With worms that are thy chambermaids; O, here And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars With characteristic versatility Shakespeare soon turned his attention to a very different species of dramatic work-the dramatisation of episodes in English history. The first efforts in this kind with which his name can be associated-the three parts of Henry VI.-were versions of other men's works which he had revised. They mainly treat of the civil wars in progress during the reign of the politically weak and superstitious king, Henry VI. On March 3, 1592; Henry VI., the piece subsequently known as The First Part of Henry VI., was acted at the Rose Theatre by Lord Strange's company of actors. A second piece in continuation of the theme quickly followed, and a third, treating of the concluding incidents of Henry VI.'s reign, was played in the early autumn. The first of the three plays, which was originally published in the collected edition of Shakespeare's works, shows sparse marks of Shakespeare's workmanship. It was probably a hasty revision by Marlowe and Shakespeare of a crude and clumsy piece of independent origin. Shakespeare's genuine thought and expression are visible in such a brilliant passage as (1 Henry VI., Act 1. sc. ii. ll. 133-5): Glory is like a circle in the water, Till by broad spreading it disperse to nought. But very few scenes bear the impress of his style; the rest, including the barbarous handling of the story of Joan of Arc, are from a far inferior pen. The second and third parts of Henry VI., which were first connected with Shakespeare's name on their publication in the First Folio, had been printed previously under other titles, and in forms very different from that which they subsequently assumed in the First Folio. The second part of Shakespeare's Henry VI. was first published in 1594 with the title The first part of the contention betwixt the two famous houses of Yorke and Lancaster; and the third part was printed in 1595 as The true tragedie of Richard, Duke of Yorke. There seems little doubt that The first | part of the contention and The True Tragedie were by Marlowe aided by Shakespeare, but were not themselves original compositions, being liberally constructed out of older pieces now lost. The second and third parts of Henry VI., as they figure in the First Folio, were doubtless the outcome of a further revision of the Contention and True Tragedie, for which Shakespeare may he held to have been mainly responsible. One of the most notable amplifications of the True Tragedie is the touching soliloquy, while the battle of Towton is raging, of Henry VI., who there pathetically contrasts the happiness of a shepherd's life with that of a king (3 Henry VI., Act II. sc. v. ll. 21-54): O God! methinks it were a happy life, To carve out dials quaintly, point by point, So many days my ewes have been with young; When care, mistrust, and treason wait on him. Shakespeare's final revision of the trilogy of plays dealing with the reign of Henry VI. met with a triumphant reception on the stage. But older dramatists grew jealous, and in the autumn of 1592 one of them, Robert Greene, denounced the younger dramatist in A Groats-worth of Wit as an upstart crow beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygers heart wrapt in a players hide supposes he is as well able to bumbast out a blanke verse as the best of you, and being an absolute Johannes factotum is, in his own conceit, the only Shake-scene in a countrie.' The italicised words parody a line in 3 Henry VI. (Act I. sc. iv. l. 137), ‘Oh Tiger's heart wrapped in a woman's hide.' The publisher of Greene's illnatured attack on Shakespeare, Henry Chettle, at the end of the year apologised to the young writer for the rancour of Greene's pen, in the preface to a tract called Kind Hartes Dreame. Chettle frankly acknowledged Shakespeare's civility of demeanour, excellence in his quality of actor, uprightness of dealing, and 'facetious grace in writing.' Shakespeare pursued the path which he first essayed in the plays of Henry VI. in the two tragedies that succeeded them-Richard III. and Richard II. In Richard III. Shakespeare plainly shows a conscious resolve to follow in Marlowe's footsteps. The tragedy takes up the history near the point at which the third part of Henry VI left it. The hero's hypocrisy is pictured with much irony. The study of vicious ambition is rarely relieved by poetic passages, but a peculiarly Shakespearian outburst of poetic sentiment characterises the description by Tyrrel of the murder of the princes in the Tower (Act IV. sc. iii. ll. 4-22): Dighton and Forrest, whom I did suborn Which once,' quoth Forrest, 'almost changed my mind; Richard II. seems to have followed Richard III. without delay, and here again the influence of Marlowe is strongly marked. Marlowe's Edward II. clearly inspired Richard II. The sober note of patriotism and of reverence for the best traditions of the country, which was characteristic of all Shakespeare's historical plays, was sounded with exceptional effect in John of Gaunt's dying speech (Act