No play better deserves the type name of 'tragedy of blood.' The crimes which disfigure its scenes seem to us unnecessarily wanton. Briefly, the struggle is between Titus, conqueror of the Goths, and Tamora, their captive queen, who marries the Roman emperor, and who would revenge Titus's sacrifice of her son to the shades of his own slain sons. From the first five minutes, during which a noble Goth is hacked to pieces—off stage, mercifully—to the last minute of carnage, when the entire company go hands all round in murder, fifteen persons are slain, and other crimes no less horrible perpetrated. Every one at some time gets his revenge; and the play is entirely made up of plotting, killing, gloating, and counterplotting. The inhumanly brutal Aaron, the blackamoor lover of Tamora, is arch villain in all this; but the ungovernable passions of Titus render him scarcely more attractive.
The pity of it is that the young Shakespeare apparently wasted upon this slaughtering much genuine poetic art, and no little elaboration of plot. But he was writing what the public of that day enjoyed. Developed by such real artists as Kyd, the tragedy of blood, like the modern "thriller," had about 1590 an enormous success. It is well for us to remember, too, that out of one of these tragedies of revenge and blood sprang the great tragedy of Hamlet.
Date.—The most recent authorities put the play as written not long before the publication of the First Quarto, 1594. The Stationers' Register records it on February 6, 1593-4. Second and Third Quartos followed in 1600 and 1611. None of these ascribe the play to Shakespeare. It is, however, included in the First Folio.
Authorship and Source.—Richard Henslowe, the manager, recorded in his Diary, April 11, 1591, the performance of a new play Tittus and Vespacia. In a German version, Tito Andronico, printed in a collection of 1620, Lucius is called Vespasian; and thus we have a slight ground for belief that the entry of Henslowe refers to an early play about our Titus. A Dutch version, Aran en Titus, appeared in 1641. This appears to have been based on another relation of the story, earlier and cruder than Shakespeare's. The Shakespearean version probably came from these two earlier plays, with considerable additions in plot.
The two latest students of the play, Dr. Fuller and Mr. Robertson, differ as far as they well can on the question of authorship. The former believes Shakespeare wrote every line of the present play; the latter that he wrote none of it, and that Greene and Peele had their full share. Kyd and Marlowe are assigned as authors by others. One fact stands clear, that in the face of the evidence of the First Folio and of Meres, no conclusive internal evidence has disposed of the theory of Shakespearean authorship. The play was enormously popular, if we may judge by contemporary references to it, and a mistake in attribution by Meres would therefore have been the more remarkable. Incredible, too, as it may seem, the earlier versions must have been more revolting than Shakespeare's; so that there is really a lift into higher drama.
Romeo and Juliet stands out from the other great tragedies of Shakespeare, not only in point of time, but in its central theme. It deals with the power of nature in awaking youth to full manhood and womanhood through the sudden coming of pure and supreme love; with the danger which always attends the precipitate call of this awakening; and with the sudden storm which overcasts the brilliant day of passion. The enmity of the rival houses of Montague and Capulet, to which Romeo and Juliet belong, is but a concrete form of this danger that ever waits when nature prompts. Romeo's fancied love for another disappears like a drop of water on a stone in the sun, when his glance meets Juliet's at the Capulet's ball. Love takes equally sudden hold of her. Worldly and religious caution seek to stem the flood of passion, or at least to direct it. The lovers are married at Friar Laurence's cell; but in the sudden whirl of events that follow the friar's amiable schemes, one slight error on his part wastes all that glorious passion and youth have won. It was not his fault, after all; such is the eternal tragedy when Youth meets Love, and Nature leads them unrestrained to peril.
