modified form, has found many supporters. The most elaborate and attractive attempt to find in the dramatist's characters the reflection of phases in Shakespeare's own development has been made by the Irish critic, Edward Dowden, in Shakspere's Mind and Art (1874). The tendency of the latest criticism is on the whole to veer round from this point of view. Nevertheless, we may believe that in certain characters, notably Hamlet and Prospero, whose meditations are of far more import than their actions, the veil wears thin, and that we catch glimpses of the features, and hear echoes of the voice, familiar to the burghers of Stratford and to the fellowship of the Globe Theatre.

VI

Shakespeare's Language

It is at once an advantage and a drawback to the student of Shakespeare that his language has a comparatively modern air. Any one who wishes to read the earliest memorials of English literature, the epic of Beowulf, or the prose of Alfred or Aelfric, must go through a preliminary drill in Anglo-Saxon grammar or vocabulary, as rigorous as is necessary for learning a modern foreign language. Even the student of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales or of Wyclif's tracts needs initiation into the distinguishing features of Middle-English before he can read them with ease and to full advantage. But any one can open his Shakespeare', and find himself, in the matter of language, more or less at home, much as he does with the Authorized Version of the Bible, which is just five years ahead in time of the First Folio.

This is, of course, in the main, an incalculable benefit to the English-speaking race. What would have been our loss had Shakespeare been contemporary with Dante, and had his genius found expression in a form of English which has now become obsolete. His plays would have been banished from the theatre, the fireside, and the 'lady's lap' (where Lyly wished his Euphues to lie), and would have been open only on the lecturer's desk or beside the student's lamp.

or

Yet the modern look of Shakespeare in the 'Globe' 'Oxford' edition is, to some extent, deceptive, and may be at times a cause of stumbling. We have in the first place to remember that we do not read the plays exactly in the form in which they were written. Take, for example, the opening lines of the chorus in Henry V, Act Iv. This is how they appear in the First Folio: Now entertaine coniecture of a time,

When creeping Murmure and the poring Darke

Fills the wide vessell of the Vniuerse.

From Camp to Camp, through the foule Womb of Night,
The Humme of eyther Army stilly sounds;

That the fixt Centinels almost receiue

The secret Whispers of each others Watch.

Fire answers fire, and through their paly flames
Each Battaile sees the others vmber'd face.

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'

In the first place we notice that in the Folio text‘i' takes the place of 'j', initial 'v' of 'u', u' of 'v', and sometimes 'y of ‘i'. Many nouns begin with a capital letter. Final consonants are sometimes doubled, e. g. ́ vessell ', and 'e' is often added at the end of a word, e. g. 'entertaine'. In 'Humme all three points are illustrated. Certain words vary in other ways from their present spelling, e. g. Battaile' and 'Centinels'. The apostrophe as mark of the possessive case is omitted, e. g. 'others'.

It is evident, therefore, that the text with which we are now familiar has been edited to make it more easily understood by modern readers. In the main the changes are merely formal, and are confined to details of spelling and punctuation. They do not as a rule affect the meaning or the rhythm of the verse. Yet they are not negligible, for sometimes the modernization of spelling obscures the sense, especially in passages where Shakespeare, after the fashion of his day, indulges in play upon words. Take, for instance, Antony's cry, as he stands beside the body of Caesar (III. i. 207-8): I

O world! thou wast the forest to this hart;

And this, indeed, O world! the heart of thee.

The transition from the image of Caesar as a hart, or deer, entangled in the forest of the world, to that of him as the heart,

I The references throughout this chapter are to the lines as numbered in the Oxford' one-volume edition.

or centre of the world, seems much less forced in the Folio, where the spelling is 'hart' in both cases.

Earlier in the same play Cassius protests indignantly against Caesar's monopoly of power (1. ii. 153–6):

When could they say, till now, that talk'd of Rome,

That her wide walls encompass'd but one maǹ?
Now is it Rome indeed and room enough,

When there is in it but one only man.

Here the whole point of the two last lines hangs on the fact that room' was spelt Roome' and was pronounced like the name of the town.

In Much Ado about Nothing (11. i. 305–6) Beatrice speaks of Claudio as ' civil as an orange'. The jest is lost, unless we know that in Shakespeare's day a Seville orange was written civil orange'.

In Twelfth Night (1. iii. 99-107) there is the following dialogue between Sir Andrew Aguecheek, chafing at the illsuccess of his wooing, and Sir Toby Belch:

Sir And. I would I had bestowed that time in the tongues that I have in fencing, dancing, and bear-baiting. O! had I but followed the arts.

Sir To. Then hadst thou had an excellent head of hair.

Sir And. Why, would that have mended my hair?

Sir To. Past question; for thou seest it will not curl by nature.

To most readers or listeners in the theatre Sir Toby's repartees here are meaningless. We do not appreciate their point till we realize that 'tongues' (i. e. languages) and ‘tongs' (i. e. here, curling-tongs) were pronounced alike, and had interchangeable forms of spelling.

In other cases where Elizabethan and modern spelling are the same, difficulties arise owing to changes in pronunciation only. We cannot, of course, reproduce the pronunciation of Shake

speare's contemporaries as accurately as phonographic records will transmit the current speech of to-day to future generations. But we know that the sounds of the vowels were much closer than at present to those in French or German, and that some of the consonants, e. g. '1' and 'r', were drawn out in utterance, and had almost the value of semi-vowels. It is interesting to take some familiar passages from the plays, and to compare the rhythmical effect of their delivery in older and modern pronunciation. In some places Elizabethan pronunciation is necessary for the sense.

6

Thus in Henry IV, Part I (11. iv. 262–70), Prince Hal and Poins press Falstaff to give his reasons' for one of his monstrous inventions. The knight retorts: 'Give you a reason on compulsion! if reasons were as plenty as blackberries, I would give no man a reason upon compulsion, I.' The comparison of reasons' with blackberries loses its point, unless we remember that the pronunciation was like that of raisins' to-day.

In Much Ado about Nothing (11. iii. 56–60), when Balthasar is asked for an encore' of a song, he protests :

Note this before my notes;

There's not a note of mine that's worth the noting.

Don Pedro exclaims :

Why these are very crotchets that he speaks;

Notes, notes, forsooth, and nothing.

To appreciate the full word-play here we have to realize that 'not' and 'note', and 'noting' and ' nothing' were similarly pronounced.

Later in Much Ado (111. iv. 53–5) Beatrice sighs' Heigh-ho'. Margaret, her maid, asks whether it is 'For a hawk, a horse, or a husband'. Beatrice retorts, For the letter that begins them all, H'. The point of this lies in the identity of pronunciation