Chapter 13

THE PLAYS OF THE THIRD PERIOD--TRAGEDY

The Second and Third periods slightly overlap; for _Julius Caesar_, the first play of the later group, was probably written before _Twelfth Night_ and _As You Like It_. But the change in the character of the plays in these two periods is sharp and decisive, like the change from day to night. Shakespeare has studied the sunlight of human cheerfulness and found it a most interesting problem; now in the mysterious starlight and shadow of human suffering he finds a problem more interesting still.

The three comedies of this period, partly on account of their bitter and sarcastic tone, are not widely read nor usually very much admired; but the great tragedies are the poet's finest work and scarcely equaled in the history of the world.

+Troilus and Cressida+.--Here the story centers around the siege of ancient Troy by the Greeks. Its hero, Troilus, is a young son of Priam, high-spirited and enthusiastic, who is in love with Cressida, daughter of a Trojan priest. Pandarus, Cressida's uncle, acts as go-between for the lovers. Just as the suit of Troilus is crowned with success, Cressida, from motives of policy, is forced to join her father Calchas, who is in the camp of the besieging Greeks. Here her fickle and sensuous nature reveals itself rapidly. She yields to {173} the love of the Greek commander Diomed and promises to become his mistress. Troilus learns of this, consigns her to oblivion, and attempts, but unsuccessfully, to take revenge on Diomed.

While this love story is progressing, meetings are going on between the Greek and Trojan warriors; a vivid picture is given of conditions in the Greek camp during the truce, and particularly of the insolent pride of Achilles. The story ends with the resumption of hostilities, the slaying of Hector by Achilles, and the resolution of Troilus to revenge his brother's death.

It is very difficult to understand what Shakespeare meant by this play. If it is a tragedy, why do the hero and heroine meet with no special disaster at the end, and why do we feel so little sympathy for the misfortunes of any one in the play? If it is a comedy, why is its sarcastic mirth made more bitter than tears, and why does it end with the death of its noblest minor character and with the violation of all poetic justice? From beginning to end it is the story of disillusion, for it sorts all humanity into two great classes, fools who are cheated and knaves who cheat. Some people think that Shakespeare wrote it in a gloomy, pessimistic mood, with the sardonic laughter of a disappointed, world-wearied man. Others, on rather doubtful grounds, believe it a covert satire on some of Shakespeare's fellow dramatists.

+Authorship+.--It is generally agreed that a small part of this play is by another author. The Prologue and most of the Fifth Act are usually considered non-Shakespearean. They differ from the rest of the play in many details of vocabulary, meter, and style.

{174}

+Date+.--_Troilus and Cressida_ must have been written before 1603, for in the spring of that year an entry in regard to it was made in the Stationers' Register. It must have been written after 1601, for it alludes (Prologue, ll. 23-25) to the Prologue of Jonson's _Poetaster_, a play published in that year. Hence the date of composition would fall during or slightly before 1602. The First Quarto was not published until 1609.

+Sources+.--The main source of this drama was the narrative poem _Troilus and Criseyde_ by Chaucer. Contrary to his custom, Shakespeare has degraded the characters of his original, instead of ennobling them. The camp scenes are adapted from Caxton's _Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye_; and the challenge of Hector was taken from some translation of Homer, probably that by Chapman. An earlier lost play on this subject by Dekker and Chettle is mentioned in contemporary reference. We do not know whether Shakespeare drew anything from it or not. Scattered hints were probably taken from other sources, as the story of Troy was very popular in the Middle Ages.

+All's Well That Ends Well+.--When a beautiful and noble-minded young woman falls in love with a contemptible scoundrel, forgives his rebuffs, compromises her own dignity to win his affection, and finally persuades him to let her throw herself away on him,--is the result a romance or a tragedy? This is a nice question; and by the answer to it we must determine whether _All's Well That Ends Well_ is a romantic comedy like _Twelfth Night_ or a satirical comedy bitter as tragedy, like _Troilus and Cressida_.

