justify this to himself by a sophism: the happiness of being beloved is denied to him; what then remains to him but the happiness of ruling? All that stands in the way of this must be removed. This envy of the enjoyment of love is so much the more natural in Richard, as his brother Edward, who besides preceding him in the possession of the crown, was distinguished by the nobleness and beauty of his figure, and was an almost irresistible conqueror of female hearts. Notwithstanding his pretended renunciation, Richard places his chief vanity in being able to please and win over the women, if not by his figure at least by his insinuating discourse. Shakespeare here shows us, with his accustomed acuteness of observation, that human nature, even when it is altogether decided in goodness or wickedness, is still subject to petty infirmities. Richard's favorite amusement is to ridicule others, and he possesses an eminent satirical wit. He entertains at bottom a contempt for all mankind : for he is confident of his ability to deceive them, whether as his instruments or his adversaries. In hypocrisy he is particularly fond of using religious forms, as if actuated by a desire of profaning in the service of hell the religion whose blessings he had inwardly adjured. So much for the main features of Richard's character. The play named after him embraces also the latter part of the reign of Edward IV., in the whole, a period of eight years. It exhibits all the machinations by which Richard obtained the throne, and the deeds which he perpetrated to secure himself in its possession, which lasted, however, but two years. Shakespeare intended that terror rather than compassion should prevail throughout this tragedy; he has rather avoided than sought the pathetic scenes which he had at command. Of all the sacrifices to Richard's lust of power, Clarence alone is put to death on the stage; his dream excites a deep horror, and proves the omnipotence of the poet's fancy. His conversation with the murderers is powerfully agitating; but the earlier crimes of Clarence merited death, although not from his brother's hand. The most innocent and unspotted sacrifices are the two princes: we see but little of them, and their murder is merely related. Anne disappears without our learning anything further respecting her in marrying the murderer of her husband she has shown a weakness almost incredible. The parts of Lord Rivers and other friends of the queen are of too secondary a nature to excite a powerful sympathy; Hastings, from his triumph at the fall of his friend, forfeits all title to compassion; Buckingham is the satellite of the tyrant, who is afterwards consigned by him to the axe of the executioner. In the background the widowed Queen Margaret appears as the fury of the past, who invokes a curse on the future; every calamity, which her enemies draw down on each other, is a cordial to her revengeful heart. Other female voices join from time to time in the lamentations and imprecations. But Richard is the soul, or rather the demon, of the whole tragedy. He fulfils the promise which he formerly made of leading the murderous Macchiavel to school. Notwithstanding the uniform aversion with which he inspires us, he still engages us in the greatest variety of ways by his profound skill in dissimulation, his wit, his prudence, his presence of mind, his quick activity, and his valor. He fights at last against Richmond like a desperado, and dies the honorable death of a hero on the field of battle. Shakespeare could not change this historical issue, and yet it is by no means satisfactory to our moral feelings, as Lessing, when speaking of a German play on the same subject, has very judiciously remarked. How has Shakespeare solved this difficulty? By a wonderful invention he opens a prospect into the other world, and shows us Richard in his last moments already branded with the stamp of reprobation. We see Richard and Richmond in the night before the battle sleeping in their tents; the spirits of the murdered victims of the tyrant ascend in succession, and pour out their curses against him, and their blessings on his adversary. These apparitions are properly but the dreams of the two generals represented visibly. It is no doubt contrary to probability that their tents should only be separated by so small a space; but Shakespeare could reckon on poetical spectators who were ready to take the breadth of the stage for the distance between two hostile camps, if for such indulgence they were to be recompensed by beauties of so sublime a nature as this series of spectres and Richard's awakening soliloquy. The catastrophe of Richard the Third is, in respect of the external events, very like that of Macbeth. We have only to compare the thorough difference of handling them to be convinced that Shakespeare has most accurately observed poetical justice in the genuine sense of the word, that is, as signifying the revelation of an invisible blessing or curse which hangs over human sentiments and actions. Although the last four pieces of the historical series paint later events, yet the plays of Henry the Fourth and Fifth have, in tone and costume, a much more modern appearance. This is partly owing to the number of comic scenes; for the comic must always be founded not only in national, but also in contemporary, manners. Shakespeare, however, seems also to have had the same design in the serious part. Bloody revolutions and devastations of civil war appear to posterity as a relapse into an earlier and more uncultivated condition of society, or they are in reality accompanied by such a relapse into unbridled savageness. If, therefore, the propensity of a young poetical mind to remove its object to a wonderful distance has had an influence on the style in which Henry the Sixth and Richard the Third are conceived, Shakespeare has been rightly guided by his instinct. As it is peculiar to the heroic poem to paint the races of men in times past as colossal in strength of body and resolution, so in these plays, the voices of a Talbot, a Warwick, a Clifford, and others, so ring on our ear that we imagine we hear the clanging trumpets of foreign or of civil war. The contest of the houses of York and Lancaster was the last outbreak of feudal independence; it was the cause of the great and not of the people, who were only dragged into the struggle by the former. Afterwards the part was swallowed up in the whole, and no longer could any one be, like Warwick, a