he will possess the greatest and noblest of all gifts . . . and to possess this natural gift in virtue and honour is to have a perfect and sincere nobility of nature." (1114b.) The idea was more fully developed, however, in the medieval mystics, such as Saint Francis, Suso, and especially Meister Eckhart with the doctrine of the "uncreated light" in the soul-"Ye have all truth essentially within you." 28 After Sidney, the Pietists of the later seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries contributed to the development of the conception of the beautiful soul, but it reached its highest growth in the romantic thought of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in such writers as Richardson, who was probably influenced by Sidney, Rousseau in the Nouvelle Héloise, Klopstock, Wieland, Schiller, Goethe especially in Wilhelm Meister, Schleiermacher, and Hegel.30

If Sidney uses Philoclea, Pamela, Musidorus, and Pyrocles to represent degrees and kinds of virtue, he also offers a Cecropia, a Basilius and Gynecia to represent varying kinds of self-indulgence and wickedness; and the wickedness of these characters is no less linked with conceptions of nature than is the virtue of the others. To digress for a moment, there is in the Arcadia a recognition, somewhat vague, it is true, that there are certain "laws of nature," that is, certain principles of conduct that have an objective validity and are right by nature. The contrast between what is right, objectively and impersonally considered from the point of view of universal nature, and what is subjectively to be desired, is interestingly brought out in the following quotation. Pyrocles is arguing with Philoclea that it is ethically right for him to commit suicide: "No, no, most faultlesse, most perfect Lady, it is your excellencie that makes me hasten my desired end, it is the right I owe to the generall nature, that (though against private nature) makes me seek the preservation of all that she hath done in this age." (II, 107.) As to the content of the law of nature, Sidney gives us only scattering hints. "Nature," he says, "gives not to us her degenerate children, any more general precepte, then one

29

38 Quoted in R. A. Vaughan, Hours with the Mystics, London, 1879, p. 192. See, however, George R. Havens, "The Theory of Natural Goodness in Rousseau's 'Nouvelle Héloïse,'” Modern Language Notes, XXXVI, 385 ff. 30 Max Wundt, Goethes Wilhelm Meister und die Entwicklung des modernen Lebensideals, Berlin u. Leipzig, 1913, p. 216.

to helpe the other, one to feele a true compassion of the others mishappe." (II, 45.) And also:

Nature above all things requireth this,

That we our kind doo labour to maintaine. (I, 139.)

...

Now Cecropia and Basilius, on the other hand, use what they call laws of nature, to defend an ethical naturalism. Basilius, for instance, defends his love for Zelmane, by asking, "Should . . . opinion of I know not what promise binde me from paying the right duties to nature and affection? (II, 92.) The course of free love for him is "natures course."

Thy yonger shall with Natures blisse embrace

An uncouth love, which Nature hateth most. (I, 327.)

Here we have two antithetic conceptions of nature in successive lines. The first nature is clearly the nature that favors unrestricted spontaneity, impulsive and unreflective action. The second is the nature that is to be equated with the controlling force of

reason.

Further, Basilius and Cecropia invoke nature in defense of a naturalistic antinomianism that is opposed to custom and convention. The antithesis of nature and custom goes back to the Sophists 31 and was revived and amplified in Sidney's time by Montaigne.32 There is no proof, however, that Sidney was familiar with the Essais at the time he was writing the Arcadia and he makes use, not of the more usual antithesis between custom and an objective, rational, and universally valid "law of nature," but of the special and extreme antithesis between custom and antinomianism. "Alas," sighs the love-sick Basilius, "let not certaine imaginatife rules, whose trueth stands but upon opinion, keepe so wise a mind from gratefulnes and mercie, whose never fayling laws nature hath planted in us." (II, 43.) 33 Zelmane fights fire with fire in her reply to this appeal, for she also invokes the magic name of nature and assures him that chastity is "the truest observaunce of nature."

1 See the speeches of Callicles in Plato's Gorgias, 482-3.

32 See Essais, I, 31.

33 Cf. Cecropia's "But in you (Neece) whose excellencie is such, as it neede not be held up by the staffe of vulgar opinions." (I, 406.) See also I, 379.

Cecropia reinforces her argument of ethical naturalism by yet another standard of what is "right by nature," namely, the analogy with physical nature. She is trying to persuade Pamela that it is right for her to let herself love and be loved, for "Do you see how the spring-time is ful of flowers, decking it self with them, & not aspiring to the fruits of Autumn? what lesson is that unto you, but that in the april of your age, you should be like April?" (I, 405.) Again she goes into the very camp of her enemies and borrows their doctrine that it is "right by nature" to maintain one's characteristically human nature: "it is manifest inough, that all things follow but the course of their own nature, saving only Man, who while by the pregnancie of his imagination he strives to things supernaturall, meane-while he looseth his owne naturall felicitie." (I, 406.) With this antinomian tendency of Cecropia Sidney shows little sympathy.

