An interesting dialogue takes place between the lovers, which is interrupted by Juliet's nurse. Tybalt, a fiery kinsman of Juliet's, having discovered Romeo, vows revenge on the intruder. The interview, however, has succeeded in producing the most ardent passion between Romeo and Juliet, and the latter endeavors to secure the interest of her nurse, of whom she makes eager inquiries about her lover, but is tantalized by the nurse with the most provoking garrulity. The mutual impression the lovers have, is so ardent that already, on the following day, a secret marriage is the consequence, at which Friar Laurence, confessor of the two, is induced to officiate, because he hopes that by this marriage, sooner or later, a reconciliation between the two rival houses may be effected. Immediately after this ceremony, a duel is provoked by Tybalt, the fierce cousin of Juliet, with Mercutio, the gallant kinsman of Romeo. Mercutio is slain; and Romeo, who had endeavored to prevent this duel, allows himself, by his momentary passion, to be drawn into a conflict | with Tybalt, in which he kills the latter. A tumult ensues, the heads of the Capulets and Montagues, with the prince, arrive at the scene, and the latter, not fully aware of the provocation, orders the banishment of Romeo. Romeo having ascended to Juliet's chamber window, holds a stolen interview, and swearing eternal constancy, prepares to depart by the way he came. During this scene between the lovers, the nurse calls Juliet, who alternately answers her, and tenderly takes leave of her lover. Romeo, by the advice of the good Friar Laurence, hies to Mantua. Juliet, inconsolable over this separation, weeps bitterly. Her parents think that the death of her cousin Tybalt is the cause of her tears, and resolve to marry her to the kinsman of the prince, Count Paris, who now sues for her hand. Juliet, to avoid marrying Count Paris, and to preserve her faithfulness to Romeo, swallows an opiate furnished her by Friar Laurence, the effect of which is to produce the temporary semblance of death, and is found by her nurse and others in this trance on the morning of the intended nuptials. Universal grief follows, and Friar Laurence, with a view to moderate it, and to prove his friendship for Romeo, recommends the immediate interment of Juliet's body. Meantime, the messenger sent by Friar Laurence is not admitted, because he had tarried in a pest-house, and returns home without seeing Romeo, while Balthasar, Romeo's servant, although enabled to communicate with his master, only informs him of Juliet's death and burial, not being aware of the rest. Romeo, in his despair, procures a deadly poison, returns to Verona, where he visits Juliet's tomb at midnight, unacquainted, from the miscarriage of the friar's note, with her reported death being but a trance. Count Paris, the intended husband selected by Juliet's parents, meets Romeo; they quarrel, fight, and Paris falls. Romeo takes a final leave of his seemingly dead mistress, and swallows the poison. At this moment, Friar Laurence arrives, to await Juliet's awakening. She, on learning the melancholy catastrophe, kills herself, and dies in the arms of Romeo. The friar previously requests the bodies of their unhappy children, the deadly enmity of the Capulet and Montague families ceases, and they are finally and effectively reconciled by the great grief that has overwhelmed them. This drama is among the most powerful of the great poet in strong delineation of passion and richness of fancy. In Juliet we have the first striking figure of Shakespeare's youthful conception of womanhood. The glorious figure of girlhood, clad in the beauty of the southern spring, stepping out for scarce two days from the winter of her grand but loveless home into the sunshine and warmth of love, and then sinking back into the horrors of the charnel-house and the grave, is one that ever haunts the student of Shakespeare. The deeper and richer note of love which the great bard has struck becomes deeper and richer still in Romeo and Juliet. Fierce Tybalt; gay, fiery Mercutio; gallant Benvolio; tender, chivalrous Romeo — we see them all in fancy as they move under the intense blue of the Italian sky. The day is hot; the Capulets are abroad; Mercutio's laugh rings down the street; his jewelled cap flames in the sunlight. Such sights and sounds as these crowd on the mind's eye as we read and think. Passion lends the lovers power," as the old song says. It is the time of the affections and warm youthful blood. But these violent delights have violent ends, and Juliet, "ill-divining soul," prepares us for the end that awaits the delicious, passionate love of the