but is at last pardoned at the suit of Epitia, who is now as earnest and eloquent for her husband as she had been for her brother. Her holy and heroic conduct touches him with remorse, and finally proves as effective in redeeming his character as it was in redeeming his life.

As early as 1578, this tale of Cinthio's was dramatized after a sort by George Whetstone. The title of Whetstone's performance runs thus: The right excellent and famous History of Promos and Cassandra, divided into Comical Discourses. In the conduct of the story Whetstone varies somewhat from his model; as may be seen by the following abstract of his argument:

In the city of Julio, then under the rule of Corvinus, King of Hungary, there was a law that for incontinency the man should lose his head, and the woman be marked out for infamy by her dress. Through the indulgence of magistrates this severe law came to be little regarded. At length the government falling into the hands of Lord Promos, he revived the terrible statute, and, a youth named Andrugio being convicted of the fault in question, resolved to visit the penalties in their utmost rigor upon both him and his partner in guilt. Andrugio had a sister of great virtue and accomplishment, named Cassandra, who undertook to sue for his life. Her good behavior, great beauty, and the sweet order of her talk wrought so far with the governor as to induce a short reprieve; but, his love socn turning into lust, he set down the spoil of her honor as the ransom; but she, abhorring both him and his suit, could by no persuasion be won to his wish. Unable, however, to stand out against the pathetic pleadings of her brother, she at last yielded to the wicked man's proposal, upon condition that he should pardon her brother and then marry her. This he solemnly vowed to do; but, his wish being gained, instead of keeping his vows, he ordered the jailer to present Cassandra with her brother's head. The jailer, knowing what the governor had done, and touched with the outcries of Andrugio, took the head of a felon just executed, and set the other at liberty.

Cassandra, thinking the head to be her brother's, was at the point to kill herself for grief at this treachery, but spared that stroke to be avenged of the traitor. She devised to make her case known to the King, and he forthwith hastened to do justice upon Promos, ordering that to repair the lady's honor he should marry her, and then for his crime against the state lose his head. No sooner was Cassandra a wife, than all her rhetoric of eye, tongue, and action was tasked to procure the pardon of her husband; but the King, tendering the public good more than hers, denied her suit. At length Andrugio, overcome by his sister's grief, made himself known; for he had all the while been about the place in disguise; whereupon the King, to honor the virtues of Cassandra, pardoned both him and Promos.

In 1582 Whetstone published his Heptameron of Civil Discourses, containing a prose version of the same tale. He was a writer of learning and talent, but not such that even the instructions of Shakespeare could have made him capable of dramatic excellence; and, as he had no such benefit, his performance, as might be expected, is insipid and worthless enough. It is observable that he deviates most from Cinthio in managing to bring Andrugio off alive; and from Shakespeare's concurring with him herein it may be fairly inferred that the borrowings were from him, not from the original author. The Poet, moreover, represents the illicit meeting of Claudio and Juliet as taking place under the shield of a solemn betrothment; which very much softens their fault, as marriage bonds were already upon them, and proportionably heightens the injustice of Angelo, as it brings upon him the guilt of making the law responsible for his own arbitrary rigor. Beyond this outline of the story, it does not appear that Shakespeare took any thing from Whetstone more than a few slight hints and casual expressions. And a comparison of the two performances were very far from abating the Poet's fame; it being more creditable to have lifted the story out of the mire into such a region of art and

poetry than to have invented it. The main original feature in the plot of Measure for Measure is the part of Mariana, which puts a new life into the whole, and purifies it almost into another nature; as it prevents the soiling of Isabella's holy womanhood, suggests an apt reason for the Duke's mysterious conduct, and yields a pregnant motive for Angelo's pardon, in that his life is thereby bound up with that of a wronged and innocent woman, whom his crimes are made the occasion of restoring to her rights and happiness, so that her virtue may be justly allowed to reprieve him from death.