Helena, a poor orphan girl, has been brought up by the kindly old Countess of Rousillon, and cherishes a deep affection for the Countess's son Bertram, though he neither suspects it nor returns it. She saves the life of the French king, and he in gratitude allows her {175} to choose her husband from among the noblest young lords of France. Her choice falls on Bertram. Being too politic to offend the king, he reluctantly marries her, but forsakes her on their wedding day to go to the wars. At parting he tells her that he will never accept her as a wife until she can show him his ring on her finger and has a child by him. By disguising herself as a young woman whom Bertram is attempting to seduce, Helena subsequently fulfills the terms of his hard condition. Later, before the king of France she reminds him of his promise, shows his ring in her possession, and states that she is with child by him. The count, outwitted, and in fear of the king's wrath, repentantly accepts her as his wife; and at the end Helena is expected to live happily forever after.

Disagreeable as the plot is when told in outline, it is redeemed in the actual play by the beautiful character given to the heroine. But this, while it vastly tones down the disgusting side of the story, only increases the bitter pathos which is latent there. The more lovely and admirable Helena is, the more she is unfitted for the unworthy part which she is forced to act and the man with whom she is doomed to end her days. A modern thinker could easily read into this "comedy" the world-old bitterness of pearls before swine.

+Date+.--No quarto of this comedy exists, nor is there any mention of such a play as _All's Well That Ends Well_ before the publication of the First Folio in 1623. A play of Shakespeare's called _Love's Labour's Won_ is mentioned by Francis Meres in 1598; and many think that this was the present comedy under another name. However, the meter, style, and mood of most of the play seem to indicate a later date. The {176} most common theory is that a first version was written before 1598, and that this was rewritten in the early part of the author's third period. This would put the date of the play in its present form somewhere around 1602.

+Sources+.--The story is taken from Boccaccio's _Decameron_ (ninth novel of the third day). It was translated into English by Painter in his _Palace of Pleasure_, where our author probably read it. Shakespeare has added the Countess, Parolles, and one or two minor characters. The conception of the heroine has been greatly ennobled. It is a question whether the bitter tone of the play is due to the dramatist's intention or is the unforeseen result of reducing Boccaccio's improbable story to a living possibility.

+Measure for Measure+.--When Hamlet told his guilty mother that he would set her up a glass where she might see the inmost part of her, he was doing for his mother what Shakespeare in _Measure for Measure_ is doing for the lust-spotted world. The play is a trenchant satire on the evils of society. Such realistic pictures of the things that are, but should not be, have always jarred on our aesthetic sense from Aristophanes to Zola, and _Measure for Measure_ is one of the most disagreeable of Shakespeare's plays. But no one can deny its power.

Here, as in _All's Well That Ends Well_, we have one beautiful character, that of Isabella, like a light shining in corruption. Here, too, the wronged Mariana, in order to win back the faithless Angelo, is forced to resort to the same device to which Helena had to stoop. But this play is darker and more savage than its predecessor. Angelo, as a governor, sentencing men to death for the very sin which he as a private man is trying to commit, is contemptible on a huger {177} and more devilish scale than Bertram. Lucio, if not more base than Parolles, is at least more malignant. And Claudio, attempting to save his life by his sister's shame, is an incarnation of the healthy animal joy of life almost wholly divested of the ideals of manhood. In a way, the play ends happily; but it is about as cheerful as the red gleam of sunset which shoots athwart a retreating thunderstorm.

+Date+.--The play was first published in the Folio of 1623. It is generally believed, however, that it was written about 1603. In the first place, the verse tests and general character of the play seem to fit that date; secondly, there are two passages, I, i, 68-73 and II, iv, 27-30, which are usually interpreted as allusions to the attitude of James I toward the people after he came to the throne in 1603; and, thirdly, there are many turns of phrase which remind one of _Hamlet_ and which seem to indicate that the two plays were written near together. Barksted's _Myrrha_ (1607) contains a passage apparently borrowed from this comedy, which helps in determining the latest possible date of composition.

+Sources+.--Shakespeare borrowed his material from a writer named George Whetstone, who in 1578 printed a play, _Promos and Cassandra_, containing most of the story of _Measure for Measure_. In 1582 the same author published a prose version of the story in his _Heptameron of Civil Discourses_. Whetstone in turn borrowed his material, which came originally from the _Hecatommithi_ of Giraldi Cinthio. Shakespeare ennobled the underlying thought as far as he could, and added the character of Mariana.

