Complete Plays, The

by William Shakespeare

  And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, [feminine]

  The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, [feminine]

  The solemn temples, the great globe itself, [masculine]

  Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, [masculine]

  And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, [feminine]

  Leave not a rack behind."

  —Tempest, IV, i, 147-166.

  In the main, although with some exceptions, the number of feminine endings, like the number of run-on lines, increases as the plays become later in date.

  A third form of ending, which practically does not appear at all in the early plays, and which recurs with increasing frequency in the later ones, is what is called a 'weak ending.'[4] This occurs whenever a run-on line ends in a word which according to the meter needs to be stressed, and according to the sense ought not to be. Here there is a clash between meter and meaning, and the reader compromises by making a pause before the last syllable instead of emphasizing the syllable itself. Below are two examples of weak endings:—

  "It should the good ship so have swallowed, and

  The fraughting souls within her."

  "I will rend an oak

  And peg thee in his knotty entrails till

  Thou hast howled away twelve winters."

  Lastly, we have the evidence of rime. Run-on lines, feminine endings, and weak endings constantly increase as Shakespeare grows older. Rime, on the other hand, in general decreases. The early plays are full of it; the later ones have very little. It does not follow that the chronological order of the individual plays could be exactly determined by their percentage of riming lines, for subject matter makes a great difference. In a staged fairy story, like A Midsummer Night's Dream, the poet would naturally fall into couplets. But, other things being equal, a large amount of rime is always a sign of early work. This is especially true when the rimes occur, not in pairs, but in quatrains or sonnet forms, or (as they sometimes do in the first comedies) in scraps of sing-song doggerel.

  Such is the internal evidence from the various changes in versification. Its value, as must always be remembered, lies in the fact that the results of these different tests in the main agree with each other and with such external evidence as we have.

  Then, wholly aside from metrical details, there is a large amount of internal evidence of other kinds,—evidence which cannot be measured by the rule of thumb, but which every intelligent reader must notice. We feel instinctively that one play mirrors the views and emotions of youth, another those of middle age. A man's face does not change more between twenty-five and forty than his mind changes during the same interval; and the difference between his thoughts at those periods is as distinct often as the difference between the rounded lines of youth and the stern features of middle age. This is a subject which will be better understood in the light of the next chapter.

  The Order of the Plays.—Upon such evidence as has been described, a list of Shakespeare's plays in their chronological order can now be presented. The details of evidence on date may be found in the account of the plays which appears in Chapters X-XIII.

  Love's Labour's Lost . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1590-1591

  The Comedy of Errors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1590-1591

  II and III Henry VI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1590-1592

  Richard III . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1592-1593

  Two Gentlemen of Verona . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1592

  King John . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1592-1593

  Richard II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1593-1594

  Titus Andronicus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1593-1594

  Midsummer Night's Dream . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1593-1596

  Romeo and Juliet . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1591, revised 1597

  The Merchant of Venice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1594-1596

  The Taming of the Shrew . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1596-1597

  I Henry IV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1597

  II Henry IV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1598

  Henry V . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1599

  Merry Wives of Windsor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1599

  Much Ado about Nothing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1599

  As You Like It . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1599-1600

  Julius Caesar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1699-1601

  Twelfth Night . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1601

  Troilus and Cressida . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1602

  All's Well That Ends Well . . . . . . . . . . . . 1602

  Hamlet . . . . . . . . . . . 1602, 1603-1604 (two versions).

  Measure for Measure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1603

  Othello . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1604

  King Lear . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1604-1605

  Macbeth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1605-1606

  Antony and Cleopatra . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1607-1608

  Timon of Athens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1607-1608

  Pericles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1608

  Coriolanus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1609

  Cymbeline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1610

  The Winter's Tale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1610-1611

  The Tempest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1611

  King Henry the Eighth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1612-1613

  [1] This play is either lost, or preserved under another title.

  [2] Quoted in full in Chapter I.

  [3] This form of evidence is usually weak and unreliable. Most of the supposed allusions are much more vague than the two given. Where there have been similar events in history, the allusion might be to one which we had forgotten when we thought it was to a similar one which we knew.

  [4] Mr. Ingram makes a distinction between "light" and "weak" endings. Both are classed together as weak endings above. The distinction seems to us too subtle for any but professional students.

  CHAPTER VII

  SHAKESPEARE'S DEVELOPMENT AS A DRAMATIST

  As the reader will remember, our main aim in attempting to date Shakespeare's plays was to trace through them his development as a dramatist and poet. Just as the successive chambers of the nautilus shell show the stages of growth of its dead and vanished tenant, so the plays of Shakespeare show how

  "Each new temple, nobler than the last,

  Shut him from heaven with a dome more vast."

  The great thing which distinguishes the genius from the ordinary man, we repeat, is his power of constant improvement; and we can trace this improvement here from achievements less than those of many a modern writer up to the noblest masterpieces of all time.

