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porary gossip, seems at least suggestive of the possibilities which lay within him. The bit of gossip is a random note preserved in the diary of one John Manningham, Barrister-at-Law of the Middle Temple, and of Bradbourne, Kent. Writing in 1602 or 1603, with no more authority than one "Mr. Curle," he tells a story which very possibly is apocryphal, but which certainly indicates in what manner of estimation Shakspere was held after he had been fifteen years at work: 1

“Upon a tyme when Burbidge played Rich. 3 there was a Citizen gaene soe farr in liking with him, that before shee went from the play shee appointed him to come that night unto hir by the name of Ri: the 3. Shakespeare overhearing their conclusion went before, was intertained, and at his game ere Burbedge came. Then message being brought that Rich. the 3d was at the dore, Shakespeare caused returne to be made that William the Conquerour was before Rich. the 3. Shakespere's name William.”

The familiar passage from Shakspere's own writing is the 111th sonnet, which was certainly written within a few years of the same date. It gives at least a plausible inner glimpse of a life whose outward aspect might have justified Manningham's gossip:

"O, for my sake do you with Fortune chide,
The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,
That did not better for my life provide

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Than public means which public manners breeds.

1 Centurie of Prayse, 45.

Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,
And almost thence my nature is subdued
To what it works in, like a dyer's hand:
Pity me then, and wish I were renew'd;
Whilst, like a willing patient, I will drink
Potions of eisel1 'gainst my strong infection;
No bitterness that I will bitter think,
Nor double penance, to correct correction.

Pity me then, dear friend, and I assure ye
Even that your pity is enough to cure me."
1 Vinegar.

IV

THE WORKS OF SHAKSPERE

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FROM now forth, we shall devote our attention chiefly to the works of Shakspere, in which we shall endeavor constantly to find traces of his artistic individuality. Though, like any technical term of criticism, the phrase sound canting, it has a real meaning. Any artist, in whatever art, whose work deserves serious attention, must either perceive or express the matters with which he deals or better still both perceive and express them in a way peculiar to himself. The artist's work need not be autobiographic; everybody knows, for example, that a most erratic man may write noble poetry, or an estimable young girl produce a novel which shocks her mother. Any work of art, however, must express something which the artist, either in experience or by imaginative sympathy, has perceived or known. If in the work of any artist, then, we succeed in defining traits not perceptible in that of others, we succeed, so far as these go, in defining his artistic individuality.

The generally accepted works of Shakspere consist of two rather long poems, a few short ones not distinguishable from his other lyrics, a collection of sonnets, and thirty-seven five-act plays, if we count

separately the two parts of Henry IV. and the three of Henry VI. These works we shall generally consider in what appears to be their chronological order. Partly because the two long poems were undoubtedly his first publications, however, and partly because they are by far the most careful work of his earlier period, and so the most seriously and consciously expressive, we shall consider them first. The plays we shall try to arrange in their original order, placing the Sonnets, where they probably belong, in the midst of the dramatic work.

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In reading this dramatic work, we must never allow ourselves to forget that it is not, like the poems and the sonnets, pure literature, addressed primarily to readers. From beginning to end it was written for an actual stage, at the general condition of which we have already glanced. So far, then, as we try to find the plays expressive of the artistic individuality of Shakspere, we must keep in mind that they are not mere writings, but texts intended to be recited by professional actors, under conditions long since obsolete, to popular audiences. Incidentally, then, while studying the work of Shakspere we must find ourselves continually studying the conditions and the development of the Elizabethan stage.

For this reason, our first glance at this stage could properly be hasty. As we shall find when we examine the first plays attributed to Shakspere, if not certainly his own, this stage had already begun to develop certain definite kinds of drama, tragic, his

toric, and comic. In a way, then, it is a fortunate chance that what seem beyond doubt the earliest of the plays are thought by many critics not to be genuine. From an uncertainty full of historical suggestion, and beyond question full of information concerning his artistic environment when his work began, we can proceed to certainties among which our earlier doubts may help us to define the traits which make Shakspere artistically individual.

For our purposes, we may conceive his complete work as grouping itself in four parts. The first includes his poems and the plays from Titus Andronicus to the Two Gentlemen of Verona; the second includes the plays from the Midsummer Night's Dream to Twelfth Night; between this and the third, as in some degree contemporaneous with both, we shall consider the Sonnets; after them we shall consider the third group of plays, from Julius Cæsar to Coriolanus; Timon of Athens, and Pericles, Prince of Tyre, as transitional and peculiar, we shall glance at by themselves; and finally we shall consider the fourth group of plays, from Cymbeline to Henry VIII.

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