Shakespeare; this is a fact which proves indisputably how far this man had surpassed the range of sight of those around him. Menander's comedy is not so far removed from the genius of Aristophanes, as the English drama after Shakespeare is from his works. The ethical and aesthetic depth of both is in each case lost, almost without leaving a trace behind. We read through the works of Munday, of Marston and Webster, of Ford and Field, of Massinger and Heywood, of Jonson and Middleton, of Beaumont and Fletcher, and we find an uncommon richness of power and matter prominent in their plays, which often, overladen with three-fold actions, present an inexhaustible mine for the dramatist well acquainted with psychological and theatrical matters; but throughout, the work of the artisan must be refined into the work of the artist. We looked upon a mighty industry, rapidly organised upon a great demand, full of clumsy, careless, hasty manufactures paid by the piece, and formed according to the wishes of the multitude; an industry occasionally guided by a publisher such as Munday, who himself indeed made a dozen plays in company with two or three poets. Here everything testifies of sap and vigour in the minds engaged, of life and motion, of luxuriant creative genius, and of ready ability to satisfy a glaring taste with glaring effects; but the forming hand of that master is nowhere to be perceived, who created his works according to the demands of the highest ideal of art. Misused freedom and power, disfigured form, distorted truth, stunted greatness-these are everywhere the characteristics of the works of these poets. In the strictest contrast to the French theatre, ridiculing all rules, void of all criticism, and without any power of arrangement, they generally confound a wild heap of ill-connected events of the most opposite character in an exciting confusion of buffoonery and horror, allowing even an action full of abominable depravity to issue in a comedy, and a plot of a conciliating character to terminate in a tragedy; they seek sublimity in extravagance, power in excess, the tragic in the awful; they strain the horrible to insipidity, they give events the loose character of adventures, they pervert motives to whims, they turn characters into caricatures. With Ben Jonson, Shakespeare's witty and cheerful view of life becomes bitter satire, his idealism becomes realism, his florid poetry is turned into prose soberness, his world, charming with its manifold forms of fancy, is exchanged for a lumber-room full of strange requisites, his delineations of

the eternal nature and habits of men is transferred into a representation of ephemeral extravagances, and his typical characters become whimsical humourists. On the other hand, there are countless plays by the less original of the poets of that day, full of direct reminiscences of Shakespeare in the manner of speech and jest, in outward colouring, in designs, situations, and forms of character; but we have only to observe how Massinger exaggerated the character of Iago in his Duke of Milan,' or how he christianised Shylock in his work 'A New Way to Pay Old Debts,' or how Ford ("Tis a Pity she's a Whore') transferred the glowing colouring of the love in Romeo and Juliet to an incestuous passion between a brother and sister, and to compare these with Shakespeare, in order at once to perceive the extent of the aesthetic gap between these disciples and their master. And still wider is the distance between them in an ethical respect. In a number of dramas which originated contemporaneously with Shakespeare or after him, we are transported into an infected sphere, among the middle and lower London classes, where morals were more heathenish, says Massinger, than among the heathen, and crime, as Ben Jonson represents, was more refined than in hell. The society in which we here move'-thus it is said in a serious Morality of this time (Lingua,' 1607)-' is that of passionate lovers, miserable fathers, extravagant sons, insatiable courtesans, shameless bawds, stupid fools, impudent parasites, lying servants, and bold sycophants.' Yet even these figures and subjects were not hideous enough for the poets; they had recourse at the same time especially to Italian society, as it is depicted in the history and romance of the age-a world of corruption, which, with bare-faced shamelessness and obduracy, delights in an impudent ostentation of strong and violent crimes. Not satisfied with this characteristic choice of the most repulsive matter, they could not even portray it faithfully enough in the coarsest realistic truth without an ideal perspective. Nay, not even satisfied with this photographic image, they chose rather to hold the concave mirror before the age, that the deformity might be yet more deformed. Lingering with darkened vision upon these shadow-sides in their plays, which can often only awake the interest of criminal procedures, concealing by silence the light-side of that luxuriant English race and their political and religious power, the greater part of these poets adhere notwithstanding firmly to the ethical vocation of their art, but