In perfection of dramatic technique parts of this play rank with the very best of Shakespeare's work. When to this is added the extraordinary beauty and fire of the poetry, and the brilliancy of color and stage picture afforded by the setting in old Verona, it is no wonder that to-day no mouthing of the words, no tawdriness of setting, and no wretchedness of acting can hinder the supreme appeal of this play to audiences all over the world. The chief characters are well contrasted by the dramatist. Romeo, affecting sadness, but in reality merry by nature, becomes grave when the realization of love comes upon him. Juliet, when love comes, rises gladly to meet its full claim. She is the one who plans and dares, and Romeo the one who listens. Contrasted with Romeo is his friend, Mercutio, gay and daring, loving and light-hearted; contrasted with Juliet is her old nurse, devoted, like the family cat, but unscrupulous, vain, and worldly,—a great comic figure.
Date.—There is throughout the play, but chiefly in the rimed passages in the earlier parts, a great deal of verbal conceit and playing upon words, which mark immaturity. The use of sonnets in two places, and the abundance of rime, point also to early work; but the dramatic technique and the development of character equal the work of later periods.
The First Quarto is a garbled copy taken down in the theater. It was printed in 1597. Its title claims that "it hath been often (with great applause) plaid publiquely, by the right Honourable the L. of Hunsdon his servants." The company in which Shakespeare acted was so called from July, 1596, to April, 1597. The Second Quarto, "newly corrected, augmented, and amended," appeared in 1599, and is the basis of all later texts. Three others followed—1609, one undated, and 1637.
It is generally held that Shakespeare wrote much, perhaps all, of the play in the early nineties, and that he revised it for production about 1597. The play is therefore a stepping-stone between the first and second periods of his work.
Source.—The development of the story has been traced from Luigi da Porto's history of Romeo and Giulietta (pr. 1530 at Venice) through Bandello, Boisteau, and Painter's Palace of Pleasure, to Arthur Brooke's poem Romeus and Juliet (1562), and to a lost English play which Brooke says in his address "To the Reader" he had seen on the stage, but is now known only through a Dutch play of 1630 based upon it.
The part in which Shakespeare altered the action most notably is the first scene, one of the most masterly expositions of a dramatic situation ever written. The nurse is borrowed from Brooke, the death of Mercutio from the old play. The whole is, however, completely transfused by the welding fire of genius.
Love's Labour's Lost.—Obviously imitative of the comedies of John Lyly, Love's Labour's Lost is a light, pleasant court comedy, with but a slight thread of plot. The king of Navarre and three of his nobles forswear for three years the society of ladies in order to pursue study. This plan is interrupted by the Princess of France, who with three ladies comes on an embassy to Navarre. The inevitable happens; the gentlemen fall in love with the ladies, and, after ineffectual struggles to keep their oaths, give up the pursuit of learning for that of love. This runs on merrily enough in courtly fashion till the announcement of the death of the king of France ends the embassy, and the lovers are put on a year's probation of constancy. In the subplot, or minor story, the play is notable for the burlesquing of two types of character—a pompous pedantic schoolmaster, and a braggart who always speaks in high-flown metaphor. These two, happily contrasted with a country curate, a court page, and a country clown with his lass, make much good sport.
It is often said, but as we believe without sufficient proof, that the wit combats of the lords and ladies, and the artificial speech of the sonneteering courtiers, were also introduced for burlesque. These elements appear, however, in other plays than this, with no intention of burlesque; and it seems probable that Shakespeare greatly enjoyed this display of his power as a master in the prevailing fashion of courtly repartee. In this fashion, as well as in the handling of the low-comedy figures, and in other ways, Shakespeare followed in the steps of John Lyly, the author of the novel Euphues and of th
e seven court comedies written in the decade before Love's Labour's Lost. Shakespeare's play, however, far surpasses those which it imitated.
Date.—The date of Love's Labour's Lost is entirely a matter of conjecture. It may well have been the very earliest of Shakespeare's comedies. Most scholars agree that the characteristics of style to which we have referred, together with the great use of rime (see p. 81) and the immaturity of the play as a whole, must indicate a very early date, and therefore put the play not later than 1591.
A quarto was published in 1598, "newly corrected and augmented by W. Shakespere." The corrections, from certain mistakes of the printer, appear to be in the speeches of the wittiest of the lords and ladies, Biron and Rosaline. The play next appeared in the Folio.