+Julius Caesar+.--The interest in _Julius Caesar_ does not focus on any one person as completely as in the other great tragedies. Like the chronicle plays which had preceded it, it gives rather a grand panorama of history than the fate of any particular hero. This {178} explains its title. It is not the story of Julius Caesar the man, but of that great political upheaval of which Caesar was cause and center. That upheaval begins with his attempt at despotism and the crown; it reaches its climax in his death, which disturbs the political equilibrium of the whole nation; and at last subsides with the decline and downfall of Caesar's enemies. Shakespeare has departed from history in drawing the character of the great conqueror, making it more weak, vain, and pompous than that of the real man. Yet even in the play "the mightiest Julius" is an impressive figure. Alive, he

"doth bestride the narrow world Like a Colossus";

and his influence, like an unseen force, shapes the fates of the living after he himself is dead.

In so far as the tragedy has any individual hero, that hero is Brutus rather than Caesar himself. Brutus is a man of noble character, but deficient in practical judgment and knowledge of men. With the best of motives he allows Cassius to hoodwink him and draw him into the conspiracy against Caesar. Through the same short-sighted generosity he allows his enemy Antony to address the crowd after Caesar's death, with the result that Antony rouses the people against him and drives him and his fellow conspirators out of Rome. Then when he and Cassius gather an army in Asia to fight with Antony, we find him too impractically scrupulous to raise money by the usual means; and for that reason short of cash and drawn into a quarrel with his brother general. His subsequent {179} death at Philippi is the logical outcome of his own nature, too good for so evil an age, too short-sighted for so critical a position.

Most of the old Roman heroes inspire respect rather than love; and something of their stern impressiveness lingers in the atmosphere of this Roman play. Here and there it has very touching scenes, such as that between Brutus and his page (IV, iii); but in the main it is great, not through its power to elicit sympathetic tears, but through its dignity and grandeur. It is one of the stateliest of tragedies, lofty in language, majestic in movement, logical and cogent in thought. We can never mourn for Brutus and Portia as we do for Romeo and Juliet, or for Lear and Cordelia; but we feel that we have breathed in their company an air which is keen and bracing, and have caught a glimpse of

"The grandeur that was Rome."

+Date+.--We have no printed copy of Julius Caesar earlier than that of the First Folio. Since it was not mentioned by Meres in 1598 and was alluded to in 1601 in John Weever's _Mirrour of Martyrs_, it probably appeared between those two dates. Weever says in his dedication that his work "some two years ago was made fit for the print." This apparently means that he wrote the allusion to _Julius Caesar_ in 1599 and that consequently the play had been produced by then. There is a possible reference to it in Ben Jonson's _Every Man Out of His Humour_, which came out in 1599. Metrical tests and the general character of the play agree with these conclusions. Hence we can put the date between 1599-1601, with a preference for the former year.

+Sources+.--Shakespeare drew his material from North's _Plutarch_, using the lives of Caesar, Brutus, and Antony. He has {180} enlarged the parts of Casca and Lepidus, and made Brutus much nobler than in the original. This last change was a dramatic necessity in order to give the play a hero with whom we could sympathize.

+Hamlet+.--On the surface the story of Hamlet is a comparatively simple one. The young prince is heart-broken over the recent death of his father, and his mother's scandalously hasty marriage to Hamlet's uncle, the usurping sovereign. In this mood he is brought face to face with his father's spirit, told that his uncle was his father's murderer, and given as a sacred duty the task of revenging the crime. To this object he sacrifices all other aims in life--pleasure, ambition, and love. But this savage task is the last one on earth for which his fine-grained nature was fitted. He wastes his energy in feverish efforts which fail to accomplish his purpose, just as many a man wavers helplessly in trying to do something for which nature never intended him. Partly to deceive his enemies, partly to provide a freer expression for his pent-up emotions than the normal conditions of life would justify, he acts the role of one who is mentally deranged. Finally, more by chance than any plan of his own, he achieves his revenge on the king, but not until he himself is mortally wounded. His story is the tragedy of a sensitive, refined, imaginative nature which is required to perform a brutal task in a brutal world.

But around this story as a framework Shakespeare has woven such a wealth of poetry and philosophy that the play has been called the "tragedy of thought." It is in Hamlet's brain that the great action of the drama {181} takes place; the other characters are mere accessories and foils. Here we are brought face to face with the fear and mystery of the future life and the deepest problems of this. It is hardly true to say that Hamlet himself is a philosopher. He gives some very wise advice to the players; but in the main he is grappling problems without solving them, peering into the dark, but bringing from it no definite addition to our knowledge. He represents rather the eternal questioning of the human heart when face to face with the great mysteries of existence; and perhaps this accounts largely for the wide and lasting popularity of the play. Side by side with this deep-souled, earnest man, moving in the shadow of the unseen, with his terrible duties and haunting fears, Shakespeare has placed in intentional mockery the old dotard Polonius, the incarnation of shallow worldly wisdom.

