thy pump, that when the single sole of it is worn, the jest may remain after the wearing sole singular. ROM. O single-soled jest, solely singular for thy singleness! etc.1 While thus connected with the Comedies of Illusion, it will be seen that Romeo and Juliet is also very closely allied to the great group of tragi-comedies which Shakespeare was about to bring into being. It differs from these in its melancholy ending. The play is one peculiarly harrowing to the feelings, and will always be exposed on that account to the censure of that portion of every audience which, from the days of Aristotle downwards, has demanded in a drama the prospect of ultimate happiness for the actors. Shakespeare might, if he had chosen, have secured (as Xenophon had done, and as he himself lid in Cymbeline and Measure for Measure) for his hero and heroine a fortunate issue from their sufferings. That he determined otherwise is a signal proof of his judgment. For had the Friar's device succeeded, the death of Tybalt vould have remained unavenged, and the conflict between he two houses must have continued. By the sacrifice of two true and innocent lovers a tragic propitiation is nade for past guilt, and hereditary enmities are at once eproved and reconciled. The balance of good, arising out of an overwhelming evil, is an image of the laws *** of human life:— A glooming peace this morning with it brings; The sun, for sorrow, will not show his head : 1 Romeo and Juliet, Act ii. Sc. 4. Swift as a shadow, short as any dream ; Brief as the lightning in the collied night, That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth, The jaws of darkness do devour it up : So quick bright things come to confusion.1 The story of the two Veronese lovers aptly illustrates this universal truth, and the idea that their misfortunes are the result of destiny is forcibly brought out in the words of Friar Laurence after the tragic issue of his plans : Some greater power than we can contradict This sense of mortal impotence and vanity is further heightened by the skilful blending of comedy and tragedy; the death of the witty Mercutio; the vulgar babble of the nurse in the midst of calamity; the senile irritability with which old Capulet hurries his daughter to her fate. As regards the manner of expressing this mediæval feeling of the unreality of things, and the paradoxical ideas connected with the passion of love, the influence of Lyly is everywhere apparent in Romeo and Juliet. Euphuism pervades the amorous imagery of the play, and the extent to which the style is carried in the dialogue may be judged from the following combat of wit between Romeo and Mercutio:: ROMEO. Pardon, good Mercutio, my business was great, and in such a case as mine a man may strain courtesy. MERCUTIO. That's as much as to say, such a case as yours constrains a man to bow in the hams? ROM. Meaning, to court'sy. MER. Thou has most kindly hit it. ROM. A most courteous exposition. MER. Nay, I am the very pink of courtesy. ROM. Pink for flower. MER. Right. ROM. Why, then is my pump well flowered. MER. Well said: follow me this jest now till thou hast worn out 1 Midsummer-Night's Dream, Act i. Sc. 1. 2 Romeo and Juliet, Act v. Sc. 3. thy pump, that when the single sole of it is worn, the jest may remain after the wearing sole singular. ROM. O single-soled jest, solely singular for thy singleness! etc.1 While thus connected with the Comedies of Illusion, it will be seen that Romeo and Juliet is also very closely allied to the great group of tragi-comedies which Shakespeare was about to bring into being. It differs from these in its melancholy ending. The play is one peculiarly harrowing to the feelings, and will always be exposed on that account to the censure of that portion of every audience which, from the days of Aristotle downwards, has demanded in a drama the prospect of ultimate happiness for the actors. Shakespeare might, if he had chosen, have secured (as Xenophon had done, and as he himself did in Cymbeline and Measure for Measure) for his hero and heroine a fortunate issue from their sufferings. That he determined otherwise is a signal proof of his judgment. For had the Friar's device succeeded, the death of Tybalt would have remained unavenged, and the conflict between the two houses must have continued. By the sacrifice of two true and innocent lovers a tragic propitiation is made for past guilt, and hereditary enmities are at once reproved and reconciled. The balance of good, arising out of an overwhelming evil, is an image of the laws of human life: A glooming peace this morning with it brings; The sun, for sorrow, will not show his head : 1 Romeo and Juliet, Act ii. Sc. 4. CHAPTER V SHAKESPEARE'S LATER HISTORIES, ROMANTIC COMEDIES, AND TRAGI-COMEDIES WE come now to a group of plays in which Shakespeare's genius is exhibited at the height of its powers. Perhaps such a rapid succession of masterpieces has never been witnessed as in the period which saw the production of The Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night, the two Parts of King Henry IV. and King Henry V. Whatever is crude and tentative in the poet's earlier performances disappears in these plays. The action seems of itself to reveal the depth of the philosophy, and the philosophy to illuminate the large extent of the action. The characters, no longer introduced for the mere amusement of the spectators, are all seen to be necessary for the evolution of the play. The comic dialogue, not less profusely witty than in Love's Labour's Lost, springs more spontaneously out of the occasion. In a word, Poetry here achieves her greatest triumph, by transporting us out of ourselves into a world at once ideal and natural in the highest degree. The secret of this perfection is that Shakespeare had by this time discovered the true foundation of all great dramatic art. As his knowledge of life and his theatrical experience advanced together, he perceived that he must ground his creations in the sympathies and emotions of his audience. Abandoning the more or less abstract principle of composition, which he had adopted while he was under the influence of Marlowe and Lyly, he instinctively struck into the path followed by the great Attic dramatists, and chose his subjects either from history or from those floating legends and romances which generations of storytellers had made familiar to the minds of the people. Reflection and practice had shown him the truth of the principle which Aristotle extracts from the plays of the Greek tragedians, that "what has not happened we do not at once feel sure to be possible; but what has happened is manifestly possible, otherwise it would not have happened."1 Having first successfully applied this principle to the epic materials of history in his dramatic rendering of the chronicles of Holinshed, he extended it to the sphere of legend, and in The Two Gentlemen of Verona and Romeo and Juliet dramatised epic situations already dealt with by trouvères and novelists. An ever-growing popularity encouraged him in his practice, and he henceforth grounded the fable of every play that he produced on some existing tale or history, with a welldefined beginning, middle, and end. But with the main plot, which thus brought him into immediate sympathy with the spectators, he now combined characters and underplots, conveying, in a dramatic form, his own philosophic view of the action, and distributing light and shadow over the entire composition. The general effect produced by this method of workmanship, when contrasted with the more regular form of the Greek drama, determined by the central position of the chorus, is appropriately described by the word "Romantic." Nowhere is the romantic mode of dramatic composition more brilliantly illustrated than in the great series of histories beginning with King Richard II. and ending with King Henry V. The unity of conception running through the series is as unmistakable as in King Henry VI. and King Richard III.; but whereas, in the earlier tetralogy, Shakespeare was chiefly concerned to display the general course of divine justice in human affairs, in the latter he represents rather the effects produced by the character and 1 Aristotle, Poetics, chap. ix. pp. 5, 6. |