admitted. The pedantic censure of Thomas Rymer on the score of Shakespeare's indifference to the classical canons attracted attention, but awoke in England no substantial echo. In his 'Short View of Tragedy' (1692) Rymer mainly concentrated his attention on 'Othello,' and reached the eccentric conclusion that it was a bloody farce without salt or savour.' In Pepys's eyes 'The Tempest' had 'no great wit,' and 'Midsummer Night's Dream' was 'the most insipid and ridiculous play'; yet this exacting critic witnessed thirty-six performances of twelve of Shakespeare's plays between October 11, 1660, and February 6, 1668–9, seeing 'Hamlet' four times, and Macbeth,' which he admitted to be 'a most excellent play for variety,' nine times. Dryden, the literary dictator of the day, repeatedly Dryden's complained of Shakespeare's inequalities he is the very Janus of poets.' But in almost the same breath Dryden declared that Shakespeare was held in as much veneration among Englishmen as Eschylus among the Athenians, and that he was the man who of all modern and perhaps ancient poets had the largest and most comprehensive soul. . . . When he describes anything, you more than see it-you feel it too.' In 1693, when Sir Godfrey Kneller presented Dryden with a copy of the Chandos portrait of Shakespeare, the poet acknowledged the gift thus:

TO SIR GODFREY KNELLER.

Shakspear, thy Gift, I place before my sight;
With awe, I ask his Blessing ere I write;
With Reverence look on his Majestick Face;
Proud to be less, but of his Godlike Race.
His Soul Inspires me, while thy Praise I write,
And I, like Teucer, under Ajax fight.

Writers of Charles II's reign of such opposite tempera-
ments as Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, and
Sir Charles Sedley vigorously argued for Shakespeare's
supremacy. As a girl the sober duchess declares she fell in
love with Shakespeare. In her 'Sociable Letters,' which
were published in 1664, she enthusiastically, if diffusely,
described how Shakespeare creates the illusion that he had
been transformed into every one of those persons he hath
described,' and suffered all their emotions. When she
witnessed one of his tragedies she felt persuaded that
she was witnessing an episode in real life. Indeed,' she
concludes, 'Shakespeare had a clear judgment, a quick wit,

view.

Restoration adaptations.

From 1702

onwards.

a subtle observation, a deep apprehension, and a most
eloquent elocution.' The profligate Sedley, in a prologue
to the 'Wary Widdow,' a comedy by one Higden, produced
in 1693, apostrophised Shakespeare thus:

Shackspear whose fruitfull Genius, happy wit
Was fram'd and finisht at a lucky hit

The pride of Nature, and the shame of Schools,
Born to Create, and not to Learn from Rules.

Many adaptations of Shakespeare's plays were contrived But to meet current sentiment of a less admirable type. they failed efficiently to supersede the originals. Dryden and D'Avenant converted 'The Tempest into an opera (1670). D'Avenant single-handed adapted 'The Two Noble Kinsmen' (1668) and 'Macbeth' (1674). Dryden dealt similarly with 'Troilus' (1679); Thomas Duffett with 'The Tempest' (1675); Shadwell with 'Timon' (1678); Nahum Tate with Richard II' (1681), ‘Lear' (1681), and 'Coriolanus' (1682); John Crowne with 'Henry VI' (1681); D'Urfey with Cymbeline' (1682); Ravenscroft with 'Titus Andronicus' (1687); Otway with 'Romeo and Juliet' (1692); and John Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham, with Julius Cæsar' (1692). But during the same period the chief actor of the day, Thomas Betterton, won his spurs as the interpreter of Shakespeare's leading parts, often in unrevised versions. Hamlet was accounted that actor's masterpiece. No succeeding tragedy for several years,' wrote Downes, the prompter at Betterton's theatre, 'got more reputation or money to the company than this.'

From the accession of Queen Anne to the present day the tide of Shakespeare's reputation, both on the stage and among critics, has flowed onward almost uninterruptedly. The censorious critic, John Dennis, in his 'Letters' on Shakespeare's 'genius,' gave his work in 1711 whole-hearted commendation, and two of the greatest men of letters of the eighteenth century, Pope and Johnson, although they did not withhold all censure, paid him, as we have seen, the homage of becoming his editors. The school of textual criticism which Theobald and Capell founded in the middle years of the century has never ceased its activity since their day. Edmund Malone's devotion at the end of the eighteenth century to the biography of the poet and the contemporary history of the stage secured for him a vast

band of disciples, of whom Joseph Hunter and John Payne Collier well deserve mention. But of all Malone's successors, James Orchard Halliwell, afterwards HalliwellPhillipps (1820-1889), has made the most important additions to our knowledge of Shakespeare's biography.

Meanwhile, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, there arose a third school to expound exclusively the æsthetic excellence of the plays. In its inception the æsthetic school owed much to the methods of Schlegel and other admiring critics of Shakespeare in Germany. But Coleridge in his 'Notes and Lectures' and Hazlitt in his 'Characters of Shakespeare's plays' (1817) are the best representatives of the aesthetic school in this or any other country. Although Professor Dowden, in his 'Shakespeare, his Mind and Art' (1874), and Mr. Swinburne, in his 'Study of Shakespeare' (1880), are worthy followers, Coleridge and Hazlitt remain as æsthetic critics unsurpassed. In the effort to supply a fuller interpretation of Shakespeare's works - textual, historical, and æsthetic- two publishing societies have done much valuable work. The Shakespeare Society' was founded in 1841 by Collier, Halliwell, and their friends, and published some forty-eight volumes before its dissolution in 1853. The New Shakspere Society, which was founded by Dr. Furnivall in 1874, issued during the ensuing twenty years twenty-seven publications, illustrative mainly of the text and of contemporary life and literature.

