word won in the last line might have sug- | places it, for the most part, in the class of gested to Mr. Hunter the possibility of the his earlier plays. Where, except in the class play having a double title-the one derived of the earlier plays, shall we find one in which from the one great incident of the piece, the rhyming couplet so constantly occurs? the other from the application of its dra- But then, again, we occasionally encounter matic action. Mr. Hunter, however, rejects all the music and force of thought of his the claim of 'All's Well that Ends Well' most perfect blank-verse. Tieck is of opinion to the title of Meres, upon the assumption that the play, as we have it, contains an that it could only have had a single title; engrafting of the poet's later style upon his whilst he seeks to establish the claim of earlier labours. He says, "Rich subjectThe Tempest' to the title of Meres, upon matter, variety of situation, marvellous dethe assumption that it had a double title: velopment, and striking catastrophe allured "I suspect that the play originally had a the young poet, who probably, later in life, double title, 'The Tempest, or Love's Labour would not have chosen a subject so unsuited Won;' just as another of the plays had a to dramatic treatment. Some passages, not double title, 'Twelfth Night, or What You merely difficult, but almost impossible to be Will.'" This reasoning is, to say the least understood, remain out of the first attempt; of it, illogical. If the argument is good for and here the poet combats with language 'The Tempest,' it is good for 'All's Well and thought—the verse is artificial, the exthat Ends Well.' pressions forced. Much of what I consider later alterations reminds us of the Sonnets, and. of Venus and Adonis.' The prose, particularly in the last acts, is so pure and clear, the scenes with Parolles are so excellently written,—that in all that concerns the language we must reckon them amongst Shakspere's best efforts. The first act is the most obscure; and here are probably the most extensive remains of the older work. The last half of the delineation of Parolles must belong to Shakspere's later period." Whether or no 'The Tempest,' looking at the internal evidence of its date, could have been included in Meres' list, there can be no doubt that 'All's Well that Ends Well' has many evidences of having been an early composition-unquestionably so in parts. When Malone changed his theory with regard to the date, and assigned it to 1606, in the posthumous edition of his 'Chronological Order,' he relied principally upon the tone of a particular passage: "The beautiful speech of the sick King in this play has much the air of that moral and judicious reflection that accompanies an advanced period of life, and bears no resemblance to Shakspere's manner in his earlier plays." The mind of Shakspere was so essentially dramatic, that when he puts serious and moral words into the mouth of a sick King, who is growing old, we should be no more disposed to believe that the sentiment has reference to the individual feelings of the poet than we should believe that all the exuberant gaiety of some of his comic characters could only have been produced by the reflection of his own spirit of youth. "Shakspere's manner in his earlier plays" has, however, much more to assist us in approximating to a date. The manner -by which we mean the metrical arrangement and the peculiarities of constructionin All's Well that Ends Well' certainly Malone assigns his second conjectural date of this play to 1606 upon other ground than that of Shakspere's manner: "Another circumstance which induces me to believe that this is a later play than I had formerly supposed is the satirical mention made of the puritans, who were the objects of King James's aversion." Surely the poet might allude to the famous contention about wearing the surplice, without being led to it by the aversions of King James. The contest had been going on for many years, and Hooker, in his fifth book of Ecclesiastical Polity,' published in 1597, refutes the puritanical opinions upon this matter at great length. Upon the subject of the surplice he distinctly says that the hostility of the puritans was much modified when he wrote. The controversy had raged with the greatest violence at the period when Shakspere, ac cording to our belief, was most likely to have produced 'All's Well that Ends Well,' -perhaps not as it has been handed down to us, but in an imperfect form. That period was probably not very widely separated from the period when 'Love's Labour's Lost' was produced; to which, as we do not hesitate to think, with Coleridge, this play was the counterpart. Having thus traced the principal dramatic action of All's Well that Ends Well' in the endeavour to show