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like Ben Jonson they fall into a harsh and severe theory of intimidation, which misses its aim in the poet's task still more than in that of the judge. Wherever they more positively tend to a moral idea, as is the case with Heywood and Massinger, they fall into another devious path. Losing that sense of moderation, which in Shakespeare measures human actions according to the pure eternal moral law, these Romanticists of English literature point in idealistic extravagance to conventionally extolled virtues, and bring forward examples of exaggerated ideas of honour and fidelity, in the style of the Spanish drama. And still more frequently these poets, though conscious of their vocation as elevators of morals, drawn down by the gravitating force of the corrupt conditions of life, suffer their hand to sink in convulsive efforts, and even inconsiderately resign themselves to the current of depravity, and sketch with seductive pencil the vices of the age, dead to the sensibility of moral feeling. This internal ruin sufficiently explains why the dramatic poetry of England, rapidly as it started forth, and luxuriantly as it grew up, just as quickly withered; why its constant adversary, Puritanic religious zeal, forced it so soon to relinquish the task for which it had proved itself too weak-the task of purifying society by a moral revolution. We can imagine that this degeneration of the stage would have been alone sufficient ground for Shakespeare's premature withdrawal from the stage, from London, and from his poetic vocation; he could no longer recognise his own work in the wild practices of those who believed themselves his most devoted disciples. For the intellectual extent of his historical survey of the world, the profound character of his poetic creation, and his moral refinement of feeling, were to the whole race a sealed letter. All this, however, makes Shakespeare's appearance in no wise a marvel. The passionate sympathy of the people for the art of the stage, the merry life of the court, the activity of a great city, the prosperity of a youthful state, the multitude of distinguished men, of famous persons by sea and land, in the cabinet and in the field, who were concentrated in London, the ecclesiastical and political advance on all sides, the scientific discoveries, the progress of the arts in other branches; all this combined together in producing the poet, whose fascinated eye rested upon this whole movement. So, too, in the history of European civilisation, Shakespeare's great contemporary, Francis Bacon, is no excep

tion, although at that time in England he stood as solitary as Shakespeare. All that belonged to the theatrical apparatusthe means and the material-lay ready for the great poet's dramatic art. No great dramatist of any other nation has met with a foundation for his art of such enviable extent and strength, with such a completeness of well-prepared materials for its construction, such as ancient tradition and present practice afforded to Shakespeare. From the Mysteries he drew the necessity for epic fulness of matter, from the Moralities. he gained ideal and ethical thought, from the Comic Interludes he derived the characteristic of realistic truth to nature, from the Middle Ages he acquired the romantic matter of epic-poetic and historical literature; from the present he obtained the strong passions of a politically excited people, and of a private society deeply stirred by the religious, scientific, and industrious movements of the age. The higher ideal of art, and the more refined conception of form, which in this branch of poetry was not yet existing in England, he could gather from antiquity when not drawing from the resources of his own mind, and from the more cultivated branches of poetry, in which Sidney and Spenser had laboured. But that which beyond all had the most direct influence upon Shakespeare's dramatic poetry, and affected it in a manner which unhappily we cannot sufficiently estimate, was the flourishing state of the histrionic art. It is certain that Shakespeare learned more from one Richard Burbage than he could have done from ten Marlowes; and he who is searching for proofs of any direct aid to our poet in his young and yet uncertain art, need seek no other.

We must, therefore, turn our attention briefly to dramatic affairs in Shakespeare's time.

THE STAGE.

THE history of the stage in London kept pace with the progress of dramatic poetry. Patronised by an amusement-loving queen, and even after her death promoted in every way by the learned James, supported by an ostentatious nobility, and sought after in increasing degree by a sight-loving people, the stage rose extraordinarily both in the capital and country during the last thirty years of the sixteenth century. All that had before been for the most part the rough inoffensive amusement of artisans for their own pleasure; all that the servants of the nobles had only acted before their masters, or the members of the courts in Gray's Inn and the Temple had only played before the queen or before their fellows in a small circle; all that the children of the royal chapel or the choristers of St. Paul's had attempted in histrionic art before the court; this now found its way among the mass of the people, and throughout the whole extent of the land. The sacred and moral tendency of the Mysteries and Moralities gave way to an exuberance of jests and burlesques; the miserable attempts at poetry were exchanged for a serious pursuit of art prosecuted with all the zeal of novelty; acting, once a humble talent kept under a bushel, stepped forward into public life, and became a profession capable of supporting its votary. A great excitement in favour of the new art, to an extent which has never again been manifested but in Spain at the time of Lope de Vega, seized the people even to the lowest orders, and at the very outset the young stage was not lacking in overweening extravagance, while it felt itself doubly secure in the favour of the court and of the whole nation. The Lord Mayor and aldermen of London endeavoured with remarkable perseverance to put an end to, not only the mischief, but even the existence and duration of this art; the royal Privy Council, on the other hand, was the refuge of the players,