with the State, and of the Church with the State. The political insight and wisdom shown in this comprehensive ethical grasp of the relation of the individual to society in institutional life are quite beyond the achievements of any statesman in the range of English history; for statecraft is everywhere, in the exposition of the dramatist, the application of universal principles of right and wise living to the affairs of State. Thus, on the great stage of history, Shakespeare, in the spirit of the poet and in the manner of the dramatist, dramatized the spirit of man working out its destiny under historic conditions.

CHAPTER XI

THE COMEDIES

DURING these prosperous five or six years Shakespeare's hand turned readily from history to comedy and from comedy to history; the exact order in which the plays of the period were written is unimportant so long as we are able to identify the group as a whole. The rising tide of creative energy, his mounting fortunes, and the deep fascination of the spectacle of life evoked his humour and gave free play to the gayety of his nature and the buoyancy of a mind which played like lambent lightning over the whole surface of experience and knowledge. It is probable that he was at work on several plays at the same time; taking up history or comedy as it suited his mood, and giving himself the rest and refreshment which come from change of work. It is certain that some of the greater Tragedies were slowly shaping themselves in his imagination from the earliest working years. "Romeo and Juliet" and "Hamlet" had taken root in his mind while he was yet an unknown apprentice in his craft; during these fertile years the germinal ideas which were to take shape in the entire body of his work were clarifying themselves in his consciousness; while his hand was engaged with one subject his mind

was dealing with many. He had already used the comedy form in "The Two Gentlemen of Verona," "The Comedy of Errors," and "Love's Labour's Lost," and had made it clear to his contemporaries that he possessed the genius of comedy- that rare, penetrating, radiant, sane genius which was also the possession of Homer and Cervantes, and, later, of Molière and Goethe the genius which not only looks into human experience deeply, but sees it broadly and in true perspective. It was Shakespeare's ease of mind, derived from the largeness and deep humaneness of his view, which kept him sane during the years when he was living in the heart of tragedy; and this ease of mind found expression in the comedy. The Shakespearean comedy is a comedy of life rather than of manners —a gay, sweet, high-spirited play with the weaknesses, follies, incongruities of men as these are projected against the great background of the spiritual kinship and destiny of humanity. There is no touch in Shakespeare of that scorn which is the mood of those lesser men who see the details of human character but not the totality of its experience. Shakespeare was equally at home with the tragic and comic elements in human nature, because both spring from the same root. In dealing with the tragic forces he is always superior to them; at their worst they are rigidly limited in their destructive force; he is not the victim of their apparent finality; he sees through and beyond them to the immovable order of the world, as one sees through the brief fury of the storm to the untouched sun and unmoved earth which are hidden

for a moment by the cloud. In like manner and for the same reason he laughs with men, but is saved from the cheapness of the sneer and the hard blindness of scorn. In his wide, clear, dispassionate vision he sees the contrast between the greatness of man's fortunes and the occasional littleness of his aims, the incongruities of his occupations, the exaggerations and eccentricities of his manners. He is mirthful because he loves men; it is only those who love us who can really laugh at and with us, and it is only men of great heart who have the gift of humour on a great scale. For humour, Dr. Bushnell says, "is the soul reeking with its own moisture, laughing because it is full of laughter, as ready to weep as to laugh; for the copious shower it holds is good for either. And then, when it has set the tree a-dripping,

And hung a pearl in every cowslip's ear,

the pure sun shining after will reveal no colour of intention in the sparkling drop, but will leave you doubting still whether it be a drop let fall by laughter

or a tear."

Later in life, for a brief period, Shakespeare's laughter lost its ring of tenderness, its overflowing kindness; but his vision became clear again, and, although the spirit of mirth never regained its ascendency, the old sweetness returned. "Shakespeare is a well-spring of characters which are saturated with the comic spirit," writes George Meredith; "with more of what we will call blood-life than is to be found anywhere out of Shakespeare; and they are of this world,

but they are of the world enlarged to our embrace by imagination, and by great poetic imagination. They are, as it were -I put it to suit my present comparison - creatures of the woods and wilds, not in walled towns, not grouped and toned to pursue a comic exhibition of the narrower world of society. Jaques, Falstaff and his regiment, the varied troop of Clowns, Malvolio, Sir Hugh Evans and Fluellen-marvellous Welshmen! Benedict and Beatrice, Dogberry and the rest, are subjects of a special study in the poetically comic."

In "The Merchant of Venice" the poet finally emancipated himself from the influence of Marlowe, and struck his own note with perfect distinctness. There is a suggestion of the "Jew of Malta" in Shylock, but the tragic figure about whom the play moves bears on every feature the stamp of Shakespeare's humanizing spirit. The embodiment of his race and the product of centuries of cruel exclusion from the larger opportunities of life, Shylock appeals to us the more deeply because he makes us feel our kinship with him. Marlowe's Jew is a monster; Shakespeare's Jew is a man misshapen by the hands of those who feed his avarice.

The comedy was produced about 1596; it was entered in the Stationers' Register two years later, and was twice published in 1600. The dramatist drew freely upon several sources. There are evidences of the existence of an earlier play; the two stories of the bond, with its penalty of a pound of flesh, and of the three caskets were already known in