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From his old association he has learned how common men think about common things, so that he can reason with soldiers like Williams and Bates sympathetically and on their own level; but the rough homeliness of their reflection oppresses him with the irony of his position, and when he is alone, he breaks into a soliloquy that Hamlet might have uttered on the real nature of the external "Onore," which the world in general values above everything :—

O ceremony, show me but thy worth!

What is thy soul of adoration?

Art thou aught else but place, degree and form,

Creating awe and fear in other men?

Wherein thou art less happy being feared

Than they in fearing.

What drinkest thou oft, instead of homage sweet,

But poisoned flattery? O, be sick, great greatness,
And bid thy ceremony give thee cure!

Thinkest thou the fiery fever will go out

With titles blown from adulation?

Will it give place to flexure and low bending?

Canst thou, when thou command'st the beggar's knee,

Command the health of it? etc., etc.1

On the field of Agincourt, as at Shrewsbury, however, all sense of irony disappears; the King combines the resolution of the Bastard in King John with the fiery imagination of Hotspur :

WESTMORELAND.

K. HENRY.

1

O that we now had here
But one ten thousand of those men in England
That do no work to-day!

What's he that wishes so?

My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin :
If we are mark'd to die, we are enow

To do our country loss; and if to live,

The fewer men, the greater share of honour.

God's will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.

By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,

Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;

It yearns me not if men my garments wear;

Such outward things dwell not in my desires :
But if it be a sin to covet honour,

I am the most offending soul alive.2

King Henry V. Act iv. Sc. 1.

2 Ibid. Act iv. Sc. 3.

Such was the genius with which Shakespeare converted a series of famous events in English history into a vehicle for representing the deepest and most universal truths of human character. Not less admirable is the dramatic skill shown in the accommodation of the subject to the forms of the stage, by the use made of the underplot in displaying the character of the leading personages. Where the comic interludes in Shakespeare's earlier plays, such as the Comedy of Errors and The Two Gentlemen of Verona, are too often introduced, in Lyly's fashion, for the mere exhibition of wit, the scenes at Rochester and Gadshill, at the Boar's Head and at Shallow's House, are, in Henry IV., all intimately connected with the main action, and are necessary for the evolution of the characters of Falstaff and the Prince. Lastly, the euphuistic smartness of dialogue, cultivated in such plays as Love's Labour's Lost, is now seen to be toned down into a natural style, suited to the character of the speakers, and forming an appropriate vehicle for some of the most genuinely comic scenes in the English language. Throughout Henry IV. the euphuism of Falstaff's language-a good sample of which occurs in the inimitable mock trial at the Boar's Head-is unmistakable, but it is as far removed from the mechanical rhetoric of Lyly as Falstaff himself from Euphues :

Peace, good pint-pot; peace, good tickle-brain. Harry, I do not only marvel where thou spendest thy time, but also how thou art accompanied for though the camomile, the more it is trodden on the faster it grows, yet youth, the more it is wasted the sooner it wears. That thou art my son, I have partly thy mother's word, partly my own opinion, but chiefly the villanous trick of thine eye and a foolish hanging of thy nether lip, that doth warrant me. If then thou be son to me, here lies the point; why, being son to me, art thou so pointed at? Shall the blessed sun of heaven prove a micher and eat blackberries? a question not to be asked. Shall the son of England prove a thief and take purses? a question to be asked. There is a thing, Harry, which thou hast often heard of and it is known to many in our land by the name of pitch this pitch, as ancient writers do report, doth defile; so doth the company thou keepest: for, Harry, now do I speak to thee not in drink but in tears, not in pleasure but in passion, not in

:

From his old association he has learned how common men think about common things, so that he can reason with soldiers like Williams and Bates sympathetically and on their own level; but the rough homeliness of their reflection oppresses him with the irony of his position, and when he is alone, he breaks into a soliloquy that Hamlet might have uttered on the real nature of the external "Onore," which the world in general values above everything:

O ceremony, show me but thy worth!

What is thy soul of adoration?

Art thou aught else but place, degree and form,

Creating awe and fear in other men?

Wherein thou art less happy being feared

Than they in fearing.

What drinkest thou oft, instead of homage sweet,

But poisoned flattery? O, be sick, great greatness,
And bid thy ceremony give thee cure!

Thinkest thou the fiery fever will go out

With titles blown from adulation?

Will it give place to flexure and low bending?
Canst thou, when thou command'st the beggar's knee,

Command the health of it? etc., etc.1

On the field of Agincourt, as at Shrewsbury, however, all sense of irony disappears; the King combines the resolution of the Bastard in King John with the fiery imagination of Hotspur ::

WESTMORELAND.

K. HENRY.

O that we now had here
But one ten thousand of those men in England
That do no work to-day!

What's he that wishes so?

My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin :
If we are mark'd to die, we are enow

To do our country loss; and if to live,

The fewer men, the greater share of honour.

God's will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.

By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,

Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;

It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires:
But if it be a sin to covet honour,

I am the most offending soul alive.2

1 King Henry V. Act iv. Sc. I.

2 Ibid. Act iv. Sc. 3.

Such was the genius which Shakespeare con verted a series of famous events in English history into a vehicle for representing the deepest and most universa truths of human character. Not less admirable is the dramatic skill shown in the accommodation of the subject to the forms of the stage, by the use made of the under plot in displaying the character of the leading personage Where the comic interludes in Shakespeare's earlier pays such as the Comedy of Errors and The Two Gentlemen i Verona, are too often introduced, in Lyly's fashion, for the mere exhibition of wit, the scenes at Rochester and Gadshill, at the Boar's Head and at Shallow's House, re in Henry IV., all intimately connected with the man action, and are necessary for the evolution of the mar acters of Falstaff and the Prince. Lastly, the ephuste such pays is.

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words only, but in woes also: and yet there is a virtuous man in thy company, and I know not his name.1

I have dwelt at length on this great succession of historic dramas, because it is in them that we can trace most clearly the advance of Shakespeare, both in philosophic thought and dramatic skill. They furnish us with the key of personal sympathy needed to unlock the full significance of such plays as As You Like It, Twelfth Night, Hamlet, and Measure for Measure, in which, though the conception and execution are not less plainly the product of the dramatist's own emotional experience, his sympathies are more closely veiled behind the characters of fictitious persons. Perhaps the most completely dramatic of all his plays, certainly the one in which his constructive skill is most evident, is The Merchant of Venice. This comedy, one of those mentioned by Meres, was produced some time before 1598, at what exact date we have no evidence to show. By some it is supposed to be identical with the "Venecyon Comedy," mentioned by Henslowe in his diary as early as 1594, but, in my opinion, the finish of the style, and the complex art of the whole composition, clearly prove it to be a later work than the Midsummer-Night's Dream, which can hardly have been written before 1595. Shakespeare's creative power in organising scattered materials is here seen in its most splendid form. The action of the play is grounded on no less than three different stories, and though, from a casual expression of Stephen Gosson's it has been inferred that Shakespeare was indebted for his plot to an older drama, this reasoning seems to me in the highest degree improbable. Many particulars of the central episode-namely, that of the agreement for the pound of flesh-are taken from an old fabliau which, after appearing in the Gesta Romanorum, had been reproduced towards the close of the fourteenth century in a more polished form, in the Il Pecorone of Giovanni Fiorentino,

3

1 Henry IV. Part i. Act ii. Sc. 4.

2 Henslowe, Diary, p. 40.

3 Steevens' Shakespeare (1803), vol. vii. p. 229.

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