Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/401

] academy of God's universe did not include all lesser colleges, and as if God needed lectures and masters to instruct those whom he chooses to inform himself, and to produce as his elect and peculiar oracles.

It has been said that his dramas cast into the shade and made obsolete all that went before him; but, indeed, his great light is the shadow that obscures also all that has come after him. Where is the second Shakespeare of the stage? He still stands alone as the type of dramatic greatness and perfection, and is likely to continue so. When we recollect his marvellous characters—his Hamlet, his Macbeth, his Lady Macbeth, his Othello and 'Desdemona, his Shylock, his Lear, his Ophelia, his Juliet, his Rosalind—the humours and follies of Shallow, Slender, Dogberry, Touchstone, Bottom, Launce, Falstaff—or the ideal creations, Ariel, Caliban, Puck, Queen Mab, we scarcely hope for the appearance of any single genius who shall at once enrich our language with an affluence of such living and speaking characters, such a profound insight into all the depths and eccentricities of our nature, and such a fervent and varied expression of all the sentiments that are dearest to our hearts. But when we survey in addition the vast extent of history and country over which he has ranged, gleaning thence the most kingly personages, the most tragic incidents, the most moving and thrilling as well as amusing sensations and fancies, our wonder is the greater. Greece has lent him its Pericles, its Timon, its Troilus and Cressida—Rome its Cæsar, Brutus, Antony, Coriolanus—Egypt its Cleopatra. Ancient Britain, Scotland, and Denmark; all the fairest cities of Italy, Venice, Verona, Mantua; the forests of Illyria and Belgium, and the isles of the Grecian seas, are made the perpetually shifting arena of his triumphs. Through all these he ranged with a free hand, and, with a power mightier than ever was wielded by any magician, recalled to life all that was most illustrious there, and gave them new and more piquant effect from the sympathetic nearness into which he brought them with the spectator, the enchanting scenery with which he surrounded them. All this was done by the son of the woolcomber of Stratford—the youthful ranger of the woods of Charlecote, and the uplands of Clopton—the merry frequenter of country wakes, and then the player of London, who, so far as we know, was never out of his native country in his life.

If we are to take it for granted that after the year 1597, when he bought one of the best houses in his native town for his residence, Shakespeare spent his life there, except during the the theatrical season, the greater part of his last nineteen years would be passed in the quiet of his country tome. We may then settle his "Two Gentlemen of Verona," "The Comedy of Errors," "Love's Labour Lost," "All's Well that Ends Well," "Richard II." and " Richard III.," "King John," "Titus Andronicus" (if his), the first part of "Henry IV.," and "Romeo and Juliet," as produced in the bustle of his London life. But the far greater part, and the most magnificent and poetical, of his dramas have been composed in the pleasant retirement of his native scenes; namely, the second part of "Henry IV.," "Henry v.," "The Midsummer Night's Dream," "Much Ado about Nothing," and "The Merchant of Venice," in 1598 and 1600; the second and third parts of "Henry VI.,"

"Merry Wives of Windsor," 1601; "Hamlet," 1602; "Lear," 1608; "Troilus and Cressida " and "Pericles," 1609; "Othello" (not published till after the author's death, which was the case, too, with all his other plays, though brought on the stage in his lifetime), "The Winter's Tale," "As You Like It," "King Henry VIII.," "Measure for Measure," "Cymbeline," "Macbeth," "The Taming of the Shrew," "Julius Caesar," "Antony and Cleopatra," "Coriolauus," "Timon of Athens," "The Tempest," and "Twelfth Night." Shakespeare died in 1616. Of the envy which the unexampled splendour of Shakespeare's genius produced amongst inferior dramatic writers, we have an amusing specimen in the words of Robert Greene: "There is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that, with his tiger's heart wrapped in a player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you, and, being an absolute Johannes Factotum, is, in his own conceit, the only Shakscene in a country."

Amongst the most remarkable dramatic contemporaries of Shakespeare, or those who immediately followed him, are Chapman, Bon Jonson, Webster, Middleton, Decker, Marston, Tailor, Tourneur, Rowley, Ford, Heywood, Shirley, and Beaumont and Fletcher. We can only give slight notices of them; those who wish to know more of their style and merits may consult Charles Lamb's Specimens, and Dilke's Old Plays, or Doilsley's Collection. Chapman wrote sixteen plays, and, conjointly with Ben Jonson and Marston, one more, as well;is three in conjunction with Shirley. The tragedies of Chapman are written in a grave and eloquent diction, and abound with fine passages, but you feel at once that they are not calculated, like Shakespeare's, for acting. They want the inimitable life, ease, and beauty of the great dramatist. Perhaps his tragedy of "Bussy D'Ambois" is his best, and next to that his "Byron's Conspiracy," and "Byron's Tragedy." Of his comedies, "Eastward Hoe!" partly composed by Jonson and Marston, "Monsieur d'Olive," and his "All Fools." But Chapman's fame now rests far more on his translation of Homer, which, with all its rudeness of style and extreme quaintness, has always seized on the imagination of poets, and has been declared by many to be by far the best translation of the Iliad and Odyssey that we have. Pope was greatly indebted to it, having borrowed thence almost all the felicitous double epithets which are found in him.

The most celebrated of Webster's tragedies, "The Duchess of Malfi," has been revised in our time by Richard Hartwell Home, and put on the stage at Sadler's Wells by Phelps with considerable success. He was the author of three tragedies, "Appius and Virginia," "Duchess of Malfi," and "The White Devil; or, Vittoria Corombona;" a tragi-comedy, "The Devil's Law-Case; or, When Women Go to Law, the Devil is full of Business," besides two comedies in conjunction with Rowley, and two others in conjunction with Decker. Webster exhibits remarkable power of language, and an imagination of wonderful vigour, but rather too fond of horrors. Undoubtedly he was one of the best dramatists of his age, and seemed fully conscious of it. That he had a true poetic vein in him is evidenced by such passages as the "Dirge of Marcello," sung by his mother,