that it is identical with Love's Labour Won,' we may conclude this notice with a brief sketch of its characters. Of Helena we have necessarily spoken at length. Mrs. Jameson quotes a passage from Foster's 'Essays' to explain the general idea of her character: "To be tremblingly alive to gentle impressions, and yet be able to preserve, when the prosecution of a design requires it, an immoveable heart amidst even the most imperious causes of subduing emotion, is perhaps not an impossible constitution of mind, but it is the utmost and rarest endowment of humanity." This "constitution of mind" has been created by Shakspere in his Helena, and who can doubt the truth and nature of the conception? Bertram, like all mixed characters, whether in the drama or in real life, is a great puzzle to those who look without tolerance on human motives and actions. In a onesided view he has no redeeming qualities. Johnson says, "I cannot reconcile my heart to Bertram; a man noble without generosity, and young without truth; who marries Helena as a coward, and leaves her as a profligate: when she is dead by his unkindness sneaks home to a second marriage: is accused by a woman whom he has wronged, defends himself by falsehood, and is dismissed to happiness." If the Bertram of the comedy were a real personage of flesh and blood, with whom the business of life associated us, and of whom the exercise of prudence demanded that we should form an accurate estimate, we should say— "Too bad for a blessing, too good for a curse, I wish from my soul thou wert better or worse." But we are called upon for no such judgment when the poet presents to us a character of contradictory qualities. All that we have then to ask is, whether the character is natural, and consistent with the circumstances amidst which he moves? We have no desire to reconcile our hearts to Bertram; all that we demand is, that he should not move our indignation beyond the point in which his qualities shall consist with our sympathy for Helena in her love for him. And in this view the poet, as it appears to us, has drawn Bertram's character most skilfully. Without his defects the dramatic action could not have proceeded; without his merits the dramatic sentiment could not have been maintained. Shakspere, from the first, makes us understand that the pride of birth in Bertram constrained him to regard Helena as greatly his inferior. His parting with her is decisive: "The best wishes that can be forged in your thoughts be servants to you." This is the kindness of one who had known her long, and pitied her dependent state. But he leaves no doubt as to the sense which he entertains of her condition: "Be comfortable to my mother, your mistress, and make much of her." When the King proposes Helena to him as his wife, he assigns but one reason for his rejection of her-but that is all in all: "I know her well; She had her breeding at my father's charge: A poor physician's daughter my wife!" If Bertram had seen Helena with the eyes of his mother, as A maid too virtuous For the contempt of empire," or with those of the King and of Lafeu,he would not have rejected her, and the comedy would have been only a common lovetale. Johnson says he marries Helena " as a coward." This is unjust. Johnson overlooked the irresistible constraint to which his will was subjected, and the scorn with which he spoke out his real purposes even at the moment of submission: "Pardon, my gracious lord; for I submit My fancy to your eyes: When I consider What great creation, and what dole of honour, Flies where you bid it, I find, that she, which late Was in my nobler thoughts most base, is now Nothing can be less like cowardice than this speech. It is the bitterest irony of a desperate will, bowed for a time, but not subdued. Nor does Bertram leave Helena as "a profligate." We, who know the intensity of her love, which he could not know, may think that he was unwise to fly from his own happiness; but he believed that he fled from constraint and misery; from "The dark house, and the detested wife." The Bertram of the Florentine wars has something to recommend him besides his ancestry "he has done worthy service." But the young, proud, courageous Bertram is also a libertine. Schlegel asks, “Did Shakspere ever attempt to mitigate the impression of his unfeeling pride and giddy dissipation? He intended merely to give us a military portrait." This is quite true. The libertines of the later comedy are the only generous, spirited, intellectual persons of the drama; the virtuous characters are as dull as they are discreet. Shakspere goes out of his usual dramatic spirit in this play, to mark emphatically the impression which Bertram's actions produce upon his own associates. In the third scene of the fourth act they comment with indignation