Source.—No direct source has been discovered. In 1586, Catherine de' Medici, accompanied by her ladies, visited the court of Henry of Navarre, and attempted to settle the disputes between that prince and her son, Henry III. Other hints may also have come from French history. The masque of Muscovites may have been based on the joke played on a Russian ambassador in York Gardens in 1582, when the ambassador was hoping to get a lady of Elizabeth's court as a wife for the Czar. A mocking presentation of this lady was made with much ceremony.
The Comedy of Errors.—Mistaken identity (which the Elizabethans called "Error") is nearly always amusing, whether on the stage or in actual life. The Comedy of Errors is a play in which this situation is developed to the extreme of improbability; but we lose sight of this in the roaring fun which results. Nowadays we should call a play of this type a farce, since most of the fun comes in this way from situations which are improbable, and since the play depends on these for success rather than on characterization or dialogue.
A merchant of Syracuse has had twin sons, and bought twin servants for them. His wife with one twin son and his twin slave has been lost by shipwreck and has come to live in Ephesus. The other son and slave, when grown, have started out to find their brothers, and the father, some years later, starts out to find him. They come to Ephesus, and an amusing series of errors at once begins. The wife takes the wrong twin for her husband, the master beats the wrong slave, the wrong son disowns his father, the twin at Ephesus is arrested instead of his brother, and the twin slave Dromio of Syracuse is claimed as a husband by a black kitchen girl of Ephesus. The situation gets more and more mixed, until at last the real identity of the strangers from Syracuse is established, and all ends happily.
Date.—There is much wordplay of a rather cheap kind, much doggerel, and much jingling rime in this play. All these things point to early work. A reference (III, ii, 125-127) to France "making war against her heir" admits the play to the period 1585-1594, when Henry of Navarre was received as king of France. The play was probably written not later than 1591. The play was first printed in the First Folio.
Source.—Shakespeare borrowed most of his plot from the Menaechmi of Plautus. Shakespeare added to Plautus's story the second twin-slave and the parents, together with the girl whom the elder twin meets and loves in Syracuse. This elaboration of the plot adds much to the attractiveness of the whole story. From the Amphitruo of Plautus, Shakespeare derived the doubling of slaves, and the scene in which the younger twin and his slave are shut out of their own home.
The Two Gentlemen of Verona is the first of the series of Shakespeare's romantic comedies. Our interest in this play turns upon the purely romantic characters; two friends, one true, the other recreant; the true friend exiled to an outlaw's life in a forest, the false in favor at court; two loving girls, one fair and radiant, the other dark and slighted, and following her lover in boy's dress; two clowns, Speed and Lance, one a mere word tosser, the other of rare humor. The plot is of slighter importance; a discovered elopement, and a maiden rescued from rude, uncivil hands, are the only incidents of account. All ends happily as in romance, and the recreant friend is forgiven.
The Two Gentlemen of Verona was an experiment along certain directions which were later to repay the dramatist most richly. Here first an exquisite lyric interprets the romantic note in the play; here first the production of a troth-plight ring confounds the faithless lover, and here we first meet one of the charming group of loving ladies in disguise.
But as a whole the play is disappointing. The plot is too fantastic; Proteus too much of a cad; Julia, though brave and modest, is yet too faithful; Valentine too easy a friend. The illusion of romance throws a transitory glamour over the scene, but, save in the development of character, the play seems immature, when compared with the greater comedies that followed it.
Date.—The first mention of the play is by Meres (1598); the first print that in the First Folio (1623). The presence of alternate riming sonnets and doggerel rime on the one hand, and of a number of double endings on the other, render 1592 a reasonable date. In its development of character it marks a great advance over the other two comedies of this period.
