks the other half the world over, 
 and, arrived at last at the place where 
 his brother lives, without the remotest 
 
Shakespeare as Comic "Poet 179 
 
 suspicion of it, he is mistaken for his 
 brother by the latter's fellow-citizens and 
 closest relations, even by his own slave. 
 From this result apparent contradictions 
 of the most delightful kind, strange com- 
 plications, from which the brother resid- 
 ing in the place where the action occurs 
 suffers most particularly, until through 
 the personal meeting of the twins the 
 confusion is suddenly cleared up. The 
 improbable in the premises of the story 
 could not be discarded without destroy- 
 ing the story itself. 
 
 And Shakespeare made no attempt to 
 do so. On the contrary, since he accepts 
 a world in which chance rules as the 
 necessary groundwork of his play, he 
 endeavors, with his own peculiar con- 
 sistency, to extend the realm of chance; 
 he gives it opportunity to assert itself 
 not only in one but in many instances. 
 To the one pair of twins he opposes 
 another, in whom the fate of the first is 
 repeated ; to the two masters, so closely 
 
i8o Shakespeare as Comic T^oet. 
 
 similar as to be mistaken for each other, 
 two servants equally similar. Each An- 
 tipholus, — he has thus rechristened the 
 Menaechmi, — has a Dromio for a follower. 
 The story, mad as it was, becomes still 
 madder ; the complication grows comic to 
 the highest degree. But the spectator 
 becomes familiar meanwhile with the 
 workings of chance, conceives, uncon- 
 sciously, a certain respect for this myste- 
 rious power which displays such methods. 
 The idea of putting the two pairs of 
 twins in opposition was evoked in Shakes- 
 peare's mind, as was pointed out a few 
 years ago, by another comedy of Plautus, 
 the " Amphitruo," from which he bor- 
 rowed, notably, a very effective scene. 
 
 This is not yet all. The repulsive 
 moral relations disclosed to us by 
 Plautus' Mensechmi were modified by 
 Shakespeare with a delicate touch, in 
 part entirely transformed, while, at the 
 same time, he introduced a new element, 
 a love episode, still somewhat shyly 
 
Shakespeare as Comic Toet. i8i 
 
 treated, but with a charming lyric color- 
 ing. But even this did not satisfy the 
 poet. Before his soul floated a vision 
 of the world more richly and pro- 
 foundly conceived than that produced by 
 this blending of two fables of Plautus. 
 By weaving into the action the figures 
 and fortunes of the parents of the two 
 brothers Antipholus, old ^Eegeon and 
 Amelia, he gained for his play, so full of 
 strange adventures, a setting which is 
 romantic, fairylike, yet charged with deep 
 meaning. It gives us at the opening of 
 the play a glimpse of a fateful past and a 
 threatening future, while, at the same 
 time, it explains the plot of the comedy 
 directly connected with it ; but to the 
 close of the drama, mingling itself with 
 the main plot, it imparts a higher spir- 
 itual meaning. While the lighter and 
 graver misconceptions, the entanglements, 
 the grievances, of the different personages 
 resolve themselves into the most delight- 
 ful harmony; while the grief of longing 
 
1 82 Shakespeare as Comic 'Voet. 
 
 is stilled, hopes long abandoned realized, 
 and blessings showered upon one to whom 
 but a moment before the grave seemed 
 the only desirable goal — a feeling takes 
 possession of us which makes us appre- 
 hend beyond the mysterious play of 
 what we termed chance the ruling of a 
 higher power. 
 
 To this apprehension Shakespeare has 
 given different expression at different 
 times. For this purpose here in the first 
 production of his comic muse it pleases 
 him to make use of the childishly naive 
 form of the fairy-tale. But at the close 
 of his career he recurs to this form, to 
 employ it in a far more daring manner. 
 In '' Pericles," in "The Winter's Tale," in 
 " Cymbeline," which has only by accident 
 been classed among Shakespeare's trage- 
 dies, the gods clearly, and partly visibly, 
 interfere in the action. In " The Tem- 
 pest," however, we find Prospero, who, by 
 the power of the human soul, has be- 
 come the ruler of the spirit world, and 
 
Shakespeare as Comic T^oet. 183 
 
 who most truly embodies Shakespeare's 
 wisdom, his magic power, his charity. 
 Something of the character of a fairy-tale 
 is present, though in an entirely different 
 form, even in the most brilliant comedies 
 of his middle period. They reproduce, 
 in their way, dreams of a golden age. 
 
 While most other poets regard comedy 
 as the form of drama which should most 
 of all be a faithful mirror of the actual 
 life around them, even as to its back- 
 ground and details, Shakespeare places 
 his scenes among ideally conceived sur- 
 roundings, — under beautiful, radiant skies, 
 in fresh, green woods, on the shores of the 
 sea, — among surroundings which power- 
 fully stir the imagination and offer free 
 scope to the fantastic play of chance, 
 opportunity for surprising encounters, 
 momentous experiences, sudden changes 
 of fortune. The dramatic action is, as a 
 rule, a complicated one ; not rarely chance 
 is permitted to assume a greater role than 
 in tragedy. The world presented to our 
 
184 Shakespeare as Comic "Poet. 
 
 eyes follows the same laws as the one in 
 which we live. But it is a world of sun- 
 shine, seen in happy days on its brightest 
 side — a world which allows us to feel the 
 workings of a benign Providence more 
 clearly than in the reality about us. The 
 beings that live and move in this world 
 are creatures of flesh and blood, with the 
 same inclinations, passions, weaknesses, 
 peculiarities, as the men around us. But 
 passion does not rise to a tragic height ; 
 the sinful, the vicious, do not succeed in 
 attaining their end ; good deeds are re- 
 warded with a more than customarily 
 lavish hand ; punishment is meted out with 
 more charity, often in great part remitted. 
 In many instances sin is expiated by 
 repentance. Everything is so planned 
 that good shall conquer evil, that the 
 plot may culminate happily. Sometimes 
 — whether because of the unmanageable- 
 ness of the material, or because the poet's 
 fancy first penetrates too deep, then 
 swiftly speeds on in its winged flight — it 
 
Shakespeare as Comic l^oet. 185 
 
 happens that the consummation does not 
 seem to us sufficiently warranted, that, 
 indeed, in dramas of his earliest and his 
 latest period he to some degree violates 
 our sense of poetic justice. 
 
 We feel this especially in a work not 
 usually put in the class of pure comedy, 
 but which, nevertheless, Shakespeare con- 
 ceived as one — in '' The Merchant of 
 Venice." Here this feeling is closely con- 
 nected with the tragic intensity which is 
 given to one of the characters ; I mean 
 Shylock. 
 
 The character of Shylock is one of 
 Shakespeare's most perfect creations, 
 even though he devotes comparatively 
 little space to its elucidation. The con- 
 ception of this figure is as grand as the 
 perfection of art with which it appears 
 upon the scene. The very first words he 
 speaks are characteristic, and still more 
 the manner in which he speaks them ; 
 and at each one of his utterances we 
 seem to see the man before us, and we 
 
1 86 Shakespeare as Comic Toet. 
 
 ourselves supply the gestures, the play of 
 expression, which accompany his speech. 
 As in his Jlichard III., Shakespeare has 
 here furnished the actor with a worthy 
 and most grateful task. 
 
 The two characters resemble each other 
 in that one great passion dominates each 
 with demoniac power. In Shylock it is 
 the love of possession, the love of gold. 
 His surrender to this passion has by de- 
 grees turned his heart to stone. Not al- 
 ways had he been so lacking in love ; the 
 tender memory of his dead wife, of the 
 time of their betrothal, which once rises 
 up before him, recalls a gleam of that 
 radiant epoch : " It was my turquoise ; I 
 had it of Leah when I was a bachelor ; I 
 would not have given it for a wilderness 
 of monkeys." Whatever tenderness, 
 reverence, he still feels is essentially for 
 things of the past ; it is of a historic, tra- 
 ditional character. Outward and purely 
 traditional are his relations to his daugh- 
 ter ; he understood her so little, con- 
 
Shakespeare as Comic T^oet 187 
 
 cerned himself so little about her inner 
 life, so little endeavored to influence her 
 morally — she suffers so much from his 
 hard, unfeeling nature, can so little re- 
 spect him, that the paternal house seems 
 a veritable hell to her, that, yielding to 
 her love for Lorenzo, she flees from her 
 father as from a jailer, and no stirrings of 
 filial piety cause her to waver in her action. 
 