In 1769 Shakespeare's 'jubilee' was celebrated for three Stratford days (September 6-8) at Stratford, under the direction of festivals. Garrick, Dr. Arne, and Boswell. The festivities were repeated on a small scale in April 1827 and April 1830. 'The Shakespeare tercentenary festival,' which was held at Stratford from April 23 to May 4, 1864, claimed to be a national celebration.

stage.

On the English stage the name of every eminent actor On the since Betterton, the great actor of the period of the Resto- English ration, has been identified with Shakespearean parts. Steele, writing in the 'Tatler' (No. 167) in reference to Betterton's funeral in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey on May 2, 1710, instanced his rendering of Othello as proof of an unsurpassable talent in realising Shakespeare's subtlest conceptions on the stage. One great and welcome innovation in Shakespearean acting is closely associated with Betterton's name. He encouraged the substitution, which

The first appearance of actresses

in Shakespearean parts.

David Garrick, 1717-1779.

Killigrew inaugurated, of women for boys in female parts.
The first role that was professionally rendered by a woman
in a public theatre was that of Desdemona in 'Othello,'
apparently on December 8, 1660. Thomas Jordan, a very
humble poet, wrote a prologue to notify the new procedure,
and referred to the absurdity of the old custom :

For to speak truth, men act, that are between
Forty and fifty, wenches of fifteen,

With bone so large and nerve so uncompliant,
When you call DESDEMONA, enter GIANT.

The actress on the occasion is said to have been Mrs.
Margaret Hughes, Prince Rupert's mistress; but Betterton's
wife, who was at first known on the stage as Mrs. Saunderson,
was the first actress to present a series of Shakespeare's
great female characters. Mrs. Betterton gave her husband
powerful support, from 1663 onwards, in such rôles as
Ophelia, Juliet, Queen Katharine, and Lady Macbeth.
Betterton formed a school of actors who carried on his
traditions for many years after his death. Robert Wilks
(1670-1732) as Hamlet, and Barton Booth (1681–1733) as
Henry VIII and Hotspur, were popularly accounted no
unworthy successors. Colley Cibber (1671-1757), as actor,
theatrical manager, and dramatic critic, was both a loyal
disciple of Betterton and a lover of Shakespeare, though his
vanity and his faith in the ideals of the Restoration incited
him to perpetrate many outrages on Shakespeare's text
when preparing it for theatrical representation. His no-
torious adaptation of 'Richard III,' which was first pro-
duced in 1700, long held the stage to the exclusion of the
original version.

Towards the middle of the eighteenth century all earlier efforts to interpret Shakespeare in the playhouse were eclipsed in public esteem by the concentrated energy and intelligence of David Garrick. Garrick's enthusiasm for the poet and his histrionic genius riveted Shakespeare's hold on public taste. His claim to have restored to the stage the text of Shakespeare-purified of Restoration defilements cannot be allowed without serious qualifications. Garrick had no scruple in presenting plays of Shakespeare in versions that he or his friends had recklessly garbled. He supplied 'Romeo and Juliet' with a happy ending; he converted the 'Taming of The Shrew' into the

farce of 'Katharine and Petruchio,' 1754; he introduced radical changes in 'Antony and Cleopatra,' 'Two Gentlemen of Verona,' Cymbeline,' and 'Midsummer Night's Dream.' Nevertheless, no actor has won an equally exalted reputation in so vast and varied a repertory of Shakespearean rôles. His triumphant début as Richard III in 1741 was followed by equally successful performances of Hamlet, Lear, Macbeth, King John, Romeo, Henry IV, Iago, Leontes, Benedick, and Antony, in 'Antony and Cleopatra.' Garrick was not quite undeservedly buried in Westminster Abbey on February 1, 1779, at the foot of Shakespeare's statue.

Garrick was ably seconded by Mrs. Clive (1711-1785), Mrs. Cibber (1714-1766), and Mrs. Pritchard (1711-1768). Mrs. Cibber as Constance in 'King John,' and Mrs. Pritchard in Lady Macbeth, excited something of the same enthusiasm as Garrick in Richard III and Lear. There were, too, contemporary critics who judged rival actors to show in certain parts powers equal, if not superior, to those of Garrick. Charles Macklin (16972-1797) for nearly half a century, from 1735 to 1785, gave many hundred performances. of a masterly rendering of Shylock. The character had, for many years previous to Macklin's assumption of it, been allotted to comic actors, but Macklin effectively concentrated his energy on the tragic significance of the part with an effect that Garrick could not surpass. Macklin was also reckoned successful in Polonius and Iago. John Henderson, the Bath Roscius (1747-1785), who, like Garrick, was buried in Westminster Abbey, derived immense popularity from his representation of Falstaff; while in subordinate characters like Mercutio, Slender, Jaques, Touchstone, and Sir Toby Belch, John Palmer (1742?-1798) was held to approach perfection. But Garrick was the accredited chief of the theatrical profession until his death. He was then succeeded in his place of predominance by John Philip Kemble, who derived invaluable support from his association with one abler than himself, his sister, Mrs. Siddons.

Kemble,

Somewhat stilted and declamatory in speech, Kemble John enacted a wide range of characters of Shakespearean tragedy Philip with a dignity that won the admiration of Pitt, Sir Walter 1757-1823. Scott, Charles Lamb, and Leigh Hunt. Coriolanus was regarded as his masterpiece, but his renderings of Hamlet, King John, Wolsey, the Duke in 'Measure for Measure,' Leontes, and Brutus satisfied the most exacting canons of