Source.—The chief source was a story of a shepherdess, an episode in the Spanish novel, Diana Enamorada, by Jorge de Montemayor (1592). Shakespeare probably read it in an English translation by B. Yonge, which had been in Ms. about ten years. This story gives Julia's part of the play, but contains no Valentine. The Silvia of the story, Celia, falls in love instead with the disguised Felismena, and when rejected kills herself. Whether it was Shakespeare who felt the need of a Valentine to support the tale, or whether this was done in the lost play of Felix and Philiomena, acted in 1584, cannot be told. The Valentine element may have been borrowed from another play, of which a German version exists (1620).
Midsummer Night's Dream is Shakespeare's experiment in the fairy play. Four lovers, two young Athenians of high birth and their sweethearts, are almost inextricably tangled by careless Robin Goodfellow, who has dropped the juice of love-in-idleness upon the eyes of the wrong lovers. King Oberon tricks his capricious and resentful little queen, by the aid of the same juice, into the absurdest infatuation for a clownish weaver, who has come out with his mates to rehearse a play to celebrate Theseus's wedding, but has fallen asleep and wakened to find an ass's head planted upon him. All comes right, as it ever must in fairyland; the true lovers are reunited; the faithful unloved lady gets her faithless lover; Titania repents and is forgiven; and Theseus's wedding is graced by the "mirthfullest tragedy that ever was seen."
We have in Midsummer Night's Dream three distinct groups of characters—the lovers, the city clowns rehearsing for the play, and the fairies. These three diverse groups are combined in the most skillful way by an intricate interweaving of plot and by the final appearance of all three groups at the wedding festivities of the Duke of Athens and his Amazon bride Hypolita. The characterization, light but delicate throughout, the mastery of the intricate story, the perfection of the comic parts, and the unsurpassed lyrical power of the poetry, are all the evidence we need that Shakespeare is now his own master in the drama, and can pass on to the supreme heights of his art. He has learned his trade for good and all.
It is not a bad way of placing the last of the comedies in the first period of Shakespeare's production, to say that it is the counterpart in comedy of Romeo and Juliet. Like Romeo, Lysander has made love to Hermia, has sung at her window by moonlight, and has won her heart, while her father has promised her hand to another. Like the lovers in the tragedy, Lysander and Hermia plan flight, and an error in this plan would have been as fatal as it was in Romeo and Juliet, but for the kind interposition of the fairies. Again, the "tedious brief scene" of Pyramus and Thisbe, performed by the rustics at the close of the play, is nothing but a delightful parody on the very theme of Romeo and Juliet, even to the mistaken death, and the suicide of the heroine upon realization of the truth. At the end of the parody, as if in mockery of the Capulets and Montagues, Bottom starts up to tell us that "the wall is down that parted their fathers." Finally, the whole fairy story is the creation of Shakespeare in a Mercutio mood.
In the diversity of its metrical form, Midsummer Night's Dream is
also the counterpart of Romeo and Juliet. The abundance of rimed couplet, combined wherever there is intensity of feeling with a perfect form of blank verse, is reminiscent of the earlier play. Passages of equally splendid poetic power meet us all through, while at the same time we feel the very charm of youthful fervor in expression that the tragedy displayed.
Date.—There is nothing certain to guide us in assigning a date to the play, except the mention of it in Meres's list, in 1598. The absence of a uniform structure of verse, the large proportion of rime (partly due, of course, to the nature of the play), the unequal measure of characterization, and the number of passages of purely lyric beauty argue an earlier date than students who notice only the skillful plot structure are willing to assign. Perhaps 1593-5 would indicate this variation in authorities. Some evidence, of the slightest kind, is advanced for 1594. A quarto was printed in 1600, another with the spurious date 1600, really in 1619.
Source.—The plot of the lovers has no known direct source. The Diana Enamorada has a love potion with an effect similar to that of Oberon's. The wedding of Theseus and the Amazon queen is the opening theme of Chaucer's Knight's Tale, and some minor details may also have been borrowed from that story. No doubt, Shakespeare had also read for details North's account of Theseus in his translation of Plutarch. Pyramus and Thisbe came originally from Ovid's Metamorphoses, which had been translated into English before this time. Chaucer tells the same story in his Legend of Good Women.
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