No other play of Shakespeare's has called forth such a mass of comment as this or so many varied interpretations. Neither has any other roused a deeper interest in its readers. The spell which it casts over old and young alike is due partly to the character of the young prince himself, partly to the suggestive mystery with which it invests all problems of life and sorrow.

+Date+.--'A booke called the Revenge of Hamlett' was entered in the Stationers' Register July, 1602. Consequently, Shakespeare's Preliminary version, as represented by the First Quarto, though not printed until 1603, must have been written in or before the spring months of 1602; the second version 1603-1604.

+Sources+.--The plot came originally from the _Historia Danica_, a history of Denmark in Latin, written in the twelfth century {182} by Saxo Grammaticus, a Danish scholar. About 1570 the story was retold in French in Belleforest's _Histoires Tragiques_. Besides his debt to Belleforest, it seems almost certain that Shakespeare drew from an earlier English tragedy of Hamlet by another man. This earlier play is lost; but Nash, a contemporary writer, alludes to it as early as 1589, and Henslowe's Diary records its performance in 1494. Somewhat before 1590, an early dramatist, Thomas Kyd, had written a play called _The Spanish Tragedy_, which, though far inferior to Shakespeare's _Hamlet_, resembled it in many ways. This likeness has caused scholars to suspect that Kyd wrote the early Hamlet; and their suspicions are strengthened by an ambiguous and apparently punning allusion to Æsop's _Kidde_ in the passage by Nash mentioned above. A crude and brutal German play on the subject has been discovered, which is believed by many to be a translation of Kyd's original tragedy. If this is true, it shows how enormously Shakespeare improved on his source.

+Editions+.--A very badly garbled and crude form of this play was printed in 1603, and is known as the First Quarto. A much better one, which contained most of the tragedy as we read it, appeared in 1604, and is called the Second Quarto. Several other quartos followed, for the play was exceedingly popular. The Folio omits certain passages found in the Second Quarto, and introduces certain new ones. Both the new passages and the omitted ones are included in modern editions; so that, as has often been said, our modern _Hamlet_ is longer than any _Hamlet_ which Shakespeare left us. The First Quarto is generally regarded as a pirated copy of Shakespeare's scenario, or first rough draft, of the play.

+Othello+.--This play has often been called the tragedy of jealousy, but that is a misleading statement. Othello, as Coleridge pointed out, is not a constitutionally jealous man, such as Leontes in _The Winter's Tale_. His distrust of his wife is the natural suspicion of a man lost amid new and inexplicable surroundings. {183} Women are proverbially suspicious in business, not because nature made them so, but because, as they are in utter ignorance of standards by which to judge, they feel their helplessness in the face of deceit. Othello feels the same helplessness. Trained up in wars from his cradle, he could tell a true soldier from a traitor at a glance, with the calm confidence of a veteran; but women and their motives are to him an uncharted sea. Suddenly a beautiful young heiress falls in love with him, and leaves home and friends to marry him. He stands on the threshold of a new realm, happy but bewildered. Then comes Iago, his trusted subordinate, --who, as Othello knows, possesses that knowledge of women and of civilian life which he himself lacks,--and whispers in his ear that his bride is false to him; that under this fair veneer lurks the eternal feminine as they had seen it in the common creatures of the camp; that she has fooled her husband as these women have so often fooled his soldiers; and that the rough-and-ready justice of the camp should be her reward. Had Othello any knowledge or experience in such matters to fall back on, he might anchor to that, and become definitely either the trusting husband or the Spartan judge. But as it is, he is whirled back and forth in a maelstrom of agonized doubt, until compass, bearings, and wisdom lost, he ends all in universal shipwreck.

The character of Iago is one of the subtlest studies of intelligent depravity ever created by man. Ostensibly his motive is revenge; but in reality his wickedness seems due rather to a perverted mental activity, unbalanced by heart or conscience. As Napoleon enjoyed manoeuvring armies or Lasker studying chess, so {184} Iago enjoys the sense of his own mental power in handling his human pawns, in feeling himself master of the situation. If he ever had natural affections, they have been atrophied in the pursuit of this devilish game.

