written in collaboration and made up of ill-fitting parts, some very fine, others very clumsy, the few dramas of that final period are romantic works. The bitterness and pessimism of the poet have vanished; the anguish and terror of the coming night are calmed; the sun sets radiant in a tranquil autumn evening. "The Tempest," "Cymbeline," "The Winter's Tale," end in a general forgiveness and reconciliation. In "The Tempest" Prospero commands

and Monuments;" written in collaboration, probably with Fletcher. It was during a performance of this play that broke out, in 1613, as we saw (above, p. 55), the fire that destroyed the Globe, rebuilt the following year. By an extraordinary chance no life was lost in the catastrophe, which formed the subject of a tragi-comic ballad. The fire spread :

Regarding neither Cardinall's might,

Nor yet the rugged face of Henry the eight.
Out runne the knightes, out runne the lordes,
And there was great adoe;

Some lost their hattes, and some their swordes,
Then out runne Burbidge too.

Text in Halliwell-Phillipps, "Outlines," i. p. 310. Ben Jonson, in his "Execration upon Vulcan," gives a picturesque description of the place and of the event, reproaching the god for his "mad prank

Upon the Globe, the glory of the Bank,

Which though it were the fort of the whole parish,
Flank'd with a ditch, and forc'd out of a marish,

I saw with two poor chambers taken in,

And razed; ere thought could urge, this might have been!

' Performed in 1609-10 (Furnivall), 1611 (Lee), 1613 (Garnett, who restates former arguments according to which the play was written for the marriage, in that year, of the Princess Elizabeth, Universal Review, 1889, iii. 556). First ed. the folio of 1623; source: probably a novel or a lost play, the same which furnished the German, Jacob Ayrer of Nuremberg, with the subject of his "Comedia von der schönen Sidea," performed about 1595, printed in 1618; text and translation in Cohn, "Shakespeare in Germany,' 1865 same nobleman, adept of the arts of magic, holding in his power the son of his enemy, obliging him to pile up logs (a labour more suitable to the Lithuania of the German play than to Shakespeare's island, between Naples and Tunis), and marrying him at the end to his daughter; rôle of the familiar demon "Runcifal der Teufel." Ed. Dorer has pointed out some resemblances between Shakespeare's plot and a Spanish novel (Das Magazin für die

:

the spirits of the air and of the waters, and gives them back their liberty; he holds his enemies in his grasp, and pardons them; the optimism of his daughter Miranda sheds over all the characters, even the traitors, its gentle light: "How beauteous mankind is!" Even Caliban, the monster, who represents bestial and ferocious envy, profits at the end by this universal indulgence. The problem of the hereafter remains as obscure, but it is no longer contemplated by the poet with the same dread. To the anguish of Hamlet succeeds the resignation of Prospero:

We are such stuff

As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

In "Cymbeline" and in "The Winter's Tale," other Desdemonas forgive other Othellos. A grace and elegance of thought worthy of Marivaux, a freshness of colour recalling Watteau, withal the manners and language of the Warwickshire shepherds faithfully portrayed, make of "The Winter's Tale" a drama apart, the truest pastoral

Literatur des In- und Auslandes, 1885, No. 5). This novel forms chapter iv. of the "Parte primera del libro intitulado Noches de Invierno, por Antonio de Eslava," Brussels, 1610 (Dorer mentions an ed. of 1609), and tells of the "arte magica del Rey Dardano," a dispossessed king whose daughter Serafina marries in the end the son of the usurper; the events take place in a wonderful palace under the waters of the Adriatic. The shipwreck and sojourn in the Bermudas (the "Ile of Divels," famous for storms; cf. Bolton, "Hypercritica," ab. 1618, III. xi., § 5) of English sailors in 1609, several relations of which were published in 1610, had excited public attention, and gave Shake. speare, who alludes to it (i. 2), the idea of a play with a shipwreck, spirits, etc. 'Performed in 1611; on May 15th of that year, Dr. Forman attended a performance of it and noted his impressions; text of his observations in Halliwell-Phillipps, "Outlines"; 1st ed. the folio of 1623; source: Greene's novel "Pandosto," otherwise "Dorastus and Fawnia " (the Florizel and Perdita of Shakespeare), 1588. On this novel, which had, especially because of its improbability, an incredible success, which was one of the first English literary works translated into French, and which furnished the French stage with the subject of two plays; also on "Amadis de Gaule," and not a Polish chronicle, being the main source followed by