 Her flight is a terrible blow to Shylock ; 
 his paternal authority, the honor of his 
 house, are deeply wounded ; but what 
 pains him most is the loss of his jewels 
 and of his ducats. 
 
 A heartless father, a merciless usurer, 
 Shylock, nevertheless, in his way, clings to 
 religion. He contents himself with the 
 strict observance of the letter of the law, 
 arms himself in conscious self-righteous- 
 ness, and beholds in his growing wealth 
 the blessing of God : 
 
 " And thrift is blessing if men steal it not." 
 If his heart be dead to love, so much 
 
1 88 Shakespeare as Comic Toet. 
 
 the more is hatred familiar to him. He 
 hates all Christians, but above all Antonio, 
 whose high-minded, humane sentiments 
 are directly opposed to his own nature, 
 and who injures his trade : 
 
 " I hate him for he is a Christian, 
 But more for that in low simpHcity 
 He lends out money gratis, and brings down 
 The rate of usance here with us in Venice. 
 If I can catch him once upon the hip, 
 I will feed fat the ancient grudge I bear him." 
 
 How has Shakespeare been able to 
 make this man appeal to us, to arouse our 
 sympathies in his fate ? Before all, be- 
 cause he makes Shylock's nature com- 
 prehensible to us, because he lets us see 
 his inmost being, prompts us to put our- 
 selves in his place. Shylock is a Jew ; he 
 belongs to the chosen race, which bears 
 marks of the curse of a bondage of many 
 centuries, which has been persecuted, 
 robbed, tortured, and is still insulted and, 
 upon occasion, trodden underfoot. The 
 historical light in which the poet places 
 
Shakespeare as Comic Toet. 189 
 
 his figure elevates it and renders it at 
 the same time humanly comprehensible. 
 " He hates our sacred nation," Shylock 
 says of Antonio, and although this motive 
 is but one of many, and not the strongest, 
 yet all the other motives that determine his 
 action, taken in connection with this one, 
 seem to assume a certain justification. 
 When Shylock says: "Hath not a Jew 
 eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs, 
 dimensions, senses, affections, passions ? 
 fed with the same food, hurt with the 
 same weapons, subject to the same dis- 
 eases, healed by the same means, warmed 
 and cooled by the same winter and sum- 
 mer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, 
 do we not bleed ? if you tickle us, do we 
 not laugh ? if you poison us, do we not 
 die ? and if you wrong us, shall we not 
 revenge ? If we are like you in the rest, 
 we will resemble you in that " — when 
 Shylock speaks thus, he comes close 
 to us humanly, we feel for him and 
 with him. 
 
1 9© Shakespeare as Comic l^oet. 
 
 It is above all on account of this feel- 
 ing that the celebrated trial scene in the 
 fourth act strikes us as harshly discord- 
 ant. If Shylock is prevented from carry- 
 ing out his bloody intentions in regard 
 to Antonio, even if he is remorselessly 
 punished, mortally wounded in what 
 he holds most dear, it is nothing more 
 than poetic justice. It is only against 
 his being forced to become a convert 
 that our feelings justly rebel. The 
 contemporaries of the poet doubtless 
 attached no such importance to this 
 point. But it is not merely poetic jus- 
 tice that our feelings demand. Shy- 
 lock has come too close to us, we 
 have learned to know too intimately the 
 grounds of his hatred, of the intensity of 
 his resentment, his figure has become too 
 humanly significant, and the misfortune 
 which overtakes him appeals too deeply 
 to our sympathies, to permit us to be 
 reconciled to the idea that his fate, which 
 moves us so tragically, should be con- 
 
Shakespeare as Comic Toet. 191 
 
 ceived otherwise than as a tragedy. We 
 are powerfully moved when this man who 
 stands upon his right, who stakes all to 
 gain it, who hour by hour is strengthened 
 in the belief that his right will be granted 
 him — when this man suddenly feels the 
 ground give way beneath his feet, when, in 
 the name and with the forms of law, he 
 is cheated of his right. And we cannot 
 dismiss the thought that this decision, 
 brought about by a lucky accident, by the 
 sophistical interpretation of a document, 
 is not commensurate to Shylock's grand 
 passion. We crave to feel the necessity 
 of the fate which befalls him, the inevita- 
 bleness of his ruin. Not only the higher 
 moral motives of his judges, but also the 
 legal motives of the sentence as such, we 
 wish to feel to be justified and necessary. 
 There is a discordance here which can- 
 not be explained away. It was impossi- 
 ble for Shakespeare to avoid it. The 
 most essential feature of the tale — the 
 suit about the pound of flesh — the real 
 
192 Shakespeare as Comic T^oet 
 
 purpose, the gist of the whole, he could 
 not and would not discard. It embraces, 
 indeed, a symbolically profound thought : 
 Summuinjus, siimnia injuria ; it is admi- 
 rably adapted to satisfy upon Shylock, in 
 the most pronounced form, the demands 
 of poetic justice. Considered in the 
 abstract, this feature satisfies our under- 
 standing, creates the pleasing impression 
 which the spirited solution of a difficult 
 problem is wont to produce. And in 
 comedy we must often resort to abstrac- 
 tion in order to find unalloyed enjoy- 
 ment. When we see the success of the 
 plans in which the poet has specially 
 aroused our interest, the favorable change 
 of fortune of the persons who chiefly 
 enlist our sympathies, we often dare not 
 too vividly realize the moral relations 
 and the human individuality of those 
 who, in the happy consummation, are 
 deeply wounded and hurt. Few comedies 
 would be enjoyable without abstraction 
 of this kind. But Shakespeare renders 
 
Shakespeare as Comic T^oet. 193 
 
 this abstraction so difficult for us because 
 he himself was incapable of it, because 
 all his characters are drawn with equal 
 sympathy and with equal objectiveness; 
 there is, consequently, often something 
 unsatisfying in the denouement of his 
 comedies. The offense generally consists 
 in this : that for the sake of a happy 
 solution the evil which appears too 
 prominent in some of his personages 
 is not wholly eradicated, the guilt not 
 adequately atoned. In " The Merchant 
 of Venice " we have an instance of the 
 opposite : a comic solution and a tragic 
 character ; a tragic fate developed in a 
 manner befitting comedy. 
 
 This capacity for abstraction, coupled 
 with unlimited powers of observation, 
 would have made Shakespeare's life in- 
 tolerable had not the gods bestowed 
 upon him as their choicest gift his fund 
 of humor. It is humor which renders 
 the inconsistencies of the world and of 
 human nature endurable, as we make 
 
194 Shakespeare as Comic T*oet. 
 
 them subjects of aesthetic apprehension — 
 an apprehension which awakens within us 
 a feeling of the ludicrous which is mingled 
 with sadness. While wit consists in com- 
 bining ideas that are discordant to each 
 other in an unexpected manner, humor 
 illumines for our inner vision the incon- 
 sistencies existing in things themselves, 
 in our own being and action. To render 
 humor effective a reference to one's own 
 self is as important as it is in tragedy. It 
 is only when we put ourselves in the posi- 
 tion of the suffering hero, when we be- 
 hold in his fate but a particular instance 
 of a common destiny, that our soul is 
 stirred with tragic sympathy. And it is 
 only when we recognize in a humorous 
 character the underlying traits of human 
 nature and of our own that it will pro- 
 duce an effect in accordance with the 
 poet's purpose. 
 
 Humor as a poetic faculty presupposes, 
 before all else, a spiritual emancipatipn 
 from self. Shakespeare must have be- 
 
Shakespeare as Comic Toet. 195 
 
 come objective to himself, have at once 
 wept and laughed at the contradictions in 
 his own nature, before he could have 
 written " Love's Labor's Lost," the earli- 
 est of his works in which humor breaks 
 out triumphantly. And from that time 
 forward we see this child of the gods ever 
 more vigorously stirring his wings, and 
 the creatures of the poet ever more gayly 
 fluttering about. Shakespearean comedy 
 is inspired with humor ; it permeates the 
 language, animates the characters, shapes 
 the situations, and to the hero of his 
 tragedy it blows a breath of relief in the 
 midst of the intensest strain and suspense. 
 If one would realize by an example 
 the depth and daring of Shakespearean 
 humor, let him think of that scene in 
 " Henry IV." which, as Goethe has re- 
 marked, may well draw from us a lofty 
 smile — the scene where Henry Percy, 
 Hotspur, the noble hero, full of achieve- 
 ment, and Falstaff, that magnificent 
 rogue and good-for-nothing, are lying on 
 
196 Shakespeare as Comic T^oet. 
 
 the ground side by side ; the one killed 
 by Prince Henry's hand, the other, from 
 cowardice, feigning death, to rise again 
 when all have disappeared ; or recall the 
 love scenes in "A Midsummer Night's 
 Dream " between Titania, the queen of 
 the fairies, and the weaver Bottom, who, 
 through a spell, but quite symbolically, 
 bears an ass's head — that scene in which 
 Shakespeare shows us the point where 
 the divine and the human, the ideal and 
 the coarsest reality, meet, where the spirit 
 is dragged down by the dust. 
 
