same impetuous vigour of thought, and diverging and contracting with the same activity of the assimilative and of the modifying faculties; and with a yet larger display, and a wider range of knowledge and reflection: and lastly, with the same perfect dominion, often domination, over the whole world of language. What, then, shall we say? Even this, that Shakespeare, no mere child of nature, no automaton of genius, no passive vehicle of inspiration possessed by the spirit, not possessing it, first studied patiently, meditated deeply, understood minutely, till knowledge, become habitual and intuitive, wedded itself to his habitual feelings, and at length gave birth to that stupendous power, by which he stands alone, with no equal or second in his own class; to that power which seated him on one of the two glory-smitten summits of the poetic mountain, with Milton as his compeer, not rival.” It is impossible, even in work distinctly sensuous in imagery, not to discern the idealist in Shakespeare. Dealing with the physical aspects of beauty in "Venus and Adonis," he is bent on the ideal beauty. With Plato and Michael Angelo, he is driven by the appearance of beauty to that invisible and eternal reality which is at once the inspiration and justification of religion and poetry. In his earliest thought the future writer of the sonnets discerned the reality of which all beautiful faces, aspects, and images are the passing reflections, the fleeting remembrances and prophecies. The publication of these poems gave Shakespeare another constituency and a new group of friends, and brought him recognition and reputation. In the eight years which followed its appearance no less than seven editions of "Venus and Adonis " were was in its fifth In exchanging the issued, and "The Rape of Lucrece edition when the poet died. writing of plays for the writing of poems the poet passed from an occupation which shared to a considerable extent the social indifference or contempt which attached to the actor's profession to one in which gentlemen were proud to engage. He became, for the time being, a man of letters; he thought of readers rather than of hearers; he gave his work the care and finish of intentional authorship. He had become known to the theatre-going people as an actor of skill and an adapter of plays of uncommon parts; he now became known as a poet. Writing four years later, Richard Barnfield comments on "the honeyflowing vein" of Shakespeare, Whose "Venus" and whose "Lucrece," sweet and chaste, Thy name in fame's immortal book have plac't; and in an oft-quoted passage, which appeared in the same year, Francis Meres, in his "Comparative Discourse of our English Poets with the Greek, Latin, and Italian Poets," uses these striking words, expressive at once of the impression which Shakespeare had made upon his contemporaries and of his association in their minds with the Latin poet upon whom he had drawn freely in both poems: "As the soul of Euphorbus was thought to live in Pythagoras, so the sweet witty soul of Ovid lives in mellifluous and honey-tongued Shakespeare; witness his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, his sugared sonnets among his private friends. . . ." A year later John Weever calls Shakespeare "honie-tongued." At Cambridge in the same year St. John's College heard a fellowplaywright declare, "I'll worship sweet Mr. Shakespeare, and, to honour him, will lay his Venus and Adonis under my pillow." That Shakespeare had become so well known that the readers of his poems and the hearers of his plays were divided on the question of the relative importance of his works is shown, a little later, by these words of Gabriel Harvey written, Mr. Gollancz tells us, on the fly-leaf of a Chaucer folio: "The younger sort take much delight in Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis; but his Lucrece, and his tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, have it in them to please the wiser sort." These references, and others of similar import, show the young poet with the earliest light of fame upon him. Life and art, friends and fame, opportunity and work, were already his. And he had been in London less than fourteen years. The poets of his own time-Drayton, Brooke, Weever were under the spell of his genius; and there is good reason to believe Spenser was thinking of him when he wrote in "Colin Clouts come home againe": And then, though last not least in Aetion; A gentler shepheard may no where be found, In the Christmas season of 1594 he acted at court before Queen Elizabeth, and the fact that his plays were repeatedly presented in her presence indicates her liking for his work and her purpose to show him favour. A playwright upon whose words crowds hung in the Rose and the Globe; whose great passages were recited again and again in the palaces at Greenwich, Richmond, and Whitechapel; whose poems, having passed from hand to hand among his friends, appeared in rapidly succeeding editions; to whom many contemporary writers paid glowing tribute; and who counted among his friends some of the most brilliant and influential men of his time, can hardly be regarded as having escaped the notice of his age, or as so obscure as to raise the question of his authorship of the work which bears his name. The lyrical period in the growth of Shakespeare's mind and art culminated about 1597 or 1598, and bore its highest fruits in two dramas which hold a place by themselves; plays essentially poetic in quality and form, and singularly complete in their disclosure of the resources of his imagination and his art. The tragic story of Romeo and Juliet had attracted him at a very early date; there is evidence that he was brooding over this pathetic tale in 1591, although the play, in the form in which it has come down to us, probably did not appear before 1596. It was published in quarto form, probably without the dramatist's consent, in the following year, and the sub-title declared that it had been publicly played often and with great applause. The poet found the material for his first tragedy in several quarters, and drew upon these sources with the freedom characteristic of the time. The story has been traced as far back as the Greek romances of the early Christian centuries, but long before Shakespeare's imagination fastened upon it the congenial soil of Italy had given it new and more vigorous life. The tragic fate of the two lovers who were destined to become the typical lovers of Western literature was set forth at length by Luigi da Porto in a novel published about 1535; it had been sketched sixty years earlier by Masuccio, and it reappeared in later years in various forms; its popularity and its rich material tempting several succeeding story-tellers. Chief among these was Bandello, who made it the theme of a novelle in the decade before Shakespeare's birth. Two years before that event, an English poet, Arthur Brooke, told it in English verse, and five years later another English writer, William Painter, gave a prose version of the old story in his "Palace of PleasThe main line of development of the tragedy is to be found in Bandello, Brooke, and Shakespeare; the dramatist following quite closely the plot as it came to him from the English poet, but transforming and transfiguring both material and form by his insight, his dramatic skill, and, above all, by turning upon the passion of love for the first time the full splendour of his imagination. "Romeo and Juliet" is the consummate flower of Shakespeare's poetic genius, the complete disclosure of his purely poetic gifts. The dramatic insight and skill with which the materials are rearranged; the the brilliancy of characterization, as in the splendid figure of Mercutio; the rising tide of emotion which bears the ill-fated lovers to their death, do not make |