CONTENTS CHAPTER I. THE AGE.-Shakespeare's setting in Elizabethan England. The significance of the Renaissance in his lit- erary environment. Classical and Italian influences. The new interest in poetry, and in art prose. The neo-platonic doctrines of love. Ideas of villainy. The Reformation in England; its relation to the Renaissance. The Elizabethan Londoners; the brilliancy and zest of their mental atmos- phere. The blend of feudalism and nationalism; democratic influences. The blend of refinement and barbarism. Moral standards. Political theories. Superstitions. Elizabethan psychology. The popular stage; the early theatres and their dramatists. Types and ideals of Elizabethan drama. The characteristic blend of story and poetry. CHAPTER II. LIFE AND WORKS.-Fact and fiction in Shake- speare biography. Birth, probable education, and marriage. Traditions of the migration to London. Shakespeare's reading. His early acquaintance with the theatre. The Greene and Chettle pamphlets. His début as poet: Venus and Adonis and Lucrece. Shakespeare as actor. The Lord Chamberlain's company. Established position and pros- perity; the coat-of-arms; real estate. Meres's tribute. The Globe Theatre; Shakespeare's income. The Passionate Pilgrim and the sonnets on the friend and the "dark lady." speare in London and at Stratford. His friendships, known and guessed. His last years, death, and burial. Contem- porary opinion of him, as poet and man. The publication of his poems and plays; quartos and folio. The Shake- CHAPTER III. THE POEMS.-Relation of Shakespeare's early and conceits. Sonnets on beauty, love, time, poetry, absence, death, estrangement; the "triangle" sonnets. Varying CHAPTER IV. THE CHRONICLE-HISTORIES.-The vogue of na- tional drama in Shakespeare's period. Characteristics of the type; frequently primitive, naïve, undramatic. Mar- lowe's development of it. The group of plays on the reign of Henry the Sixth: the lost play on the wars in France, The Contention, and The True Tragedy. Relation of Shake- speare's Henry the Sixth to these. Richard the Third; its Marlovian character. Primitive elements of the tragedy of villainy; Shakespeare's development of the hero. The Life and Death of King John; a rewriting of an older play. Slight Shakespearean elements. The series on the house of Lancaster. Richard the Second: a chronicle-play becom- ing a tragedy of character. Primitive conventional ele- ments mingled with Shakespearean characterization. Henry the Fourth; new problems in the dramatization of incident and personality. The comic elements; origin and develop- ment of Falstaff. The changes in these elements in the Second Part; difficulties raised by "the rejection scene. Henry the Fifth; a still different type of chronicle-history; its epic or pageant-like structure. The use of the prologue or chorus. Evolution of the comic elements surviving from the preceding plays. Brilliancy and yet inadequacy of the CHAPTER V. THE COMEDIES.-Condition of English comedy at of Errors based on a farce by Plautus; Shakespeare's problem of the Shylock story and its seeming approximation to a tragic mood. The Taming of the Shrew a revision of an earlier play; some blend of characterization with far- cical action. The Merry Wives of Windsor another farce comedy; Falstaff and other familiar characters revived in a plot of domestic intrigue. Much Ado about Nothing notable for its multiple plotting; conventional romance and relatively original character comedy developed side by side. Beatrice marks the growing importance of women in Shakespeare's drama. As You Like It a blend of love and adventure, based on an earlier novel. Rosalind as the incarnation of Shakespeare's union of the spirit of comedy and that of romance. Brilliant technique marred by a somewhat negligent conclusion. Twelfth Night revives the elements of success in many earlier comedies; another notable case of multiple plotting. Queries as to the comic appropriateness of the Malvolio under-plot. The acme of Shakespeare's happier studies of love; some progress ob- CHAPTER VI. THE TRAGEDIES.-The pleasurableness of tragedy, even more painful than its predecessor, and marked by stormy and confused action. Material from the chronicle made tragic by a newly invented catastrophe; doubtful effect of this, and of the unusual double plotting. Another notable specimen of the mingling of comic and tragic mat- ter. Macbeth a chronicle-history in origin; its plot and characters explained by the source. In type analogous to Richard the Third; its special quality due to the sympa- thetic treatment of the villain-hero. Varying interpreta- tions of Macbeth's moral responsibility. Reasons for the supreme success of this play among the tragedies. Antony and Cleopatra another study from Plutarch. Historic tragedy now turned to tragedy of personal passion. Shake- speare's following of Plutarch in the principal presenta- tion of Cleopatra; his departure from Plutarch at the close. The remarkable double catastrophe. Supremacy of the dramatic-poetic style. Coriolanus Shakespeare's final tragedy. Ironically stern in mood. Again following Plu- tarch, Shakespeare is now equally impartial with his source; the problem of the sympathies left open to diverg- CHAPTER VII. THE TRAGI-COMEDIES.-Difficulty of classifying |