moral purpose in view.”* serving of pardon, but that it would be inconsistent with the characters of the pardoners that they should exercise their power with severity. Shakspere lived in an age when the vindictive passions were too frequently let loose by men of all sects and opinions, and much too frequently in the name of that religion which came to teach peace and good will. Is it to be objected to him, then, that wherever he could he asserted the supremacy of charity and mercy; But there are some who are not quite so pedantically wise as to affirm "he paid no attention to that retributive justice which, when human affairs are rightly understood, pervades them all," but who yet think that Proteus ought to have been at least banished, or sent to the galleys for a few years with the outlaws; that Angelo, in 'Measure for Measure,' should have been hanged; that Leontes, in 'The Winter's Tale,' was not sufficiently punished for his cruel jealousy by sixteen-that he taught men the "quality" of that years of sorrow and repentance; that blessed principle which Iachimo, in 'Cymbeline,' is not treated with poetical justice when Posthumus says,—— "Kneel not to me: The power that I have on you is to spare you ;”— and that Prospero is a very weak magician not to apply his power to a better purpose than only to give his wicked brother and his followers a little passing punishment; weak indeed, when he has them in his hands, to exclaim, "Though with their high wrongs I am struck Yet with my nobler reason 'gainst my fury In virtue than in vengeance: they being penitent, The sole drift of my purpose doth extend - -never clothed Not a frown further: go release them, Ariel." Not so thought Shakspere. He, that never represented crime as virtue, had the largest pity for the criminal. "He has never varnished over wild and bloodthirsty passions with a pleasing exteriorcrime and want of principle with a false show of greatness of soul:" but, on the other hand, he has never made the criminal a monster, and led us to flatter ourselves that he is not a man. It is as a man, subject to the same infirmities as all are who are born of woman, that he represents Proteus, and Iachimo, and other of the lesser criminals, as receiving pardon upon repentance. It is not so much that they are de *Lardner's Cyclopædia, 'Literary and Scientific Men,' vol. ii. p. 128. Ibid., vol. iii. p. 122. A. W. Schlegel, Black's trans., vol. ii. p. 137. "Droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven;"— geance. The generous, confiding, courageous, and forgiving spirit of Valentine are well appreciated by the Duke—“Thou art a gentlevirtues which Shakspere desired to represent man." In this praise are included all the in the character of Valentine ;-the absence of which virtues he has also indicated in the selfish Proteus. The Duke adds, "and well derived." "Thou art a gentleman,” in "thy spirit"valled merit ;" and thou hast the honours of -a gentleman in "thy unriancestry-the further advantage of honourable progenitors. We have dwelt so long upon the contrasts in the characters of the "two gentlemen,” Proteus and Valentine, that we may appear to have forgotten our purpose of also tracing the distinctive peculiarities of the two ladies "beloved." Julia, in the sweetest feminine tenderness, is entirely worthy of the poet of Juliet and Imogen. Amidst her deep and sustaining love she has all the playfulness that belongs to the true woman. When she receives the letter of Proteus, the struggle between her affected indifference and her real disposition to cherish a deep affection is exceedingly pretty. Then comes, and very quickly, the development of the change which real love works,-the plighting her troth with Proteus,-the sorrow for his absence, the flight to him,—the grief for his perjury, the forgiveness. How full of heart and gentleness is all her conduct after she has discovered the inconstancy of Proteus! How beautiful an absence is there of all upbraiding either of her faithless lover or of his new mistress! Of the one she says, "Because I love him, I must pity him;" the other she describes, without a touch of envy, as "A virtuous gentlewoman, mild, and beautiful.” Silvia is a character of much less intensity of feeling. She plays with her accepted lover as with a toy given to her for her amusement; she delights in a contest of words between him and his rival Thurio; she avows she is betrothed to Valentine, when she reproves Proteus for his perfidy, but she allows Proteus to send for her picture, which is, at least, not the act of one who strongly felt and resented his treachery to his friend. When she resolves to escape from her prison, she does not go forth to danger and difficulty with the spirit of Julia,-"a true-devoted pilgrim,”—but she places herself under the protection of Eglamour ("a very perfect gentle knight," as Chaucer would have called him) "For the ways are dangerous to pass." She goes to her banished lover, but she flies from her father "To keep me from a most unholy match." When she encounters Proteus in the forest, she, indeed, spiritedly avows her love for Valentine and her hatred for himself; nor is there, in any of the slight distinctions which we have pointed out, any real inferiority in her character to that of Julia. She is only more under the influence of circumstances. Julia, by her decision, subdues the circumstances of her situation to her own