garden scene. Far above anything Shakespeare had yet written stands this and the lovers' subsequent meeting and parting. The character of Juliet, too, is the guiding star of the play - far above Romeo, whose sentimental weeping for Rosaline, and grief when he hears of the order for his banishment, call forth a well-deserved reproach from Friar Laurence. The Nurse, so thoroughly a character, is the first and only figure of the kind in Shakespeare (except, perhaps, Mrs. Quickly). The fussy, bustling, hot-tempered old Capulet is a capital figure, too. The play is "young" all through, not only in its passions, but in its conceits and its excess of fancy. The time of the action of the play is five and a half days. The ball is on Sunday night; the lovers are married on Monday, and pass the night together. Juliet drinks the sleeping draught on Tuesday night, and on Wednesday, instead of marrying Paris, is found seemingly dead and entombed. She sleeps more than forty-two hours. On Thursday Romeo returns, and poisons himself before Juliet wakes before the dawn of Friday. She stabs herself, and the families are roused from their sleep to come to the tomb, as previously related. TIMON OF ATHENS. See Page 608. not yet decided conclusive whether her to follow him into a convent, but is frightened off I Shakespeare obtained his basis for this tragedy by approaching footsteps. Juliet, imprinting an affectionate farewell kiss on the lips of the dead Romeo, takes his dagger and stabs herself. Meanwhile, Paris's page has summoned the guards, who, on seeing what had taken place, call the prince, the Capulets and the Montague families to the scene, while other attendants bring Laurence and Romeo's servant thither. The prince investigates the tragedy, and Friar Laurence rehearses the details of the melancholy story. His statement is corroborated by the page and Balthasar, and also by a letter from Romeo to his father. Over from North's English translation of Plutarch, or from Paynter's older work, entitled "Palace of Pleasure," nor is the date of its composition stated as certain. It was probably written in 1605. SCENE.-Athens and the contiguous woods. Timon, a noble citizen of Athens, equally renowned for his patriotic love for the cause of his fatherland, as on account of his immense wealth, is charitable beyond prudence, without aim or measure. Surrounded by a crowd of parasites, he is distributing to one of them a rich jewel, nearly the last remains of his wealth. His friend, Apemantus, the cynical philosopher, warns him of the consequences of such prodigality, but his advice is not listened to. When reduced in fortune, he knocks at the door of his friends, who formerly had been his daily guests, but finds, as might be expected, closed doors and deaf ears. Filled with bitter rage, he once more invites these false friends for the last time, but places before them, in covered dishes, nothing but lukewarm water, a fitting symbol of their friendship, and, with terrible curses, throws the vessels at their heads. Abandoned and treated with the blackest ingratitude by those he had enriched and benefited, Timon spurns the hated city of his residence, and, renouncing human society, seeks the shelter of the forest, where he becomes an inveterate misanthrope. All invitations for a return to Athens he rejects; neither Flavius, his honest steward, who offers to divide his savings with him; nor Alcibiades, his general, who offers to revenge him; nor the senators of Athens, who offer him the highest office of honor, were able to change him. In this seclusion from the busy world, he draws from his bitter experience the motives of the people who come thus to meet himnot moved by pity or even curiosity, not for the purpose of consolation or atonement, but for the selfish and covetous reasons of thirst for gold, for it was rumored in Athens that, while digging roots, he had found a treasure which a miserly fellow had once buried. Still a prodigal with his gold, not for charitable purposes, but animated by evil intentions, Timon meets all who visit his retreat only to bribe and excite, and so to lead to the destruction of the hated human race. A warrior under Alcibiades at last finds Timon's grave, | and reports the inscription, written by himself, witnessing to the loathing he felt for mankind until death. JULIUS CESAR. See Page 627. crown of an emperor. As Cæsar was now on the eve AMONG the materials used by Shakespeare in this follow the example of Julius Cæsar are frustrated, and play were North's translation of the biographies of Julius Cæsar, Marcus Antonius, and Brutus, by Plutarch; perhaps Appian and Dio Cassius were not unknown to him. It