characters ridiculously out of keeping with the original play, and the added zest of indecency. The method of improving Shakespeare to please the town continued to be applied to his plays with remorseless zeal during a long period of time. Songs were added to Macbeth; Much Ado about Nothing and Measure for Measure were mingled, and out of the mingled material was produced Davenant's Law against Lovers. Dennis metamorphosed The Merry Wives into The Comical Gallant; Durfey altered Cymbeline; Richard II. became The Sicilian Usurper; Tate improved upon King Lear by introducing love-passages between Edgar and Cordelia, and giving the play a happy ending; Lord Lansdowne made a comic personage of Shylock; Colley Cibber rehandled Richard III., and introduced some of the rants and time-honored hits which have been repeated on the stage until our own day. Dryden (to return to Restoration times) both praises and depreciates Shakespeare, but as he grew older his admiration for Shakespeare increased; the dramatic work of his own, which Dryden most highly valued, All for Love, is written in professed imitation of "the divine Shakespeare ;" and his prose prefaces, which are often critical essays, contain some admirable remarks upon the genius of his great predecessor. Some of Mr. Pepys's theatrical notes in his Diary, refer to plays of Shakespeare, which he deals with in a most amusing spirit of superiority: "September 29, 1662. To the King's Theatre, where we saw Midsummer Night's Dream, which I had never seen before, nor shall ever again, for it is the most insipid, ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life."

In 1709 appeared the first critical edition of Shakespeare's plays, that by Nicholas Rowe; he did something towards ascertaining the facts of Shakespeare's life, and corrected a large number of the grosser errors of the folios. Rowe was succeeded as an editor by Pope in 1725; his six quarto volumes are more admirable from a bibliographical than from a literary point of view; his admiration of Shakespeare was real, but his sympathy was imperfect; his emendations are in the spirit of eighteenth century literature, not in the Elizabethan spirit. Theobald, the first hero of Pope's Dunciad, “poor piddling Tibbald!" is infinitely a better editor than Pope; if he amended the text often arbitrarily, on the other hand he first collated in anything like a scholarly manner the early copies of the plays. To his ingenuity as an emendator we owe the celebrated "'a babbled of green fields," in the passage which tells of Falstaff's death. The merit of Theobald's edition, 1733, was recognized, and it sold largely. Hanmer's edition, remarkable like Pope's for its external splendor, followed in 1744, and three years later appeared that of Warburton. Warburton was learned, but arrogant, and treats Shakespeare with the contemptuousness a harsh schoolmaster might exhibit toward a naughty urchin. The editions of the second half of the eighteenth century begin with that of Dr. Johnson, 1765. Johnson saw some of the substantial excellencies of

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* In King Henry V. See page 434.

Shakespeare, but his strong common sense was of a prosaic kind, and he often takes Shakespeare to task for offences which touch such prosaic common sense only. As a moralist he was especially shocked at Shakespeare's not rewarding virtue and punishing vice in the persons of his dramas with an orthodox regularity. Capell's edition in 1768, his “Notes and Various Readings," and his "School of Shakespeare," were the labors of love of a very learned man, who obscured his merits by a strange and contorted style of writing. The work of Johnson was united with that of Steevens, five years later. Steevens was acute, witty, and sometimes brilliant, but conceited, utterly devoid of reverence for Shakespeare, and without a true feeling for poetry. His adversary, Malone, was duller, but more industrious, more honest, and less vain. Steevens published a reprint of the quartos (1766), and Six Old Plays, the originals on which Shakespeare founded some of his dramas, in 1779. Malone's first edition appeared in 1790; it contained his own notes with those of his predecessors; and in 1803, 1813, and 1821, followed Variorum Editions, the last of these, called Boswell's Malone, being the most complete. Malone, unfortunately, had a very imperfect ear for verse.