 " Bis der Gott, des Irdischen entkleidet, 
 Flammend sich vom Menschen scheidet." 
 
 Or, finally, see how the lightning flashes 
 of humor accompany the thunder of 
 Shakespeare's wrath in Isabella's words 
 in " Measure for Measure " — those words 
 which warn earthly greatness of its 
 bounds, and which, at the same time, tell 
 us why, in the loftiest view, though all 
 things human seem so small, nothing 
 appears ridiculous. 
 
FIFTH LECTURE 
 
 SHAKESPEARE AS TRAGIC 
 WRITER 
 
SHAKESPEARE AS TRAGIC WRITER. 
 
 We have sought in these lectures to 
 approach our subject from various sides, 
 and endeavored to reach in these various 
 paths a standpoint which might afford us 
 the most complete view possible of the 
 part of the subject under examination. 
 To-day we have the difficult task of at- 
 tempting to gain an insight into the most 
 important, the most significant, but also 
 the most unapproachable, side of our sub- 
 ject. Shakespeare, considered as a tragic 
 writer, shall occupy our attention in our 
 last lecture. 
 
 If Shakespeare as a comic poet must 
 submit to being compared with Moliere 
 and to be measured by his standard, as a 
 tragic writer he towers so far above any 
 standard which may be adduced from 
 modern poets that comparison becomes 
 
200 Shakespeare as Tragic Writer. 
 
 impossible. From the lonely summit 
 where he sits enthroned he beholds all 
 other heights of tragic art far beneath at 
 his feet, and he soars before the disciples 
 of this art, in our time, as an unattain- 
 able model, as some being of a higher 
 sphere. 
 
 What he is capable of as a poet, as a 
 dramatist, Shakespeare reveals nowhere 
 in so overpowering a manner as in his 
 great tragedies; and as to what consti- 
 tutes tragic action no poet of ancient 
 times can instruct us better, no modern 
 poet as well. 
 
 With the peculiar nature of this action, 
 and the means by which it is produced, 
 theory since Aristotle has repeatedly 
 occupied itself; and it has, at various 
 times, owing partly to a mistaken or a one- 
 sided interpretation of the ancient philos- 
 opher, partly to a confounding of morals 
 and aesthetics, advanced the most absurd 
 views. 
 
 You will not expect a criticism of these 
 
Shakespeare as Tragic Writer. 201 
 
 views at this point, nor, indeed, to hear 
 from me any elaborate theoretic disquisi- 
 tion. Permit me, nevertheless, to make a 
 few leading remarks of a general charac- 
 ter before turning to my real subject, 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 The conflict which, as we have seen in 
 a former lecture, constitutes the essence 
 of every real drama is in tragedy of such 
 a nature that the hero succumbs, and our 
 sympathies are enlisted in his sufferings 
 and his ruin. We are profoundly moved 
 by compassion and, at the same time, by 
 fear, produced by beholding in the unfor- 
 tunate hero an image of ourselves, by see- 
 ing in his fate the common fate of man and 
 our own, by being reminded of the limits 
 which confine humanity. Tragic fear will 
 always be naturally awakened where tragic 
 compassion is aroused ; and the presence 
 or absence of such fear may serve as a 
 gauge to determine whether our compas- 
 sion has really reached a tragic height, or 
 whether we feci merely a greater or lesser 
 
202 Shakespeare as Tragic Writer. 
 
 degree of sympathy, a pleasing agitation, 
 but not of that nature which stirs the soul 
 to its inmost depth. Everything, then, 
 depends upon exciting tragic compassion. 
 How is this aroused? The greatness of 
 the suffering which we witness is not 
 in itself sufficient. A great misfortune, 
 terrible suffering, may inspire horror, 
 revulsion, disgust ; if it concern a person 
 whom we love, it will, under any circum- 
 stances, cause us pain. But in order to 
 excite our compassion, it is essential that 
 we should perceive a connection between 
 the hero's sorrows and his actions, and 
 that we should so comprehend his actions 
 as related to his character and his posi- 
 tion that we may imagine ourselves in his 
 place. 
 
 The deed or deeds of the hero of trag- 
 edy which are the cause of his sufferings 
 constitute his tragic error, or, as they are 
 pleased to term it in more modern times, 
 his tragic fault. The expression would in 
 itself not be objectionable if one always 
 
Shakespeare as Tragic Writer. 203 
 
 realized what sort of fault is here meant, 
 namely, simply the origin of suffering. 
 But if one means by a tragic fault a mor- 
 ally reprehensible action, for which the 
 perpetrator justly suffers, and for which 
 he must atone by his sorrows, he dis- 
 places the proper standpoint to such a 
 degree that it is impossible for him to 
 realize, in the great tragic writers, the 
 simple workings of facts upon each other. 
 Even Sophocles' Antigone, that ideal of 
 lofty maidenhood, of purest sisterly 
 affection, of willing sacrifice to duty, is 
 the author of her tragic fate. But with- 
 out that unfortunate confusion of ideas 
 would it have entered the mind of any 
 philologist or aesthetic critic to suggest, 
 by way of correction, to Antigone that she 
 erred in acting against the authority of 
 the state? as if she could have done 
 aught but fulfill the higher law at the 
 expense of the lower; or to maintain 
 that she erred at least in expressing her- 
 self in such unmeasured terms to the 
 
204 Shakespeare as Tragic Writer. 
 
 representative of the state, in disregard- 
 ing the reverence due him? as if, accord- 
 ing to the Hellenic conception, it did not 
 well become one whose kindred are in- 
 sulted to be roused to a noble rage, and 
 as if this error, even if according to 
 Greek ethics it were one, involved a fault 
 in any way proportionate to Antigone's 
 fate. Such is the peculiar character of 
 that false conception of the tragic fault, 
 exposing it at once to a rediictio ad 
 abstirdtim, that it sometimes forces us to 
 attribute to a microscopic cause an effect 
 as great as that from an infinitely great 
 cause. 
 
 The weight of the tragic fault does not 
 necessarily depend upon the magnitude 
 of the moral transgression connected with 
 it. Whether the acts from which the 
 tragic misfortunes spring are in them- 
 selves good or bad in a moral sense is 
 not the essential point, though the work 
 of the tragic poet will doubtless assume 
 very different forms in the two cases. 
 
Shakespeare as Tragic Writer. 205 
 
 The essential thing primarily is that 
 these acts should evoke a violent conflict 
 between the hero and a power whose sig- 
 nificance we must acknowledge, and that 
 we should feel that this conflict is inevi- 
 table. That it is the power of the state 
 with which Antigone enters into conflict 
 impresses upon her fate the stamp of 
 necessity, and consequently of tragedy, 
 in a heightened degree, but her tragic 
 error does not by any means constitute 
 on that account a moral fault. 
 
