for the merchant's life, has been provided in the merry episode of the rings which Portia and Nerissa wheedle out of their husbands, as reward for their legal services. The bantering reproaches that follow, on the return to Belmont, bring into prominence again the lighter side of Portia's nature, repressed during the solemn crisis in the court-house. The heroine drops again into the gay girl-wife, and the perfect balance of her character is thus preserved. But even more restful than the silvery ripple of Portia's laughter is the lyrical softness of the moonlight confidences between Lorenzo and Jessica in the gardens of Belmont. It would almost seem as if in The Merchant of Venice Shakspere was intent on drawing materials from every race and epoch. From the passionate strife between the spirit of Jewish and Roman codes, he bears us into the very heart of Greek romance, flinging its choicest secrets, like waters from a classic fountain, into the spiced air of the Italian night. And when music, breathed to the stars, adds the last touch of enchantment to the scene, it is the voice of Greek philosophy in its most sublime flight that speaks through Lorenzo's lips: 'Sit, Jessica. Look, how the floor of heaven Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubims.' The discords of human life are heard no more, as we linger on the moonlit bank at Belmont, and seek to catch the faint echoes upon earth of the choral music of the spheres. CHAPTER XI. THE CHIEF GROUP OF CHRONICLE-HISTORY PLAYS. DURING the years that Shakspere had been elaborating into its final shape the tragedy of the Veronese lovers, he had been engaged also on other work, demanding different powers. The closing period of the sixteenth century saw the development to a brilliant climax of the branch of dramatic art in which he had made his first tentative efforts. It has been shown how in conjunction with other playwrights, or under the inspiration of their methods, he had completed the tetralogy dealing with the Wars of the Roses. Fired with the patriotic interest of the theme, he now turned back to the period whence the issues, decided at so dear a cost of English blood and treasure, had taken their rise, and he included in his survey a single more remote epoch which presented similar dynastic problems. Thus there came into being, the second tetralogy of Richard II, Henry IV (Parts I and II), and Henry V, and the play of King John, which is a self-contained whole. Towards the close of his career Shakspere began, but had to hand over in unfinished form to Fletcher, a final historical drama, Henry VIII, one of whose motives was to glorify the Tudor monarchy, and the blessings of concord in the State. Thus, viewed in one aspect, the whole of Shakspere's historical plays form, in Schlegel's phrase, a great 'dramatic epopee,' tracing the current of the national life through the mingled storms and sunbursts of the later Middle Ages to the steady splendour of the Renaissance. Of this epopee no Richard or Henry is the true protagonist, but England, an omnipresent and immortal figure, with the divine ichor, though often spilt and wasted, never exhausted in her veins, and bubbling up afresh in a perpetual renewal of youth. But while the historical dramas, from this aspect, form a whole, there are aesthetic considerations which mark off the group which we have now reached, and give it exceptional significance. Shakspere's share in the three Parts of Henry VI can only be surmised by the aid of plausible, but never quite conclusive, internal evidence, and in Richard III the special nature of the theme, and the dominating influence of Marlowe's method, led to a treatment bordering upon the purely tragic. For King John and the Lancastrian tetralogy Shakspere partly used old plays as models, but he was no longer overshadowed by a mighty personality, and his individual genius had full scope. It is therefore this group that gives the clearest evidence of the mode in which he considered that historical material could be used for artistic purposes. He never confounded the functions of the poet and the annalist. He accepted the traditions given in Holinshed's Chronicle without any inquiry into their truth, and he did not scruple to add or alter in matters of secondary importance. Schlegel therefore was far from accurate when he asserted that in Shakspere's Histories the leading features of events were so faithfully conceived, their causes and even their secret motives so clearly penetrated, that the truth of history might be learned from them. In order to disprove such a statement it is only necessary to contrast Shakspere's Henry V, overflowing with gracious bonhommie, the Tudor type of monarch lovingly idealized, with the actual historical prototype whose orthodox zeal in sending Lollards to the stake had won a cordial encomium from the contemporary poet, Occleve, in his De Regimine Principum. On the other hand, Shakspere, with characteristic sobriety and respect for realities, did not interweave with his historical