these qualities in him must be constantly and incontinently changing his imaginary relations with the world: his imagination will not allow him to be tranquil: moodiness, variableness, is the imperious law of his being. Shakespeare, in imagining the general mental attitude of crafty Bolingbroke, cynical Timon, melancholy Jacques, madheaded Hotspur, or even dare-devil Richard, and unconscionable Falstaff, fell back upon more or less temporary attitudes of his own variable mind. There could not be a more monstrous mistake than to suppose the great dramatist to have been a calm man, who was never melancholy, and who sat comfortably in a study turning the world round for his amusement, and meditating quietly on the strange fellows that nature had formed in her time. He could not have understood so many of those strange fellows unless he had for however brief an interval passed through the experience of their moods. We know that Shakespeare lived a life of changeful circumstances. In his boyhood, his father's position underwent a gradual change in the eyes of the townspeople of Stratford; and in his youth. he took an unusual step that also exposed him to various comments. In London he experienced the feelings of gradually making his way in the world through various obstructions, and at all times he occupied a doubtful position, exposing him to great variety of treatment between the extremes of insult and admiration. He was brought into direct contact with men of all classes, and received with all the diversity of manner experienced by men whose position is not fixed by rigid convention. Now a man of active imagination and quick susceptibilities could not but have approached these changing circumstances in different moods; now melancholy, now defiant, sometimes eager, sometimes cool and indifferent, disposed sometimes to laugh at everything, and sometimes to cry at nothing. In the course of his varied life, he had, doubtless, a touch of the dissolute and reckless spirit of his favourite "Hal"-" of all humours that have showed themselves humours since the old days of goodman Adam;" as well as of the grave, politic, and

resolute spirit of Hal's father, Bolingbroke, or Hal himself when he became the heroic Harry the Fifth.

The amazing thing is to find all this variableness, without which dramatic insight is impossible, in combination with the fundamental steadiness, without which dramatic execution is impossible. All this variableness had, as it were,

a centre was an incessant movement above, below, and around a fixed centre of gravity. For all his presumable moodiness, Shakespeare would seem to have never composed but in one mood-the mood of dramatic impartiality. Nobody has been able to detect in his character any strong bias of opinions held dogmatically by himself. He would seem to have composed with intense concentration, setting himself with all the strength of his imagination to express the particular concerns, passions, follies, vices, virtues, actions, and motives that emerged from his story of love or revenge, and allowing himself to be swayed by no considerations except dramatic effect. Preachers sometimes essay to prove his religion and morality by choice excerpts, but they only prove that he put such sentiments into the mouths of his characters: he holds the mirror up to the irreligion and immorality of Edmund and Iago, and displays them with equal clearness and force. One of his characters explains away prophecy, another rationalises presentiments, a third declares that miracles are ceased, and that we can admit only natural means: yet ghosts walk in his dramas, men are haunted by evil forebodings, and calamities are heralded by monstrous portents. It is vain to look for consistent opinions where the dramatist's principle is to embody men of all shades with strict impartiality in their exact form and pressure.

The most amiable and one of the best attested features of Shakespeare's character, is the constancy of certain attachments. We may well suppose that, with an imagination ever ready to invest objects with attributes not their own, and sufficiently subtle to find for Titania points of attraction in the head of an ass, Shakespeare had many passing loves and friendships. But he was capable also of constant

attachment. The strongest evidence of this is found in his continued visits to his native place, and his final settlement there in the evening of his life. True, had we no other evidence of his intense affections, the fact of his retirement to Stratford might be otherwise interpreted: it might be said that he left London and its pleasant society because there his profession as an actor exposed him to indignities that his pride would not brook, and went to Stratford because there he was treated as a person of consequence. In support of this might be alleged the significant fact that in 1596 his father, probably at his instigation, applied for a grant of arms at the Heralds' College. We know from Shakespeare's sonnets that he felt keenly the inferiority and disgrace attaching to his profession; and it is not unlikely that he went back to the scenes of his boyhood with a certain feeling of relief from the scene of his humiliation. It is not perhaps to be denied that Shakespeare was glad to leave London, with all the attractions of wit-combats with Ben Jonson at the Mermaid, because he had not Big Ben's rough indifference to public opinion, and could not bear to be patronised for his genius by men that felt themselves above his profession. But while we acknowledge all this, we have still to account for the fact that his native town of Stratford was the chosen place of his retirement: he might have invested his gains in some quarter where he was utterly unknown, but for the desire to be near the friends and the scenes of his youth. And we are entitled to put upon the fact its most natural construction, when we find that supported by the warmth of attachment expressed in his sonnets, and the recorded testimonies of the gentleness of his nature. "I loved the man," said Ben Jonson, "and do honour his memory, on this side idolatry, as much as any. He was, indeed, honest, and of an open and free nature."