 But if we picture to ourselves a hero 
 who is drawn into a conflict not only 
 with the outward, official representatives 
 of the moral order of the universe, but 
 who is driven to deeds of violence by an 
 overpowering desire, then the task of the 
 poet appears, on the one hand, easier, on 
 the other, so ipuch the more difficult. 
 The motive of the tragic suffering is 
 simplified, since our feelings, anticipating 
 the dramatic unfolding, here imperiously 
 demand this suffering; but, again, it is 
 
2o6 Shakespeare as Tragic Writer. 
 
 harder for the poet to excite compassion, 
 as the sight of what one feels is a just 
 punishment will not in itself admit the 
 awakening of compassion. The mistake 
 of those who convert the tragic error into 
 a tragic fault is here most clearly shown ; 
 for the greater the moral delinquency of 
 the hero the more difficult is it to pro- 
 duce tragic effects. It is here pre- 
 eminently, too, that the art of the poet 
 is put to the test in his conception of the 
 motive of the tragic error, of the irrep- 
 arable deed ; it is in just such cases that 
 Shakespeare reveals his incomparable 
 tragic power. Far from painting his 
 offending hero in the blackest possible 
 colors, from representing him as repel- 
 lent to the highest degree, he endeavors, 
 on the contrary, to bring him humanly 
 near to us, to make his deed compre- 
 hensible; endeavors, if I may say so, to 
 transform his crime, as far as it be 
 possible, into innocence, or, as Schiller 
 expresses it: 
 
Shakespeare as Tragic Writer. 207 
 
 "Er walzt die gross're Halfte seiner Schuld 
 Den ungliickseligen Gestirnen zu."* 
 
 But the means which Shakespeare 
 employs to this end are of such masterly- 
 simplicity, are so thoroughly different 
 from the painful artifices to which feeble- 
 hearted tragedians of later times are 
 wont to resort, that they have deceived 
 many commentators as to his purpose; 
 commentators only, however, never the 
 unbiased reader, and far less still the 
 spectator, who feels the effects intended 
 to be produced by the poet without 
 troubling himself much about the manner 
 in which they were aroused. 
 
 But here I expect to be met by the 
 objection from the well-meaning that to 
 make a wicked hero, a criminal of 
 tragedy, an object of our sympathy has 
 its doubtful side. I acknowledge this 
 consideration to be perfectly well 
 grounded. I am, still further, of the 
 
 * " He casts the greater half of his great guilt 
 Upon the unfav'ring and malignant stars." 
 
2o8 Shakespeare as Tragic Writer, 
 
 conviction, founded upon experience and 
 reflection, that an easily inflamed fancy, a 
 highly developed tendency to imitation, 
 has, under the influence of a tragic repre- 
 sentation, not rarely carried away the 
 spectator to the commission of a real 
 tragic deed. Yet if we should banish a 
 certain kind of tragedy, or, indeed, 
 tragedy in general, from our land on 
 account of its possibly evil results, should 
 we not, as a logical consequence, eventu- 
 ally arrive at having to banish every 
 species of art — nay, finally, even science? 
 Art in itself pursues no practically useful 
 aims, nor any moral ones: its sole end is 
 to heighten and strengthen our sense of 
 life {Lebensgefuhl\ But he who con- 
 siders the moral effect of art, — I mean real 
 art, — impartially will probably arrive at 
 the conviction that in the main, and on 
 the whole, the beneficial effects outweigh 
 the injurious ones, if not, perhaps, in num- 
 ber, yet in inner significance. And as 
 regards Shakespeare in particular, and 
 
Shakespeare as 7ragic Writer. 209 
 
 those of his tragedies in which he enHsts 
 our sympathies for a guilty hero, is there 
 a loftier human standpoint than one that 
 comprehends all and forgives all? is it not 
 more divine deeply to pity Othello or 
 Macbeth for his deeds than to condemn 
 him? 
 
 It is essential that we should not con- 
 found heterogeneous domains of life and 
 various points of view. The tragic stage 
 is not a court of justice, the poet not an 
 advocate, and the spectator not a judge. 
 But it is a significant fact that at the very 
 time when a morbid humanitarianism in- 
 vades the courts of justice, playing a game 
 with the notion of responsibility and irre- 
 sponsibility, which, carried to its natural 
 consequences, would convert the sword of 
 justice into a mere child's bugbear, the 
 tragic critic so often feels it his vocation 
 to formulate judgments of moral condem- 
 nation. 
 
 But it is my firm conviction that a 
 thorough study of Shakespeare's trage- 
 
2IO Shakespeare as Tragic Writer, 
 
 dies would as greatly promote real hu- 
 manity as it would antagonize that false 
 humanity which would exempt the 
 criminal from retribution at the expense 
 and to the danger of society. 
 
 If Shakespeare is the greatest of tragic 
 writers, it is pre-eminently because of his 
 spiritual depth and his thorough reality. 
 He needed no traditional aesthetic theory 
 in order to penetrate the tragic idea. 
 The function of the drama is, according 
 to him, no other than to hold the mirror 
 up to nature. And human nature, the life 
 of man, offered him a wealth of tragic ele- 
 ments, of tragic destinies, which he 
 observed, felt, and probed with that uni- 
 versal sympathy for which he was fitted 
 by his own inmost experiences. Dramatic 
 creation had become his vocation, but he 
 did not make a profession of it; and as 
 all art was held sacred by him, so, pre- 
 eminently, was tragedy. He did not 
 obtrude himself upon his tragic material, 
 but rather it obtruded itself upon him. 
 
Shakespeare as, Tragic Writer. 211 
 
 His maiden effort alone, the bloody 
 tragedy "Titus Andronicus," evidently 
 owed its existence to no inner necessity, 
 but to the desire of the rising dramatist 
 to rival the brilliant example of Marlowe 
 and of his imitators. The author of 
 "Titus Andronicus" was not yet ripe for 
 his material, nor, indeed, for tragedy at 
 all; nevertheless, he had already an intui- 
 tive sense of how tragic passion is de- 
 veloped and finds expression, and if in 
 dramatic composition and dramatic lan- 
 guage he proves himself a docile disciple 
 of Marlowe, in the art of creating tragic 
 effects he shows himself from the first far 
 superior to his predecessor. 
 
 Then Shakespeare turned, as we have 
 seen before, to the domain of comedy, 
 and not long before the close of that series 
 of lovely, bright creations, in which love 
 in its manifold variations is his theme, he 
 produced, at a happy moment, "Romeo 
 and Juliet," that tragedy of his youth 
 which stands out in astonishing loftiness. 
 
212 Shakespeare as Tragic Writer. 
 
 yet not without connection, not incom- 
 prehensibly, amid the comedies which 
 surround it. And we see in "Romeo and 
 Juliet" that, if it is given to genius to find 
 the right matter at the right moment, he 
 does not owe it to mere luck, but also to 
 his own patience inasmuch as he knows 
 how to wait for the right moment. 
 Shakespeare did not undertake to drama- 
 tize the fable of "Romeo and Juliet" as 
 soon as he became acquainted with it. 
 We see that the matter had already 
 vividly interested him when he wrote the 
 "Two Gentlemen of Verona"; we find evi- 
 dence of it in the character and in the 
 name of the Julia of the comedy, in the 
 analogy between Valentine's banishment 
 from Milan and Romeo's from Verona; it 
 is shown, above all, in the additional 
 insignificant circumstance that the ban- 
 ished Valentine in Shakespeare, like 
 Romeo in the original tale, sojourned in 
 Mantua. 
 
 Not until many years after the comple- 
 
Shakespeare as 7ragic Writer, 213 
 
 tion of "Romeo and Juliet" was it that 
 Shakespeare's reflections upon the nature 
 of man and his destiny attained such 
 depth and gravity that they compelled 
 him, as it were, for a number of years, to 
 tragic production. Like all great poets, 
 but in a higher degree than most, he pos- 
 sessed that inborn fine sense of the fit- 
 ness of things, of harmony, of justice. 
 He needed not to seek laboriously for 
 tragic effects, and he ran no risk of 
 choosing the wrong means. It did not 
 occur to him to excite in his hearers emo- 
 tions which had not thrilled the depths of 
 his own soul; it was impossible for him 
 to disguise himself, to exaggerate. That 
 effect of pity and of fear which at once 
 harrows and relieves us, and which con- 
 stitutes the essence of tragedy, he had 
 himself often enough felt ; he needed but 
 to look into his own heart to see what 
 means were required to produce it. But 
 even this represents the matter too 
 objectively. When matter like that of 
 
214 Shakespeare as Tragic Writer. 
 
 "Hamlet," of "Othello," of ''Lear," took 
 possession of him, conquered for a time 
 a supreme place in his inner world, a 
 certain necessity constrained an adjust- 
 ment, an assimilation, of this matter to 
 the laws which governed that inner 
 world. The transformation of the adven- 
 tures, the character, the destiny, of the 
 hero was accomplished with restless 
 energy, yet in great part unconsciously, 
 in consonance with those laws; and in 
 the dramatic conception there arose in 
 indissolubly close connection the tragic 
 idea and the plan of the tragic action. 
 