II. sc. i. ll. 31–68) : Methinks I am a prophet new inspired Small showers last long, but sudden storms are short; This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England, Of the world's ransom, blessed Mary's Son; Both Richard III. and Richard II. were pub lished anonymously in 1597. Between February 1593 and the end of the year the London theatres were closed owing to the plague; but Shakespeare's pen was busily employed, and 1594 probably proved more prolific than any other year of his life. To it may be assigned the greater part of three plays-Titus Andronicus, The Merchant of Venice, and King John. Titus Andronicus, a sanguinary and revolting picture of the decadence of imperial Rome, was probably only in part Shakespeare's work. It was suggested by a piece called Titus and Vespasian, which was acted by Lord Strange's men in 1592, and is now only extant in a German version published in 1620. Titus Andronicus was acted by the Earl of Sussex's men on January 23, 1593-4, as a 'new' piece. It was subsequently performed by Shakespeare's company. evidence suggests that Kyd wrote much of it. But there are many powerful passages for which Shakespeare alone could have been responsible. The heart-rending speech in which the hero laments the ruin that overtakes his children contains such lines as these (Act III. sc. i. ll. 93-97): For now I stand as one upon a rock, Internal Who marks the waxing tide grow wave by wave, Expecting ever when some envious surge Will in his brinish bowels swallow him. Then, turning to his tongueless daughter, he adds (Ibid., 11. 111-113): When I did name her brothers, then esh tears In The Merchant of Venice Shakespeare showed to splendid advantage his power of investing ancient legends with genuinely dramatic point and poetry. Ser Giovanni's Il Pecor one, a fourteenth-century collection of Italian novels, supplied him with the main plot of the pound of flesh. Stephen Gosson, in his Schoole of Abuse (1579), mentions a lost play called The Jew, in which apparently the tales of the pound of flesh and the caskets were combined. Robert Wilson's extant play of the Three Ladies of London roughly anticipated some of Shakespeare's scenes between the Jewish creditor Shylock and his debtor Antonio. Shakespeare's Jew is a far subtler study of Jewish character than Marlowe achieved in his Jew of Malta, and the delicate comedy which relieves the serious interest attaching to Shylock's fate lay wholly out of Marlowe's reach. But Shakespeare, in the Merchant of Venice, betrayed the last definable traces of his discipleship to Marlowe. Marlowe's Jew of Malta was the forerunner of Shylock, although the topic was doubtless immediately suggested to Shakespeare by the popular excitement aroused in London by the recent execution of the queen's Jewish physician, Roderigo Lopez. Passages notable for high poetic feeling and for eloquent ratiocination abound in the Merchant of Venice. Shylock's claim to be treated as a man, Portia's plea for mercy, Lorenzo's speech on the power of music, and Bassanio's exposure of the deceitfulness of appearances illustrate the play's wealth of thought and beauty of language. One of the most beautiful passages is the speech in which Portia accepts the suit of her lover Bassanio (Act III. sc. ii. ll. 149-175): You see me, Lord Bassanio, where I stand, Such as I am though for myself alone I would not be ambitious in my wish, To wish myself much better; yet, for you I would be trebled twenty times myself; A thousand times more fair, ten thousand times That only to stand high in your account, I might in virtues, beauties, livings, friends, Is sum of something, which, to term in gross, The Merchant of Venice may have been first produced under the name of the Venesyon Comedy on August 25, 1594. It was revised later, and was not published until 1600, when two editions appeared, each printed from a different stage copy. Turning once again to English history, Shakespeare, also in 1594, adapted his drama of King John from a worthless play called The Troublesome Raigne of King John (1591). This old piece was fraudulently reissued in 1611 as 'written by W. Sh.,' and in 1622 as by 'W. Shakespeare.' The three chief characters in Shakespeare's King John-the mean and cruel king, the desperately wronged and passionate Constance, and the soldierly humorist Falconbridge—are in all essentials Shakespeare's own invention. In Arthur boyish emotion is portrayed with a freshness and truthfulness that are scarcely known elsewhere in dramatic literature. As in other of Shakespeare's historical plays, the general effect of the tragic history of King John is to instil a reasonable and honourable patriotism, to which the Bastard's concluding lines give very eloquent expression (Act v. sc. vii. l. 112-end): This England never did, nor ever shall, III. At the same epoch in his career (1591–4) as saw these remarkable efforts in the drama, Shakespeare also wrote and published two Narrative Poems, both of which paraphrased with melodious fluency Ovidian themes of somewhat lascivious tendency. In May 1593 Richard Field, Shakespeare's