One of the main objects of the New Shakspere Society set on foot by the great society-maker, Mr Furnivall, is to settle the chronology of Shakespeare's 1 plays, with a view

1 I spell the name as it is spelt wherever it occurs in print in the poet's time.

to determining the development of his art. There is a good basis of external evidence to begin with, in the plays published before 1600, and it is probable that the application of various tests will enable critics to arrange the plays not published before 1623 in some approach to the order of their composition, and even to detect additions or alterations made on the first copy. I have not yet seen any considerations affording grounds for departing to any great extent from Malone's arrangement, except in the case of the "Tempest," which was probably composed before the date assigned by Malone. I should place the "Winter's Tale" at the end of the list of Shakespeare's works. But the subject will be more ripe for discussion when the Shakspere Society has published its labours.

Increase of power is most apparent in Shakespeare's tragedies. He began with imitating Marlowe. In "Titus Andronicus," and the two Chronicle Histories on the wars between York and Lancaster-which I take to be authentic works of Shakespeare's-the imitation of Marlowe is so strong, that several critics have ascribed them to that poet, in defiance both of external and of internal evidence. But he soon left off this imitation. There is no more of it in "Richard III." or in "Richard II." than there is in "Hamlet" or "Macbeth." I should be disposed to place "Richard II." after "Richard III.," partly because "Richard III." is a natural continuation of the preceding chronicle histories, and partly because "Richard II." is more richly coloured, showing the poet's advance towards "Romeo and Juliet." It is remarkable that "Richard II." contains no mixture of comedy. In "Romeo and Juliet," the dramatist first dares to exhibit the grave and the ridiculous side by side in the same action. His great tragedies, which represent the maturity of his power, are more darkly coloured and more strongly woven together than his earlier efforts. The danger in the application of tests is that facts be more or less bent to suit them. I am not sure that Mr J. W. Hales, so far as one can gather from the report of his lectures in the 'Academy,' has altogether escaped this danger.

He certainly exaggerates the faintness of the characterisation in Shakespeare's earlier work. That is a quality which must appear in a man's earliest works, if he has got it in him at all. It may be admitted that Shakespeare acquired greater power in the expression of character. That could hardly have been otherwise. But to say that there is only one character in "Richard III.," and no character in "Love's Labour Lost," or in the "Two Gentlemen of Verona," is to raise a doubt whether Mr Hales has very much appreciation of the sayings and doings that reveal character. As a study of character, Shakespeare's Margaret is quite equal to his Richard, and the three disconsolate ladies are distinguished with subtle and careful art. Valentine and Proteus are distinct and purposely opposed types of character: and Mr Hales gives other evidence of hasty study or imperfect appreciation of this play when he describes it as an inconsistency on the part of Silvia, of which Shakespeare would not have been guilty in later years, to reject the love of Proteus, and yet agree to send her picture to him next morning. The four lovers in "Love's Labour Lost" are also distinct men, and this play contains also the character of Holofernes, a study not inferior in subtle art to the Sir Toby Belch of Shakespeare's most mature period. But perhaps when Mr Hales has explained his views at greater length, they may prove more in accordance with the facts than appears in a condensed summary. I cannot, however, say that I expect any very strikingly new results from the application of "tests" to settle the order of Shakespeare's plays.

II. HIS WORDS AND IMAGERY.

The art of putting things cleverly and playing upon words was never carried to a greater height than in the age of Elizabeth. The Elizabethans were conscious wordartists" engineers of phrases," as Thomas Nash said. "To see this age!" cries the clown in "Twelfth Night,"