 For Shakespeare it was a matter of 
 course that tragic suffering cannot be a 
 thing of accident, that it must be brought 
 about by the sufferer's own deeds ; for to 
 him it was a matter of profound signifi- 
 cance, not a mere cruel sport of chance. 
 It was a matter of course that the tragic 
 catastrophe presupposed the insoluble- 
 ness of the preceding conflict. Tragic 
 necessity was an axiom in the code of his 
 
Shakespeare as Tragic Writer. 215 
 
 poetic logic — one upon which he may, 
 perhaps, never have reflected, but which 
 formed, nevertheless, the groundwork of 
 all his reflections: necessary connection 
 between the sufferings of the hero and the 
 conflict into which his deeds throw him 
 with the powers and the laws of the 
 world about him ; necessary connection 
 between the actions of the hero and his 
 inmost nature as it is shaped and devel- 
 oped by the circumstances of his contact 
 with the outer world. 
 
 In his tragedies Shakespeare uncon- 
 sciously followed the same fundamental 
 laws which governed the great tragedians 
 of classical antiquity. But these funda- 
 mental laws allow a wide latitude to the 
 individuality of the poet, and the form, 
 which is determined by the conditions of 
 time and place. Many varieties, there- 
 fore, may be conceived in the domain of 
 tragedy. Shakespearean tragedy bears, 
 primarily, the family traits of his dramas, 
 of the English drama in general of the 
 
2i6 Shakespeare as Tragic Writer. 
 
 time; it has its broad, realistic basis, its 
 abundance of reflection of real life. 
 
 A work of art can offer us but a seg- 
 ment of the world, of reality; but if all 
 great poets have known how to round 
 this fragment, and invest it with an ideal 
 significance which shapes it into a perfect 
 whole, into a sort of a microcosm, an 
 image of the great world, we see Shakes- 
 peare, besides this, ceaselessly endeavor- 
 ing to extend as far as possible the 
 boundaries of his microcosm. 
 
 By means of a thousand little artifices 
 which serve this purpose our fancy is trans- 
 ported to actions and scenes beyond those 
 actually presented before us, to actions 
 of the past, to scenes beyond the boards. 
 I shall only remind you here of Capulet's 
 feast in "Romeo and Juliet," of the brief 
 scene between Capulet's servants which 
 precedes the appearance of the guests, 
 where the excitement and disorder pre- 
 vailing on the stage give us a sense of the 
 reality of the feast which is held behind 
 
Shakespeare as Tragic Writer. 217 
 
 the scene ; and, further, the short colloquy 
 between Capulet and his nephew, the 
 natural, everyday tone of which makes 
 the present moment seem but a link in a 
 long chain of years of their hfe ; of the 
 nurse's narrative of Juliet's childhood — 
 and how many similar instances might 
 be mentioned! Most distinctly of this 
 nature is the art wherewith Shakespeare 
 always so shapes the utterances of new 
 personages on the scene, be it in mono- 
 logue or dialogue, that we are trans- 
 ported in the most natural manner into 
 the midst of the thing that occupies 
 them. In the monologues the intention 
 of the poet has sometimes been misun- 
 derstood; as, for instance, in Hamlet's 
 famous "To be, or not to be," where even 
 eminent players often disregard the fact 
 that the opening words of the monologue 
 do not form the beginning of Hamlet's 
 soliloquy, but are the result of reflections 
 directly preceding them whose substance, 
 though suppressed, is necessarily in- 
 
2i8 Shakespeare as Tragic Writer, 
 
 ferred from what is uttered. The effect 
 produced by all these and similar artifices 
 is that no doubt can spring up in our 
 minds as to the reality of what we see 
 and hear. If it is a question of the narra- 
 tion of an occurrence which we have either 
 not ourselves seen, or the truth of which 
 it is hard for us to believe in spite of hav- 
 ing seen it, the poet never fails to give us 
 a conviction of its reality by making the 
 narrators introduce all sorts of insignifi- 
 cant details that they remember; often, 
 too, by making the narrators deviate from 
 each other in such minor details. Let us 
 hear how Hamlet questions those who 
 have informed him of the apparition of 
 the ghost, questions them about the par- 
 ticulars : 
 
 Hajnlet. Arm'd, say you ? 
 
 Marcellus. ) . , , . . 
 
 „ , V Arm d, my lord. 
 
 Bernardo, S 
 
 Hamlet. From top to toe ? 
 
 . ' \ My lord, from head to foot. 
 
 Bernardo. S ^ 
 
 Hamlet. Then saw you not his face ? 
 
Shakespeare as Tragic Writer. 219 
 
 Horatio. O, yes, my lord ; he wore his beaver 
 
 up. 
 Hamlet. What, look'd he frowningly ? 
 Horatio. A countenance more in sorrow than 
 
 in anger. 
 Hamlet. Pale or red } 
 Horatio. Nay, very pale. 
 
 Ha??tlet. And fix'd his eyes upon you ? 
 
 Horatio. Most constantly. 
 Hamlet. I would I had been there. 
 
 Horatio. It would have much amazed you. 
 Hamlet. Very like, very like. Stay'd it long ? 
 Horatio. While one with moderate haste might 
 
 tell a hundred. 
 Marcellus. ) .. 
 Bernardo. \ ^""g"''' '""Ser. 
 Horatio. Not when I saw't. 
 Hamlet. His beard was grizzled, — no } 
 
 Horatio. It was, as I have seen it in his life, 
 A sable silver'd. 
 
 Ha7nlet. I will watch to-night ; 
 
 Perchance 'twill v/alk again. 
 
 Of still greater significance to the under- 
 lying character of Shakespearean tragedy 
 than the instances cited was the custom 
 of the stage of the time to extend the 
 dramatic action itself beyond the limits 
 customary with the ancients, and with 
 other imitators of them. The latter, as a 
 
2 20 Shakespeare as Tragic Writer. 
 
 rule, really represent only the crisis of the 
 action ; that which has preceded belongs 
 among the presumptions which the spec- 
 tator learns by means of narrative or refer- 
 ence; the English actually represented 
 everything that bore any essential rela- 
 tion to the plot. 
 
 Matchless in this connection is the art 
 with which Shakespeare contracts wide- 
 spreading matter, condenses the dramatic 
 action ; the way in which by the simplest 
 means, — by alternately introducing paral- 
 lel motives and parallel scenes, by fore- 
 shadowing to us at the appropriate time 
 what is to come, — he produces the illusion 
 that we have really beheld in all the pleni- 
 tude of life even those parts of the action 
 which he has depicted merely with a few 
 strokes. A few short scenes, outwardly 
 separated by others, but in reality most 
 closely connected, suffice to create an illu- 
 sion of abundant and continuous action. 
 And, withal, we completely lose our sense 
 of the measure of time. In the study of 
 
Shakespeare as Tragic Writer. 221 
 
 the reckoning of time in Shakespeare's 
 works, to which recent English research 
 seems particularly inclined to devote it- 
 self, it becomes evident that in many of 
 his dramas, perhaps in a majority of them, 
 a double reckoning of time prevails. This 
 appears with especial clearness in "King 
 Lear." If we follow the scenes in which 
 the king appears, from the point where 
 Goneril first shows her disregard toward 
 him to the night when he wanders shelter- 
 less upon the heath, and calculate the 
 time that has elapsed between these two 
 periods, we shall find that it comprises 
 but a limited number of hours — at most a 
 few days. During this same time, how- 
 ever, Cordelia in France has received in- 
 formation of the base treatment her 
 father has experienced, has found oppor- 
 tunity to communicate with Kent by let- 
 ter, nay, more, French troops have already 
 landed on the British coast. But what 
 does it matter? What spectator that fol- 
 lows the fortunes of Lear with ever-in- 
 
22 2 Shakespeare as Tragic Writer. 
 
 creasing sympathy will think of verifying 
 the poet's reckoning of the time necessary 
 for the development of those fortunes? 
 Shakespeare well knew that time is reck- 
 oned only by thoughts and experiences. 
 
 The wealth of substance offered us in 
 "Lear" comports well with the idea that 
 much might be happening in other places 
 at the same time. 
 
