At that period, when dramas were not written for the sake of readers, when the separation between histrionic art and dramatic poetry had not yet taken place, it was not unusual that dramatic poets should be actors also; Greene, Marlowe, Peele, Ben Jonson, Heywood, Webster, Field, and others united both arts. With regard to Shakespeare's perfection in the art, the expressions of his contemporaries and the traditions of his biographers appear to be at variance. Chettle calls him excellent in his art; Aubrey says 'he did act exceedingly well;' Rowe, on the contrary, states that he was a mediocre performer. Perhaps these accounts are less contradictory than they appear. Collier's supposition that Shakespeare only played short parts, in order to be less disturbed in writing, appears natural and probable. We know that he acted the Ghost of Hamlet's father, and this part, it is said, was the top of his performance;' and one of his brothers, probably Gilbert, at an advanced age, remembered having seen him in the character of Adam, in As You Like It. These are subordinate but important parts; with justice did Thomas Campbell say, that the Ghost in Hamlet demanded a good if not a great actor. It was at that time a usual custom, and another proof of the great perfection of the scenic art, that players of rank acted several parts, some very insignificant ones as well as the chief characters: this gave a harmony to the whole; it preserved uniformity of the enjoyment and of the artistic effect, and it enabled the poet to give distinction and life even to these subordinate figures. If Shakespeare, therefore, in order to pursue his poetic calling, played only shorter parts, this is no argument against his histrionic qualifications; if he played many parts of the kind mentioned, it is rather in favour of them. Yet this circumstance itself prevented his ever arriving at extraordinary perfection or pre-eminence in this branch of art. Besides, comparisons not only with Burbage, but of the actor Shakespeare with the poet Shakespeare, were at hand, in both of which the actor Shakespeare stood at a disadvantage. But the circumstance which prevented him most truly from becoming as great an actor as he was a poet was his moral antipathy to this profession. This would have ever restrained him from the attainment of the highest degree of the art, even if it had not induced him early to quit the stage. But to these events we shall return more at length.

SHAKESPEARE'S FIRST DRAMATIC ATTEMPTS.

WE have endeavoured to point out the condition of the stage upon which Shakespeare entered on his settling in London, and the state of dramatic poetry, in the nurture and progress of which he now stood by the side of Marlowe and Greene, Lodge and Chettle. In the first short period of his dramatic writings we see him more or less biassed by the peculiarities of this poetry, but we observe at the same time how rapidly he sought to disengage himself from the want of design, and from the harshness and rudeness of their productions; in the beginning a subject scholar, he soon appears as a rising master. The relation of Shakespeare to his contemporaries is illustrated by the fact that his early plays were only elaborations of older existing dramas, some of which we possess for comparison; the elaborator, however, soon raised himself above his prototypes, and after a few years towered like a giant over them. Pericles and Titusthe one from internal evidence, the other from a transmitted record are amongst these plays by another hand which were only elaborated by Shakespeare. The First Part of Henry VI. betrays at least the touches of three hands. The original of the two last parts, which Shakespeare followed step by step with his, is still preserved. In the Comedy of Errors, an English play, founded on the 'Menæchmi' of Plautus, probably lay before the poet; the Taming of the Shrew is worked after a ruder piece. These seven plays we consider, in accordance with most English critics, to be the first dramatic attempts of our poet, and we shall now glance over them in succession. We shall follow the course of the creative mind of the young poet in the workshop in which, indeed, he was yet to be himself formed.

TITUS ANDRONICUS AND PERICLES.

It is indisputable that Titus Andronicus, if a work of Shakespeare's at all, is one of his earliest writings. Ben Jonson (in the introduction to Bartholomew Fair') said, in the year 1614, that the Andronicus-by which he could hardly allude to any other play-had been acted for twenty-five or thirty years; it would, therefore, in any case have been produced during the first years of Shakespeare's life in London. There are few, however, among the readers who value Shakespeare who would not wish to have it proved that this piece did not proceed from the poet's pen. This wish is met by the remark of a man named Ravenscroft, who, in 1687, remodelled this tragedy, and who had heard from an old judge of stage matters that the piece came from another author, and that Shakespeare had only added 'some master-touches to one or two of the principal characters.' Among the masters of English criticism the best opinions are divided. Collier and Knight assign it unhesitatingly to Shakespeare, and the former even thinks, in accordance with his opinion upon Marlowe, that as a poetical production the piece has not had justice done to it. Nathan Drake, Coleridge (a few passages excepted), and Ingleby, absolutely reject it, and Alex. Dyce believes that the 'Yorkshire Tragedy' had more claims than Titus to be numbered among the Shakespeare writings.

