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something resembling a pseudo-classic comedy, one is a kind of romantic comedy which later Shakspere made peculiarly his own, one is a fashionable erotic poem. Clearly another trait besides lack of serious artistic purpose distinguishes him from Marlowe; in view of the comparative excellence of all these works, it would be hard to find a more excellent versatility than Shakspere's.

In our study of his poems, we dwelt enough on the peculiarly concrete habit of thought which marked him; we assured ourselves that in his mind words so naturally stood for real concepts, that by merely playing with words he played unwittingly with thoughts, too. His notable versatility proves to be a second trait as marked and as permanent. In neither is there so far a trace of conscious originality, such as one feels must surely have underlain the passionate philosophy of Marlowe. Yet, in the Two Gentlemen of Verona we found Shakspere at last as freshly original as he had already been versatile. The originality there displayed, however, was not a matter of philosophy, not of generalization, not of wisdom. It was an originality of observation, and of humanly concrete statement; what he did was only to try a new theatrical experiment, to introduce into popular comedy gleams of real human life hitherto unknown there. This originality seems only half-conscious; it seems simply the experimental adaptation to his professional work of what he had learned by actual experience of life; as such, it would very likely have seemed to him almost accidental.

In three ways, then, although his accomplishment was not yet permanently great, Shakspere's power had displayed itself by 1593. In the first place, his mind was so made that words and concepts seemed one, and so his verbal gymnastics proved unwittingly wise; in the second place, whatever he turned his hand to he did as well as the next man, and he turned his hand to everything; in the third place, in experimenting with comedy he had stumbled on the fact and the use of his own great faculty of observation. None of these traits, however, are showy, none of the kind which either require or command instant recognition. To Shakspere, we may guess, they may well have seemed humdrum; and these six years little else than a prolonged apprenticeship. He had learned his trade; apart from this, he would probably have thought that he had accomplished nothing.

VII

THE PLAYS OF SHAKSPERE, FROM A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM TO TWELFTH NIGHT

I.

As the general uncertainty of our chronology must indicate, the separation of some plays in this chapter from those in the last is arbitrary. Its justification must rest chiefly on two facts which broadly distinguish the groups: In the first place, while the interest of the preceding plays is chiefly historical, the interest of those to come remains intrinsic; apart from any historical conditions they are often in themselves delightful. In the second place, while in the preceding plays one finds at bottom hardly anything more significant than versatile technical experiment, one finds throughout those to come constant indications of growing, spontaneous, creative imagination.

In an artist of whatever kind, a period of vigorous creative imagination declares itself after a fashion which people who are not of artistic temperament rarely understand. The artist does not feel that he has something definite to say, that he has a statement to make; but when he is about his work, or perhaps before, he is constantly aware of a haunting mood which will not let him rest until he has some

how expressed it. What that mood signifies in the scheme of the eternities he may as likely as not neither know nor care. All he need certainly know is that, without being able to tell why, he feels somehow with painful acuteness; what he cares for is chiefly to express his feeling in such manner as shall get rid of it. If he be a man of genius, his work under these conditions will be of lasting value; if not, it may be comically insignificant. To the artist, this is a matter of accident: to himself a man of genius is as commonplace as a plough-boy. The thing for us to remark, then, in this chapter and in the two following, is that throughout, to greater or less degree, the plays and the poems seem born of true artistic impulse, of that trait, uncomfortable to great folk and small, which at times, to any artistic temperament, makes the legends. of inspiration seem almost credible.

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As generally of lasting artistic value, then, palpably works of genius,-the writings to come must be read in a different mood from those which precede. To understand them we must not only train ourselves to appreciate how they impressed Elizabethans three hundred years ago; we must actually enjoy them ourselves. So essential is this, indeed, and so great the lasting enjoyment which, as we know them better, we may find throughout them, that in many moods to busy ourselves with them further seems wasted time, worse still, it often seems like pedantic blindness to the constant delights which alone have made them permanent. In the end, how

ever, if we assume in ourselves the full power of enjoyment, of artistic appreciation, and if we test it now and again by reading for pure pleasure the works which in our coming study we must discuss, we shall gain from our discussion the only thing which could really justify it, an increased power of enjoyment. These general facts are nowhere clearer than in the Midsummer Night's Dream.

II. A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM.

[The Midsummer Night's Dream was entered in the Stationers' Register on October 8th, 1600. During the same year it was twice published in quarto, with Shakspere's name. It was mentioned by Meres, in 1598.

The sources, none of them closely followed, are many and various. Among them are probably the life of Theseus in North's Plutarch; Chaucer's Knight's Tale, Wife of Bath's Tale, and Legend of Good Women; and perhaps Golding's Ovid. The fairy scenes have obvious relation to the actual folk-lore of the English peasantry. Besides, the sources of both the Comedy of Errors and the Two Gentlemen of Verona probably affect this play, too.

Conjectures as to the origin and date of the Midsummer Night's Dream vary. Some hold that the play was made, like Milton's Comus, for a wedding festival. The conjectures as to date, based on internal evidence, verse-tests and allusions, vary from 1590 to 1595, with a slight preference for 1594.]

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The first, constant, and last effect of the Midsummer Night's Dream is one of poetry so pervasive that one feels brutally insensitive in seeking here anything but delight. Nowhere does Shakspere more fully justify Milton's words: 1—

A L'Allegro.

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