principle, to end his career as honorably as it has been begun. His wife it is who at the outset is the dominant character. In her dauntless hardihood she gives courage and strength to her husband's infirm purpose, which, while longing for the fruits of crime, shrinks from its commission. But before the play approaches its conclusion, the positions of the two have been reversed. The gallant soldier of the early part has become a cruel tyrant, as inaccessible to remorse as he is to pity. The man, who at his first entrance into crime was horrified by the phantoms of his own disordered brain, comes to encounter recklessly and defy undauntedly the terrors of the visible and invisible. worlds. The moral nature has become an absolute wreck. But with the hardening of the heart and the deadening of the conscience have disappeared entirely the compunctions which once unnerved the resolution. and the tremors which shook the soul. Not so with Lady Macbeth. Her nature, far finer and higher strung, though at the beginning more resolute, pays at last in remorseful days and sleepless nights the full penalty of violated law. While Macbeth grows stronger as a man by the very course which destroys his susceptibility to moral considerations, this very susceptibility on her part increases with the success of the deed she has prompted and in which she has taken determined part. The woman could not unsex herself wholly, and succumbs at last to the long-continued and increasing strain of a burden she was not fitted to bear.

Pervading all these plays of Shakespeare which involve the problems that beset man's life and destiny

is not the shallow conception of poetic justice, never fully realized in fact and rarely realizable even in the most imperfect way, but instead the profound conviction he inspires of the sway and sweep of those moral forces which, once set in motion, must go on to work out their inevitable course in human conduct, whether it be in itself right or wrong, whether it lead to triumph or to failure. There belongs not indeed to his drama the fatalism of the Greek tragedy in which the hero is urged on by the stress of irresistible necessity to a catastrophe at which he shudders but which he cannot shun. The idea that runs through it all, that unites its most discordant elements, that binds in one common bond its most diverse themes, is the existence of the reign of law; is the inexorable sequence of cause and effect, whether it bring with it joy or sorrow, whether it point to the serene close of happy days, or disclose itself in the ever-recurring tragedy of lives going out in noisy defeat or in countless quieter forms of failure. It is not at all that every act is followed by the specific result which is most appropriate to it, according to our imperfect conceptions of justice. It is that the general consequences of human conduct correspond in the Shakespearean drama with the consequences which we see exemplified in the life about us. In the domain of morals as in that of letters it is the art which holds the mirror up to nature.

Let us illustrate the fact by the play which has just been under consideration. Macbeth's overthrow and death is a mere accident of personal fortune. It

might or might not have happened in real life. In his case a sort of poetic justice has been exemplified; but it was in no wise a necessary sequence of the crimes he has committed. That, so far as he is concerned, is found elsewhere, and would have been in active operation had he returned victorious from the battlefield on which he fell. He himself recognized it, and announced it. In the years which were coming he could not look to have that which should chiefly attend a happy old age, "honor, love, obedience, troops of friends;"

"But, in their stead,

Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honor, breath,
Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not.”

Upon him in the pride of power had fallen already the penalty of violated law. It is this inflexible enforcement of the genuine decrees which regulate the moral government of the universe; it is his full acceptation and adequate representation of the far-reaching consequences which follow human action, whether it be due to frailty or to fault, whether it spring from folly, ignorance, wilfulness, credulousness, irresolution, or anything contained in the darker catalogue of sins and crimes; it is his insistence upon the actual rewards and penalties that wait upon conduct: these it is that entitle Shakespeare to the position he holds of the great moral poet of humanity.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

THE following pages contain a bibliography of the works, referred to in this volume, which appeared from the Restoration to the end of the eighteenth century. For obvious reasons they have been put down in chronological order; but they are in the index with a reference to the page on which they are found here. In every instance they appear under the date of the year in which they were first published; but the full title is given only of the particular edition which has been consulted in the preparation of this volume. The prefix of an asterisk to a title signifies that the work has not been seen: that any account given of it, or of its contents, has been taken from others.

1663.

The Adventures of Five Hours. A Tragi-Comedy. Feb. 21° 1662. Imprimatur John Berkenhead. London, Printed for Henry Herring

Four New Plays, viz.: The Surprisal, The Committee, Comedies. The Indian-Queen, The Vestal-Virgin, Tragedies. As they were acted by his Majesties Servants at the Theatre Royal. Written by the Honourable Sir Robert Howard. Imprimatur, March 7. 166 Roger 1665. L'Estrange. London, Printed for Henry Herringmann.

1667.

Love Tricks: or, The School of Complements; as it is now acted by his Royal Highnesse the Duke of York's Servants at the Theatre in Little Lincolns-Inne Fields. By J. S. Licens'd May 24. 1667. Roger L'Estrange. London, Sold by Thomas Dring Junior. 1667.

The Indian Emperour, or, the Conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards. Being the sequel of the Indian Queen. By John Dryden, Esq; London, Printed for Henry Herringman. 1694.

1668.

The Great Favorite, or, the Duke of Lerma. A Tragedy. As it was acted at the Theatre-Royal by His Majesty's Servants. Written by the Honourable Sir Robert Howard. London, Printed for Henry Herringman. 1692.

in Five New Plays. 1692.

Secret-Love, or the Maiden-Queen: As it is acted by his Majesties Servants at the Theater-Royal. Written by John Dryden, Esq; London, Printed for Henry Herringman, 1669.

The Sullen Lovers: or, The Impertinents.

Highness the Duke of York's Servants.

A Comedy acted by his

Written by Tho. Shadwell.

London, Printed for Henry Herringman. 1670.

Of Dramatick Poesie, an Essay. By John Dryden Esq: London, Printed for Henry Herringman, 1668.

1669.

The Wild Gallant: A Comedy. As it is acted by their Majesties Servants. Written by John Dryden, Esq; London, Printed for Henry Herringman, 1694.

1670.

Tyrannick Love; or, the Royal Martyr. A Tragedy. As it is acted by his Majestie's Servants at the Theatre Royal. By John Dryden, Servant to his Majesty. London, Printed for H. Herringman, 1686. The Tempest, or the Enchanted Island. A Comedy. As it is now acted at his Highness the Duke of York's, Theatre. London, Printed for Henry Herringman. 1674.

1671.

Paradise Regained. A Poem. In IV Books. To which is added Samson Agonistes. The author John Milton. London, Printed for John Starkey. 1671.

1672.

The Conquest of Granada by the Spaniards: In two parts. Acted at the Theater Royall. Written by John Dryden Servant to his Majesty. Printed for Henry Herringman. 1672.

Almanzor and Almahide, or the Conquest of Granada. The Second Part. As it is acted at the Theater-Royal. Written by John Dryden Servant to his Majesty. Printed for Henry Herringman. 1672.

1673.

The Law against Lovers, pp. 272-329

in The Works of St William D'Avenant K* consisting of those which were formerly printed, and those which he design'd for the press: now published out of the Author's original copies. London: Printed for Henry Herringman.

1673.