With Desdemona the feminine element, which had been negligible in _Julius Caesar_ and thrown into the background in _Hamlet_, becomes a prominent feature, and remains so through the later tragedies. There is a pathetic contrast between the beautiful character of Desdemona and her undeserved fate, just as there is between the real nobility of Othello and the mad act by which he ruins his own happiness. For that reason this is perhaps the most touching of all Shakespeare's tragedies.

+Date+.--The play was certainly published after 1601, for it contains several allusions to Holland's translation of the Latin author Pliny, which appeared in that year. Malone, one of the early editors of Shakespeare, says that _Othello_ was acted at Hallowmas, 1604. We not know on what evidence he based this assertion; but since the metrical tests all point to the same date, his statement is generally accepted. The First Quarto did not appear until 1622, six years after Shakespeare died and one year before the appearance of the First Folio. This was the only play published in quarto between Shakespeare's death and 1623. There are frequent oaths in the Quarto which have been very much modified in the Folio, and this strengthens our belief that the manuscript from which the Quarto was printed was written about 1604, for shortly after that date an act was passed against the use of profanity in plays.

+Sources+.--The plot was taken from Giraldi Cinthio's _Hecatommithi_ (seventh novel of the third decade). A French translation of the Italian was made in 1583-1584, and this Shakespeare may have used. We know of no English translation until {185} years after Shakespeare died. Many details are changed in the play, and the whole story is raised to a far nobler plane. In the original the heroine is beaten to death with a stocking filled with sand; Othello is tortured, but refuses to confess, and later is murdered by his wife's revengeful kinsmen. This crude, bloody, and long-drawn-out story is in striking contrast with the masterly ending of the tragedy.

+King Lear+.--As _Romeo and Juliet_ shows the tragedy of youth, so _Lear_ shows the tragedy of old age. King Lear has probably been a good and able man in his day; but now time has impaired his judgment, and he is made to suffer fearfully for those errors for which nature, and not he, is to blame. Duped by the hypocritical smoothness of his two elder daughters, he gives them all his lands and power; while his youngest daughter Cordelia, who truly loves him, is turned away because she is too honest to humor an old man's whim. The result is what might have been expected. Lear has put himself absolutely into the power of his two older daughters, who are the very incarnation of heartlessness and ingratitude. By their inhuman treatment he is driven out into the night and storm, exposing his white head to a tempest so fierce that even the wild beasts refuse to face it. As a result of exposure and mental suffering, his mind becomes unhinged. At last his daughter Cordelia finds him, gives him refuge, and nurses him back to reason and hope. But this momentary gleam of light only makes darker by contrast the end which closely follows, where Cordelia is killed by treachery and Lear dies broken-hearted.

The fate of Lear finds a parallel in that of {186} Gloucester in the underplot. Like his king, this nobleman has proved an unwise father, favoring the treacherous child and disowning the true. He also is made to pay a fearful penalty for his mistakes, ending in his death. But he is represented as more justly punished, less excusable through the weaknesses of age; and for this reason his grief appeals to us as an intensifying reflection of Lear's misery rather than as a rival for that in our sympathy. The character of Edmund shows some likeness to that of Richard III; and a comparison of the two will show how Shakespeare has developed in the interval. Both are stern, able, and heartless; but Edmund unites to these more complex feelings known only to the close student of life. Weakness and passion mingle in his love; superstition and some faint, abortive motion of conscience unite to torment him when dying.

There is a strangely lyric element about this great tragedy, an element of heart-broken emotion hovering on the edge of passionate song. It is like a great chorus in which the victims of treachery and ingratitude blend their denouncing cries. The tremulous voice of Lear rises terrible above all the others; and to his helpless curses the plaintive satire of the fool answers like a mocking echo in halls of former enjoyment. Thunder and lightning are the fearful accompaniment of the song; and like faint antiphonal responses from the underplot come the voices of the wronged Edgar and the outraged Gloucester.

+Date+.--The date of _King Lear_ lies between 1603 and 1606. In 1603 appeared a book (Harsnett's _Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures_) from which Shakespeare afterward drew {187} the names of the devils in the pretended ravings of Edgar, together with similar details. In 1606, as we know from an entry in the Stationers' Register, the play was performed at Whitehall at Christmas. A late edition of the old _King Leir_ (not Shakespeare's) was entered on the Register May 8, 1605; and it is very plausible that Shakespeare's tragedy was then having a successful run and that the old play was revived to take advantage of an occasion when its story was popular. Hence the date usually given for the composition of _King Lear_ is 1604-5. A quarto, with a poor text, and carelessly printed, appeared in 1608; another, (bearing the assumed date of 1608) in 1619. The First Folio text is much the best. Three hundred lines lacking in it are made up for by a hundred lines absent from the quartos.

