“The critic . will, indeed, require, as the spirit and substance of a work, something true in human nature itself, and independent of all circumstances; but in the mode of applying it he will estimate genius and judgment according to the felicity with which the imperishable soul of intellect shall have adapted itself to the age, the place, and the existing manners."-Coleridge.

Copyright, 1922, by
DUFFIELD & COMPANY

Printed in the United States of America

Kutric
Wair
10-12-17

1564.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

PREFACE

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.' Theatrical controversies and difficulties. Shake-

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-

speare canon. The order of composition; the assumed four

periods.

CHAPTER III. THE POEMS.-Relation of Shakespeare's early
poems to Ovid and the Italian Renaissance. Venus and
Adonis; decorative sensualism. The Rape of Lucrece;
greater earnestness. Style and imagery of the poems. The
Passionate Pilgrim, The Phoenix and the Turtle, A Lover's
Complaint. The Sonnets of 1609; uncertainty as to date
and circumstances of composition. The Renaissance "con-
ceit.''
Conventional and personal elements in sonnets of
the Petrarchan school. The question of continuity in Shake-
speare's. Influence of Sidney and of Daniel. Metrical
form of the Shakespeare sonnets. The more trivial and
conventional, and the more serious and individual, themes

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and conceits. Sonnets on beauty, love, time, poetry, absence,
death, estrangement; the "triangle'
"sonnets. Varying
estimates of the Sonnets. Their maturity, in contrast with
the narrative poems.

The

105

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.
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
characterization of the King. Reversion to chronicle-
history in the late patchwork play of Henry the Eighth. 147

CHAPTER V. THE COMEDIES.-Condition of English comedy at
the opening of Shakespeare's career: the popular and clas-
sical traditions. Types of comedy in general: farcical and
"high." Divergent moods: satiric and romantic. Shake-
speare's experimentation in all these; his final emphasis
on the comedy of romance. Love's Labor's Lost of uncer-
tain origin and history. Satire of contemporary affecta-
tions. Slight elements of characterization. The Comedy

of Errors based on a farce by Plautus; Shakespeare's
contribution of certain more serious elements. Two Gentle-
men of Verona the herald of his romantic comedy. In-
fluence of Greene on this type. Shakespeare's daring use
of improbabilities. The Midsummer Night's Dream a type
by itself; a romantic farce, apparently occasional in origin.
Its brilliantly complex structure. Combination, in the
clownish characters, of farce comedy and realistic charac-
terization. The first great poetic achievement among the
comedies. The Merchant of Venice primarily a romance;
improbabilities again daringly accumulated. Plausibility
notwithstanding, attained chiefly by characterization. The