  Much of the material connected with this development has already been discussed in another connection under Internal Evidence. Internal evidence, however, that one play is later than another, is nothing else than the marks of intellectual growth in the poet's mind between those two dates. We arrange the plays in order according to indications of intellectual growth, just as one could fit together again the broken fragments of a nautilus shell, guided by the relative size of the ever expanding chambers. So, in discussing Shakespeare's development, we must bring up much old material, examining it from a different point of view.

  Meter.—In the first place, the poet develops wonderfully in the command of his medium of expression; that is, in his mastery of meter. What is meant by the fact that as Shakespeare grew older, wiser, more experienced, he used more run-on lines, more weak endings, more feminine endings? Simply this, that by means of these devices he gained more variety and expressiveness in his verse. A passage from his early work (in spite of much that is fine) with every ending alike masculine and strong, and with every line end-stopped, harps away tediously in the same swing, like one lonely instrument on one monotonous note. His lat
er verse, on the other hand, with masculine and feminine endings, weak ones and strong, end-stopped and run-on lines, continually relieving each other, is like the blended music of a great orchestra, continually varying, now stern, now soft, in harmony with the thought it expresses. Below are given two passages, the first from an early play, the second from a late one. In print one may look as well as the other; but if one reads them aloud, he will see in a moment how much more variety and expressiveness there is in the second, especially for the purposes of acting.

  "Urge not my father's anger, Eglamour,

  But think upon my grief, a lady's grief,

  And on the justice of my flying hence,

  To keep me from a most unholy match,

  Which heaven and fortune still rewards with plagues.

  I do desire thee, even from a heart.

  As full of sorrows as the sea of sands,

  To bear me company and go with me;

  If not, to hide what I have said to thee,

  That I may venture to depart alone."

  —Two Gentlemen of Verona, IV, iii, 27-36.

  "By whose aid,

  Weak masters though ye be, I have bedimm'd

  The noontide sun, call'd forth the mutinous winds,

  And 'twixt the green sea and the azur'd vault

  Set roaring war; to the dread rattling thunder

  Have I given fire, and rifted Jove's stout oak

  With his own bolt; the strong-bas'd promontory

  Have I made shake, and by the spurs plucked up

  The pine and cedar; graves at my command

  Have wak'd their sleepers, op'd, and let 'em forth

  By my so potent art. But this rough magic

  I here abjure, and, when I have requir'd

  Some heavenly music, which even now I do,

  To work mine end upon their senses that

  This airy charm is for, I'll break my staff,

  Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,

  And deeper than did ever plummet sound

  I'll drown my book."

  —Tempest, V, i, 40-57.

  The same reason shows why Shakespeare used less and less rime as his taste and experience ripened. Rime is a valuable ornament for songs and lyric poetry generally; but from poetry which is actually to be acted on the English stage it takes away the most indispensable of all qualities, the natural, life-like tone of real speech. Notice this in the difference between the two extracts below. Observe how stilted and artificial the first one seems; and see how the second combines the melody and dignity of poetry with the simple naturalness of living language.

  "This fellow pecks up wit as pigeons pease,

  And utters it again when God doth please.

  He is wit's pedler, and retails his wares

  At wakes and wassails, meetings, markets, fairs;

  And we that sell by gross, the Lord doth know,

  Have not the grace to grace it with such show.

  This gallant pins the wenches on his sleeve;

  Had he been Adam, he had tempted Eve."

  —Love's Labour's Lost, V, ii, 315-321

  "I was not much afeard; for once or twice

  I was about to speak and tell him plainly

  The self-same sun that shines upon his court

  Hides not his visage from our cottage, but

  Looks on all alike. Will't please you, sir, be gone?

  I told you what would come of this. Beseech you,

  Of your own state take care. This dream of mine—

  Being now awake, I'll queen it no inch farther,

  But milk my ewes and weep."

  —Winter's Tale, IV, iv, 452-400.

  I do not mean to imply by the above that Shakespeare's early verse is poor according to ordinary standards. It is not; it contains much that is fine. But it is far inferior to his later work, and it is inferior in those very details which time and experience alone can teach.

  An important point to remember is that while Shakespeare was growing in metrical skill, he was not growing alone. A crowd of other authors around him were developing in a similar way; and he was learning from them and they from him. The use of blank verse in English when Shakespeare began to write was a comparatively new practice, and, like all new inventions, for a time it was only imperfectly understood. Men had to learn by experiments and by each other's successes and failures, just as men in recent years have learned to fly. Shakespeare surpassed all the others, as the Wright brothers in their first years surpassed all their fellow-aeronauts; but like the Wright brothers he was only part of a general movement. No other man changed as much as he in one lifetime, but the whole system of dramatic versification was changing.

