pedantry to sacrifice certain advantages of contrast and comparison to a procedure in every instance, from play to play, according to dates. Thus, in the chapter on the English Historical Plays I have, for convenience of illus tration, treated Henry VI. after King John, and before Richard III. In the opening of the eighth chapter, I have explained what I believe to be the right manner of using the chronological method. I have called The Tempest Shakspere's last play, but I am quite willing to grant that A Winter's Tale, Henry VIII., and perhaps Cymbeline may actually have succeeded The Tempest. For the purpose of such a study as the present, if it be admitted that these plays belong to one and the same period-the final period of the growth of Shakspere's art -it matters little how the plays succeeded one another within that period. I refer in one passage to Henry VIII. (act iv., sc. 2) as if written by Shakspere. The scene was, I believe, conceived by Shakspere, and carried out in the spirit of his design by Fletcher. About half of this volume was read in the form of lectures ("Saturday Lectures in connection with Alexandra College, Dublin") in the Museum Buildings, Trinity College, Dublin, during the spring of the year 1874. In some instances I have referred to, and quoted from, papers by the Rev. F. G. Fleay as read at meetings of the New Shakspere Society, but which have not received the final corrections of their author. In seeing the volume through the press, I received valuable suggestions and corrections from Mr. Harold Littledale, the editor, for the New Shakspere Society, of "The Two Noble Kinsmen," for which I thank him. I have to thank the Director of the New Shakspere Society, Mr. F. J. Furnivall, for permission to print the "Trial Table of the Order of Shakspere's Plays," which appears in his introduction to the new edition of "Shakespeare Commentaries" by Gervinus. TRIAL TABLE OF THE ORDER OF SHAKSPERE'S PLAYS. [This, like all other tables, must be looked on as merely tentative, and open to modification for any good reasons. But if only it comes near the truth, then reading the plays in its order will the sooner enable the student to find out its mistakes. (M. stands for "mentioned by Francis Meres in his 'Palladis Tamia,' 1598.")] In his introductory essays to “Shakespeare's Dramatische Werke” (German Shakespeare Society), Prof. Hertzberg dates Titus 1587-89; Love's Labor's Lost, 1592; Comedy of Errors, about New-year's-day, 1591; Two Gentlemen, 1592; All's Well, 1603; Troilus and Cressida, 1603; and Cymbeline, 1611. TRIAL TABLE OF THE ORDER OF SHAKSPERE'S PLAYS-Continued. * Entered one year before at Stationers' Hall. Entered two years before at Stationers' Hall. SHAKSPERE HIS MIND AND ART. CHAPTER I. SHAKSPERE AND THE ELIZABETHAN AGE. In these chapters an attempt will be made to present a view or aspect of a great poet, and the first word must explain precisely what such a view or aspect is worth, what it professes to be, and what it disclaims. Dr. Newman, in his "Grammar of Assent," has distinguished two modes of apprehending propositions. There is what he calls the real apprehension of a proposition, and there is the notional apprehension. In real apprehension there is the perception of some actual, concrete, individual object, either with the eye or some bodily sense, or with the mind's eye-memory or imagination. But our minds are not so constructed as to be able to receive and retain only an exact image of each of the objects that come before us one by one, in and for itself. On the contrary, we compare and contrast. We see at once "that man is like man, yet unlike; and unlike a horse, a tree, a mountain, or a monument. And in consequence we are ever grouping and discriminating, measuring and sounding, framing cross classes and cross divisions, and thereby rising from particulars to generals; that is, from images to notions. . . . 'Man' is no longer what he really is, an individual presented to us by our senses, but as we read him in the light of those comparisons and contrasts 1 |