will. Turn we now to Speed and Launce, the two "clownish servants of Valentine and Proteus. In a note introducing the first scene between Speed and Proteus, Pope says, "This whole scene, like many others in these plays (some of which I believe were written by Shakspere, and others interpolated by the players), is composed of the lowest and most trifling conceits, to be accounted for only by the gross taste of the age he lived in; populo ut placerent. I wish I had authority to leave them out." There are passages in Shakspere which an editor would desire to leave out, if he consulted only the standard of taste in his own age; just as there are passages in Pope which we now consider filthy and corrupting, which the wits and fine ladies of the court of Anne only regarded as playful and piquant. The scenes, however, in which Speed and Launce are prominent, with the exception of a few obscure allusions, which will not be discovered unless a commentator points them out, and of one piece of plain speaking in Launce, which is refinement itself when compared with the classical works of the Dean of St. Patrick's, these scenes offer a remarkable instance of the reform which Shakspere was enabled to effect in the conduct of the English stage, and which, without doubt, banished a great deal of what had been offensive to good manners, as well as good taste. The clown or "fool" of the earlier English drama was introduced into every piece. He came on between the acts and sometimes interrupted even the scenes by his buffoonery. Occasionally the author set down a few words for him to speak; but out of these he had to spin a monologue of doggrel verses created by his "extemporal wit." The 'Jeasts' of Richard Tarleton, the most celebrated of these clowns, were published in 1611; and fortunate it must have been for the morals of our ancestors that Shakspere constructed dialogue for his "Clowns," and insisted on their adhering to it: "Let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them." The "Clown" was the successor of the "Vice" of the old Moralities; and he was the representative of the domestic "Jester" that flourished before and during the age of Shakspere. The "clownish " servant was something intermediate between the privileged "fool” of the old drama and the pert lackey of the later comedy. But he originally stood in the place of the genuine "Clown;" and his " conceits are to be regarded partly as a reflection of the manners of the most refined, whose wit, in a great degree, consisted in a play upon words, and partly as a law of the established drama, which even Shakspere could not dispense with, if he had desired so to do. But his instinctive knowledge of the value of his dramatic materials led him to retain the "Clowns" amongst other inheritances of the old stage; and who that has seen the use he has made of the "allowed fool" in "Twelfth Night,' and 'As You Like It,' and 'All's Well that Ends Well,' and especially in ‘Lear,'of the country clown in 'Love's Labour's Lost' and 'The Merchant of Venice,'-and of the "clownish " or witty servant in "The Two Gentleman of Verona,' will regret that he did not cast away what Pope has called "low" and "trifling," determining to retain a machinery equally adapted to the relief of the tragic and the heightening of the comic, and entirely in keeping with what we now call the romantic drama,- -an edifice of which Shakspere found the scaffolding raised and the stone quarried, but which it was reserved for him alone to build up upon a plan in which the most apparently incongruous parts were subjected to the laws of fitness and proportion, and wherein even the grotesque (like the grinning heads in our fine Gothic cathedrals) was in harmony with the beautiful and the sublime. Speed and Launce are both punsters; but Speed is by far the more inveterate one. He begins with a pun-my master "is shipp'd already, and I have play'd the sheep (ship) in losing him." The same play upon words which the ship originates runs through the scene; and we are by no means sure that, if Shakspere made Verona a seaport in ignorance (which we very much doubt),—if, like his own Hotspur, he had "forgot the map,"—whether he would, at any time, have converted Valentine into a land-traveller, and have lost his pun upon a better knowledge. In the scene before us, Speed establishes his character for "a quick wit;" Launce, on the contrary, very soon earns the reputation of "a mad-cap" and "an ass." And yet Launce can pun as perseveringly as Speed. But he can do something more. He can throw in the most natural touches of humour amongst his quibbles; and, indeed, he altogether forgets his quibbles when he is indulging his own peculiar vein. That vein is unquestionably drollery,—as Hazlitt has well described it, the richest farcical drollery. His descriptions of his leave-taking, while "the dog all this while sheds not a tear," and of the dog's misbehaviour when he thrust "himself into the company of three or four gentlemanlike dogs," are perfectly irresistible. We must leave thee, Launce; but we leave thee with less regret, for thou hast worthy successors. Thou wert among the first fruits, we think, of the creations of the greatest comic genius that the world has seen, and thou wilt endure for ever, with Bottom, and Malvolio, and Parolles, and Dogberry. Thou wert conceived, perhaps, under that humble roof at Stratford, to gaze upon which all