 No poet ever better understood than 
 Shakespeare how to utilize for the highest 
 purposes of his art the constitution of the 
 stage which was at his disposal, and the 
 dramatic tradition to which he attached 
 himself. The ideality of space which 
 characterized the English stage of that 
 time, and of which the ideality of time is 
 a necessary corollary, the ability of the 
 prevailing drama to include a long chain 
 of events throughout its entire course, per- 
 mitted Shakespeare in tragedy to follow 
 his inner bent, which impelled him to the 
 psychological side of his subject. It per- 
 mitted him to represent, as he loved to 
 
Shakespeare as Tragic Writer. 223 
 
 do, the evolution of a passion from its 
 first beginnings to its climax ; and not 
 seldom reaching still farther back, to show 
 us the soil in which it was to take root. 
 It permitted him to show us a character 
 unfolding before our eyes under the 
 reciprocal influence of deed and experi- 
 ence, of action and environment. It 
 enabled him thus in his tragedies to lay 
 the chief weight upon the connection 
 between the character and the acts of 
 the tragic hero, or, what is the same 
 thing, to devote the best part of his 
 powers and endeavors to the dramatic 
 unfolding of his characters. 
 
 If we study Shakespeare's tragedies as 
 far as "King Lear" in their chronological 
 order, we see how the poet grows ever 
 more clearly conscious of his real voca- 
 tion, of his real^ strength ; how, ever more 
 decidedly, he makes the tragic conflict 
 center in the soul of his hero. 
 
 With "Romeo and Juliet" we have 
 already occupied ourselves in a former 
 
2 24 Shakespeare as Tragic Writer. 
 
 lecture. In the extremely simple con- 
 flict of this tragedy the antagonistic 
 powers of the outside world and those 
 that determine the action of the main 
 characters play an equal part, and the 
 tragic theme did not in itself demand a 
 special display of. character study, much 
 as Shakespeare accomplished even here 
 in the way of psychological subtility. 
 
 In "Julius Caesar" our interest centers 
 in the ideal figure of Brutus, the embodi- 
 ment of manly loftiness of thought, of 
 manly honor, full of the sense of duty, 
 full of moderation and self-control, full 
 of self-denial — Brutus, who lacks nothing 
 but practical insight into the men and 
 things of this world. 
 
 And the tragedy of his fate lies in this : 
 that precisely in consequence of his high 
 sentiments he falls under the influence 
 of men cleverer, more keen-sighted, but 
 morally far inferior; that precisely in 
 consequence of his feeling of duty he is 
 plunged into the most agonizing conflict 
 
Shakespeare as Tragic Writer. 225 
 
 of duties, and, apparently through self- 
 denial, comes to a fatal decision; that 
 from his sense of virtue he aims at an 
 unattainable end, and in the pursuance 
 of this end uses means repellent to his 
 nature and which cover him with re- 
 proach, while, at the same time, they fail 
 of their purpose. It is a painful spec- 
 tacle to see this noble stoic share the 
 vulgar error of all conspirators. How 
 thrilling do the words "j5"/ tu, Brute T' 
 sound coming from Csesar's lips! Brutus 
 become the murderer of his benefactor! 
 And most depressing is the ever clearer 
 consciousness that the crime was com- 
 mitted in vain. Brutus' life becomes a 
 chain of disappointments. In place of 
 Caesar his country has now civil war and 
 a new triumvirate, the source of new 
 civil wars and of new tyranny. Ever 
 more hopeless grows the struggle of the 
 idealist with harsh reality. To his grief 
 over the consequences of his deed, the 
 failure of his plans, the downfall of the 
 
226 Shakespeare as Tragic Writer, 
 
 republic, are added sorrows of another 
 kind: he loses his Portia. But the stoic 
 stifles his grief, masters his feelings, con- 
 tinues to do to the end what he deems 
 his duty. And finally, when all is over, 
 he rejoices in the thought that he has 
 never in the whole course of his life met 
 any who have proved unfaithful to him, 
 and he falls upon his sword exclaiming: 
 
 " Caesar, now be still : 
 I kill'd not thee with half so good a will." 
 
 But though Brutus is the chief char- 
 acter in the tragedy, it bears its title 
 "Julius Caesar" not in vain. Mightier 
 than all the personages of the drama does 
 the idea prove that was projected into 
 the world by Caesar and represented by 
 him. In vain do Brutus and his friends 
 combat against it ; they are annihilated 
 in the struggle. And the less adequate 
 its embodiment, the more distinctly does 
 the full significance of the idea as such 
 stand out. Or, to be more explicit, it is 
 
Shakespeare as Tragic Writer. 227 
 
 embodied not so much in Caesar's person 
 as in his position, his power, in the judg- 
 ment, the mood, the character, of the 
 people. Hence the significance in this 
 tragedy of the gatherings of the populace, 
 scenes which are at once eminently char- 
 acteristic and intensely dramatic. If 
 Shakespeare be guilty of serious errors 
 as to the outward usages, nay, in indi- 
 vidual instances as to the views, the 
 manners, of the Romans, that which is 
 really typical of the time and situation 
 he reproduces with historic fidelity. 
 
 In Hamlet also Shakespeare gives us 
 an idealist, one who is placed amid sur- 
 roundings incongruous with his nature, 
 who sees himself confronted with a prob- 
 lem to which he is not equal and which 
 proves his ruin. Here, too, it is a ques- 
 tion of regicide. Brutus murders Caesar, 
 who has been like a father to him. Ham- 
 let has the death of his father to avenge. 
 Both feel themselves called upon to set 
 right the time which is out, of joint. But 
 
2 28 Shakespeare as Tragic Writer. 
 
 Brutus thinks it possible to solve his in- 
 soluble problem. Hamlet feels that he is 
 unequal to the task forced upon him and 
 which he must recognize as a duty. 
 Brutus errs in his assumption, as he does 
 in his choice of means. Hamlet's vision 
 is theoretically far clearer, but as he can- 
 not gather himself up to make a decision, 
 he does not even reach the point of fram- 
 ing a plan. Both are endowed with pro- 
 foundly moral natures, spirits delicately 
 attuned. Brutus has the self-control and 
 the energy which Hamlet lacks; Hamlet, 
 the deeper insight into the relations of 
 things and into his own conscience which 
 Brutus docs not possess. 
 
 In "Julius Caesar" we have, besides the 
 general human interest, the powerful his- 
 torical interest attaching to the time. In 
 "Hamlet" the problem is treated in its 
 most universal significance, and presented 
 with a depth which will remain unfathomed 
 for all time. What experiences of Shakes- 
 peare's past and present formed the basis 
 
Shakespeare as Tragic Writer. 229 
 
 of the mood which gave birth to Hamlet, 
 what elements impelled him to descend 
 deeper than he had ever done before into 
 the abysses of his own soul, will perhaps 
 forever remain a mystery. 
 
 And a mystery, to a certain extent, will 
 the character of Hamlet also, and the real 
 intention of the poet, remain. Though 
 Goethe, in his "Wilhelm Meister," has 
 given us the key to the solution, it seems 
 as if we had not since then penetrated 
 much farther into the heart of the sanctu- 
 ary. It is, of course, not my intention to 
 hastily swell the list of the already innu- 
 merable Hamlet commentaries whose 
 strength lies wholly in criticism, their 
 weakness in positive construction. This 
 much, however, I shall permit myself to 
 express as my firm conviction : that 
 Goethe's statement of the main problem, 
 much as it may leave in the dark, yet 
 rightly defines the limits within which the 
 gist of it lies. When Goethe, referring to 
 Hamlet and his task, says that the impos- 
 
230 Shakespeare as Tragic Writer. 
 
 sible is demanded of him, — not the impos- 
 sible in itself, but that which is impossible 
 to him, — he traces, as precisely as may- 
 be, the delicate line which investigation 
 should follow, and from which it is apt to 
 deviate. As regards later interpretations, 
 like that of Werder, who finds the essen- 
 tial feature of the tragic conflict in the 
 objective difficulties which confront Ham- 
 let, and believes the point to be that 
 Claudius, the murderer and usurper, is to 
 be punished, while, at the same time, the 
 world is given sufficient legal proof, proof 
 beyond all justifiable question, of his 
 guilt — as regards this and similar inter- 
 pretations, I shall simply remark that 
 Shakespeare evidently had no such 
 thought in his mind, for he obstinately 
 disdains to use the occasions which offer 
 themselves to express such an intention. 
 At no point does he show us Hamlet 
 occupied with a real examination of his 
 task, with a discussion of its actual nature 
 and extent, of the means at his command 
 
Shakespeare as Tragic Writer. 231 
 
 to accomplish it, of the difficulties inher- 
 ent in the undertaking. Now I firmly 
 maintain under all circumstances the prin- 
 ciple that it is not the proper method to 
 drag to the light, nay, more, to sub'nit to 
 a microscopic analysis and to take as a 
 starting point of investigation, things that 
 Shakespeare intentionally or unintention- 
 ally leaves in the dark. That which he 
 considers of moment Shakespeare ex- 
 presses clearly enough ; what he leaves 
 unexpressed cannot have been deemed 
 essential by him, and should, therefore, 
 not be so regarded by us. 
 
