brings home to us the ultimate fall of the old world-republic, and impresses us with that sense of universal annihilation which in this play, as in King Lear, Shakespeare aims at begetting.

This is no tragedy of a domestic, limited nature like the conclusion of Othello; there is no young Fortinbras here, as in Hamlet, giving the promise of brighter and better times to come; the victory of Octavius brings glory to no one and promises nothing. No; the final picture is that which Shakespeare was bent on painting from the moment he felt himself attracted by this great theme-the picture of a world-catastrophe.

BOOK THIRD

I

DISCORD AND SCORN

OUT of tune-out of tune!

Out of tune the instrument whereon so many enthralling melodies had been played-glad and gay, plaintive or resentful, full of love and full of sorrow. Out of tune the mind which had felt so keenly, thought so deeply, spoken so temperately, and stood so firmly "midst passion's whirlpool, storm, and whirlwind." His life's philosophy has become a disgust of life, his melancholy seeks the darkest side of all things, his mirth is grown to bitter scorn, and his wit is without shame.

There was a time when all before his eyes was green-vernally green, life's own lush, unfaded colour. This was followed by a period of gloom, during which he watched the shadows of life spread over the bright and beautiful, blotting out their colours. Now it is black, and worse than black; he sees the base mire cover the earth with its filth, and heeds how it fills the air with its stench.

Shakespeare had come to the end of his first great circumnavigation of life and human nature: an immense disillusionment was the result. Expectation and disappointment, yearning and content, life's gladness and holiday-making, battle mood and triumph, inspired wrath and desperate vehemence-all that once had thrilled him is now fused and lost in contempt.

Disdain has become a persistent mood, and scorn of mankind flows with the blood in his veins. Scorn for princes and people; for heroes, who are but fellow-brawlers and braggarts after all; and for artists, who are but flatterers and parasites seeking possible patrons. Scorn for old age, in whose venerableness he sees only the unction or hypocrisy of an old twaddler. Scorn for youth, wherein he sees but profligacy, slackness, and gullibility, while all enthusiasts are impostors, and all idealists fools. Men are either coarse and unprincipled, or so weakly sentimental as to be under a woman's thumb; and woman's distinguishing qualities are feebleness, voluptuousness, fickleness, and falsehood;

a fool he who trusts himself to them or lets his actions depend upon them.

This mood has been growing on Shakespeare for some time. We have felt it grow. It shows first in Hamlet, but is harmless as yet in comparison with the scathing bitterness of later times. There is a breath, a whisper, in the "Frailty, thy name is Woman!" addressed to Hamlet's mother. Ophelia is rather futile than specially weak; she is never false, still less faithless. Even the inconstant Queen Gertrude can scarcely be called false.

There was malignity and temper in that challenge of moral hypocrisy, Measure for Measure, and enough earnestness to overpower the comic, although not sufficient bitterness to make the peaceful conclusion impossible. The tragedy of Macbeth was brought to a consoling end; the powers of good triumphed at the last. There was only one malign character in Othello, evil indeed, but solitary. Othello, Desdemona, Emilia, &c., are all good at heart. There is no bitterness in Lear, no scorn of mankind, but sympathy and a wonderful compassion pervading and dominating all. Shakespeare has divided his own Ego among the characters of this play, in order to share with them the miseries and suffering of life on this earth; he has not gathered himself up to judge and despise.

It is from thenceforward that the undertone of contempt first begins to be felt. A period of some years follows, in which his being narrows and concentrates itself upon an abhorrence of human nature, accompanied, so far as we can judge, by a correspondingly enormous self-esteem. It is as though he had for a moment felt such a scorn for his surroundings of court and people, friends and rivals, men and women, as had nearly driven him wild.

We see the germs of it in Antony and Cleopatra. What a fool is this Antony, who puts his reputation and a world-wide dominion in jeopardy in order to be near a cold-blooded coquette, who has passed from hand to hand, and whose caprice puts on all the colours of the rainbow. We find it in full bloom in Troilus and Cressida. What a simpleton this Troilus, who, credulous as a child, devotes himself body and soul to a Cressida ; a typical classic she, treachery in woman's form, as false and flighty as foam upon the waves, whose fickleness has become a by-word.

Shakespeare has now reached that point of departure where man feels the need of stripping woman of the glamour with which romantic naïveté and sensual attraction have surrounded her, and finds a gratification in seeing merely the sex in her. Sympathy with love, and a conception of woman as an object worthy of love, goes the way of all other sympathies and illusions at this stage. "All is vanity," says Kohelet, and Shakespeare with him. As in all artist souls, there was in his a peculiar blending of

enthusiast and cynic. He has now parted with enthusiasm for a time, and cynicism is paramount.

Such an all-pervading change in the disposition and temper of a great personality was not without its reasons, possibly its one first cause. We can trace its workings without divining its origin, but we may seek to orient ourselves with regard to its conditions. Leverier came to the conclusion in 1846 that the disturbances in the path of Uranus were caused by something behind the planet which neither he nor anybody else had ever seen. He indicated its probable position, and three weeks afterwards Galle found. Neptune on the very spot. Unfortunately, Shakespeare's history is so very obscure, and such fruitless search in every direction has been made after fresh documents, that we have no great hope of finding any new light.

We can but glance around the horizon of his life, and note how English circumstances and conditions grouped themselves about him. Material for cheering or depressing reflections can be found at all times, but the mind is not always equally prone to assimilate the cheering or depressing. Certain it is that Shakespeare has now elected to seek out and dwell upon the ugly and sorrowful, the unclean and the repulsive. His melancholy finds its nourishment therein, and his bitterness has learned to suck poison from every noxious plant which borders his path through life. His contempt of mankind and his weariness of existence swell and grow with each experience, and in the events and conditions of those years there was surely matter enough for abhorrence, rancour, and scorn.

II

THE COURT-THE KING'S FAVOURITES

AND RALEIGH

UNDER the circumstances Shakespeare could do nothing but keep as close to King and Court as possible, even though the King's dreary, and the Court's profligate qualities grew year by year. James aspired to a comparison with Solomon for wisdom; he certainly resembled him in prodigality, and Henry III. of France in his susceptibility to manly beauty. His passion for his various favourites recalls that of Edward II. for Gaveston in Marlowe's drama. He was, says a chronicle of the time, as susceptible as any schoolgirl to handsome features and wellformed limbs in a man. The parallels his contemporaries drew between him and his predecessor on this score did not work out to his advantage. Elizabeth, they said, who was unmarried, loved only individuals of the opposite sex, all eminent men, whom, even then, she never allowed to rule her. James, on the contrary, was married, and yet entertained a passion for one mignon after another, giving the most exalted positions in the country to these men, who were worthless and arrogant, and by whom he was entirely led. In our day Swinburne has characterised James as combining with "northern virulence and pedantry. . . a savour of the worst qualities of the worst Italians of the worst period of Italian decadence." Was he, in truth, of Scotch descent on both sides? His exterior recalled little of his mother's charms, and still less those of the handsome Darnley. His contemporaries doubted. They neither believed that Darnley's jealousy was groundless, nor the modern embellishment that the Italian singer and private secretary's ugly face made any tender feeling on Mary Stuart's side quite impossible. The Scottish Solomon was invariably alluded to by the outspoken, jest-loving Henry IV. of France as "Solomon, the son of David " (Rizzio).

The general enthusiasm which greeted King James on his accession speedily gave way to a very decided unpopularity. Again and again, upon a score of different points, did he offend English national pride, sense of justice, and decency.

The lively Queen, who romped through the court festivities, and spent her days in dressing herself out for masquerades, had