was probably written in 1602, soon after the completion of Hamlet. The political moral of the tragedy is, that the most unstatesmanlike and politically immoral policy is that which is not in keeping with the strictest requirements of the laws of right and equity. A treacherous or cruel deed, even carried out from noble or patriotic motives, cannot escape the Nemesis of retribution. SCENE. In the city of Rome; afterwards at Sardis, and near Philippi. Julius Cæsar, renowned for many gallant deeds, and for his brilliant victories loved by the Roman nobility as well as by the people, after vanquishing the younger Pompey in Spain, thought that the time had now come to carry out the ambitious desire, so long entertained, of making himself the absolute ruler of the Roman Empire. On his return to Rome, contention was caused by the display made of the vanquished prisoners an ostentation which had not been previously attempted and the magnificence of this triumphal march could not altogether drown the displeasure; nevertheless, the Romans vied in showing Cæsar honors, which almost amounted to adoration. In fact, Cæsar was already a monarch, and his admirers urged him now to assume the name and the he is compelled, against his will, to acknowledge Octavius Cæsar and the influential Lepidus as triumvirs in the government, whose first act was that bloody proscription, from which even Cicero the great orator is not exempted, but falls a victim. After being present at the execution of those of their enemies who had lingered in Rome, Octavius and Antonius embark for Macedonia to pursue Brutus and Cassius, who, after the news had been imparted to them that Portia had committed suicide by swallowing burning coals, venture, on the day of Cassius's birthday, the decisive battle of Philippi. great battle against the conspirators, and dismay seizes Mark Antony seems on the point of gaining the last them; Brutus, their great leader, to avoid falling into the victors' hands, and impressed with the fate denounced against him by Caesar's ghost, which had appeared to him the preceding night in his tent, commands his page Strato to let him fall on his sword, and thus dies. His corpse receives an honorable burial at the hands of his victorious enemies. Julius Cæsar is not the real hero of this play, but Brutus is; yet Cæsar's spirit rules, as Cassius and Brutus before their deaths acknowledge. Cæsar's murder is the centre and hinge of the play. The death of the great soldier overcomes his conquerors; for though his bodily presence is weak, his spirit rises, arms his avengers, and his assassins proclaim his might. Shakespeare has made the Cæsar of his play not the brave and vigorous subduer of Britain and the Goths, but Cæsar old, decaying, failing both in mind and body; his long success had ruined his character and turned his head. The character of Brutus is that of one of the noblest of men the poet has drawn-if not the noblest. Brutus believes himself the man to set the times right; but as honor calls him he must act. He is no judge of men; he cannot see that Cassius is playing on him as on a pipe; he misjudges Antony, and allows him to make that most effective appeal at Cæsar's funeral to the passions of the fierce Roman mob; he always takes the wrong steps in action; he has his faults, too, as see his ungenerous upbraiding of Cassius about getting gold wrongfully, when he, Brutus, had previously asked for some of it; and how his vanity gives way to Cassius's appeal to him in the scene after Cæsar's death. That is a glorious scene between Brutus and his wife-pure soul to soul; no thought of earthly dallying between them. MACBETH. See Page 647. rage, rushes to King Duncan's room and stabs the two officers on whom he endeavored to cast suspicion, all doubt who the real perpetrators are. Malcolm and Donalbain flee; Macbeth is crowned king, and thus the prediction of the weird sisters is literally fulfilled. Macbeth, after usurping the crown, to secure himself in the possession of it, caused Banquo to be assassinated by the hands of hired murderers, and celebrates his success by a grand banquet. He is alarmed in the midst of it by the appearance of Banquo's ghost! The queen and nobles, to whom the spectre is invisible, express amazement, and vainly strive to soothe him. Macduff, the Thane of Fife, hastens away and seeks refuge in England with Malcolm; but Macbeth storms his castle and murders pitilessly Lady Macduff and her children. Remorse and the dangers that menace her husband's throne having thrown Lady Macbeth into a dangerous condition, rest becomes a stranger to her harrowed mind; she walks in her sleep, and in that state discloses