+Sources+.--The story of Lear in some form or another had appeared in many writers before Shakespeare. The sources from which he drew chiefly were probably the early accounts by Geoffrey of Moumouth, a composite poem called _The Mirrour for Magistrates_, Holinshed's _Chronicles_, Spenser's _Faerie Queene_, and lastly an old play of _King Leir_, supposed to be the one acted in 1594. This old play ended happily; Shakespeare first introduced the tragic ending. He also invented Lear's madness, the banishment and disguise of Kent, and the characters of Burgundy and the fool. The underplot he drew from the story of the blind king of Paphlagonia in _Arcadia_, a long, rambling novel of adventure by Sir Philip Sidney.

+Macbeth+.--Macbeth, one of the great Scottish nobles of early times, is led, partly by his own ambition, partly by the instigation of evil supernatural powers, to murder King Duncan and usurp his place on the throne of Scotland. In this bloody task he is aided and encouraged by his wife, a woman of powerful character, whose conscience is temporarily smothered by her frantic desire to advance her husband's career. We are forced to sympathize with this guilty pair, wicked as they {188} are, because we are made to feel that they are not naturally criminals, that they are swept into crime by the misdirection of energies which, if directed along happier lines, might have been praiseworthy. Macbeth, vigorous and imaginative, has a poet's or conqueror's yearning toward a larger fullness of life, experience, joy. It is the woeful misdirection of this splendid energy through unlawful channels which makes him a murderer, not the callous, animal indifference of the born criminal. Similarly, his wife is a woman of great executive ability, reaching out instinctively for a field large enough in which to make that ability gain its maximum of accomplishment. Nature meant her for a queen; and it is the instinctive effort to find her natural sphere of action,--an effort common to all humanity--which blinds her conscience at the fatal moment. Once entered on their career of evil, they find no chance for turning back. Suspicions are aroused, and Macbeth feels himself forced to guard himself from the effects of the first. The ghosts of his victims haunt his guilty conscience; his wife dies heart-broken with remorse which comes too late; and he himself is killed in battle by his own rebellious countrymen.

Between the characters of Macbeth and his wife the dramatist has drawn a subtle but vital distinction. Macbeth is an unprincipled but imaginative man, with a strong tincture of reverence and awe. Hitherto he has been restrained in the straight path of an upright life by his respect for conventions. When once that barrier is broken down, he has no purely moral check in his own nature to replace it, and rushes like a flood, with ever growing impetus, from, crime to crime. His {189} wife, on the other hand, has a conscience; and conscience, unlike awe for conventions, can be temporarily suppressed, but not destroyed. It reawakes when the first great crime is over, drives the unhappy queen from her sleepless couch night after night, and hounds her at last to death.

This is the shortest of all Shakespeare's plays in actual number of lines; and no other work of his reveals such condensation and lightning-like rapidity of movement. It is the tragedy of eager ambition, which allows a man no respite after the first fatal mistake, but hurries him on irresistibly through crime after crime to the final disaster. Over all, like a dark cloud above a landscape, hovers the presence of the supernatural beings who are training on the sinful but unfortunate monarch to his ruin.

+Authorship+.--The speeches of Hecate and the dialogue connected with them in III, v and IV, i, 39-47 are suspected by many to be the work of Thomas Middleton, a well-known contemporary playwright. They are unquestionably inferior to most of the play. Messrs. Clark and Wright have assigned several other passages to Middleton; but these are now generally regarded as Shakespeare's, and some of them are considered as by no means below his usual high level.

+Date+.--We find no copy of _Macbeth_ earlier than the First Folio. It was certainly written before 1610, however; for Dr. Simon Forman saw it acted that year and records the fact in his _Booke of Plaies_. The allusion to "two-fold balls and treble sceptres" (IV, i, 121) shows that the play was written after 1603 when James I became king of both Scotland and England. So does the allusion to the habit of touching for the king's evil (IV, iii, 140-159),--a custom which James revived. The reference to an equivocator in the porter's soliloquy (II, iii) may allude to Henry Garnet, who was tried in 1606 for complicity in the {190} famous Gunpowder Plot, and who is said to have upheld the doctrine of equivocation. The date of composition is usually placed 1605-6.

