extravagantly bored by the scenic pleasures of the aristocracy. No doubt they rewarded his tale with more beer-more than the original score of fourteen pence could defray. Excellent English Christopher! The fancy clings fondly to him, and benevolently reposes, as it were, on his ale-house bench in the sun, after this preposterous exhibition of Italian hu mors. In these essays the writer has contemplated Shakespeare's comedies with the eyes of a reader, not of a play-goer, and has frequently insisted, with Charles Lamb to back him, that Shakespeare is too good to act now, whatever he may have been in a greater, simpler, kindlier, braver England. But the Taming of the Shrew is not one whit too good to act. No doubt it is an excellent rattling farce for the stage. And so much the less is this piece worthy of Shakespeare. An old canvas, a rather dull and roaring ancient farce, was the poet's material, and only here and there could he rouse it into immortality. It is one of his failures; it is to him what The Monastery is to Scott. And, if any one said so to Shakespeare, he might answer, like the other master, and with his smiling unconcern, "If it be na weel bobbit, we'll bob it again." NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE VOL. XCI AUGUST, 1895 No. DXLIII THE COMEDIES OF SHAKESPEARE. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY E. A. ABBEY, AND COMMENT BY ANDREW LANG. XIV. MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM. THERE is no play more absolutely the original of the story is not extant vention, character and color, than the Midsummer Night's Dream. Here he is untrammelled by an earlier canvas, while Copyright, 1895, by Harper and Brothers. All rights reserved. the learned have discovered. Here he dwells free in a fairy world, and only copies men where grace is most courtly, |