fellow-townsman, published the first poem, Venus and Adonis. The character of the verse may be illustrated by Venus's lament over the body of the dead Adonis (Il. 1075–1080): Alas, poor world, what treasure hast thou lost! What face remains alive that's worth the viewing? Whose tongue is music now? what canst thou boast Of things long since, or any thing ensuing? was The flowers are sweet, their colours fresh and trim; No name appeared on the title-page, but there a fully-signed dedication addressed to a brilliant young nobleman, Henry Wriothesley, third Earl of Southampton. A year later Shakespeare's poem of Lucrece appeared, and it too was dedicated to the Earl of Southampton. A more serious note is often sounded here than in the earlier poem, and there are many reflections on human affairs which embody convictions cherished by Shakespeare through life; for example (l. 1240-1246): For men have marble, women waxen, minds, These two volumes constituted Shakespeare's first appeal to the reading public, and they were welcomed with unqualified enthusiasm. Spenser and other contemporary men of letters panegyrised the genius which the poems betrayed. The general reader showed himself no less appreciative. No fewer than seven editions of Venus appeared between 1594 and 1602, and an eighth followed in 1607. Lucrece achieved a fifth edition in the year of Shakespeare's death. In other directions Shakespeare was strengthening his position and reputation. He was gaining personal esteem in influential quarters outside the circles of actors and men of letters. The Earl of Southampton, as the dedicatory addresses before his narrative poems show, had become his acknowledged patron. His 'civil demeanour' recommended him to the habitués of the court, and his summons to act before Queen Elizabeth at Christmas 1594 indicated the courtiers' personal interest in him. Thenceforth his plays were frequently performed before the queen by himself and his fellow-actors at her palaces of Whitehall, Richmond, and Greenwich, and his recognition as the greatest poet and dramatist of the day steadily grew. The bulk of Shakespeare's Sonnets were, doubtless, written in 1594, soon after he had sought and won the patronage of the Earl of At that date the sonnet enjoyed Southampton. a popularity among poets in England that has never been equalled. Shakespeare characteristically tried his hand on the popular poetic instrument when its vogue was at its height. The metrical form of his sonnets is that peculiar to the English sonneteers (three decasyllabic quatrains, each rhyming alternately, and a concluding rhyming couplet). In literary value the extant collection is notably unequal, but the best examples reach levels of lyric melody and meditative energy that are not matched elsewhere in poetry. Among the finest of Shakespeare's sonnets are these : XXX. When to the sessions of sweet silent thought I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste: Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow, For precious friends hid in death's dateless night, And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er XXXIII. Full many a glorious morning have I seen Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye, Kissing with golden face the meadows green, Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy; Anon permit the basest clouds to ride The region cloud hath mask'd him from me now. LIII. What is your substance, whereof are you made, Is poorly imitated after you ; And you in Grecian tires are painted new : The one doth shadow of your beauty show, The other as your bounty doth appear; And you in every blessed shape we know. In all external grace you have some part, But you like none, none you, for constant heart. CXVI. Let me not to the marriage of true minds Or bends with the remover to remove : That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wandering bark, Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come; Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved. On the other hand, some of Shakespeare's sonnets sink almost into inanity beneath the burden of quibbles and conceits. Take, for example : XLVI. Mine eye and heart are at a mortal war, A quest of thoughts, all tenants to the heart; The clear eye's moiety and the dear heart's part: As thus; mine eye's due is thine outward part, And my heart's right thine inward love of heart. There is no evidence that the order in which the sonnets were first printed followed the order in which they were written. The same train of thought is at times pursued continuously through two or more sonnets, and thus the collection resembles a series of independent poems, some in a varying number of fourteen-line stanzas. But, beyond the fact that the vein throughout is more or less amorous, there is no close logical continuity in the arrangement of the whole. The majority of the sonnets, numbered i. to cxxvi., are addressed to a young man, and most of the remaining twenty-six poems are addressed to a woman, but both groups include meditative soliloquies in the sonnet-form which are addressed