of a period which had numbered many, an even song of enchanting sweetness, modulated by the poet, who recalls to mind his distant childhood, associates with the rays of his setting sun the glimmerings of dawn, and enjoys in thought the happiness of those whose turn it is to be young: "Vivite felices!"

A certain lassitude is discernible however in these last dramas, evidenced by a larger space being reserved to the spectacular part (which drew upon the poet new jests from his friend Jonson), by the use of devices too often employed before, unexpected recognitions, disguises, oracles and prophecies, fourth and fifth feigned deaths; by more glaring improbabilities, especially in "Cymbeline," where, as in the plays of the first period, the wooden puppet, taken from the properties' store-house, mixes with characters of flesh and blood, struts about, grimaces, condemns to death: "I am sorry for thee . . . thou art dead-And thou shalt die for it. . . . Take him hence." I

Greene, see my Introduction to "The Winter's Tale," in Sidney Lee's ed. of Shakespeare's Works, vol. xv., New York, 1907. Schlegel has spent much ingenuity to prove that the title "Winter's Tale," suits the play perfectly: love's labour's lost! for winter has nothing to do with it; a "winter's tale" simply meant an imaginary story, invented at pleasure :

Now I remember those old women's words

Who, in my wealth, would tell me winter's tales,
And speak of spirits and ghosts,

says Marlowe's Jew of Malta (ii. 1.)-"A merry winter's tale would drive away the time trimly," says Peele's Antic (“Old Wives Tale," pr. 1595).

"Cymbeline," v. 5; performed about 1609-10; 1st ed. the folio of 1623 Sources: for the so-called historical part, Holinshed; for the romantic part, a very old tale, popular in all countries, Greece included, of which a French version is famous, the "Roman de la Violette," thirteenth century (same plot in the "Comte de Poitiers," twelfth century); there is an Italian version in the "Decameron "; a (debased) English one in "Westward for Smelts," 1603? (only known ed. 1620; Percy Society, 1848). Cf. "Anglia," vols. vi. and vii., and R. Ohle, "Shakespeare's Cymbeline," 1890. A kind of prototype of the stupid and malevolent Cloten is to be found in Chettle's "Hoffman," 1602-3, character of Jerome.

Forty-two other plays have been attributed, in part or in whole, to Shake.

The poet's last years were passed at Stratford, "as all men of good sense will wish theirs may be, in ease, retirement, and conversation of his friends." He saw his beloved grand-daughter, Elizabeth Hall, grow up and enliven the family circle; he practised hospitality, collected his revenues, increased his possessions (purchasing in 1613, and letting, a house near the Blackfriars Theatre), received visits from his old London friends: Drayton, whom Shakespeare's son-in-law, Hall, affirms having cured of a fever,2 and Ben Jonson. A particular mark of the consideration in which his wit and acumen

