In this aspect, which some critics, deeming Shakspere more moralist than artist, take to involve a deliberate preaching of reconciliation, Pericles foreshadows the three romances to come. In more than one detail, too, it suggests them. The shipwreck, for example, reminds one a little of Twelfth Night and the Comedy of Errors, but far more of the Tempest.1 The story of Marina has something in common with that of Miranda, and more with that of Perdita. The recovery of the priestess Thaisa, recalling that of Emilia in the Comedy of Errors, is still more like that of Hermione in the Winter's Tale. Clearly enough, Pericles bears to the coming romances a relation very like that borne to the great comedies by the experimental. Just as this second period of experiment is shorter, and its fruit less ripe than was the case before, however, so the foreshadowing of what is to come is less complete. In reviving, after eight years of passionate gloom, a fresh gleam of romantic feeling, Pericles is perhaps most noteworthy. In Timon, then, we have the definite close of the period of passionate gloom, a mood of which in Coriolanus we observed traces of exhaustion. In Timon, too, we have such paralysis of creative power as normally belongs to a period of artistic transition. In Pericles, we have the feeble, experimental beginning of Shakspere's final period. During this period, though it is short and its production less ideally finished than that of either the artistic period or the 1 Cf. C. of E. I. i. 63 seq.; T. N. I. ii.; Per. III. i.; Temp. I. i. passionate, we shall find something like a fusion, in lifelong romances, of all the moods which have preceded, of the darkness of tragedy, the gayety of comedy, the serenity of romance. Though of little intrinsic worth, then, Timon and Pericles, considered in relation to Shakspere's development, may be regarded as deeply significant. ΧΙ THE PLAYS OF SHAKSPERE FROM CYMBELINE TO HENRY VIII I. WHILE by common consent, Cymbeline, the Tempest, and the Winter's Tale are thought to have been written after the plays we have already considered, and before Henry VIII., there is nothing but verse-tests to fix their order. The order in which we shall consider them, then, is little better than arbitrary. Any line of development which we may be tempted to trace within the series must be even more conjectural than usual. Keeping this in mind, however, we may suggestively compare these plays with each other; and, with fair confidence in our chronology, we may compare them with anything which we have considered hitherto. II. CYMBELINE. [Cymbeline is first mentioned in the note-book of Dr. Forman. His note about it is undated, but as his note of Macbeth is dated April 20th, 1610, and that of the Winter's Tale is dated May 15th, 1611, it probably belongs to about the same period. As Forman died in September, 1611, that year is the latest possible for his note. Cymbeline was entered in 1623, and published in the folio. The historical parts of Cymbeline are based on Holinshed; the story of Imogen, including both the trunk-scene and the disguise, is based on a story in the Decameron, of which no English version is known to have existed before 1620; the death-like sleep of Imogen, so obviously like Juliet's, is also like a familiar German story. In general, perhaps, the resemblance of incidents in Cymble to incidents in Shakspere's earlier plays is more noteworthy than the relation of either to their actual sources. By verse-tests Cymbeline is placed between Coriolanus and ine Tempest. It is generally assigned to 1609 or 1610; but Mr. Fleay thinks that certain parts of it were written as early as 1606, when Shakspere was engaged in extracting from Holinshed material for King Lear aud Macbeth.] A hasty critic lately said that Cymbeline sounds as if Browning had written it. Though crude, the remark is suggestive. The style of Cymbeline has at least two traits really like Browning's: the rhythm of the lines is often hard to catch; and the thought often becomes so intricate that, without real obscurity, it is hard to follow. Take, for example, the opening of the third scene of the first act, a conversation between Imogen and Pisanio: "Imo. I would thou grew'st unto the shores o' the haven, And question'dst every sail : if he should write And I not have it, 't were a paper lost As offer'd mercy is. What was the last Pis. Imo. Then waved his handkerchief? Pis. It was his queen, his queen! And kiss'd it, madam. Imo. Senseless linen! happier therein than I! Pis. No, madam; for so long As he could make me with this eye or ear Still waving, as the fits and stirs of's mind Imo. Thou shouldst have made him As little as a crow, or less, ere left To after-eye him. Pis. Madam, so I did.” This passage is enough to illustrate the peculiar metrical structure of Cymbeline. Endstopped lines are so deliberately avoided that one feels a sense of relief when a speech and a line end together. Such a phrase as "How slow his soul sail'd on, how swift his ship" is deliberately made, not a single line, but two halflines. Several times, in the broken dialogue, one has literally to count the syllables before the metrical regularity of the verse appears. The meaning, too, is often so compactly expressed that to catch it one must pause and study. Clearly this puzzling style is decadent; the distinction between verse and prose is breaking down. Again, take this passage from the scene when Imogen receives the letter of Posthumus bidding her meet him at Milford : 1 "Then, true Pisanio, Who long'st, like me, to see thy lord; who long'st, O, let me bate, but not like me - yet long'st, But in a fainter kind: - O, not like me; For mine's beyond beyond-say, and speak thick; To the smothering of the sense To this same blessed Milford." 1 III. ii. 53-61. - how far it is |