upon his desertion of Helena, and his practices towards Diana: "As we are ourselves what things are we!" But then all the Shaksperean tolerance is put forth to make us understand that Bertram is not isolated in his vices, and that even his vices, as those of all other men, are not alone to be regarded in our estimates of character: "The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together: our virtues would be proud if our faults whipped them not; and our crimes would despair if they were not cherished by our virtues." This is philosophy, and, what is more, it is religion-for it is charity. In this spirit the poet undoubtedly intended that we should judge Bertram. He is cer tainly not a hypocrite: and, when he returns to Rousillon, we are bound to believe him when he speaks of Helena as "She, whom all men praised, and whom myself Since I have lost have loved." for, For ourselves, we can see no poetical injustice that he is "dismissed to happiness; unless he has become a "sadder and a wiser man," he will not be happy. "In this piece," says Schlegel, "age is exhibited to singular advantage: the plain honesty of the King, the good-natured impetuosity of old Lafeu, the maternal indulgence of the Countess to Helena's love of her son, seem all, as it were, to vie with each in endeavours to conquer the arrogance of the young Count." The general benevolence of these characters, and their particular kindness towards Helena, are the counterpoises to Bertram's pride of birth, and his disdain of virtue unaccompanied by adventitious distinctions. The love of the Countess towards Helena is habit,—that of the King is gratitude: in Lafeu the admiration which he perseveringly holds towards her is the result of his honest sagacity. He admires what is direct and unpretending, and he therefore loves Helena: he hates what is evasive and boast ful, and he therefore despises Parolles. Parolles has been called by Ulrici "the little appendix of the great Falstaff." Schlegel says, "Falstaff has thrown Parolles into the shade." Johnson goes farther, and declares, "Parolles has many of the lineaments of Falstaff." In our view this opinion of Johnson exhibits a singular want of discrimination in one who relished Falstaff so highly. Parolles is literally what he is described by Helena "I know him a notorious liar, Think him a great way fool, solely a coward.” For the "fool," take the scene in the second act, in which he pieces out the remarks of Lafeu upon the King's recovery with the most impertinent commonplaces - ending "Nay, 't is strange, 't is very strange, that is the brief and the tedious of it." It was in this dialogue that Lafeu "smoked him;" and he makes no secret, afterwards, of his self. There is nothing but plain knavery, "Yet am I thankful: if my heart were great, more; But I will eat and drink, and sleep as soft opinion: "I did think thee, for two ordina- | Essays.' But Parolles certainly knows himries, to be a pretty wise fellow; thou didst make tolerable vent of thy travel; it might pass: yet the scarfs and the bannerets about thee did manifoldly dissuade me from believing thee a vessel of too great a burthen. I have now found thee." To the insults of Lafeu the boaster has nothing to oppose,neither wit nor courage. His very impudence is overborne. We thoroughly agree with Lafeu, that "there can be no kernel in this light nut." All this is but a preparation for the comic scenes in which he is to play so conspicuous a part-in which his folly, his falsehood, and his cowardice conspire to make him odious and ridiculous. Before this exhibition he is denounced to Bertram, by his companions in warfare, as a hilding"-" a bubble "-"a most notable coward, an infinite and endless liar, an hourly promise-breaker, the owner of no one good quality." The disclosure which he makes of his own folly before he is seized, when the lords overhear him, is perfectly true to nature, and therefore in the highest degree true comedy: "Par. Ten o'clock: within these three hours 't will be time enough to go home. What shall I say I have done? It must be a very plausive invention that carries it: They begin to smoke me: and disgraces have of late knocked too often at my door. I find my tongue is too foolhardy; but my heart hath the fear of Mars before it, and of his creatures, not daring the reports of my tongue. 1 Lord. This is the first truth that c'er thine own tongue was guilty of. [Aside. Par. What the devil should move me to undertake the recovery of this drum; being not ignorant of the impossibility, and knowing I had no such purpose? I must give myself some hurts, and say I got them in exploit: Yet slight ones will not carry it: They will say, Came you off with so little? and great ones I dare not give. Wherefore? what's the instance? Tongue, I must put you into a butter-woman's mouth, and buy myself another of Bajazet's mule, if you prattle me into these perils. 