the secret of the king's murder to her physician and her attendant, and at last kills herself. The entire country is in revolution; one after another desert Macbeth's failing cause, and the weird sisters drive him finally, by their mischievous oracles, into a state bordering on insanity. They tell him he need not fear any harm to his person until Birnam wood chronologist, Dunsinane; any one Boethius, forms the basis to the plot of this tragedy, which was written in 1606. the significance of the prediction of the weird sisters; and a foe not born of woman arises indeed against him-in Macduff, who was not born of woman, in the ordinary manner of man, but was prematurely taken from his mother. The finale is reached when Macbeth falls in a struggle with the avenging Macduff; and Duncan's oldest son, Malcolm, ascends the throne as legal heir and king of Scotland. a woman cause danger to him. But in the attack upon Macbeth's stronghold the wood really advances towards Macbeth's castle. The English soldiers, while SCENE.-Principally in Scotland. At the on their march, passed through these woods of Birend of the Fourth Act, in England. nam, and, in order to conceal their numbers, carried The throne of Duncan, king of Scotland, is threat-green boughs and twigs in leaf before them. This is ened by one of his vassals, who is aided by the Norwegians. But this danger is averted by the lustrous valor of his cousins, Macbeth and Banquo, generals of the army. On their return from the last decisive victory, these officers meet, upon a lonesome heath, three witches; the first greets Macbeth as Thane of Glamis, the second as Thane of Cawdor, while the third hails him with the prophetical announcement: "All hail, king that shall be hereafter!" Nor does Banquo go away without a prophecy, for the witches say that his sons after him shall be kings in Scotland. The early fulfilment of the first two prophecies excite in Macbeth's breast the hope that the other will be fulfilled, and that he will ascend the throne of Scotland. Macbeth, without delay, had informed his wife of all that had happened, who is not only an ambitious woman, but withal an unfeeling and unscrupulous one, and consequently a person ever ready to do anything, however wrong, to accomplish her designs. Lady Macbeth is told by her husband that King Duncan is about to visit the castle, and she at once resolves to murder the king. Duncan, who on his journey is accompanied by Malcolm and Donalbain, his sons, and a numerous train of nobles and attendants, comes to honor, by his presence, the heroic Thane, is met en route by Macbeth, who has hastened to welcome him. The king's arrival causes great rejoicing; he makes valuable presents to the attendants and also to Lady Macbeth, his kind hostess, whom he presents with a valuable diamond. Being tired with his day's travels, Duncan retires early to sleep. At midnight the murderers hie to their terrible work. Macbeth wavers; but his wife knows how to banish all his scruples, and taunts him bitterly until he nerves himself for the bloody deed, and kills the sleeping king with the dagger of one of the king's officers on guard, in order to draw the suspicion on them. At morning dawn the bloody deed of the previous night is discovered. Although Macbeth and his lady are pretending the deepest sorrow and distress, and the former, in feigned Macbeth is a play of conscience, though the workings of that conscience are seen far more in Lady Macbeth than in her husband. The play is designed to show, too, the separation from man as well as God, the miserable, trustless isolation that sin brings in its train. Before the play opens, there must have been consultations between the guilty pair on Duncan's murder, and when the play opens, the pall of fiendish witchcraft is over us from the first. The fall of the tempted is terribly sudden. Lady Macbeth has a finer and more delicate nature than Macbeth, but having fixed her eyes on the attainment by her husband of Duncan's throne, she accepts the inevitable means; yet she cannot strike the sleeping king, who resembles her father. She sustains her husband until her thread of life suddenly snaps under its load of remorse. The real climax of the play is in the second act rather than the fifth, and no repentance is mixed with the vengeance at its close. The only relief is the gallantry of Macbeth, the gratitude of Duncan, and the picture of Macbeth's castle, so pleasantly put into Duncan's and Banquo's mouths. Macbeth had the wrong nature for a murderer- he was too imaginative. The more blood he shed, which he thought would make him safe and hardened, did but increase his terrors. But he resolves to