Salisbury-"Disturb him not; let him pass peace

ably."

King—“Peace to his soul, if God's good pleasure be ! Lord cardinal, if thou think'st on heaven's bliss,

Hold up thy hand, make signal of thy hope.

He dies, and makes no sign. O God, forgive him!"

HENRY VIII.

This is a rich, spectacular drama, written near the end of the poet's life, and portraying the decline of British chivalry of the more showy and less warlike period, the Field of the Cloth of Gold, and also of the decline of the "pride, pomp and circumstance of glorious war.'

There are two theories in regard to the date of this play; one is, that it was composed in the time of Queen Elizabeth to defend the character of her mother, Anne Boleyn, and another, that it was brought out in the reign of James I. and founded on a previous drama.

The proud figure of Cardinal Wolsey and his solemn words of repentance for his sin of serving

two masters-God and the world, God and the king-still powerfully reverberate in men's deepest consciousness.

These historical plays, written from a heart full of the patriotism of a truly British soul, were evidently thrown off originally in his youthful days for the stage, and had their plot, it may be, in some instances from previous plays, but in them all there are traces of Shakespeare's revision and inimitable genius. These touches or marks of Shakespearean genius are plainly discernible wherever they occur, and I have sometimes exemplified this to myself by a homely illustration, which would apply both to Shakespeare and Homer.

The explorer in the dark forest of mid-Africa comes across a spring of pure water, which wild beasts visit at night to quench their thirst. All kinds, small and great, come; on the sandy marge of the spring or pond are innumerable tracks of these nightly visitants, but across them all are great prints, effacing the smaller ones, which are the marks of the lion alone, unmistakable and aweinspiring.

COMEDIES.

CYMBELINE.

Comedy is usually a play where the ludicrous or, better, the humorous element is prominently set forth in opposition to tragedy, which stirs deeper emotions; but in the older classic and Italian use of the word, as in Dante's "Divina Commedia," it is applied to the Middle Style, admitting, indeed, the elegant and poetic, but running usually in the common form of dialogue, both high and low.

The play I now take up, "Cymbeline," is an instance of this. It is neither comedy nor tragedy, but may be classed under the form of comedy according to the definition of this term which has just been given.

It is laid on British soil in an ancient period, whether real or fictitious, and like "King Lear,"

Macbeth," and all Shakespeare's dramas, wherever their scene is laid, has, as I have said, a smack of Warwickshire and Arden Forest; yet in spite of this, there is no merely local type of character exclusively evolved, either Greek or Roman,

Italian, French, or English, but a pure humanity as the basis of all. There is, however, in some of the poet's dramas, as in one character, at least, in this play of "Cymbeline," a certain profound subjectivity of thought.

This play, which has been sometimes supposed to belong to a more youthful stage of Shakespeare's works, is, by more thoughtful critics, assigned to the period of his later dramas, such as "Hamlet" and "Othello." Its style is too serious for my definition of comedy, and though it does not exhibit traces of exalted poetry, it is clear and simple in its prose.

It reminds one both of barbarism and civilization, and if its figures are dressed in British tunics or Roman brazen armor, this is of little consequence.

None of Shakespeare's women, or those of any other dramatist, equal Imogen's feminine perfection of womanly purity that springs from the central principle of feminine nature. It is genuine and unconscious-one lustrous immaculate pearl. It is the essence of love, natural, gentle, patient, enduring, thinking no evil.

Imogen forgives her most treacherous enemies,

and seems to harbor no revenge, is ready to obey her husband's letter that she be killed, is true to his love, is unchanging in her patience, unswerving in her affection. This is the deep lesson of the drama.

Imogen's character needs no ornament; it is born of perfect love-innate, spiritual, and divine. No female personage of Shakespeare's plays sinks more quietly, more indelibly into the mind of the reader.

It is strange that few plays contain more Homeric and classical allusions fitly applied than " Cymbeline."

Shakespeare must have read the Iliad, it may be of Chapman's translation, aided by what of the Greek language he knew. Shakespeare was an educated man. He had the culture that was comprehended in his age. If modern science had then existed he would have delighted in its wonderful progress, as his marvelous guesses in respect to the circulation of the blood, the electric currents in the atmosphere, and the law of evolution in "The Tempest" show. Sir Thomas Brown's observations on