  Taste.—But wholly aside from questions of meter, Shakespeare improved greatly in taste and judgment between the beginning and middle of his career. This is shown especially in his humor. To the young man humor means nothing but the cause for a temporary laugh; to a more developed mind it becomes a pleasant sunshine that lingers in the memory long after reading, and interprets all life in a manner more cheerful, sympathetic, and sane. The early comedies give us nothing but the temporary laugh; and even this is produced chiefly by fantastic situations or plays on words, clever but far-fetched, puns and conceits so overworked that their very cleverness jars at times. On the other hand, in the great humorous characters of his middle period, like Falstaff and Beatrice, the poet is opening up to us new vistas of quiet, lasting amusement and indulgent knowledge of our imperfect but lovable fellow-men.

  The same growth of taste is shown in the dramatist's increasing tendency to tone down all revolting details and avoid flowery, overwrought rhetoric. Nobody knows whether Shakespeare wrote all of Titus Andronicus entire or simply revised it; but we feel sure that the older Shakespeare would have been unwilling, even as a reviser, to squander so much that is beautiful on such an orgy of blood and violence. Romeo and Juliet is full of beautiful poetry; but even here occasional lapses show the undeveloped taste of the young writer. Notice the flowery and fantastic imagery in the following passage, where Lady Capulet is praising Paris, her daughter's intended husband:—

  "Read o'er the volume of young Paris' face

  And find delight writ there with beauty's pen;

  Examine every married lineament

  And see how one another lends content,

  And what obscur'd in this fair volume lies

  Find written in the margent of his eyes.

  This precious book of love, this unbound lover,

  To beautify him, only lacks a cover.

  The fish lives in the sea, and 'tis much pride

  For fair without the fair within to hide.

  That book in many's eyes doth share the glory,

  That in gold clasps locks in the golden story."

  —Romeo and Juliet, I, iii, 81-92.

  If we try to picture to ourselves the post-wedlock edition of Paris described above, we shall see how a young man's imagination may run away with his judgment. There are passages in this play as good, perhaps, as anything which the author ever wrote; but if we compare such fantastic imagery with the uniform excellence of the later masterpieces, we shall see how much Shakespeare unlearned and outgrew.

  Character Study.—Still more significant is the poet's development in the conception of character. In no other way, probably, does an observant mind change and expand so much as in this. For the infant all men fall into two very simple categories:—people whom he likes and people whom he doesn't. The boy of ten has increased these two classes to six or eight. The young man of twenty finds a few more, and begins to suspect that men who act alike may not have the same motives and emotions. But as the keen-eyed observer nears middle age, he begins to realize that no two souls are exact duplicates of each other; and that behind every human eye there lies an undiscovered country, as mysterious, as fascinating, as that which Alice found behind the looking-glass,—a country like, and yet unlike, the one we know, where dreams grow beautiful as tropic p
lants, and passions crouch like wild beasts in the jungle.

  Great as he was, Shakespeare had to learn this lesson like other men; but he learned it much better. In Love's Labour's Lost, generally considered his earliest play, he has not led us into the inner selves of his men and women at all, has not seemed to realize that they possess inner selves. At the conclusion we know precisely as much of them as we should if we had met them at a formal reception, and no more. The princess is pretty and clever on dress parade; but how does the real princess feel when parade is over and she is alone in her chamber? The later Shakespeare might have told us, did tell us, in regard to more than one other princess; but the young Shakespeare has nothing to tell.

  Richard III, which is supposed to have come some three years later, is a marked advance in characterization, but still far short of the goal. Here the dramatist attempts, indeed, to analyze the tyrant's motives and emotions; but he does not yet understand what he is trying to explain, and for that reason the being whom he creates is portentous, but not human. To understand this, you need only compare Richard with Macbeth. In Macbeth we have a host of different forces—ambition, superstition, poetry, remorse, vacillation, affection, despair—all struggling together as they might in you or me; and it is this mingling of feelings with which we all can sympathize that makes him, in spite of all his crimes, a human being like ourselves. But in Richard there is no human complexity. His is the fearful simplicity of the lightning, the battering-ram, the earthquake, forces whose achievements are terrible and whose inner existence a blank. Richard hammers his bloody way through life like the legendary Iron Man with his flail, awe-inspiring as a destructive agency, not as a human being.

  Two or three years later we find Shakespeare in his conception of Shylock capable of greater things as a student of character. In this pathetic, lonely, vindictive figure, exiled forever from the warm fireside of human friendship by those inherent faults which he can no more change than the tiger can change his claws, the long tragedy which accompanies the survival of the fittest finds a voice. Yet even in Shylock the dramatist has not reached his highest achievement in character study. The old Jew is drawn splendidly to the life, but he is a comparatively easy character to draw, a man with a few simple and prominent traits. Depicting such a man is like drawing a pronounced Roman profile, less difficult to do, and less satisfactory when done, than tracing the subdued curves of a more evenly rounded face. Still greater will be the triumph when Shakespeare can draw equally true to life a many-sided man or woman, in whose single heart all our different experiences find a sympathetic echo.