know the worst, and after his second visit to the witches, the courage of desperation takes the place of the feebleness of the guilty soul, and finally he faces and meets his own death with a coolness almost admirable. HAMLET, PRINCE OF DENMARK. See Page 666. MANY books and essays have been written concern ing this tragedy of all the tragedies of Shakespeare; some of the critics, in their analysis of the play, vary materially, especially in the understanding of the principal character. According to the general acceptation of modern critics, Shakespeare designed to delineate his religious, moral, artistic, and dramatic acknowledgment of faith, and wrote this drama for the exaltation of the dramatic art upon the stage, as an educator as much entitled to serve the highest interests and aims of humanity as any other educational influence. The source from which Shakespeare gathered his material, was probably the novel entitled the "Hystorie of Hamlet," by the Danish author, Saxo Grammaticus. This drama was written, according to Dr. Drake and Chalmers, in 1597, while Malone fixes the date in 1600, and it appeared first in print, in a quarto edition, in 1604. SCENE. - Elsinore, Denmark. Prince Hamlet, the son of King Hamlet, of Denmark, after receiving the news of the sudden death of his father, leaves Wittenberg, where he had been in pursuit of learning, and returns to the residence at Elsinore. In addition to the deep mourning caused by the great loss he had sustained in his father's death, he is, moreover, exceedingly affected by his mother's speedy remarriage. The queen, who had been loved with tenderness by King Hamlet during the thirty years of their married life, and who simulated, at the funeral of her husband, the most frantic grief, had, nevertheless, but a few brief weeks thereafter, celebrated her nuptials with Claudius, the brother of the late lamented king. Prince Hamlet's uncle, Claudius, was a prodigal and a hypocrite, who had also contrived to accomplish his election as king of Denmark. Hamlet, from this hasty and unseemly marriage, and other scandalous incidents which had transpired at the court, had long suspected a secret crime, and over this he brooded in a melancholy which alarmed his friends. Hamlet, moreover, from Horatio, and some officers who were devoted to him, learned that the ghost of the departed king had appeared to them on the portico, before the palace, at midnight. Prince Hamlet, on hearing this report, accompanies the guard on the following night, and he, indeed, discerns in the apparition, which also appears to him at midnight, the spirit of his father, who informs him that his sire had not died a natural death, but had been stealthily poisoned by his brother Claudius, the now reigning king. The ghost asks Hamlet to revenge the murder, but to spare his mother, who had been induced to commit adultery by the ignoble usurper. Hamlet vows revenge, and at once resolves on a plan to carry out this intent. But his righteous revenge is delayed by difficulties, since he does not design to commit murder or any other crime, and, moreover, respects the injunction concerning his mother, whom he did not wish to harm. Hamlet, closeted with his royal mother, upbraids her with her incestuous marriage to his uncle, and his father's murder. His father's ghost, at this moment, appears to him. The queen, to whom the spirit is invisible, seeing Hamlet gaze on and converse with empty air, thinks his mind is disordered, and displays the greatest consternation. During this interview IIamlet hears a noise behind the arras, and thinking it to be the king, thrusts his sword through the hangings, only to find he has killed Polonius, who was eavesdropping. Hamlet now resolves to act like one whose mental faculties had become clouded, and in this completely succeeds, to all others but his friend Horatio. In this affected aberration of mind, Hamlet leads the entire court at his will to carry ont his purpose of judge and avenger; and he also finds in this affectation of insanity the means of advising his beloved Ophelia to remain single. By a theatrical performance before the court, he succeeds in convicting the king of his crime. Ophelia's mind, distracted with the slights of Hamlet and the death of her father, gives way, and in pursuit of her insane amusements she is drowned. Laertes, Ophelia's brother, is instigated by the usurping uncle to fight with Hamlet, and how this act of revenge not only causes the death of the criminal king, but also the poisoning of the queen, of Laertes, and Hamlet, the drama fully unfolds. In judging of the character of Hamlet, we must get rid of the absurdity of supposing him a man