Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 18.djvu/60

SHAKESPEARE. 44 a sense they lead up to the pei-iod of the great tragedies, they partly belong to it. Of these tragedies Hamlet was undoubtedly the first, the earliest quarto edition having appeared in 1603. The next year a second quarto was published, claiming to be "newly imprinted and enlarged to almost as much again as it was." At least three other editions were printed before the publication of the Folio of 1023. in which the text varies con- siderably from that of the quartos. The precise relation of the texts to one another is a per- plexing question. Othello was performed on the first of November, 1604. before King James, and was probabl}' then a new play. Macbeth is men- tioned in the manuscript Diary of Dr. Simon Fornian, who saw it "at the Glob, 1610, the 20 of Aprill;" but it is supposed to have been writ- ten in 1606 or 1607. King Lear was produced about the same time, and may possibly have pre- ceded Macbeth. Antony and Cleopatra and Co- riolanus must have followed at no long interval, the date generally accepted for both being 1607 or 1608. The transition from the tragedies to the plays that follow is most remarkable. From that period of gloom and liorror the poet emerges into the genial sunshine of Cymheline, The Tempest, and The Winter's Tale. Inexorable retribution for sin is no longer the keynote of his dramas, but charity, forgiveness, reconciliation, benignity almost divine. Dowdcn aptly calls these last pla3's 'Romances.' ami other critics have accept- ed the designation. "The dramas have a grave beauty, a sweet serenity, which seems to render the name 'comedies' inappropriate ; we may smile tenderly, but we never laugh loudly as we read them." Cymbeline was probably a new play when Dr. Forman, as we learn from his Diary, saw it in 1610 or 1611, the undated entry cer- tainly belonging to one of those years. The Tempest was believed by Campbell, the poet, to be the last of Shakespeare's plays, and Lowell also thought that in it "the great enchanter" was "bidding farewell to the scene of his tri- iimphs;" but most critics think that The Win- ter's Tale followed rather than preceded it, though both must have been written in 1610 or 1611. The Tempest was acted before King .James at Whitehall on the 1st of November, 1611. The Winter's Tale was also performed there four days afterwards ; but Dr. Forman had seen it at the Globe on "the 15 of Maye" the same year, and there is evidence that the ]ilay was originally li- censed in the latter part of 1010. It is now generally agreed that certain of the plays included in the standard editions of Shake- speare are partly the work of other dramatists. The earliest plays of this class belong to the period of his dramatic apprenticeship, when he was employed by theatrical managers to revise or touch up old plav's for reproduction on the stage. Titus Androniciis and the three parts of Henry VI. have been already considered, as well as the somewhat later Taminfi of the Shrew, in which there is more of his own work. To these are to be added three plays of the latter part of his career — Timon of Athens. Pericles, and Henry VIII.. in all of which he had a considerable share, though the critics differ in their explanations of the divided authorship. The Tu-o ynble Kinsmen is another play which some good critics believe to be partly Shakespeare's, and which is included SHAKESPEARE. in several of the more recent editions of his works. The title-page of the earliest edition (1634) asserts that it was "Written by the mem- orable Worthies of their time; Mr. .John Fletcher and Mr. William Shakespeare." There can be no doubt of Fletcher's share in it, but the author- ship of the other portions is uncertain. The crit- ics are almost unanimous in deciding that Timon of Athens is partly Shakespeare's, but they dis- agree as to its ])robable history. Most of them believe that he laid the play aside or left it un- finished, and that it was completed by an inferior writer. Others think that he revamped an ear- lier play, parts of which he retained with slight altei'ation. Internal evidence indicates that his share of the work was done between 1600 and 1608. Pericles, Prince of Tyre, was first pub- lished in 1609, with Shakespeare's name on the title-page. It was not included in either the first or the second (1632) folio, but was reprint- ed with six pla.vs wrongly attributed to Shake- speare in the third folio (1664) and the fourth (1685). Rowe put it in his editions (1709,1714), but it was rejected by all other editors down to the time of Malone (1778, 1790), when it was re- stored, and it has kept its place ever since. The general opinion is that the first two acts and the (irose scenes of the fourth act are not Shake- sjjeare's. Whether he enlarged and reconstructed an earlier play, or some other writer or writers filled out an unfinished work of his, is a dis- puted question : but the latter seems to be the more reasonable hypothesis. The date of the play in its present form is probably 1607. The Globe Theatre was burned on the 29th of June, 1613, when "filled with people to behold the play, viz., of Henry the Eighth," and the cause of the fire was a "peale of chambers" — that is, a discharge of small cannon. There can be little doubt that the play was Shakespeare's Henry VIII., in which, according to the original stage- direction ( iv. 1 ) , we have "chambers discharged" at the entrance of the King to the "mask at the Cardinal's house." It was probably written or finished in 1612 or early in 1013. From the in- ternal evidence of metre and style it is quite clear that portions of the play are John Fletcher's. The peculiarities of the metre were noted by Rod- erick as early as 1765; and about 1850 Spedding and Hickson, working independently, divided the play between Shakespeare and Fletcher in the same manner. Several years earlier Tennyson had pointed out to Spedding the resemblance to Fletcher's style in parts of the play: and it is an interesting fact that Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his lecture on Shakespeare (written several years before it w'as published in 18.50), also noted the metrical evidences of two hands in Eenry VIII., and assumed that Shakespeare had worked upon an earlier play, written by a man "with a vicious ear." He adds: "See Wolsey's soliloquy and the following scene with Cromwell, where, instead of the metre of Shakespeare, whose secret is that the thought constructs the tune, so that reading for the sense will best bring out the rhythm, here the lines are constructed on a given tune, and the verse has even a trace of pulpit eloquence. But the play contains, through all its length, unmis- takable traits of Shakespeare's hand, and some passages are like autographs." The passages that Emerson mentions are among those which .Sped- ding and others decide to be Fletcher's. In ex-