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preeminently in this play, the drama broadens to compass the full range of humour and character and experience; and the tragic and humorous are blended, as in life, without incongruity or violation of the essential unities of human action and knowledge. Henry IV. and Hotspur are not blurred in outline, nor is the significance of their struggle obscured by the roisterers and thieves who are at the heels of Falstaff. heroic note of the old ideals of chivalry is sounded as distinctly as if the broad, rollicking humour of Falstaff had no existence. Falstaff is one of the most marvellous of Shakespeare's creations; a gross braggart, without conscience, and as simply and naturally unmoral as if there were no morals, Shakespeare has drawn him with such matchless vitality that, although the stage is crowded with great figures, he holds it as if it were his own. Sir John Oldcastle, whose character undoubtedly gave Shakespeare a rough sketch of Falstaff, and whose name was originally used by Shakespeare, appears in the earlier play which the poet had before him; in deference to the objections of the descendants of Sir John, the name was changed in the printed play, and became Falstaff, but there is reason to believe that the earlier name was retained in the acting play. There was ground for the objection to its use, for Sir John Oldcastle was a Lollard and a martyr.

Shakespeare created a kind of English Bacchus at a time when every kind of fruit or grain that could be made into a beverage was drunk in vast quantities; and sack, which was Falstaff's native element, was both

strong and sweet. Falstaff is saved by his humour and his genius; he lies, steals, boasts, and takes to his legs in time of peril, with such superb consistency and in such unfailing good spirits that we are captivated by his vitality. It would be as absurd to apply ethical standards to him as to Silenus or Bacchus; he is a creature of the elemental forces; a personification of the vitality which is in bread and wine; a satyr become human, but moving buoyantly and joyfully in an unmoral world. And yet the touch of the ethical law is on him; he is not a corrupter by intention, and he is without malice; but as old age brings its searching revelation of essential characteristics, his humour broadens into coarseness, his buoyant animalism degenerates into lust; and he is saved from contempt at the end by one of those exquisite touches with which the great-hearted poet loves to soften and humanize degeneration.

"Henry IV." is notable not only for the range and variety of types presented, but also for the freedom of manner which the poet permits himself. About half the first part is written in prose. Shakespeare was not alone among his contemporaries in breaking with the earlier tradition which imposed verse as the only form upon the drama; Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher used both prose and verse in the same drama; but Shakespeare alone showed equal mastery over both forms. His prose is as characteristic and as perfect as his verse; he turns indifferently from one to the other and is at ease with either. He makes the transition in many places for the sake of securing variety

was ample stimulus for their production in their popularity. But other and deeper sources of attraction are not far to seek. These plays mark the transition from the epic to the drama; from the story of events and persons as shaped by fate to the story of events and persons as they disclose the fashioning of character by action and the reaction of character on events, knitting men and actions together in a logical sequence and a dramatic order. The historical plays find their logical place in the order of development between the old plays dealing with historical subjects and the masterpieces of Shakespeare and his contemporaries; and in the unfolding of Shakespeare's art they hold the same middle place. These plays preserve the characteristics of the older plays and predict the fully developed drama; they do not reveal the full play of the poet's genius nor the perfect maturity of his art, although the plays which deal with Henry IV. and Henry V. reveal the full range of his interests and his gifts.

In these plays the young poet put himself in deepest touch with the life of his race, and, in bringing to clear consciousness the race spirit, brought out with the utmost distinctness the racial qualities of his own genius. He is preeminently the English poet, not only by virtue of his supremacy as an artist, but by virtue of the qualities of his mind; and these qualities were developed and thrown into striking relief by the historical plays. His greatest work was in other fields, but through no other work has he impressed himself so deeply on the imagination of the

men of his own race. English history, and has made it live before the eyes of ten generations; he set the figures of great Englishmen on so splendid a stage that they personify finally and for all time the characteristics of the English race; he so exalted liberty as represented by the English temper and institutions that, more than any statesman, he has made patriotism the deepest passion in the hearts of Englishmen. No other poet has stood so close to the English people or affected them so deeply; and from the days when the earliest popular applause welcomed "Henry VI." on the stage of The Theatre, The Rose, and The Globe, to these later times when Irving's Wolsey crowds the stalls of the Lyceum, Shakespeare has been the foremost teacher of English history. There are many who, if they were as frank as Chatham, would confess that they learned their history chiefly from him.

He vitalized a great section of

In these plays, moreover, the young poet trained himself to be a dramatist by dealing with men under historical conditions; with men in action. The essence of the drama as distinguished from other literary forms is action, and in the historical plays action is thrown into the most striking relief; sometimes at the sacrifice of the complete development of the actors. Before taking up the profoundest problems of individual destiny or entering into the world of pure ideality, Shakespeare studied well the world of actuality. On a narrower stage, but in a higher light, he dealt with the relation of the individual to the political order, and showed on a great scale the

development of character in relation to practical ends. The depths of his spiritual insight and the heights of his art are to be found in the Tragedies; but the breadth, comprehensiveness, and full human sympathy of his genius are to be found in the historical plays; and in these plays, at the very beginning of his career, appeared that marvellous sanity which kept him poised in essential harmony between the divergent activities and aspects of life, gave him clearness of vision and steadiness of will, and made him the master of the secrets of character and destiny. The play of the divine law, which binds the deed to the doer, and so moralizes experience and makes it significant, is nowhere more clearly exhibited than in these manysided dramas, with their rich diversity of character and their wide range of action. Shakespeare is one of the greatest of ethical teachers, not by intention, but by virtue of the depth and clearness of his vision. The historical plays reveal the justice of God working itself out through historical events and in the lives of historical persons; with the constant perception that no man is wholly good or evil; that out of things evil. good often flows; that sin turns often, through the penitence of humility and service, into blessedness; and that about the certain and evident play of the divine justice there is a mercy which is a constant mediation, and hints, at times, at a redemption as inclusive as humanity.

Schlegel has well said of the historical plays that they are "a mirror for kings." In no other literature is there so complete a portraiture of the grandeur of