1 Lord. Is it possible he should know what he is, and be that he is? Aside." The last sentence is worth a folio of 'Moral braggart Let him fear this; for it will come to pass, Safest in shame! being fool'd by foolery There's place and means for every man alive." And he will "live." Lafeu understands him to the last, when he says, "Though you are a fool and a knave, you shall eat." And is this crawling, empty, vapouring, cowardly representative of the off-scourings of social life, to be compared for a moment with the inimitable Falstaff?-to be said to have "many lineaments in common" with him-to be thrown into the shade by himto be even "a little appendix" to his greatness? Parolles is drawn by Shakspere as utterly contemptible, in intellect, in spirit, in morals. He is diverting from the situations into which his folly betrays him; and his complete exposure and humiliation constitute the richness of the comedy. If he had been a particle better, Shakspere would have made his disgrace less; and it is in his charity even to the most degraded that he has represented him as utterly insensible to his own shame, and even hugging it as a good :— "If my heart were great, "T would burst at this." But Falstaff, witty beyond all other characters of wit-cautious, even to the point of being thought cowardly-swaying all men by his intellectual resources under the greatest difficulty-boastful and lying only in a spirit of hilarity, which makes him the first | The character belongs to the school of which to enjoy his own detection-and withal, Molière is the head, rather than to the school though grossly selfish, so thoroughly genial of Shakspere. that many love him and few can refuse to laugh with him-is Falstaff to be compared with Parolles, the notorious liar-great way fool-solely a coward? The comparison will not bear examining with patience, and much less with painstaking. And what shall we say of the clown? He is "the artificial fool;" and we do not like him, therefore, quite so much as dear Launce and dearer Touchstone. To the Fool in Lear' he can no more be compared than Parolles to Falstaff. But he is, nevertheless, great-something that no other artist but Shakspere could have produced. Our poet has used him as a vehicle for some biting satire. There can be no doubt that he is "a witty fool," "a shrewd knave, and an unhappy." CHAPTER V. THE TAMING OF THE SHREW. "THE TAMING OF THE SHREW' was first printed in the folio collection of Shakspere's Plays in 1623. It is not one of those plays enumerated as Shakspere's by Meres, in 1598. The matured opinion of Malone as to the date of this play is thus given :-"I had supposed the piece now under considération to have been written in the year 1606. On a more attentive perusal of it, and more experience in our author's style and manner, I am persuaded that it was one of his very early productions, and near, in point of time, to "The Comedy of Errors,' 'Love's Labour's Lost,' and 'The Two Gentlemen of Verona.' In the old comedies, antecedent to the time of our author's writing for the stage (if, indeed, they deserve that name), a kind of doggrel measure is often found, which, as I have already observed, Shakspeare adopted in some of those pieces which were undoubtedly among his early compositions: I mean hisErrors' and 'Love's Labour's Lost.' This kind of metre, being found also in the play before us, adds support to the supposition that it was one of his early productions." Mr. Collier, however, doubts whether "The Taming of the Shrew' can be treated altogether as one of Shakspere's performances:-"I am satisfied," he says, "that more than one hand (perhaps at distant dates) was concerned in it, and that Shakespeare had little to do with any of the scenes in which Katharine and Petruchio are not engaged." Farmer had previously expressed the same opinion, declaring the Induction to be in our poet's best manner, and a great part of the play in his worst, or even below it. To this Steevens replies-"I know not to whom I could impute this comedy, if Shakspeare was not its author. I think his hand is visible in almost every scene, though perhaps not so evidently as in those which pass between Katharine and Petruchio." Mr. Collier judges that "the underplot much resembles the dramatic style of William Haughton, author of an extant comedy, called 'Englishmen for my Money,' which was produced prior to 1598." But there is another play, 'The Taming of a Shrew,' which first appeared in 1594, under the following title :-'A pleasant conceited Historie called the taming of a Shrew. As it was sundry times acted by the Right honourable the Earle of Pembrooke his servants. Printed at London by Peter Short, |