happy" and "mother" I think I hear an echo of Shakespeare's sorrow at parting from his own mother.

This Antipholus, although very free and open, has a reserve of dignity, as we see in the second scene of the second act, when he talks with his servant, who, as he thinks, has played with him:

"Because that I familiarly sometimes

Do use you for my fool, and chat with you,
Your sauciness will jest upon my love,
And make a common of my serious hours.
When the sun shines let foolish gnats make sport,
But creep in crannies when he hides his beams."

The self-esteem seems a little exaggerated here; but, after all, it is only natural; the whole scene is taken from Shakespeare's experience: the man who will chat familiarly with his servant, and jest with him as well, must expect to have to pull him up at times rather sharply. Antipholus proceeds to play with his servant in a fencing match of wit—a practice Shakespeare seems to have delighted in. But it is when Antipholus falls in love with Luciana that he shows us Shakespeare at his most natural as a lover. Luciana has just taken him to task for not loving her sister Adriana, who, she thinks, is his wife. Antipholus answers her thus:

Sweet mistress,—what your name is else, I know not,
Nor by what wonder you do hit of mine,—
Less in your knowledge and your face you show not,
Than our earth's wonder; more than earth divine,
Teach me, dear creature, how to think and speak;
Lay open to my earthy-gross conceit,
Smother'd in errors, feeble, shallow, weak,
The folded meaning of your words' deceit.

He declares, in fact, that he loves her and not her sister:

"Sing, siren, for thyself and I will dote: Spread o'er the silver waves thy golden hairs, And as a bed I'll take them and there lie;

It is thyself, mine own self's better part, Mine eye's clear eye, my dear heart's dearer heart." And as if this were not enough he goes on:

"My food, my fortune, and my sweet hope's aim, My sole earth's heaven, and my heaven's claim."

The word-conceits were a fashion of the time; but in spite of the verbal affectation, the courting shows the cunning of experience, and has, besides, a sort of echo of sincere feeling. How Shakespeare delights in making love! It reminds one of the first flutings of a thrush in early spring; over and over again he tries the notes with delighted iteration till he becomes a master of his music and charms the copses to silence with his song: and so Shakespeare sings of love again and again till at length we get the liquid notes of passion and the trills of joy all perfected in "Romeo and Juliet "; but the voice is the voice we heard before in "Venus and Adonis " and "The Comedy of Errors."

Antipholus' other appearances are not important. He merely fills his part till in the last scene he assures Luciana that he will make good his earlier protestations of love; but so far as he has any character at all, or distinctive individuality, he is young Shakespeare himself and his experiences are Shakespeare's.

Now a word or two about Adriana. Shakespeare

makes her a jealous, nagging, violent scold, who will have her husband arrested for debt, though she will give money to free him. But the comedy of the play would be better brought out if Adriana were pictured as loving and constant, inflicting her inconvenient affection upon the false husband as upon the true. Why did Shakespeare want to paint this unpleasant bitter-tongued wife?

When Adriana appears in the first scene of the second act she is at once sketched in her impatience and jealousy. She wants to know why her husband should have more liberty than she has, and declares that none but asses will be bridled so. Then she will strike her servant. In the first five minutes of this act she is sketched to the life, and Shakespeare does nothing afterwards but repeat and deepen the same strokes: it seems as if he knew nothing about her or would depict nothing of her except her jealousy and nagging, her impatience and violence. We have had occasion to notice more than once that when Shakespeare repeats touches in this way, he is drawing from life, from memory, and not from imagination. Moreover, in this case, he shows us at once that he is telling of his wife, because she defends herself against the accusation of age, which no one brings against her, though every one knows that Shakespeare's wife was eight years older than himself.

"His company must do his minions grace,
Whilst I at home starve for a merry look.
Hath homely age the alluring beauty took
From my poor cheek? then he hath wasted it..
My decayed fair

A sunny look of his would soon repair:

But, poor unruly deer, he breaks the pale,

And feeds from home; poor I am but his stale."

The appeal is pathetic; but Luciana will not see it. She cries:

"Self-harming jealousy! fie, beat it hence!"

In the second scene of this second act Adriana goes on nagging in almost the same way.

In the second scene of the third act there is a phrase from the hero, Antipholus of Syracuse, about Adriana which I find significant:

She that doth call me husband, even my soul
Doth for a wife abhor!"

There is no reason in the comedy for such strong words. Most men would be amused or pleased by a woman who makes up to them as Adriana makes up to Antipholus. I hear Shakespeare in this uncalled-for, over-emphatic "even my soul doth for a wife abhor."

In the fifth act Adriana is brought before the Abbess, and is proved to be a jealous scold. Shake- . speare will not be satisfied till some impartial great person of Adriana's own sex has condemned her. Adriana admits that she has scolded her husband in public and in private, too; the Abbess replies:

"And thereof came it that the man was mad."

And she adds:

'The venom clamours of a jealous woman

Poisons more deadly than a mad dog's tooth."

Again, a needlessly emphatic condemnation. But Adriana will not accept the reproof: she will have her husband at all costs. The whole scene discovers

personal feeling. Adriana is the portrait that Shakespeare wished to give us of his wife.

The learned commentators have seemingly conspired to say as little about "The Two Gentlemen of Verona " as possible. No one of them identifies the protagonist, Valentine, with Shakespeare, though all of them identified Biron with Shakespeare, and yet Valentine, as we shall see, is a far better portrait of the master than Biron. This untimely blindness of the critics is, evidently, due to the fact that Coleridge has hardly mentioned "The Two Gentlemen of Verona," and they have consequently been unable to parrot his opinions.

"The Two Gentlemen of Verona" is manifestly a later work than "Love's Labour's Lost"; there is more blank verse and less rhyme in it, and a considerable improvement in character-drawing. Julia, for example, is individualized and lives for us in her affection and jealousy; her talks with her maid Lucetta are taken from life; they are indeed the first sketch of the delightful talks between Portia and Nerissa, and mark an immense advance upon the wordy badinage of the Princess and her ladies in "Love's Labour's Lost," where there was no attempt at differentiation of character. It seems indubitable to me that " The Two Gentlemen of Verona " is also later than "The Comedy of Errors," and just as far beyond doubt that it is earlier than "A Midsummer Night's Dream," in spite of Dr. Furnival's "Trial Table."

The first three comedies, "Love's Labour's Lost," "The Comedy of Errors," and "The Two Gentlemen of Verona," are all noteworthy for the light they throw on Shakespeare's early life.

In "The Two Gentlemen of Verona " Shakespeare makes similar youthful mistakes in portraiture to