In the comic scenes of Whetstone's play there is all the grossness of Measure for Measure, unredeemed by any thing that the utmost courtesy of language can call wit or humor: here, as Shakespeare took no help, so he can have no excuse, from his predecessor. But he probably saw that some such matter was required by the scheme of the work and the laws of artistic proportion; and as in these parts the truth and character are all his own, so he can scarce be blamed for not anticipating the delicacy of later times, there being none such in the most refined audiences of his day: and his choice of a subject so ugly in itself is amply justified by the many sweet lessons of virtue and wisdom which he has used it as an opportunity of delivering. To have trained and taught a barbarous tale of cruelty and lust into such a rich mellow fruitage of poetry and humanity, may be safely left to offset whatsoever of offense there may be in the play to modern taste. Perhaps the hardest thing to digest is the conduct of Angelo, as being too improbable for a work of art or fiction; though history has recorded several instances substantially the same,-of which probably the most familiar to English and American ears is that of Colonel Kirke, a lewd and inhuman minion of James II, whose crimes, however, did not exclude him from the favor of William III.

We have already referred to certain characteristics of style and temper which this play shares with several oth

ers written about the same period, and which have been thought to mark some crisis in the Poet's life. It cannot well be denied that the plays in question have something of a peculiar spirit, which might aptly suggest that some rude uncivil shock must have untuned the melody of his soul; that some passage of bitter experience must have turned the sweet milk of his genius for a time into gall, and put him upon a course of harsh and ungentle thought. The matter is well stated by Mr. Hallam: "There seems to have been a period of Shakespeare's life when his heart was ill at ease, and ill content with the world or his own conscience: the memory of hours misspent, the pang of affection misplaced or unrequited, the experience of man's worser nature, which intercourse with ill-chosen associates peculiarly teaches; these, as they sank down into the depths of his great mind, seem not only to have inspired into it the conception of Lear and Timon, but that of one primary character, the censurer of mankind. This type is first seen in the philosophic melancholy of Jaques, gazing with an undiminished serenity, and with a gayety of fancy, though not of manners, on the follies of the world. assumes a graver cast in the exiled Duke of the same play, and one rather more severe in the Duke of Measure for Measure. In all these, however, it is merely a contemplative philosophy. In Hamlet this is mingled with the impulses of a perturbed heart under the pressure of extraordinary circumstances; it shines no longer, as in the former characters, with a steady light, but plays in fitful coruscations amid feigned gayety and extravagance. In Lear, it is the flash of sudden inspiration across the incongruous imagery of madness; in Timon, it is obscured by the exaggerations of misanthropy." Mr. Verplanck speaks in a similar strain of "that portion of the author's life which was memorable for the production of Othello, with all its bitter passion; the additions to the original Hamlet, with their melancholy wisdom; probably of Timon, with his indignant and hearty scorn, and rebukes of the baseness of civilized society; and above all of Lear,

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with its dark pictures of unmixed, unmitigated guilt, and its terrible and prophet-like denunciations."

These words certainly carry much weight, and may go. far to warrant the suggestion of the same authors, that the Poet was visited with some external calamity, which wrought itself into his moral frame; some assault of fortune, that wrenched his mind from its once smooth and happy course, causing it to recoil upon itself and brood over its own thoughts. Yet there are considerable difficulties besetting a theory of this kind. For there is no proof that Timon, but much that Twelfth Night, was written during the period in question: besides, even in the plays referred to there is so much of unquestionable difference blended with the acknowledged likeness, as will greatly embarrass, if not quite defeat, such a theory. But whatsoever may have caused the peculiar tone, the darker cast of thought, in these plays, it is pleasing to know that that darkness passed away; the clear azure, soft sunshine, and serene sweetness of The Tempest and The Winter's Tale being unquestionably of a later date. And surely, in the life of so thoughtful a man as Shakespeare, there might well be, nay, there must needs have been, times when, without any special woundings or bruisings of fortune, his mind got fascinated by the awful mystery, the appalling presence of evil that haunts our fallen nature.

That these hours, however occasioned, were more frequent at one period of his life than at others, is indeed probable. And it was equally natural that their coming should sometimes engage him in heart-tugging and brainsweating efforts to scrutinize the inscrutable workings of human guilt, and thus stamp itself strongly upon the offspring of his mind. Thus, without any other than the ordinary progress of thoughtful spirits, we should naturally have a middle period, when the early enthusiasm of hope and successful endeavor had passed away, and before the deeper, calmer, but not less cheerful tranquillity of resignation had set in, the experienced insufficiency of man for himself having charmed the wrestlings of thought into