of decision and action, whose hesitation was due only to want of conviction of his duty. While we all admire his brilliant intellectual gifts of wit, sarcasm, reflection, his courage and his virtues, we must still find him infirm of purpose in his diseased view of God's earth and its inhabitants, and of life, with his shirkings of duty. But in his uncertainties about the mysteries of death and of the future world Hamlet but typifies each one of us at some time or other in our lives. And this is the secret of the attraction of Hamlet over us. How powerfully drawn is the scene where Hamlet, rising to nobleness and strength, upbraids his mother for her disgraceful adultery and treason to his noble father's memory, which Hamlet has felt to his inmost soul. And against his mother and her sin all the magnificent indignation of his purity and virtue speak. We forget his bloodstained hands in the white-heat intensity of his words. In his second interview with Ophelia, he turns to her at first with gentle words and affection, which are curdled into bitterness and brutality by her offer to return his gifts and by seeing her father behind the arras. Horatio, with his fortitude, his self-possession, his strong equanimity, is a strong contrast to Hamlet; and Laertes, who takes violent measures at the shortest notice to revenge his father's murder, is another contrast in a different way; but then Laertes is the young gallant of the period, and his capacity for action arises in part from the absence of those moral checks of which Hamlet is sensible. Polonius is owner of the shallow wisdom of this world, and exhibits this grotesquely while now, on the brink of dotage, he sees, but cannot see through, Hamlet's ironical mockery of him. Ophelia is sensitive and affectionate, but the reverse of heroic. She fails Hamlet in his need, and then in her turn becoming the sufferer, gives way under her afflictions. We do not honor, we commiserate her. But whatever vacillation shows in the character of Hamlet, his grand, over-mastering purpose of revenge for his murdered father never leaves him. Polonius, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, Ophelia, all whom he thinks plotted against him, are by his means dead; and then comes the end-the erring queen dying by her guilty husband's means, and he shortly following her; Laertes reaping the due reward of treachery, though forgiven by Hamlet before dying, and then the death of "that man in Shakespeare we feel most pity for." KING LEAR. See Page 696. THE legend of King Level ages, in the Laum und HE legend of King Lear and his three daughters French versions, and is also found in Holinshed's Chronicles of England, whence Shakespeare obtained the material for this drama, written in 1605. SCENE.-The Kingdom of Britain. Lear, King of Britain, having reached his eightieth year, concluded to resign his crown, and to divide his dominion between his three daughters -- Goneril, wife of the Duke of Albany; Regan, the wife of the Duke of Cornwall; and Cordelia, for whose hand and heart the King of France and the Duke of Burgundy are wooing. The old king questions his daughters as to which of them has the greatest love for him, and while Goneril and Regan, in the most exaggerated terms express their affection, Cordelia, scorning the fulsome meanness and hypocrisy of her sisters, declares in clear and simple words her childish love for her father. Lear, who had always been a fiercely passionate man, feels so embittered at the seeming calmness of her reply, that he rejects and disinherits his formerly favorite daughter, and divides his realm between the two elder daughters equally. He reserves for himself merely the maintenance of his title as king, and a hundred knights as attendants. With each of his daughters he is to alternately live one month at a time with his knightly guard. The Earl of Kent, who naturally raises objections against this precipitate action of the king, is banished from the kingdom. Cordelia, although disinherited and spurned by her father, and now rejected by the Duke of Burgundy, is nevertheless chosen as the wife of the King of France, solely on account of her virtue, merits, and charms. But the real characters of Goneril and Regan soon mani assassin hired by Edmund, the latter meets his welldeserved fate in a duel with Edgar. Lear dies while tenderly clasping in his arms the corpse of Cordelia, but Edgar, Kent, and the Duke of Albany remain to Britain. again firmly establish the much harassed kingdom of Lear is especially the play of the breach of family ties - the play of horrors, the unnatural cruelty to fathers, brothers, and sisters of those who should have