Volumes of notes and criticism, of which perhaps the best known is Farmer's Essay on the Learning of Shakespeare, became numerous in the second half of the eighteenth century. In the last decade of that century Shakespeare scholars were startled by the announcement of the discovery of Shakespeare autographs, letters, conundrums, confession of faith, and what not, of inestimable literary value; finally, a drama by Shakespeare — Vortigern — was forthcoming, and was brought upon the stage by Kemble. The discoverer was a young man named Samuel Ireland. Many people believed for awhile in the Ireland discoveries, as many had believed in those of Chatterton; but Malone attacked the imposture, and Ireland himself soon after made and published his Confessions.

A new era in the criticism of Shakespeare was inaugurated by the lectures of S. T. Coleridge, 1814: this was the criticism of genius, of reverence, and of love. Unhappily, Coleridge's lectures have come down to us only in fragmentary forms. Charles Lamb and Hazlitt had led the way to such criticism, and others have followed in the steps of Coleridge. Nor has the nineteenth century been deficient in textual scholarship. The editions of Singer, Collier, Knight, Halliwell, Dyce, and Staunton, and the admirable Cambridge edition, have shown the devotion of contemporary English scholars to the works of our great poet. Of late years America has taken an admirable share in such studies. The editions of Hudson and of Grant White, and the magnificent Variorum Edition of Furness, now in process of publication, take their place beside the best work of English Shakespeare students. From 1841 onwards for about ten years, the Shakespeare Society (of England) issued annually a series of valuable publications illustrative of Shakespeare's life and works. In

1852 Mr. Collier made the public aware of an astounding discovery - that in a copy of the Second Folio purchased by him some three years previously, existed a multitude of manuscript corrections, written, it might be supposed, in the first half of the seventeenth century, by a frequenter of the theatres, who had possessed the volume. A selection from these manuscript corrections was published by Mr. Collier, and they were commonly esteemed of high value; but, although the question is still supposed by some persons to be an open one, the most competent authorities are of opinion that the corrections are in reality a modern fabrication by some person possessed of considerable scholarship in Elizabethan literature. In 1874 the New Shakespeare Society was founded by the indefatigable English scholar, Mr. F. J. Furnivall; it has already done work of high value, and invites all persons interested in the writings of our chief poet to join its ranks. The tendency of recent inquiries has been towards the chronological study of the works of Shakespeare, and characteristics of his versification have been examined by the Rev. F. G. Fleay, Professor Ingram, and other scholars, with a view to obtaining a clue to discover the order in which the plays followed one another in point of time. France and Germany have joined vigorously in the study of Shakespeare. The greatest Frenchman of letters of the last century, Voltaire, spoke of Shakespeare as an intoxicated barbarian. The greatest living poet of France, Victor Hugo, has celebrated Shakespeare in a volume of eulogy almost unqualified, often injudicious, but always the writing of a man of genius. His son completed a translation into French of Shakespeare's works. The great Lessing first taught Germany to honor our poet. Goethe followed with his remarkable criticism of Hamlet in his Wilhelm Meister. Schiller's admiration of Shakespeare was more passionate than Goethe's, and unlike that of Goethe, did not decline with advancing years. About the same time that Coleridge was lecturing in our country A. W. Schlegel delivered at Vienna his lectures on Dramatic Art, approaching Shakespeare in a spirit of enthusiastic admiration not less than that of Coleridge. The translation of Shakespeare called Schlegel's and Tieck's (though not in fact wholly their work) is probably the best translation of Shakespeare into any foreign language. In more recent time the admirable edition of Delius, the well-known commentaries of Ulrici and Gervinus, the lectures of Kreyssig, the essays by Hertzberg, and above all, the Shakespeare Lexicon of Schmidt have been the most valuable contributions of Germany to Shakespeare literature. The German Shakespeare Society has published its twelfth annual volume (1877). A reaction against the so-called "Shakespeare mania" has produced the clever anti-Shakespearemania criticism of Rümelin (Shakespeare Studien) and a less able work by the poet Benedix. But Shakespeare's popularity continues undiminished, and in the theatrical season 1875-76 over four hundred Shakespeare representations were given upon the German stage.

THE DRAMA IN ENGLAND.

BY ARTHUR GILMAN.