 The essence of the Hamlet problem 
 must, then, lie in the character of the hero 
 as it was shaped by the portentous events 
 which precede the dramatic action, and as 
 it is further developed before our eyes by 
 the problem which confronts him. But 
 this character, although transparent, is so 
 profound that no one has ever yet fath- 
 omed its depths. 
 
 Hamlet remains a mystery, but it is 
 
232 Shakespeare as Tragic Writer. 
 
 irresistibly attractive in that we feel that 
 it is not an artificially created mystery, but 
 one founded upon the nature of things. 
 We recognize the inherent reality of this 
 character, even though we despair of ever 
 exhaustively interpreting it. And, above 
 all, we feel the universal validity, the 
 typicalness, of Hamlet. As he thought 
 and felt, or in some like manner, have we 
 all at some time thought and felt and 
 acted, or rather failed to act. An inward 
 conflict of the most universal significance 
 is here depicted with unsurpassed veracity 
 and with a realistic abundance of detail. 
 It is this which gives "Hamlet" a pre- 
 eminent charm among Shakespeare's 
 great tragedies. "Othello," "Macbeth," 
 "Lear," are not less profound, not less 
 grandly conceived, not less dramatic; 
 nay, they are, in these respects, in part 
 superior to "Hamlet." But a psycho- 
 logical delineation carried out in such 
 detail, such a wealth of traits taken from 
 nature's self, of traits which compel us to 
 
Shakespeare as Tragic Writer. 233 
 
 descend into the depths of our own 
 hearts, we find in "Hamlet" alone. The 
 highest realism, nay, naturalism, here 
 attains highest poetic effect; but it is the 
 realism of a Shakespeare applied to the 
 most ideal of subjects, to that Hamlet 
 whom he endowed with a greater abun- 
 dance of the treasures hidden in the 
 depths of his own soul than fell to the 
 lot of any hero before or after him. 
 
 "Othello" is one of the tragedies in 
 which the hero plays a more passive role 
 during the first half of the drama, until 
 the climax is reached ; nor could it be 
 otherwise in a tragedy of jealousy. But 
 all the more decidedly is it his own 
 action — the abduction of Desdemona — 
 which prepares the ground where his 
 jealousy may take root ; all the more 
 decidedly his own action which causes 
 the tragic catastrophe; and that which 
 compels him to this last deed is the over- 
 mastering power of a ruling passion, and 
 that the most terrible of passions, which 
 
234 Shakespeare as Tragic Writer. 
 
 rends his soul with a maddening tyranny. 
 And let us not overlook the fact that the 
 central point of the dramatic conflict lies 
 here absolutely in the character of the 
 hero. Outward influence is limited to 
 lago's plot, conceived, to be sure, with 
 demoniac cunning: a little more knowl- 
 edge of human nature, a little more 
 keen-sightedness, a little sang-froid, and 
 Othello would have torn asunder the net 
 which was tightening about him. Let 
 us observe, too, that Shakespeare often, 
 and most in his most powerful tragedies, 
 shows us the tragic passion which springs 
 of necessity from the hero's nature to 
 be in direct opposition to that nature. 
 Othello's jealousy, his unfounded sus- 
 picion, cannot be explained simply on 
 the ground of a certain spiritual narrow- 
 ness; but essentially on the ground of his 
 being of an open, high-minded, confiding 
 nature. Not knowing what it is to dis- 
 simulate, he does not believe in lago's 
 dissimulation. And it is just because the 
 
Shakespeare as Tragic Writer. 235 
 
 passion aroused within him is contrary 
 to his nature that it exerts so fearful and 
 destructive an influence upon him. 
 
 We observe the same thing in "Mac- 
 beth." In this play Shakespeare pro- 
 pounded to himself one of the most 
 difficult problems that any tragic poet 
 has ever had to deal with. Until then 
 his tragic heroes had been such that they 
 could all say of themselves, as Lear does 
 later: 
 
 " I am a man more sinn'd against than sinning." 
 
 To Macbeth, the regicide, the usurper, the 
 bloody tyrant, this cannot be applied. 
 How could Shakespeare dare to make 
 a figure like Macbeth the hero of a 
 tragedy? How has he succeeded in 
 arousing for this hero the sympathies, 
 enlisting for him the deep feelings, of the 
 beholder? Admirable is the lofty way 
 in which he disdains all outward help, 
 all petty artifices, and leads the problem 
 back to its simplest, most difficult, pro- 
 
236 Shakespeare as Tragic Writer. 
 
 foundest form, and solves it in all its pro- 
 fundity. He suppresses every feature 
 furnished by his source which could palli- 
 ate or excuse Macbeth's deed, that fatal 
 deed, the murder of Duncan, from which 
 all the others flow. And this he does not 
 merely tacitly by his manner of present- 
 ing the personages of the action and 
 their relation to each other. No ; in dis- 
 tinct words does he tell us that Duncan 
 was the gentlest, the most just, of princes, 
 who has heaped honors upon Macbeth, 
 and, in token of his favor, visits him in 
 his castle and there sleeps confidingly 
 under his roof; he tells us expressly that 
 everything seems to deter Macbeth from 
 his deed, that nothing impels him to it but 
 his ambition alone. And he tells us this 
 by the mouth of Macbeth himself. It is 
 Macbeth who is his own accuser; he pre- 
 sents the tragic problem to us in all its 
 fearful clearness; and this it is that at 
 once gives us the solution. For in the 
 fact that Macbeth accuses himself before 
 
Shakespeare as Tragic Writer. 237 
 
 he does the deed, that he does nothing to 
 palh'ate the crime in his own eyes, that he 
 is filled with agony and dread as he 
 clutches his dagger and makes his way to 
 Duncan's chamber, we see that he is not 
 a cold-blooded murderer, but the victim of 
 an overpowering passion which takes com- 
 plete possession of his vivid imagination, 
 summons up before him dismal pictures 
 more fearful than reality, holds him under 
 a spell from which he seeks to free him- 
 self by his deed. And this passion, ambi- 
 tion, springing from the justifiable self- 
 esteem of this heroic nature, yes, this truly 
 royal nature — had Macbeth been born in 
 the purple — fanned by the prophecy of 
 the witches, nourished by the influence of 
 his wife, develops itself to a degree and 
 exhibits itself in a way directly opposed 
 to his heroic nature and destructive of its 
 very essence. 
 
 Grand and moving is the simplicity 
 with which Shakespeare has endowed his 
 hero as it manifests itself in the words 
 
238 Shakespeare as Tragic Writer. 
 
 which Macbeth speaks after Banquo's 
 apparition : 
 
 " Blood hath been shed ere now, i' th* olden time, 
 Ere humane statute purged the gentle weal ; 
 Ay, and since too, murders have been perform'd 
 Too terrible for th' ear : the time has been, 
 That, when the brains were out, the man would 
 
 die, 
 And there an end ; but now they rise again, 
 With twenty mortal murders on their crowns, 
 And push us from our stools : this is more strange 
 Than such a murder is." 
 
