Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/610

596 "Hamlet," if no other of his dramas, though none of them appear to have been published till 1597, eight years afterwards. The first of his poems, "Venus and Adonis," was printed in 1593, four years earlier, and the "Rape of Lucrece" in the following year. From that time to 1603, the year of the death of Elizabeth, a great number of his dramas were published, but "King Lear," "Macbeth," "Cymbeline," "The Winter's Tale," the "Tempest," "Troilus and Cressida," "Henry VIII.," "Coriolanus," "Julius Cæsar," and "Anthony and Cleopatra," would appear to have been the glorious products of his ten or thirteen years of leisure in his native town. One of the first labours of his retirement appears to have been the collection of his sonnets, for they were published in 1609.

We mention these facts here merely as historical data; because it will be necessary to notice the whole of the plays in the next centennial period of our history, in connection with the drama at large; but we shall confine our notice of Shakespeare on this occasion solely to his poetical character.

The poems of Shakespeare are "Venus and Adonis," "The Rape of Lucrece," "Sonnets," "A Lover's Complaint," and "The Passionate Pilgrim." The poems for the most part, if not altogether—"The Passionate Pilgrim" and some of the sonnets excepted—would appear to have been his earliest productions. He dedicates "Venus and Adonis" to Lord Southampton, and styles it "the first heir of my invention." Both it, "The Rape of Lucrece," and the "Lover's Complaint," bear all marks of youthful passion. They burn with a voluptuous fire, and would, had they been printed in this age, have subjected their author to all the censure which "Don Juan" brought down on Lord Byron. Yet they are at the same time equally prodigal of a masterly vigour, imagination, and the faculty of entering into and depicting the souls of others. They as clearly herald the great poet of the age, as a morning sun in July announces what will be its intensity at noon. The language, in its purity and eloquence, is so perfect that it might have been written, not in the days of Elizabeth, but of Victoria, and presents a singular contrast to that of his contemporary, Spenser. "The Passionate Pilgrim" is an extraordinary production; it has no thread, even the slightest, of story or connection, and seems to be merely a stringing together of various passages of poetry, which he had struck off at different moments of inspiration, and intended to use in his dramas. Some of them indeed we find there. It opens with a commencement of the legend of "Venus and Adonis," apparently his first rude sketch of the poem he afterwards wrote more to his mind. It then breaks suddenly off with those well-known lines, beginning—

soon after as suddenly changes into—

as abruptly gives us those charming stanzas opening with—

and presents us with a number of disjointed passages which are found in "Love's Labour's Lost."

But the sonnets are the most interesting, because they give us glimpses into his own life and personal feelings. Many of them are plainly written in the characters of others; some express the sentiments of women towards their lovers, but others are unmistakably the deepest sentiments and feelings of his own life. From these we learn that Shakespeare was not exempt from the dissipations and aberrations incident on a town-life at that time, but his true and noble nature led him to abandon the immoral city as early as possible, and retire to his own domestic roof in his own native place. We may select one specimen of these sonnets, which probably was addressed to his wife, and which at once betrays his dislike of his profession of an actor, and his regret over the influence which it had had on his mind, and the stigma which it had cast on his name; for the profession of a player was then so low as to stamp actors as "vagabonds."

But if the great dramatist and inimitable poet shrunk with disgust from the profession of acting, from the estimation in which the actor then was held, and the pollutions which surrounded the stage, he held a very different opinion of the vocation of a dramatist. In the peaceful and virtuous retirement of his country residence he still occupied himself with the composition of the noblest dramas of all time; and whilst he was so free from the petty egotism of a small mind that he left scarcely any record of himself, he boldly avowed his assurance of the immortality of his fame:—

We shall have occasion to show that Shakespeare had much to do in shaping and raising the drama out of that chaotic state in which he found it, and the wonder has always been, that with his apparently imperfect education he could accomplish so much. But there is no education like self-education; that was William Shakespeare's, and his genius was of that brilliant and healthy kind that gave him all the advantages of such a tuition. In history and in society he found the materials of the drama, but the wealth and power of the poet he found in the great school of nature.

In Scotland the language had remained much more stationary than in England. In this period we find the chief Scottish poets writing in a diction far more "