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to decline—namely, to recover a drum, left on the field of battle. He goes forth alone, shaking in his shoes, and, whilst he is discussing with himself the propriety of inflicting some wounds on his own person, to cause it to be believed that he has been fighting, he is surrounded by a band of his own comrades in disguise, who talk a jabber of nonsensical sounds, to make him think they are the enemy, and carry him off, blindfolded, to the general; by whom he is examined through an interpreter, to make him think he is in the enemy's head-quarters. In abject fear of death, he tells everything he knows about the numbers and the plans of his own side, slanders his officers and, in short, proves himself an irredeemable poltroon and liar; whereupon the bandage is removed from his eyes, and he sees himself surrounded by the jeering faces of his fellow-soldiers.

A situation not dissimilar to this appears in Measure for Measure, where Lucio, an inveterate gossip and scandalmonger, in conversing with the Duke, whom he does not recognise in the disguise of a friar, begins to throw out hints disparaging to the Duke's own character, and is drawn on from one pretended revelation to another, till he has thoroughly blackened his friend and benefactor, who thereupon throws off his disguise and confounds his accuser. The whole play of Measure for Measure is occupied with the unmasking of a hypocrite, and in this operation there

of course resides a grim irony; but it is too painful for mirth. Indeed, though Measure for Measure is counted, technically, among the Comedies, it is, in its total scope, one of the most solemn and tragic of all the poet's productions.

In the beginning of The Tempest there occurs a description of a shipwreck into which a good deal of amusement is infused. The King and his councillors, who are on board, come on deck; but the boatswain shouts to them: "Keep your cabins!" and, when one asks him if he knows to whom he is speaking, he replies, pointing to the angry billows, "What care these roarers for the name of king?" When another says, "Remember whom thou hast on board," he answers promptly, "None that I love more than myself. You are a councillor-if you can command these elements to silence and work the peace of the present, we will not hand a rope more; use your authority: if you cannot, give thanks you have lived so long, and make yourself ready in your cabin for the mischance of the hour, if it so hap.-Cheerly, good hearts (to the sailors), Out of our way, I say!" (to the King and councillors).

There is another scene of the same drift in Pericles; but the wit has a sharper point: "Master," says one sailor, "I marvel how the fishes live in the sea"; to which the answer is given: "Why, as men do a-land: the great ones eat up the little ones. I can compare

our rich misers to nothing so fitly as to a whale: a' plays and tumbles, driving the poor fry before him, and at last devours them all at a mouthful. Such whales have I heard on o' the land, who never leave gaping till they've swallowed the whole parish-church, steeple, bells and all." "But, master," rejoins the first speaker, "if I had been the sexton, I would have been that day in the belfry." "Why, man?" "Because he should have swallowed me too; and, when I had been in his belly, I would have kept up such a jangling of the bells, that he should never have left till he cast bells, steeple, church and parish up again.”

The cheeriest of all these Graver Comedies is A Winter's Tale, in which appears one of Shakspeare's most comic characters-Autolycus, of whom it may be said, as Falstaff said of himself, that he is not only witty himself, but the cause of wit in others, because he has been the prototype of not a few comic figures in later English literature, such as George Eliot's witty pedlar Bob Jakin, who is an undeniable imitation of Autolycus, and Dickens' travelling auctioneer, Doctor Marigold, whose flow of language is obviously imitated from the same source. Autolycus is a discharged serving-man, who, under stress of circumstances, has taken to the trade of thieving; or, to use his own phrase, he "snapper-up of unconsidered trifles". He first appears lying apparently wounded in the highway and crying out at the pitch of his voice for help, as a clown

is a

passes, who runs to discharge the function of the Good Samaritan and, as he does so, is softly relieved of his purse. At the sheep-sheering festival Autolycus is the soul of the fun, astonishing the rustics with his torrent of words, singing ballads and selling them, commending the stock of his pack with a song:

Lawn as white as driven snow,
Cypress black as e'er was crow,
Gloves as sweet as damask roses,
Masks for faces and for noses,
Bugle bracelet, necklace amber,
Perfume for a lady's chamber,
Golden quoifs and stomachers
For my lads to give their dears,
Pins and poking-sticks of steel,

What maids lack from head to heel,

Come buy of me, come, come buy, come buy,
Buy lads, or else your lasses cry

Come buy;

and then, when his customers are fascinated with their purchases, plying his light fingers in the neighbourhood of their purses. Autolycus is a thief, but he pays for what he steals with his jokes and high spirits; or, as Professor Dowden says, "he does not trample on the laws of morality, but dances or leaps over them with so nimble a foot that we forbear to stay him".

There is an abject way of reading Shakspeare, too prevalent at the present time, which worships everything written by him and bestows on one and all of his works the same unlimited admiration. This is objectionable for many reasons, but especially for this one, that, if our superlatives are thrown away in this prodigal fashion, we cannot get the use of them when they are really applicable. The fact is, Shakspeare is a very unequal writer; and among the Graver Comedies there are some so good as to excite wonder that the author who produced them should have fathered others so thin in substance and so disjointed in construction.

There is one of these plays especially that leaves the rest completely behind and takes rank with The Merchant of Venice, Julius Cæsar, Henry the Fifth, and the very choicest of the poet's productions. This is The Tempest, which is usually printed first in editions of the poet's works, a position to which it is well entitled, although it was in reality written last, or very nearly last, of all his dramas. Here there is no skipping from country to country and from year to year, as in some of the Romances: all is compact and coherent, and the action is comprehended within a few hours; every part of the action is in easy and graceful motion; every scene contributes to the effect of the whole, and nothing could be dispensed with; the language is sustained at a high level throughout;

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