+Sources+.--The plot is borrowed from Holinshed's _Historie of Scotland_. Most of the material is taken from the part relating to the reigns of Duncan and Macbeth; but other incidents, such as the drugging of the grooms, are from the murder of Duncan's ancestor Duffe, which is described in another part of Holinshed.

+Antony and Cleopatra+.--There is no other passion in mankind which makes such fools of wise men, such weaklings of brave ones, as that of sinful love. For this very reason it is the most tragic of all human passions; and from this comes the dramatic power of _Antony and Cleopatra_. The ruin of a contemptible man is never impressive; but the ruin of an imposing character like Antony's through the one weak spot in his powerful nature has all the somber impressiveness of a burning city or some other great disaster.

Like _Julius Caesar_, this play is founded on Roman history. It begins in Egypt with a picture of Antony fascinated by the Egyptian queen. The urgent needs of the divided Roman world call him away to Italy. Here, once free of Cleopatra's presence, he becomes his old self, a reveler, yet diplomatic and self-seeking. From motives of policy he marries Octavia, sister of Octavius Caesar, and for a brief space seems assured of a brilliant future. But the old spell draws him back. He returns to Cleopatra, and Octavius in revenge for Octavia's wrongs makes war upon him. Cleopatra proves still Antony's evil genius. Her seduction has already drawn him into war; now her cowardice in the crisis of the battle decides the war {191} against him. From that point the fate of both is one headlong rush to inevitable ruin.

In the character of Cleopatra, Shakespeare has made a wonderful study of the fascination which beauty and charm exert, even when coupled with moral worthlessness. We do not love her, we do not pity her when she dies; but we feel that in spite of her idle love of power and pleasure, she has given life a richer meaning. We are fascinated by her as by some beautiful poison plant, the sight of which causes an aesthetic thrill, its touch, disease and death.

Powerful as is this play, and in many ways tragic, it by no means stirs our sympathies as do _Macbeth, King Lear_, and _Othello_. Sin for Antony and Cleopatra is not at all the unmixed cup of woe which it proves for Macbeth and his lady. Here at the end the lovers pay the price of lust and folly; but before paying that price, they have had its adequate equivalent in the voluptuous joy of life. Moreover, death loses half its terrors for Antony through the very military vigor of his character; and for Cleopatra, because of the cunning which renders it painless. What impresses us most is not the pathos of their fate, but rather the sublime folly with which, deliberately and open-eyed, they barter a world for the intoxicating joy of passion. Impulsive as children, powerful as demigods, they made nations their toys, and life and death a game. Prudence could not rob them of that heritage of delight which they considered their natural birthright, nor death, when it came, undo what they had already enjoyed. Folly on so superhuman a scale becomes, in the highest sense of the word, dramatic.

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+Date+.--In May, 1608, there was entered in the Stationers' Register 'A Book called Antony and Cleopatra'; and this was probably the play under discussion. The internal evidence agrees with this; hence the date is usually set at 1607-8. In spite of the above entry, the book does not appear to have been printed at that time; and the first copy which has come down to us is that in the 1623 Folio.

+Sources+.--Shakespeare's one source appears to have been the _Life of Marcus Antonius_ in North's _Plutarch_; and he followed that very closely. The chief changes in the play consist in the omission of certain events which would have clogged the dramatic action.

+Coriolanus+.--Here follows the tragedy of overweening pride. The trouble with Coriolanus is not ambition, as is the case with Macbeth. He cares little for crowns, office, or any outward honor. Self-centered, self-sufficient, contemptuous of all mankind outside of his own immediate circle of friends, he dies at last because he refuses to recognize those ties of sympathy which should bind all men and all classes of men together. He leads his countrymen to battle, and shows great courage at the siege of Corioli. On his return he becomes a candidate for consul. But to win this office, he must conciliate the common people whom he holds in contempt; and instead of conciliating them, he so exasperates them by his overbearing scorn that he is driven out of Rome. With the savage vindictiveness characteristic of insulted pride, he joins the enemies of his country, brings Rome to the edge of ruin, and spares her at last only at the entreaties of his mother. Then he returns to Corioli to be killed there by treachery.

