made in books. Love's Labour's lost is scarcely referable to any preceding work of any kind. One incident in it is certainly historical-the exchange of territory between France and Navarre. But the characters in the comedy, and the events in which they are engaged, are due to the poet's observation or invention. The motive for writing it evidently originated in the state of the poet's mind, and his opinion on a topic of great interest to the age of which he was destined to become the living exponent. To the subject of celibacy he had already devoted seventeen sonnets, condemning the hypocritical pretence; and now on the same subject, and with the same purpose, he had determined to compose a comedy. The drama before us had its source and root in this idea and design;--for the time, the poet's mission was comprised in these. The mission, also, was that of his age. The questions of Love and Marriage had then to be considered, and they are considered in their plenitude in Shakspere's poems and plays.

I have but little to add in this résumé to the elaborate details of this thoughtful comedy given in the preceding chapter. Its deficiency of action is evidently intentional, in order that its moral aim may be the more apparent. The influence of Italian poetry is felt in every line of its composition, and its profound meaning suggested. But for the purposes of art it is ostensibly concealed under a caricature expression, that the lesson may be more readily accepted by those who want it most, but whom it

Dialogue and Action.

79

would most offend. In this way, the cause not only of Love but of Learning, here associated with it, could best be defended and promoted. The dramatist's art is to insinuate truth, not directly to enforce it.

The dialogue of this play is an imitation of the wit-combats in which the learned of the time indulged, and in which Shakspere and his associates were proficient. Fuller describes these festive contests under the figure of a Spanish great galleon and an English man-of-war, intending by the former Ben Jonson and by the latter Shakspere. But his testimony, though usually quoted, is of no value;-for he was not Shakspere's contemporary, being only eight years old at the period of the poet's death. He received it, however, from trustworthy tradition; and the drama now under review gives an authentic picture of the practice under warranty of the poet's own hand. The life exhibited by him on the stage was the life actually lived in the world beyond it.

Shakspere at this period was disposed to depend more on the dialogue than on the action of the play, as is also evident in his next effort, Hamlet. By this time, he had thoroughly mastered the theatrical proprieties of his art, and was in a position to lecture his players on them, and also on the principles and practice of histrionic elocution. We must, however, take account of the improvements inserted in the work at a subsequent period of his life. Among these are Hamlet's contrast between Horatio's character and his own, which he delivers just before the

performance of the play of the murder of Gonzago, and the allusions to the meaning of his part while acting. The brief soliloquy at the end of the second scene of the third act is also an addition: "Tis now the very witching time of night," &c. The King's soliloquy in the next scene is much altered. As it originally stood, it belonged, I doubt not, to Kyd; the corrections are Shakspere's additions. The fourth scene in the fourth act, where Hamlet meets with Fortinbras and his troops, and soliloquises on the fact, is also an after-thought. Our modern players omit it, because the reflections in that soliloquy are repetitions of former ones in other soliloquies. But there is an artistic reason for its introduction, since it suggests a distance of time and place, and causes the intervention of both, between Hamlet's departure and Ophelia's madness. Omit the scene, and no interval takes place; moreover, we hear of Iamlet's return on the same day that he quitted Elsinore, with all the other events of Laertes' rebellion, besides what took place on board-ship as afterwards related by Hamlet himself to Horatio. On all these accounts, the scene should be restored to its place in the representation. The soliloquy, however much it may repeat others, is likewise so explanatory of the poet's purpose that, by enlightened critics, it has been valued as the key to the whole action;-showing, to adopt the words of a German writer, that "the very design of the poet was to represent his hero as a man, whose reason had been disturbed by the shock of too difficult a task; to lead him, according to that profound simile of Horatio's,

Hamlet's Melancholy.

81

to the dreadful summit of a steep whose height makes him giddy; as Goethe has expressed it: to delineate a mind, oppressed by the weight of a deed which he feels unable to carry out."

That the pretence of insanity as a politic expedient shows a tendency to insanity with Hamlet, I have already remarked; nevertheless, Hamlet is not positively mad, however subject to "the scholar's melancholy," attributed to him both in the drama and in Belleforest's romance. Too much deliberation impairs the power of acting, so that he delays an act of justice, which was also one of duty, until forced by accident to exertion, when he performs the deed in the worst possible manner, and one which involves his own destruction. Such deliberation is, indeed, called thinking; but meditative men, who indulge in such deliberations, are inept because too slow thinkers; whereas the man of action, as he is called, is really the more adroit and faster thinker, who translates his thought at once into deed, and thus secures at one heat its realisation and his own fortune. Shakspere makes Hamlet see this, and exclaim:

"Sure, he that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not

That capability and godlike reason

To fust in us unused."

But he has not the requisite courage to carry out his own convictions, from a want of practical faith in the promptings of the soul.

I have already mentioned the contrast between Shakspere's hero and heroine, Hamlet and Helena.

alike only, in

The style of

There is probably a further contrast between the plays of Love's Labour's lost and All's well that ends well. Meres mentions that Shakspere wrote a drama entitled Love's Labour's won; and there is reason to believe that All's well bore originally that title. This intimates to us the ruling idea in Shakspere's mind when he commenced the piece, and will help us in detecting its Inner Life and purpose. At some aftertime he appears to have remodelled the whole. In Bertram we have a continuation of Biron, but without the poetry or sentiment of the latter; that he has to be converted to love. the play is less florid, and indeed we find the poet beginning to appreciate the importance of action to drama as well as of dialogue. A decided action is therefore proposed. Helena has something to do-a purpose, on which depends the happiness of her life, to accomplish. Here, too, as we have already said more at large, we find the poet introducing comic characters of his own invention, such as Parolles, Lafeu, the Clown, and perhaps we may add the Countess of Rousillon; which characters serve to assist us in the interpretation of the dramatist's design, and by means of contrast give a pleasing variety to the stage-business. Shakspere derived little, besides the bare hint of the story, from Painter's Palace of Pleasure, or Boccaccio's novel. The spirit, the idea, the poetry, are all his own; the last of the best sort, and controlled within due limits by the finest dramatic judgment. The proportions of dialogue, action, and poetry, are admirably maintained, and