groundwork purely imaginary incidents, and represent them as affecting the actual connexion of events. The comedy scenes in Henry IV do not confuse the historical perspective of the main action, in so far as this is in itself correct. The function of the dramatic poet in dealing with history was, in Shakspere's eyes, not to fabricate or falsify, but to interpret and select. From the mass of details preserved by the chronicler he disentangled and emphasized those which carried forward the true life of the nation, as he conceived it. If, in certain important aspects, his conception differed from ours, this depended upon differences between the Elizabethan and the present age. But while events chiefly required skilful grouping in order to make their full impression, historical characters offered a more difficult, but also more attractive problem. In endowing these figures with renewed vitality, Shakspere sought to make each representative of some normal human type. The personages in the historical plays are wanting in the infinite complexity of the tragic creations. They are conceived,' as Dowden has said, 'chiefly with reference to action;' they are measured by positive achievements and results.' Their dramatic dignity and value spring rather from the width of radius within which they operate than from their own inherent force. The aphorism of Matthew Arnold, 'Not deep the poet sees, but wide,' misleading in its general application, defines accurately enough Shakspere's attitude in the historical plays. He does not peer with microscopic gaze into the penetralia of individual hearts, but he surveys energies for good or evil radiating from the throne to the extreme confines of the national life. The shifting of the centre of gravity in the body politic since the Elizabethan era must modify the application of Shakspere's philosophy of history to modern circumstances, but the fundamental conviction that inspires his glowing pages, that individual character reacts with potent effect upon the life of the State, is true for every age and country. But while Shakspere's historical plays are thus a unique memorial of his patriotism and political insight, from a purely artistic point of view they are not without shortcomings. Facts are stubborn things, and the effort to subdue them to the service of the Muse is seldom entirely successful. It is true that in handling the material supplied by the national annals the dramatist gradually purged his imagination of those frothier elements that had floated to the surface in the early comedies. His verse gained in volume and stateliness, and ran with a richer music. But his fidelity to historical fact, or what he took to be such, handicapped him in one direction, and that of capital importance. The besetting danger of Romantic drama, the danger that Sidney had sought to avoid by a still more dangerous remedy, is its tendency to become invertebrate. In the Chronicle-history play this tendency is aggravated by the nature of the theme, which adapts itself more easily to epic than to dramatic treatment. It must be admitted that Shakspere failed as signally as smaller men to overcome this stumbling-block. The Aristotelian canon that every drama must comprise an entanglement and its solution, applies with equal force to Romantic and Classical plays, and Shakspere's Histories do not satisfy this test. Nor has this violation of cardinal dramatic laws gone unpunished. Neither patriotism nor poetic eloquence can propitiate, in the long run, the inexorable demand of the theatre for a carefully articulated plot, and thus, while Shakspere's chief tragedies and comedies still hold the stage, the Histories, for the most part, have been banished to the library, where their exceptional popularity has largely fostered the prevalent idea that a dramatist, whose finest plots are miracles of constructive genius, was lacking in the playwright's special faculty. Literature has its Nemeses no less than history. The date of KING JOHN, and its place in the historical series, cannot be exactly determined. It was first printed in the folio of 1623, but is mentioned by Meres in 1598. How long it had been then in existence is matter of conjecture, but it is reasonable to suppose that it was written between the two tetralogies. In its main subject it recalls Richard III, while the character of Constance anticipates that of Richard II. It resembles Richard III also in the prominence given to rivalries of women, but the grouping is less studiously monumental, and the curious strophic balance of lamentation has disappeared. The blank verse is still overloaded with rhetoric, which has however lost the peculiar lurid tinge of the earlier play. Rhyme is almost entirely confined to the pithy rejoinders and epigrams of the Bastard, in whose person the element of popular humour enters for the first time an entirely Shaksperean historical play. There is as yet, however, no hint of the use of prose as the fittest vehicle for this humour. Thus the internal evidence |