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THE ENGLISH HISTORIES

KING JOHN

KING RICHARD THE SECOND

THE FIRST PART OF KING HENRY THE FOURTH

THE SECOND PART OF KING HENRY THE FOURTH

KING HENRY THE FIFTH

THE FIRST PART OF KING HENRY THE SIXTH

THE SECOND PART OF KING HENRY THE SIXTH THE THIRD PART OF KING HENRY THE SIXTH

KING RICHARD THE THIRD

KING HENRY THE EIGHTH

UNIV. OF

CHAPTER I.

THE ENGLISH HISTORIES

SHAKSPEARE is a territory so vast that the reader who desires to take possession of it requires to parcel it out into provinces and conquer these one by one. The great divisions are obvious: the plays divide themselves into Histories, Comedies and Tragedies; and the Sonnets, with the miscellaneous poems, may be reckoned as a fourth division. Some at least of these divisions would, however, require to be subdivided. Thus the Histories naturally fall into the English and the Ancient; and the Comedies may be divided into the Gayer and the Graver.

A very important question for the beginner is, with which of the great divisions he ought to commence. In most editions, if I am not mistaken, the Comedies are printed first, and with these the conscientious and unsophisticated reader is accordingly apt to begin. This, however, is a mistake. A great deal of Shakspeare's poorest work is in the Comedies; and, besides, these are far more difficult to read than the other plays, being full of obsolete words and phrases, of which the beginner can make little or nothing. I can still

remember how, as a boy, I was put out and discouraged by these obscurities; and many are, I believe, permanently alienated from this study by trying to enter by the wrong door.

It seems to me that by far the best way to begin is with the English Histories. Here you get at once, in King John, a poem of the highest excellence, brilliant in diction and easily intelligible; and the four plays which immediately follow are also simple in language and yet, both in conception and execution, up almost to the author's highest level.

This, however, is not the only reason for placing the English Histories first. They were the first section of his work which the author completed. He did not, indeed, write them quite continuously: a few of the Comedies and one or two of the Tragedies were mixed up with them: but, with the single exception of Henry the Eighth, which belongs to the very close of his career the English Histories were early work, and the whole set was finished when the other two series were little more than begun.

It would hardly be too much to say that the English Histories made Shakspeare. It is natural for a poet to open his career with subjects belonging to the domain of pure fancy, where the characters and the ncidents are of his own invention and he is at perfect liberty to shape everything according to his own will, as long as he keeps within the bounds of probability.

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