That which we wish we willingly believe. But in this case great and important reasons in evidence of Shakespeare's authorship stand opposed to the wish and the ready belief. The express testimony of Meres, a learned contemporary, who in the year 1598 mentions a list of Shakespeare's plays, places Titus positively among them. The friends of Shakespeare received it in the edition of his works. Neither of these facts certainly contradicts the tradition of Ravenscroft, but at all events they prevent the piece from being expunged as supposititious without examination.

In accordance with these contradictory external testimonies, internal evidence and the arguments deduced from it appear also to lead rather to doubt than to certainty. It is true that Titus Andronicus belongs in matter as well as in style entirely to the older school which was set aside by Shakespeare. Reading it in the midst of his works, we do not feel at home in it;

but if the piece is perused in turn with those of Kyd and Marlowe, the reader finds himself upon the same ground. If, agitated by Shakespeare's most terrible tragedies, we enter into the accumulated horrors of this drama, we perceive without effort the difference that exists between the liberal art which sympathises with the terribleness of the evil it depicts and quickly passes over it-and which, for that reason, suffers no evil to overtake men that cannot be laid to their own guilt and nature—and the rudeness of a style which unfeelingly takes pleasure in suffering innocence, in paraded sorrow, in tongues cut out and hands hewn off, and which depicts such scenes with the most complacent diffuseness of description. He who compares the most wicked of all the characters which Shakespeare depicted with this Aaron, who cursed the day in which he did not some notorious ill,' will feel that in the one some remnant of humanity is ever preserved, while in the other a 'ravenous tiger' commits unnatural deeds and speaks unnatural language. But if the whole impression which we receive from this barbarous subject and its treatment speaks with almost overwhelming conviction against the Shakespearian origin of the piece, it is well also to remember all the circumstances of the poet and his time which can counterbalance this conviction. The refinement of feeling which the poet acquired in his maturity was not of necessity equally the attribute of his youth. If the play, such as it is, were the work of his youthful pen, we must conclude, that a mighty, indeed almost violent revolution, early transformed his moral and aesthetic nature, and as it were with one blow. Such a change, however, took place even in the far less powerful poetic natures of our own Goethe and Schiller; it has in some more or less conspicuous degree at any rate taken place in Shakespeare. The question might be asked, whether, in the first impetuosity of youth, which so readily is driven to misanthropical moods, this violent expression of hatred, of revenge, and of bloodthirstiness, conspicuous throughout the piece, denotes more in such a man and at such a time, than Schiller's 'Robbers' or Gerstenberg's 'Ugolino' did, which were written in Germany in the eighteenth century, for a far more civilised generation. When a poet of such self-reliance as Shakespeare ventured his first essay, he might have been tempted to compete with the most victorious of his contemporaries; this was Marlowe. To strike him with his own weapons would be the surest path to ready conquest. And how should an embryo poet disdain this path?

At that period scenes of blood and horror were not so rare on the great stage of real life as with us; upon the stage of art they commended a piece to hearers to whom the stronger the stimulant the more it was agreeable. It is clear, from Ben Jonson's before-mentioned testimony, that Titus was a welcome piece, which continued in favour on the stage, just as much as Schiller's Robbers.' Besides this approval of the people, the author of Titus could claim yet higher approbation. Whoever he might be, he was imbued just as much as the poet of Venus and Lucrece with the fresh remembrance of the classical school; Latin quotations, a predilection for Ovid and Virgil, for the tales of Troy and the Trojan party, and constant references to old mythology and history, prevail throughout the play. An allusion to Sophocles' ' Ajax,' and similarity to passages of Seneca, have been discovered in it. All the tragic legends of Rome and Greece were certainly present to the poet, and we know how full they are of terrible matter. The learned poet gathered them together, in order to compose his drama and its action, from the most approved poetical material of the ancients. When Titus disguises his revenge before Tamora, he plays the part of Brutus; when he stabs his daughter, that of Virginius; the dreadful fate of Lavinia is the fable of Tereus and Progne; the revenge of Titus on the sons of Tamora, that of Atreus and Thyestes; other traits remind of Æneas and Dido, of Lucretia and Coriolanus. Forming his one fable from these shreds of many fables, and uniting the materials of many old tragedies into one, the poet might believe himself most surely to have surpassed Seneca.

The inference drawn from the subject and contents of the play concerns its form also. With Coleridge the metre and style alone decided against its authenticity. Shakespeare has nowhere else written in this regular blank verse. The diction, for the most part devoid of imagery, and without the thoughtful tendency to rare expressions, to unusual allusions, and to reflective sayings and sentences, is not like Shakespeare. The grand typhon-like bombast in the mouth of the Moor, and the exaggerated mimic play of rage, is in truth that out-heroding Herod which we find the poet so abhorring in Hamlet. Yet even here the objection may be raised, that it was natural for a beginner like Shakespeare to allow himself to be carried away by the false taste of the age, and that it was easy for a talent like his to imitate this heterogeneous style. If we had no testimony as