loved them dearest. Lear, as he is first presented to us, is so self-indulgent and unrestrained, so fooled to the top of his bent, so terribly unjust, not only to Cordelia, but to Kent, that we feel that hardly any punishment is too bad for him. Stripped of power by his own rash folly, his own fool teaches him what a fool he has been. When he has come to himself, cut off the flatterers who surrounded him, and realizes the consequences of his own folly, our sympathy for him melts into tender pity. The pathos of his recognition of Cordelia, his submission to her, and seeking her blessing, his lamentation over her corpse, are exceeded by nothing in Shakespeare. Note the wonderful power of this last scene- the poor old king, bending with piteous lamentations over the dead body of his murdered daughter, trying to raise her to life, and, failing, relapsing into the dread torpor of despairing insanity. Cordelia is the sun above the depths shown in the natures of her sisters Goneril and Regan. The noble and long-suffering Kent is a fine character. Edgar and Edmund are a contrasted pair; both are men of penetration, energy, and skill-Edgar on the side of good, Edmund on the side of evil. OTHELLO, THE MOOR OF VENICE. See Page 722. ASED upon a romance contained in the Italian collec test themselves. They begin to treat their aged father Btion of Hecatomithi," by Giraldi Cinthio, this trag, with coldness, and they not only suffer, but order, moreover, that the servants fail to show the respect due to the old king. These unnatural daughters furthermore demand the entire dismissal of his guard of one hundred faithful warriors. Lear flies from Goneril and Regan, but only as it were from one trouble to a greater, for each sister endeavors to vie with the other in mockery and derision. This is too hard for the weak old man to bear. In his despair he becomes insane, and leaves the court at night during a violent rainstorm, his daughters closing the door on him. But the faithful Kent, in the disguise of an attendant, and his fool, accompany Lear through the dismal darkness, until the Earl of Gloucester meets them, who had discarded his son Edgar on account of the slanderous accusations by Edmund, his bastard son. In a hovel upon the field the earl found his son Edgar, in a disguise as poor Tom, and here the poor old king with his two faithful friends at last found refuge. Through the aid of Gloucester and Kent, King Lear is securely brought to the town of Dover, where Cordelia lands with an army from France, for the purpose of reinstating her father upon the throne. Goneril and Regan, meantime, fall in love with Gloucester's bastard son Edmund, and Regan is poisoned in a fit of jealousy by her sister, while her husband, the villanous Cornwall (who had deprived the Earl of Gloucester of his eyes, for the latter's intercession for the aged king), dies by the hand of one of his own servants. Goneril ends her accursed career by committing suicide. Cordelia's army is outnumbered and defeated by Edmund's soldiers, and Cordelia and her father are captured. After Cordelia had been strangled by an edy was written in 1612 and first entered at Stationers' Hall, Oct. 6th, 1621, being printed in the following year. during the rest of the drama at a seaport town in Cyprus. SCENE. During the First Act in Venice; Othello, a courageous Moor, and able commander-inchief in the service of the republic of Venice, wins the love of Desdemona, a noble Venetian lady, and only daughter of the Senator Brabantio. The marriage secretly concluded between them is not acknowledged by the father, who deems the affinity of his daughter for a Moor, celebrated though he might be, as inexplicable and unnatural, and that only by spells and witchcraft could the fair Desdemona have been seduced to marry Othello, without the consent of her parent. At this juncture the services of the gallant Moor are needed by the republic of Venice to repel the invasion by the Turks of the island of Cyprus. Othello, accompanied by Desdemona, his wife, Cassio, his lieutenant, and Iago, his ensign, with Iago's wife, Emilia (the latter acting as attendant to Desdemona), accompanies the party. A storm scattered the Turkish fleet; but another tempest is rising against the peace of Othello, stirred up by a devil in the form of a human being. Iago entertains a deadly hatred against Othello, partly because he accuses him of having had in the past an illicit connection with his wife Emilia, and partly because Othello had preferred Cassio and had appointed him to a vacancy of a higher rank; whereas Iago believes he, from his bravery and knowledge, was fairly entitled to that place. Iago therefore |