 In *'King Lear" Shakespeare presents 
 to us a strange mixture of strength and 
 weakness, of heroism and childlike help- 
 lessness, of manly passion and childish 
 willfulness, in the figure of that royal old 
 man who, too late, is compelled to go 
 through the hard school of life, too late 
 sees his illusions destroyed by rude reality, 
 and is thus driven into madness. Noth- 
 ing can be more tragic than the fate of 
 this king, who, so accustomed to un- 
 bounded obedience that opposition puts 
 him beside himself, nevertheless renounces 
 
Shakespeare as Tragic Writer. 239 
 
 his power, divides his realm among his 
 children, — and such children ! — and thinks, 
 withal, that he can maintain his conse- 
 quence undiminished to his death ; noth- 
 ing more tragic than this man to whom 
 love is such an infinite necessity and who 
 yet has never known genuine love; who 
 only learns to know it when, enraged by 
 his wounded self-love, he has cast a being 
 indispensable to him, his Cordelia, from 
 him, and experiences in his other children 
 what filial ingratitude, unnatural selfish- 
 ness, mean ; who first begins to recognize 
 the world in its true shape, in all its base- 
 ness, at a moment when darkness is begin- 
 ning to gather over his own spirit. And 
 thus Lear, with whose soul Nature with 
 her varying moods seems in league, wan- 
 ders forth through the night — a physical, 
 spiritual, moral night, illumined only by 
 fearful lightning flashes — until he finds the 
 light once more in the arms of his Cor- 
 delia. But' only for a short space does 
 this newly regained happiness endure; 
 
240 Shakespeare as Tragic Writer. 
 
 the light is again extinguished, a horrible 
 fatality snatches his daughter from him, 
 and, in the infinite despair of an una- 
 vailing grief, Lear himself yields up 
 his breath. And as a parallel to Lear 
 Shakespeare gives us Gloucester, who has 
 sinned in blind passion, and for whom the 
 just gods have created of the fruit of his 
 sin an instrument to scourge him with; 
 who allows himself to be insnared by the 
 devilish cunning of his bastard son, Ed- 
 mund, and thrusts his legitimate son, the 
 noble Edgar, from him ; who, like Lear, 
 recognizes his injustice only when it is 
 too late; who, in consequence of Ed- 
 mund's treachery, is robbed of his sight, 
 and now feels his spirit, too, sinking into 
 darkness, and, despairing of divine justice, 
 wants to put an end to his life, but, under 
 the wise and gentle guidance of his repu- 
 diated son, learns the duty of sufferance, 
 of humble submission to a higher power, 
 and regains his faith in the gods and in 
 humanity. 
 
Shakespeare as Tragic Writer. 241 
 
 "King Lear" is, taken as a whole, the 
 mightiest work that Shakespeare pro- 
 duced. It is not only the most tragic 
 among his tragedies, but, at the same time, 
 the one in which his power of construc- 
 tion, his skill in dramatic condensation, 
 achieve their greatest triumphs. In no 
 other of his works do we find crowded 
 together such a wealth of important char- 
 acters and events. And how has the poet 
 succeeded in interweaving all his motives, 
 and in forming inwardly and outwardly 
 a consistent unit out of all this abun- 
 dance ! And how from beginning to end 
 is the execution maintained at the high 
 level of the conception ! How does the 
 language of the poet rise to every situa- 
 tion, every mood ! 
 
 There is nothing which has the power 
 to thrill us to the innermost fibers of our 
 being like that scene where the aged 
 king, falling into madness, exposed to the 
 fury of the elements upon the waste 
 heath, bids these elements defiance, and 
 
242 Shakespeare as Tragic Writer. 
 
 conjures them to wreak their vengeance 
 upon a thankless, sinful humanity which 
 his curse would destroy in the germ. I 
 say there is nothing as thrilling as this 
 scene, unless it be that other scene 
 where the tragic suspense, having reached 
 its utmost bounds, resolves itself in 
 tears when Lear and Cordelia meet 
 again. 
 
 "Lear" is also among all Shakespeare's 
 tragedies the most profound. In no 
 other work does the poet present the 
 great world-mystery in such lofty sym- 
 bols, with such remorseless truth. The 
 world into which he introduces us is im- 
 pelled by wild passion, rude pleasures, 
 coldly calculating egoism. In the fate 
 of its inhabitants is seen clearly the hand 
 of Nemesis: the wicked fall victims to 
 their own crimes; but is there not also 
 revealed the rule of a benign Providence 
 in the fortunes of Lear, and, above all, 
 in the lot of Cordelia? Or do we, per- 
 haps, rather receive the impression to 
 
Shakespeare as Tragic Writer. 243 
 
 which Gloucester lends words when he 
 says: 
 
 " As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods — 
 They kill us for their sport." 
 
 The poet does not deny a Providence, — 
 he believes in a divine government of the 
 world, — but he is content to worship in 
 humility the mystery in which it en- 
 shrouds itself. He paints the world as he 
 sees it, and it appears dark to him ; but 
 it is at night that the stars become 
 visible. 
 
 "Nothing almost sees miracles but 
 misery," says Kent ; but the miracle con- 
 sists in this: that in misery human forti- 
 tude is best developed, that virtue, like 
 a lovely lily, springs forth out of the 
 common slough of depravity. Gloucester 
 only learns to know in his wretchedness 
 the true worth of man and of life, and 
 Lear then first experiences what love 
 means. The optimism which the poet 
 does not renounce even in "Lear" is of a 
 
244 Shakespeare as Tragic Writer. 
 
 purely ethical nature; he appeals to our 
 conscience. In loud tones he preaches 
 the duty of resigned endurance, of manly 
 steadfastness, of strenuous moral con- 
 duct; he makes us feel how the Good, 
 totally regardless of any outward suc- 
 cess, is in itself a thing most real, to be 
 striven for above all other things. He 
 strengthens our faith in virtue and incites 
 us to it in figures like that of Kent, and, 
 above all, in the gracious and lofty figure 
 of Cordelia; he animates us with hope in 
 the eventual triumph of the good in this 
 world in the fortunes of Edgar. 
 
 The picture of the world which Shakes- 
 peare presents to us is illuminated in one 
 way in his tragedy, and in another in his 
 comedy; the deeply religious spirit of the 
 artist is apparent in both — a religiousness 
 whose root and essence lie in his moral 
 sense, and which, therefore, does not need 
 to shut its eyes to unpleasant facts. 
 Shakespeare loves life and is penetrated 
 with a sense of its high worth, but yet, 
 
Shakespeare as Tragic Writer. 245 
 
 like Schiller, he is convinced that life is 
 not the highest good, and he knows that 
 no one can be pronounced happy before 
 his death. To him the best thing on 
 earth is love — self-sacrificing, active ; and 
 he feels that it is infinite love which per- 
 vades and animates the universe. 
 
 With these earnest reflections, accord- 
 ing with the earnestness of the time 
 through which we are passing, let me 
 conclude this series of lectures to which 
 you have had the goodness to listen with 
 such patience and such gratifying inter- 
 est. I should consider myself happy did 
 I dare to say that I had succeeded in 
 bringing the great poet of whom I have 
 been speaking somewhat closer to your 
 understandings, and, above all, to your 
 hearts. 
 
 THE END. 
 
INDEX TO WORKS MENTIONED. 
 
 All's Well that Ends Well, S8. 
 
 Antony and Cleopatra, 90. 
 
 As You Like It, 83, 99, 126. 
 
 Comedy of Errors, 57, 73, 100, 124, 164, 178. 
 
 Coriolanus, 89. 
 
 Cymbeline, 63, 96, 99, 182. 
 
 Hamlet, 56, 62, 63, 86, 217, 227-33. 
 
 Henry IV., 60, 68, 160, 195. 
 
 Henry V., 81. 
 
 Henry VI., 7S. 
 
 Henry VIII., 100. 
 
 Histories, 155-61. 
 
 Julius Ccesar, 55, 56, 63, 85, 224-27. 
 
 King John, 80. 
 
 King Lear, 87, 90, 99, 221, 238-44. 
 
 Love's Labor's Lost, 74, 122, 163, 165, 195. 
 
 Lucrece, 79, 109-12. 
 
 Macbeth, 61, 62, 63, 67, 70, 8^, 90, 235-38. 
 
 Measure for Measure, ZZ, 196. ' 
 
 Merchant of Venice, 14, 81, 85, 185-93. 
 
 Merry Wives of Windsor, 60, 83, 165. 
 
 Midsummer Night's Dream, 56, 78, 100, 196. 
 
 Much Ado about Nothing, 83. 
 
 Othello, 56, 63, Zdy 99, 232, 233-35. 
 
248 Index to Works zMentioneU. 
 
 Pericles, 95, 182. 
 
 Richard II., 81. 
 
 Richard III., 79, 160, 186. 
 
 Romeo and JuHet, 129-51, 211, 216, 223. 
 
 Sonnets, y6, 108. 
 
 Taming of the Shrew, 80, 165. 
 
 Tempest, 96, 99, 182. 
 
 Two Gentlemen of Verona, 76, 212. 
 
 Timon of Athens, 94. 
 
 Titus Andronicus, 71, 211. 
 
 Troilus and Cressida, 91-93. 
 
 Twelfth Night, 83, 99, 128. 
 
 Venus and Adonis, 79, 109. 
 
 Winter's Tale, 55, 63, 96, 99, 182. 
 
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