THE Drama is an outgrowth of the principle of imitation in human nature. The painter represents on a flat surface what the eye sees; the sculptor puts before us the actual form in which bodies exist; the dramatist goes a step further, by giving life and activity to the scene. The drama as we know it is of Greek origin. It dates from the seventh century before Christ, when acting was connected with the rites of Bacchus and with rural festivals. It passed from Greece to Italy, thence made its way to France, and finally established itself also in England.

The fathers of the Church early protested against the performance of heathen plays, saying "the stage adulteries of the gods are unwarrantable entertainments, and so much the worse because the mercenary players set them off with all the charms and advantages of speaking." In 314, the Council of Arles pronounced sentence of excommunication against players, and Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem, at the same period, said that stage plays were among the pomps and works of the devil renounced at baptism. Under such influences the old theatres of the Greeks and Romans became deserted, and in the time of St. Augustine, a century later, were rapidly falling into ruin.

The love of dramatic representations was not driven out of men, however, and the Church itself made provision that it should be satisfied. The fathers substituted heathen plays of their own, and made dramas of the stories of the Old and New Testaments, modelling them after the classical patterns, and putting Christian hymns in the place of the choruses. In the works of Gregory Nazianzen, Patriarch of Constantinople (328-389), there is preserved a play based on the passion of the Saviour. Thus was the drama connected, first with the rites of heathen worship and then with those of the Christian Church. The stage was made a means of theological instruction.

The first use of the drama in England was the same. There were no plays there before the Norman conquest, but early in the twelfth century we hear of theatrical entertainments described as differing from the ancient shows of the theatre, being "of a more devout kind, either representations of those miracles which were wrought by holy confessors, or those passions and sufferings in which the martyrs so rigidly displayed their fortitude." This

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shows what the character of the first English plays was. They were properly called "mystery-plays," or "miracle-plays," and they were intended to satisfy the craving of the people for dramatic entertainment, as well as to give them theological instruction and information concerning the Bible history and the lives of the saints. *

The first poet who worked in this line, so far as we now know, was one Hilarius, who went to France to study under the famous Abélard. He wrote the Mystery of Lazarus, the Miracles of St. Nicholas, and of the History of Daniel. The first of these was intended for acting in the church during service when the eleventh chapter of John was the lesson for the day. The object was to enforce the doctrine of the Resurrection and to produce a realization of the story which had been read from the Bible. The dramatis persona were Lazarus and his sisters, four Jews, the Saviour, and at least six of the Apostles. The text is a mixture of Latin and French. At its close Lazarus sang the Te Deum, if the performance was at " matins,” and the Magnificat, if at vespers." The performance was realistic in the extreme, and was well adapted to impress the doctrines that the story involved.

The distinction between the Mystery and the Miracle is plainly shown by the comparison of this with the Miracles of St. Nicholas and Daniel. The former of these is intended as a warning against theft. Certain treasures are laid before an image of St. Nicholas (represented, of course, by an actor) and are taken away by thieves. The owner of the treasures thrashes the image for permitting the theft, and the saint goes out and reasons with the robbers so effectually that they restore all that they had taken. The owner of the treasures thereupon falls to worshipping the image, but the saint directs him to adore God only, in the name of Christ, and the owner, who was a barbarian, embraces Christianity. The play of Daniel is a more elaborate piece, closing with a prophecy of the coming of Christ, and the appearance of an angel singing "Behold I bring you good tidings of great joy." It is supposed that it was intended for a Christmas spectacle.

By degrees changes were made, both in the substance of the plays and in the form of their presentation. It was not long before the performances took place on scaffolds erected outside of the church door, and afterwards the scaffolds were erected at any convenient place. The first play acted on a scaffold outside of a church, is a drama entitled "Adam," written at about the time of Hilarius. Earth was represented on a stage lower than Paradise, and Hell a degree lower still. From hell smoke ascended, chains were heard to rattle and cries to imitate those of the damned were uttered. Devils came out and sometimes even walked among the audience, or ascended to one of the

*A "Mystery" or Mystery-Play, represented one of the doctrines of religion, and a "Miracle," or Miracle-Play, treated some event in the lives of the saints.