nations have since sent forth their pilgrims! Or, perhaps, when the young poet was, for the first time, left alone in the solitude of London, he looked back upon that shelter of his boyhood, and shadowed out his own parting in thine, Launce! CHAPTER II. THE COMEDY OF ERRORS. THE Comedy of Errors' was clearly one of Shakspere's very early plays. It was probably untouched by its author after its first production. We have here no existing sketch to enable us to trace what he introduced, and what he corrected, in the maturity of his judgment. It was, we imagine, one of the pieces for which he would manifest little solicitude after his genius was fully developed. The play is amongst those mentioned by Meres in 1598. The only allusion in it which can be taken to fix a date is one which is supposed to refer to the civil contests of France upon the accession of Henry IV. We must depend, then, upon the internal evidence of this being a very early play. This evidence consists, 1. In the great prevalence of that measure which was known to our language as early as the time of Chaucer by the name of "rime dogerel." This peculiarity is found only in three of our author's plays,—in ‘Love's Labour's Lost,' in 'The Taming of the Shrew,' and in 'The Comedy of Errors.' But this measure was a distinguishing characteristic of the early English drama. It prevails very much more in this play than in 'Love's Labour's Lost:' for prose is here much more sparingly introduced. The doggrel seems to stand half-way between prose and verse, marking the distinction between the language of a work of art and that of ordinary life, in the same way that the recitative does in a musical composition. It is to be observed, too, in 'The Comedy of Errors,' that this measure is very carefully regulated by somewhat strict laws: "We came into the world like brother and brother, And now let's go hand in hand, not one before another." This concluding passage, which is cast in the same mould as the other similar verses of the play, is much more regular in its money and gold." The measure in 'The Comedy of Errors' was formed by Shakspere upon his rude predecessors. In some of these it is not only occasionally introduced, but constitutes the great mass of the dialogue. In 'Gammer Gurton's Needle,' for example, the doggrel measure prevails throughout, as in the concluding lines: "But now, my good masters, since we must be gone, And leave you behind us, here all alone, There cannot, we think, be a stronger proof | Antipholus of Syracuse to Luciana, in the third act of 'The Comedy of Errors:' "Teach me, dear creature, how to think and speak; that 'The Comedy of Errors' was an early play of our author, than its agreement, in this particular, with the models which Shakspere found in his almost immediate predecessors. 2. In 'Love's Labour's Lost,' 'Romeo and Juliet,' 'A Midsummer Night's Dream,' and 'The Comedy of Errors,' alternate rhymes are very frequently introduced. Shakspere obtained the mastery over this species of verse in the 'Venus and Adonis,' "the first heir of his invention," as he himself calls it. He writes it with extraordinary facility with an ease and power that strikingly contrast with the more laboured elegiac stanzas of modern times. Nothing can be more harmonious, or the harmony more varied, than this measure in Shakspere's hands. Take, for example, the well-known lines in the 'Venus and Adonis,' which, themselves the most perfect music, have been allied to one of the most successful musical compositions of the present day :— "Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine car, Or, like a fairy, trip upon the green, seen." Lay open to my earthy gross conceit, Smother'd in errors, feeble, shallow, weak, The folded meaning of your word's deceit." There was clearly a time in Shakspere's poetical life when he delighted in this species of versification; and, in many of the instances in which he has employed it in the dramas we have mentioned, the passages have somewhat of a fragmentary appearance, as if they were not originally cast in a dramatic mould, but were amongst those scattered thoughts of the young poet which had shaped themselves into verse, without a purpose beyond that of embodying his feeling of the beautiful and the harmonious. When the time arrived that he had fully dedicated himself to the great work of his life, he rarely ventured upon cultivating these offshoots of his early versification. The doggrel was entirely rejected; the alternate rhymes no longer tempted him by their music to introduce a measure which is scarcely akin with the dramatic spirit; the couplet was adopted more and more sparingly; and he finally adheres to the Compare these with the following in 'Love's blank verse which he may almost be said Labour's Lost:' to have created,-in his hands certainly the grandest as well as the sweetest form in which the highest thoughts were ever unfolded to listening humanity. The commentators have puzzled themselves, after their usual fashion, with the evidence which this play undoubtedly presents of Shakspere's ability to read Latin, and their dogged resolution to maintain the opinion that in an age of grammar-schools our poet never could have attained that common accomplishment. The speech of Ægeon, in the first scene,— "A heavier task could not have been imposed Than I to speak my griefs unspeakable,”— is, they admit, an imitation of the |