to no person at all. The sonnets of Shakespeare's contemporaries were for the most part literary exercises, reflecting the influence of French and Italian sonneteers. Genuine emotion or the writer's personal experience very rarely inspired them. At a first glance a far larger proportion of Shakespeare's sonnets give the reader the illusion of personal confessions than those of any contemporary, but when allowance has been made for the current conventions of Elizabethan sonneteering, as well as for Shakespeare's unapproached affluence in dramatic instinct and invention which enabled him to identify himself with every phase of human emotion-the autobiographic element in his sonnets, although it may not be dismissed altogether, is seen to shrink to comparatively slender proportions. He borrows very many contemporary sonneteers' words and thoughts, although he so fused them with his fancy as often to transfigure them. A personal note may have escaped him in the sonnets in which he gives voice to a sense of melancholy and self-remorse, but his dramatic instinct never slept, and there is no positive proof that he is doing more, even in those sonnets, than to produce dramatically the illusion of a personal confession. For example, in the numerous sonnets in which Shakespeare boasted that his verse was so certain of immortality that it was capable of immortalising the person to whom it was addressed, he gave voice to no involuntary exaltation of his own spirit or spontaneous ebullition of his own feeling. He was merely handling a theme that Ronsard and Desportes, emulating Pindar, Horace, Ovid, and other classical poets, had lately made a commonplace of the poetry of Europe, and a formal topic among all English sonneteers. The imitative element is hardly less conspicuous in most of the sonnets that Shakespeare distinctly addresses to a woman. Only in one group, composed of six sonnets scattered through the collection, is there traceable a strand of wholly original sentiment, boldly projecting from the web into which it is wrought. This series of six sonnets deals with a loveadventure of no normal type. Sonnet cxliv. opens with the lines : Two loves I have of comfort and despair, The woman, the sonneteer continues, has corrupted the man and drawn him from his side. Five other sonnets treat the same theme. In three addressed to the man (xl., xli., and xlii.) the poet mildly reproaches his youthful friend for having sought and won favours of a woman whom he himself loved dearly,' but the trespass is forgiven on account of the friend's youth and beauty. In the two remaining sonnets (cxxxiii. and cxxxiv.) the poet addresses the woman, and rebukes her for having enslaved not himself but 'his next self'— his friend. It is conceivable that these six sonnets rest on a genuine experience of the poet, although a half-jesting reference to the amorous adventure, which would deprive it of very serious import, was possibly made to it at the time by a literary comrade. A poem that was licensed for publication on September 3, 1594, was published immediately under the title of Willobie his Avisa, or the True Picture of a Modest Maid and of a Chaste and Constant Wife. There, a character, described as the old player W. S.,' doubtless Shakespeare himself, mocks a rejected lover because, he explains at length, he has just recovered his own equanimity after much suffering from feminine caprice. But if few of Shakespeare's sonnets can safely be regarded as autobiographical revelations of sentiment, many of them offer evidence of the relations in which he stood to a patron, and of the position that he sought to fill in the circle of that patron's literary clients. There is no difficulty in detecting the lineaments of the Earl of Southampton in those of the man who is distinctively greeted in the sonnets as the poet's sole patron. That the Earl of Southampton was Shakespeare's only patron is not merely suggested by the terms in which the poet dedicated to him each of his two narrative poems, Venus and Adonis and Lucrece, but by the tradition handed down by Sir William D'Avenant that the earl treated Shakespeare with exceptional munificence, and 'once gave him a thousand pounds to enable him to go through with a purchase which he heard he had a mind to.' Twenty sonnets are couched in the phraseology habitual at the time to authors when penning dedications of their works to patrons. Three of these (xxvi., xxxii., and xxxvi.) merely translate into the language of poetry the expressions of devotion which had already done duty in the prose dedicatory epistle to the Earl of Southampton that prefaces Lucrece. That epistle to Southampton runs : The love I dedicate to your lordship is without end: whereof this pamphlet, without beginning, is but a superfluous moiety. The warrant I have of your honourable disposition, not the worth of my untutored lines, makes it assured of acceptance. What I have done is yours, what I have to do is yours, being part in all I have, devoted yours. Were my worth greater, my duty would show greater; meanwhile, as it is, it is bound to |