maker of kings. Shakespeare was as profound a historian as a poet. When we compare his Henry the Eighth* with the preceding pieces, we see distinctly that the English nation during the long, peaceable, and economical reign of Henry VII., whether from the exhaustion which was the fruit of the civil wars, or from more general European influences, had made a sudden transition from the powerful confusion of the middle age to the regular tameness of modern times. Henry the Eighth has, therefore, somewhat of a prosaic appearance; for Shakespeare, artist-like, adapted himself always to the quality of his materials. If others of his works, both in elevation of fancy and in energy of pathos and character, tower far above this, we have here, on the other hand, occasion to admire his nice powers of discrimination and his perfect knowledge of courts and the world. What tact was requisite to represent before the eyes of the queen† subjects of such a delicate nature, and in which she was personally so nearly concerned, without doing violence to the truth! He has unmasked the tyrannical king, and to the intelligent observer exhibited him as such he was actually — haughty and obstinate, voluptuous and unfeeling, extravagant in conferring favors, and revengeful under the pretext of justice; and yet the picture is so dexterously handled that a daughter might take it for favorable. The legitimacy of Elizabeth's birth depended on the invalidity of Henry's first marriage, and Shakespeare has placed the proceedings respecting his separation from Catharine of Arragon in a very doubtful light. We see clearly that Henry's scruples of conscience are no other than the beauty of Anne Boleyn. Catharine is, properly speaking, the heroine of the piece; she excites the warmest sympathy by her virtues, her defenceless misery, her mild but firm opposition, and her dignified resignation. After her, the fall of Cardinal Wolsey constitutes the principal part of the business. Henry's whole reign was not adapted for dramatic poetry. It would have been merely a repetition of the same scenes: the repudiation or the execution of his wives, and the disgrace of his most estimable ministers, which was usually soon followed by death. Of all that distinguished Henry's life, Shakespeare has given us sufficient specimens. But as, properly speaking, there is no division in the history where he breaks off, we must excuse him if he gives us a flattering compliment of the great Elizabeth for a fortunate catastrophe. The piece ends with the general joy at the birth of that princess, and with prophecies of the happiness which she * See page 567. ↑ It is quite clear that Henry the Eighth was written while Elizabeth was still alive. We know that Ben Jonson, in the reign of King James, brought the piece again on the stage with additional pomp, and took the liberty of making several changes and additions. Without doubt, the prophecy respecting James the First is due to Ben Jonson; it would only have displeased Elizabeth, and is so ill introduced that we at once recognize in it a foreign interpolation. was afterwards to enjoy or diffuse. It was only by such a turn that the hazardous freedom of thought in the rest of the composition could have passed with impunity. Shakespeare was not certainly himself deceived respecting this theatrical delusion. The true conclusion is the death of Catharine, which, under a feeling of this kind, he has placed earlier than was conformable to history. I have now gone through all the unquestionably genuine works of Shakespeare. I have carefully abstained from all indefinite eulogies, which merely serve to prove a disproportion betwixt the feeling and the capability of expressing it. To many the above observations will appear too diffuse; to others they will perhaps seem unsatisfactory. I shall be satisfied if they place those readers who are not yet familiar with the poet in the right point of view, and pave the way for a solid knowledge, and if they recall to the minds of intelligent critics some of those thoughts which have occurred to themselves. DOUBTFUL PLAYS. BY PROFESSOR EDWARD DOWDEN. THE importance of Titus Andronicus (pronounced by the writer of the play, Andron-i-cus), lies in the fact that, if Shakespeare wrote it, we find him as a young man carried away by the influence of a Sturm und Drang (storm and stress) movement similar to that which urged Schiller to write his Robbers. Titus Andronicus belongs essentially to the pre-Shakespearian group of bloody tragedies, of which Kyd's Spanish Tragedy is the most conspicuous example. If it is of Shakespearian authorship it may be viewed as representing the years of crude and violent youth before he had found his true self; his second tragedy, Romeo and Juliet, as representing the years of transition; and Hamlet, the period of maturity and adult power. The external evidence with reference to the authorship of Titus is the following: (1) It is mentioned by Meres (1598) among other undoubted plays of Shakespeare. (2) It is printed in the First Folio. (3) Ravenscroft, who altered the play in 1687, declares that he had been told "by some anciently conversant with the stage that it was not his [Shakespeare's]," but that he only gave some master-touches to one or two of the principal parts or characters." The great majority of English critics either altogether reject the play, upon the ground that in style and subject it is unlike any other work of our dramatist, or accept as true the tradition of Ravenscroft, that it was touched by Shakespeare, and no more. "Shakespeare's tragedy is never bloodily sensual; ... this play is a perfect slaughterhouse, and the blood makes appeal to all the senses. . . . It reeks blood, it smells of blood, we almost feel that we have handled blood-it is so gross." To attempt to point out certain passages as written by Shakespeare would be unsafe, for we know little of what the distinguishing features of Shakespeare's style were when he began to write for the stage; but no lines in the play have more of a Shakespearian ring than the following (Act IV. Sc. iv. 1. 81-86): .... King, be thy thoughts imperious, like thy name. Is the sun dimm'd that gnats do fly in it? The eagle suffers little birds to sing, Knowing that with the shadow of his wings A play, Titus and Vespasian (mentioned by Henslowe as "tittus and vespacia"), was acted in 1592, and though itself lost, a translation into German, acted early in the seventeenth century by English comedians in Ger |