In "A Midsummer Night's Dream" attains to a consummation which it had never before reached, either in our own, or in any other, dramatic literature. English romantic comedy, in a word, was now represented by an example, not of sudden (for nothing is sudden in literature), but of radiant perfection. - WARD, ADOLPHUS WILLIAM, 1875-99, A History of English Dramatic Literature, vol. II, p. 273.

In which some of his most delicate and sprightly verses have revelled. The whole play expresses humour on a revel, and brings into one human feeling the super-nature, the caprice and gross mischance, the serious drift of life.WEISS, JOHN, 1876, Wit, Humor, and Shakspeare.

Here each kind of excellence is equal throughout; there are here no purple patches on a gown of serge, but one seamless and imperial robe of a single dye. Of the lyric or the prosaic part, the counterchange of loves and laughters, of fancy fine as air and imagination high as heaven, what need can there be for any one to shame himself by the helpless attempt to say some word not utterly unworthy? Let it suffice us to accept this poem as the landmark of our first stage, and pause to look back from it on what lies behind us of partial or of perfect work. SWINBURNE, ALGERNON CHARLES, 1880, A Study of Shakespeare, p. 49.

In no other of his works has Shakespeare more brilliantly shown that complete dominance of theme which is manifested in the perfect preservation of proportion. The strands of action are braided with astonishing grace. The fourfold story is never allowed to lapse into dulness

or obscurity. There is caprice, but no distortion. The supernatural machinery is never wrested toward the production of startling or monstrous effects, but it deftly impels each mortal personage in the natural line of human development. The dream-spirit is maintained throughout, and perhaps it is for this reason, that the poet was living and thinking and writing in the free, untrammelled world of his own spacious and airy imagination, and not in any definite sphere of this earth, that "A Midsummer Night's Dream" is so radically superior to the other comedies written by him at about this period. WINTER, WILLIAM, 1888, Augustin Daly's Arrangement for Representation, Preface, p. 12.

Here he gave his fancy the reins, and showed, as he created Titania and Oberon, and then, again, a Bottom, that nothing in the broad domain of poesy was to him impossible or unattainable. The moral maturity of the poet appears, however, most strikingly in the figure of Theseus, with his manly character, his delicacy of feeling, and his broad humanity. - TEN BRINK, BERNHARD, 1892-95, Five Lectures on Shakespeare, tr. Franklin, p. 78.

Enthralled by Shakespeare's art, and submissive to it, we accept without question every stroke of time's thievish progress, be it fast or slow; and, at the close, acknowledge that the promise of the opening lines has been redeemed. But if, in spite of all our best endeavours, our feeble wits refuse to follow him, Shakespeare smiles gently and benignantly as the curtain falls, and begging us to take no offence at shadows, bids us think it all as

no more yielding than a dream. — FURNESS, HORACE HOWARD, 1895, New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare, A Midsommer Nights Dreame, Preface, p. xxxiv.

His first masterpiece is a masterpiece of grace, both lyrical and comic. How is one to speak adequately of "A Midsummer Night's Dream?" It is idle to dwell upon the slightness of the character-drawing, for the poet's effort is not after characterisation; and, whatever its weak points, the poem as a whole is one of the tenderest, most original, and most perfect Shakespeare ever produced. It is Spenser's fairy-poetry developed and condensed; it is Shelley's spirit-poetry anticipated by more than two centuries. And the airy dream is shot with whimsical parody. The frontiers of Elf-land and Clown-land meet and mingle. BRANDES, GEORGE, 1898, William Shakespeare, A Critical Study, vol. 1, p. 76.

Shakespeare's joy in the possession of the poetic gift, and his earliest delight in life, found radiant expression in "A Midsummer Night's Dream," a masterpiece of poetic fancy, and the gayest and most beautiful of poetic comedies. Rich as this drama is in humorous effects, it is so essentially lyrical in spirit that it stands alone in English poetry; an exquisite expansion of the masque or festival poem into a drama of pure fancy and daring imagination. MABIE, HAMILTON WRIGHT, 1900, William Shakespeare, Poet, Dramatist, and Man, p. 203.

TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA

have little doubt.

1590-92

That this play is rightly attributed to Shakspeare, I If it be taken from him, to whom This question may be asked of all except "Titus Andronicus;" and it

shall it be given? the disputed plays,

will be found more credible, that Shakspeare might sometimes sink below his highest flights, than that any other should rise up to his lowest. – JOHNSON, SAMUEL, 1768, General Observations on Shakspeare's Plays.

The characters are drawn with strength and truth, and it is remarkable that in this play we have the first idea of what has been since called genteel comedy. The elegance, yet the contrast in Valentine and Protheus, is a very striking picture, not only of the etiquette, but the perfidy of polite life; for Protheus is more corrupted by education than nature, of which his remorse and his contrition are proofs, while Valentine has a mind so correctly inclined to rectitude that fashion and folly cannot corrupt it. DIBDIN, CHARLES, 1795, A Complete History of the Stage, vol. III, p. 38.

This is little more than the first outline of a comedy loosely sketched in. It is the story of a novel dramatised with very little labour or pretension; yet there are passages of high poetical spirit, and of inimitable quaintness of humour, which are undoubtedly Shakespear's, and there is throughout the conduct of the fable a careless grace and felicity which marks it for his. - HAZLITT, WILLIAM, 1817-69, Characters of Shakespear's Plays, p. 187.

The "Two Gentlemen of Verona" ranks above the "Comedy of Errors," though still in the third class of Shakspeare's plays. It was probably the first English comedy in which characters are drawn from social life, at once ideal and true: the cavaliers of Verona and their lady-loves are graceful personages, with no transgression of the probabilities of nature; but they are not exactly the real men and women of the same rank in England. The imagination of Shakspeare must have been guided by some familiarity with romances before it struck out this comedy. It contains some very poetical lines. HALLAM, HENRY, 1837-39, Introduction to the Literature of Europe, pt. ii, ch. vi, par. 37.

This play appears to me enriched with all the freshness of youth; with strong indications of his future matured poetical power and dramatic effect. It is the day-spring of genius, full of promise, beauty, and quietude, before the sun has arisen to its splendour. I can likewise discern in it his peculiar gradual development of character, his minute touches, each tending to complete a portrait: and if these are not executed by the master-hand as shown in his later plays, they are by the same apprenticehand, each touch of strength sufficient to harmonize with the whole. BROWN, CHARLES ARMITAGE, 1838, Shakespeare's Autobiographical Poems, p. 231.

In parts, no doubt, the "Two Gentlemen of Verona" is sparkling with beauties, but as a whole it betrays a certain youthful awkwardness, and in execution a want of sustained power and depth. The composition is distinguished by the easy and harmonious flow of its language, by a peculiar freshness of view, by the naïveté of the par