Men like Coriolanus are not lovable, either in real life or fiction; but, despite his faults, he commands {193} our admiration in his success, and our sympathy in his death. We must remember that ancient Rome had never heard our new doctrine of the freedom and equality of man; that the common people, as drawn by Shakespeare, were objects of contempt and just cause for exasperation. Again, we must remember that if Coriolanus had a high opinion of himself, he also labored hard to deserve it. He was full of the French spirit of _noblesse oblige_. Cruel, arrogant, harsh, he might be; but he was never cowardly, underhanded, or mean. He was a man whose ideals were better than his judgment, and whose prejudiced view of life made his character seem much worse than it was. The lives of such men are usually tragic.

+Date+.--The play was not printed until the appearance of the First Folio, and external evidence as to its date is almost worthless. On the strength of internal evidence, meter, style, etc., which mark it unquestionably as a late play, it is usually assigned to 1609.

+Sources+.--Shakespeare's source was Plutarch's _Life of Coriolanus_ (North's translation). As in _Julius Caesar_ and _Antony and Cleopatra_, he followed Plutarch closely.

+Timon of Athens+.--As _Coriolanus_ was the tragedy of a man who is too self-centered, so _Timon_ is the tragedy of a man who is not self-centered enough. His good and bad traits alike, generosity and extravagance, friendship and vanity, combine to make him live and breathe in the attitude of other men toward him. From this comes his unbounded prodigality by which in a few years he squanders an enormous fortune in giving pleasure to his friends. From this lack of self-poise, too, comes the tremendous reaction later, {194} when he learns that his imagined world of love and friendship and popular applause was a mirage of the desert, and finds himself poverty-stricken and alone, the dupe of sharpers, the laughing-stock of fools.

Yet in spite of his lack of balance, he is full of noble qualities. Apemantus has the very thing which he lacks, yet Apemantus is contemptible beside him. The churlish philosopher is like some dingy little scow, which rides out the tempest because the small cargo which it has is all in its hold; Timon is like some splendid, but top-heavy, battleship, which turns turtle in the storm through lack of ballast. There is something lionlike and magnificent, despite its unreason, in the way he accepts the inevitable, and later, after the discovery of the gold, spurns away both the chance of wealth and the human jackals whom it attracts. The same lordly scorn persists after him in the epitaph which he leaves behind:--

"Here lie I, Timon; who alive all living men did hate. Pass by and curse thy fill, but pass, and stay not here thy gait."

Yet this very epitaph of the dead misanthrope shows the same lack of self-sufficiency which characterized the living Timon. He despises the opinion of men, but he must let them know that he despises it. Coriolanus would have laughed at them from Elysium and scorned to write any epitaph.

No other Shakespearean play, with the exception of _Troilus and Cressida_, shows the human race in a light so contemptible as this. Aside from Timon and his faithful steward, there is not one person in the play {195} who seems to have a single redeeming trait. All of the others are selfish, and most of them are treacherous and cowardly.

+Authorship+.--It is generally believed that some parts of the play are not by Shakespeare, although opinion is still somewhat divided as to what is and is not his. The scenes and parts of scenes in which Apemantus and some of the minor characters appear are most strongly suspected.

+Date+.--This play was not printed until the publication of the First Folio, and the only evidence which we have for its date is in the meter and style and in the fact that some of the speeches show a strong resemblance to certain ones in _King Lear_. The date most generally approved is 1607-8.

+Sources+.--The direct source was probably a short account of Timon in Plutarch's _Life of Marcus Antonius_. The same story also appears in Painter's _Palace of Pleasure_, where Shakespeare may have read it. Both of these accounts, however, contain but a small part of the material found in the play. Certain details missing in them, such as the discovery of the gold, etc., are found in _Timon or the Misanthrope_, a dialogue by Lucian, one of the later of the ancient Greek writers. As far as we know, Lucian had not been translated into English at this time; but there were copies of his works in Latin, French, and Italian. We cannot say whether Shakespeare had read them or not. In 1842 a play on Timon was printed from an old manuscript which is supposed to have been written about 1000. This contains a banquet scene, a faithful steward, and the finding of the gold. This has the appearance of an academic play rather than one meant for the public theaters, so it is probable that Shakespeare never heard of it; but it is barely possible that he knew it and used it as a source.

The most helpful book yet written on the period is: _Shakespearean Tragedy_, by A. C. Bradley (London, Macmillan, 1910 (1st ed. 1904)).

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