Nature, then, is used in the Arcadia as both the occasion and justification for many diverse and often contradictory points of view and many ways of meeting life. But if Sidney has permitted himself to use a great profusion and even confusion of interpretations of "nature," he could have quoted chapter and verse in classical philosophy for every meaning which he uses. And if he seems unaware of many of the contradictions in his use of the term, he was not more so than many a scholar has been since his time. The important point for our purposes is the richness of philosophical background displayed in the Arcadia. Sidney has amply justified his description of the function of the poet: "with a tale, forsooth, he cometh unto you, . . . and, pretending no more, doth intend the winning of the mind from wickedness to virtue."

Vassar College.

STRUCTURAL UNITY IN THE TWO PARTS OF

HENRY THE FOURTH

BY ROBERT ADGER LAW

That each of the two parts of Henry the Fourth, particularly the Second Part, utterly lacks unity of plot-structure has been asserted or tacitly assumed by many Shakespeare critics of the past half-century, wherein so much stress has been laid on dramatic technique. It is the object of this paper to show that each of the two plays is carefully planned as an organic unit, and that the lack of sequence noted by Brooke,2 when the two parts are taken together as the first two members of a trilogy, is the natural result of the entirely new framework that is employed for an "unpremeditated addition" to Part I.

I

The First Part of Henry the Fourth is built up around a conflict between protagonist and antagonist, Prince Hal and Percy, better known as Hotspur, which culminates in the Battle of

1 See Woodbridge, E., The Drama: Its Law and Its Technique, 1898, p. 158; Dowden, E., Shakspere (Literature Primers), n. d., p. 96; Baker, G. P., Development of Shakespeare as a Dramatist, 1907, pp. 156-157; MacCracken, Durham, and Pierce, An Introduction to Shakespeare, 1910, p. 157; Matthews, B., Shakspere as a Playwright, 1913, p. 122. Recently H. T. Baker in The English Journal (April, 1926) has dissented strongly from Matthews's dicta, but his answer is concerned with characters and particular scenes rather than with the structure of the play. Moorman in the Arden Shakespeare, Henry the Fourth, Part I, p. 197, believes, like Dowden, that "the two parts of Henry IV form only one play, which the limitations of time divided into two halves."

See, also, Tolman, A. H., "Why Did Shakespeare Create Falstaff?" (first printed in P. M. L. A., XXXIV, 1-13; reprinted in Falstaff and Other Shakespearean Topics, 1926, pp. 5 ff); Neilson, W. A., Shakespeare's Complete Works (Cambridge Poets), 1906, p. 536; Brooke, Tucker, The Tudor Drama, 1911, p. 333 (cf. Brooke's Introduction to Henry the Fourth, Part II, in Brooke, Cunliffe, and MacCracken's Shakespeare's Principal Plays, p. 221); Schelling, F. E., English Literature During the Lifetime of Shakespeare, 1910, p. 161.

'In The Tudor Drama, 1911, p. 333. Brooke, who believes that "the

Shrewsbury when Hal slays Hotspur. To this battle, which marks the one meeting between the two Harries, the first scene of the play definitely looks forward, and we are frequently reminded of the conflict in every act. This can be brought out more clearly by briefly summarizing each act of the First Part.

3

In Act I, scene i, King Henry discusses with his nobles news of the defeat of Mortimer, Hotspur's brother-in-law, by the Welsh under Glendower, and of Hotspur's notable victory over Douglas at Holmedon. Sir Walter Blunt brings report of Hotspur's triumph, but the King learns to his annoyance that Hotspur refuses to surrender his prisoners to his sovereign. For this attitude Westmoreland blames Worcester, and King Henry has summoned the Percies for conference. Here is not only the beginning of the Percy rebellion, but the names of all but one of the leaders in the future Battle of Shrewsbury. The one missing name is mentioned by the King when he laments the striking contrast between young Percy and his own riotous Harry. He wishes that it could be shown that some fairy exchanged the two in infancy, implying that they are of the same age, contrary to history. Neither Hal nor Hotspur appears in person. Scene ii shows Hal in an Eastcheap tavern, planning with his low companions a highway robbery. In the final twenty lines of the scene he promises the audience to repent after a season. Scene iii details the stormy interview between King Henry and the Percies, at the end of which Worcester lays down the plan of the rebellion. To this plan Hotspur assents, expressing his willingness, if he did not think such an event would please the King, to poison Hal" with a pot of ale,” symptom of the Prince's low associations. Most of Act I is pure exposition, but protagonist and antagonist are twice sharply contrasted.

Henry IV and Henry V plays form a closely connected series," holds that "the second part of Henry IV, like the second part of Tamburlaine, seems to be an originally unpremeditated addition, occasioned by the enormous effectiveness of the by-figure of Falstaff."

"In the first part the Battle of Shrewsbury forms the catastrophe, the centre and aim of the action." Ulrici, Shakespeare's Dramatic Art, 1904, p. 241. Neilson holds a slightly different view, looking on the culmination, so far as any exists, as "the emergence of Prince Henry from his low surroundings as a brilliant warrior, who slays Hotspur at Shrewsbury." (Op. cit., p. 536.) This view makes the play an epic and subordinates Hotspur.