In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
Grim-visaged war has smooth'd his wrinkled front;
And now, instead of mounting barbed steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber

To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.

But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deform'd, unfinish'd, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable

That dogs bark at me as I halt by them:
Why I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
And descant on mine own deformity;
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover
To entertain these fair, well-spoken days,
I am determined to prove a villain
And hate the idle pleasure of these days.
Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,
By drunken prophecies, libels, and dreams,
To set my brother Clarence and the king
In deadly hate the one against the other:
And if King Edward be as true and just

As I am subtle, false, and treacherous,

This day should Clarence closely be mew'd up

About a prophecy, which says that G

Of Edward's heirs the murderer shall be.

Dive, thoughts, down to my soul: here Clarence comes.

Brother, good day: what means this armed guard
That waits upon your grace?

Dr. Samuel Johnson said that "None of Shakespeare's plays is more read than the First and Second Parts of Henry the Fourth." This is still true, because of the fact that from the moment we read "Enter the Prince of Wales and Falstaff," the writer keeps us fascinated with that scandalous old man, "that old white-bearded Satan," Jack Falstaff himself, "plump Jack." It is often mistakenly said that the creator of " this ton of a man " loved him. If he did, he did not hesitate to handle him untenderly, without gloves. He did laugh with and at him; but he doubtless would have objected to the name "Swine Centaur," given to Falstaff by Victor Hugo, the Shakespeare of France. Few men have ever been wittier or the cause of more wit in other men than Sir John Falstaff.

Victor Hugo says that it is the genius of the first order who creates human types. In the two parts of King Henry IV, the genius we call Shakespeare has created several human types. Among them, aside from the wicked old knight, are the "mad-cap " Prince of Wales, whom Shakespeare seems to us to have loved too much; the impetuous Percy, "the Hotspur of the North"; Glendower, the well-bred, sentimental man of feelings and dreams, brought up on the legends of the country of the Welsh; and " that same starved Justice," Robert Shallow, the man who couldn't lose his senses because he didn't have any. It may seem paradoxical that some of these strange characters, particularly Sir John Falstaff, should be so attractive to us; but that they are is evidence that their creator knew what human nature, perversely or not, takes delight in.

These two plays are filled with lines that are daily in the mouths of many of us, such as

tell truth, and shame the devil."

"Give the devil his due."

"The lion will not touch the true prince." "More than a little is by much too much."

"Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn?"

"Thou seest I have more flesh than another man; and therefore more

frailty."

"The nice hazard of one doubtful hour."

"O, this boy lends mettle to us all."

"Past and to come seems best; things present, worst."

"The wish was father to that thought."

'The power and puissance of the king."

Many others there are, Falstaff's strictures on the value of "honour" in war, and King Henry's apostrophe to sleep, ending with the statement that

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,

are among the most famous; and we may add the King's delicately lovely reference to

those holy fields

Over whose acres walk'd those blessed feet,

Which fourteen hundred years ago were nail'd

For our advantage on the bitter cross.

There is not a great deal of great poetry in these two plays. Yet there is much, for their author could not write long without the poetic largeness of his mind revealing itself in copious

measure.

"Homer, Job, Æschylus, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Lucretius, Juvenal, St. John, St. Paul, Tacitus, Dante, Rabelais, Cervantes, Shakespeare, that is the avenue of the immovable giants of the human mind," said Victor Hugo. If one were to begin his acquaintance with Shakespeare through the reading of King Henry V, he would wonder why such high praise could be

rendered to its author. Although Shakespeare may have been on the eve of writing Twelfth Night, Julius Cæsar, and Hamlet, when Henry V was coming from his pen, yet for some reason he was willing to give himself in the last-named to the writing of what is little more than a chronicle, rather than even a chronicle play. Even though the battle of Agincourt, famous in history, occurs during the action of this play, yet the content of the play is largely filled with petty quarrels among soldiers. Fluellen, the Welshman, is a better and a truer man than Glendower, the Welshman in Henry IV, and so is worthy of notice. Henry V's wooing of Katherine of France is interesting; most charming, to some readers. The only way in which one is likely to consider this play of value is to think of it as a part of the series of the chronicle plays. Taken thus, it is a good filler-in between Henry IV and Henry VI.

Tragedies. If Shakespeare wrote any part of Titus Andronicus, it was a small part. This is one of the horror stories. that detract from the beauty of the pages of literature. Shakespeare may have adapted it to the stage at the urgency of some theater manager, or because he was in need of money and took it as a hack job. The details of structure and device show a close intimacy with the theater, such as Shakespeare, the actor, must have had; and the play was very popular in the day of its reputed author.

The works of Shakespeare are sometimes spoken of as " Poems and Plays." The "Plays" are the dramas we are now in the midst of characterizing in this rapid fashion. The "Poems" have been briefly discussed. The play of Romeo and Juliet was published in 1597, and was probably written before 1596. It seems to have come from the author's pen while he was in the mood of the "poems," for its theme is the same as theirs, viz. youthful love in most passionate form. That reason alone would

H

not be sufficient for thinking it written at about the same time as the "poems," but we also find that the theme is handled with the same tense lyricism as they are, that its diction is rich and ornate as is theirs, that it has many rhymed couplets and double rhymes, that it contains sonnets and employs some of the stanzaic forms of the poems. The English feeling for landscape is strong in this play, as in many others. Like Petrarch before him, and like the romantic poets of the early nineteenth century, also, Shakespeare makes his characters to observe that their private pangs become Nature's own feeling, as when Romeo must leave Juliet and says

Envious streaks

Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east.

But it is youthful love crossed by ancestral hate that chiefly attracts the attention in this beautiful poem-play.

In Julius Cæsar the author made a play which has delighted the hearts of young and old in all generations since its writing. It has delighted them, even though it is tragic; for its fine opportunity for impressive stage scenes, its noble character sketching, its grand speeches, and its brisk action are welcomed wherever men read or go to the playhouse. As is often pointed out, the hero of the play is not Cæsar, but Brutus; but a play with the title of "Marcus Brutus" would not so well appeal to many, not to a first-night audience, at least.

Readers and theatergoers differ widely as to which of the plays of Shakespeare is greatest. Each one of the tragedies, with the exception of Titus Andronicus and Timon of Athens, has its advocates. But probably there are more who favor one of these four, Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, and King Lear,though as great a man as Tolstoi found the reading of King Lear to be a bore. Hamlet is a thought play rather than a