speare, without convincing proofs; none of them, at all events, of such a nature as to add any lustre to his glory. See the reprints, "Pseudo Shakesperian Plays," ed. Warnke and Proescholdt, Halle, 1883, ff., and “The Shakesp. Apocrypha,” ed. Tucker Brooke, Oxford, 1908, 14 plays in one vol. with important introd. and bibliography. The chief one of these plays is "The Two Noble Kinsmen: Presented at the Black friers by the Kings Majesties servants, with great applause: Written by the memorable Worthies of their time; Mr. John Fletcher, and Mr. William Shakespeare, Gent.," 1634; ed. Littledale, New Shakesp. Soc. Theseus and Hippolyta reappear in it, with another rustic feast in honour of their nuptials; one more young lady made crazy by unrequited love, singing mad songs, crying: "Willow, willow," using coarse language and throwing herself into a lake. The plot is drawn from Chaucer's "Knight's Tale" (touching eulogy of the old poet in the prologue). Cf. J. W. Hales, Athenæum, Nov. 22, 1902, and Lawrence, Times Lit. Supt., July 14, 1921. "Sir Thomas More," same group, exists in a MS., part of which is full of erasures, and part is a fragment of the clean copy submitted to Tilney, the licenser of plays, with his remarks and objections on the margins, the first one being signed by him in large letters, on the top of folio 3.-MS. Harl. 7368, in the British Museum. According to Sir E. M. Thompson, part of the MS. (facsim. ed. by Farmer) is in the hand of Shakespeare. See "Shakespeare's Hand," papers by several specialists, 1923.

"Some Account of the Life of Mr. Shakespeare," by Nicholas Rowe, who took great pains to collect information on the famous poet and to obtain, from the best sources accessible in his day (especially from Betterton, the actor), traditions concerning him. The "Account" prefaces Rowe's ed. of Shakespeare's Works, and has been reprinted by Nichol Smith, "Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare," Glasgow, 1903.

"Select observations on English Bodies, or cures : performed upon very eminent persons in desperate diseases. First written in Latine by Mr. John Hall, Physician, living at Stratford-upon-Avon " (translated by the contem. porary surgeon and friend of Hall, J. Cooke), London, 1657, 12mo.

were held came to him in 1613, when he was asked, on behalf of the Earl of Rutland, to devise, in conjunction with Burbage, an "impresa" or emblem with an appropriate motto, for the earl to bear at the tilting in Whitehall, on the King's birthday. Shakespeare was to supply a proper subject and provide the words; Burbage, an artist as well as an actor, to "paint and make” the emblem. 'Imprese," as has been well shown, were in immense favour at the Renaissance, the more so that their origin could be traced to the Greeks; the emblem was as the body, and the motto as the soul, of the "impresa." a The occasion was for the earl a great one, as he had only some months before succeeded his brother; the King had paid him a visit at Belvoir Castle, and this was his first tilting. Hence his appeal to Shakespeare, who received the comparatively large sum of 44s. for his pains, and Burbage as much.3 This is the last literary work of the

2

'Sidney Lee, "The Future of Shakespearean Research," Nineteenth Century, May, 1906, p. 775.

See G. F. Barwick's excellent essay in The Library, April, 1906. The chief work on the subject, in the sixteenth century, was that of Contile: “Ragionamento di Luca Contile sopra la proprieta delle Imprese con le particolari de gli Academici affidati," Pavia, 1574, fol., illustr. Du Bellay asks his "Poète courtisan" to "donner des devises" to "grands seigneurs," 1559. 3 "To Mr. Shakespeare, in gold, about my Lord's impreso (sic.) xliiijs. : to Richard Burbage for paynting and making yt, in gold xliiijs." Sidney Lee, ut supra. Vain efforts have been made to show that possibly some other Shakespeare was in question; the association with Burbage, the fact that no other "Mr. Shakespeare," and certainly not the bit-maker mentioned by Mrs. Stopes (Athenæum, May 16, 1908) could have been applied to for this kind of work, the fact too that the help of the best poets was often required in such cases (as shown by the example of Marot, Jodelle and Ronsard in France), do not allow us to doubt that the Earl of Rutland exhibited on his shield the last "heire of [Shakespeare's] invention." Concerning Jodelle, see his "Recueil des Inscriptions, figures, devises et masquarades ordonnées en l'hostel de ville de Paris, le Jeudi 17 de Février, 1558," Paris, same year-a doleful account of festivities in honour of Henri II., in which Jodelle seems to have had worse mishaps than Churchyard at Norwich (above p. 13). Some of Jodelle's devices consisted in real imprese: e.g., two columns with an "H" on each, and the motto "Hoc Hercule dignæ."