Gambar halaman
PDF
ePub

through bribing three powerful noblemen who are intimately connected with Henry. This plot is discovered, and the conspirators are executed. Henry, having invaded France on her breach of treaty, marches with his troops to Harfleur, summoning that city by herald to surrender, but being answered with contempt and defiance, he determines to take the town by storm, in which he succeeds. Afterwards, at the great battle of Agincourt, King Henry encounters the French army, which outnumbered him six to one, and gains a splendid victory, which breaks the power of the French, although the culmination was not really reached until the capture of Rouen, Jan. 16, 1419. The King of France is now compelled to yield to the severe conditions which the victor imposes, namely, to acknowledge Henry as heir to the French crown, and to give him his daughter, the Princess Katharine, for his wife. In this play Sir John Falstaff does not appear in action, but, according to Mrs. Quickly's description, meets a quiet and gentle death, after a prolonged illness.

There is but brief play of the tender passion in this drama, which is fairly resonant with the clash of contending armies, of fierce alarums, wounds, and death. There are some exceedingly fine scenes, as, mark the touching picture of the dying York and Suffolk, and the humility with which King Henry after the battle of Agincourt, on bended knees, ascribes the credit of the victory alone to God.

Henry is the true warrior; Shakespeare's ideal king, evidently. See the good humor and self control with which the king receives the dauphin's insolent message (sting him though it does), and his strong resolve to win or die; and see the devotion of all his thoughts and energies to carry out this resolve. See how he convicts traitors out of their own mouths, and sends them to death, not for his personal wrong, but for seeking England's ruin. Note Henry as the soldier; the splendid patriotism and rhetoric of his speeches drives the warm blood to our cheeks as we read. How humble he is when victory is his, and how well he merits it by his foresight, skill, and valor. As a lover, the character of the king comes out well -no grand words, no pretence, but just a plain, blunt soldier, with a good heart. We can hardly realize that such a man was the father of that miserably weak creature, Henry the Sixth.

Meantime, the quarrels of the dukes of York and Somerset, disputing the claims of the rival houses of York and Lancaster, appeal to Warwick, Suffolk, and their followers, then present, in confirmation of their respective claims. The lords thus appealed to declining to answer, Plantagenet, Duke of York, bids those who agree with him to approve it by plucking a white rose. Beaufort, Earl of Somerset, adopts for the same purpose, as his emblem, the red rose, that the partisans of each might be known. These troubles form the embryo of that interminable series of fierce internecine wars which shortly thereafter drenched the kingdom in blood. The heroic Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, and his son, John Talbot, near Bordeaux, with their little army of soldiers, were by the united armies of the enemy overpowered and sacrificed to the personal jealousies of the English nobility, who failed to send reinforcements. The extraordinary success which attended the French armies under Joan of Arc, surnamed the Pucelle, in raising the siege of Orleans and everywhere repulsing the English, made the latter attribute her victories to magic. On being captured by the English under the Duke of York, she was, with a cruelty that marked the ferocity of the age, burned as a witch. Meantime, King Henry VI. is induced, by the artful suggestions of the Earl of Suffolk, to ask for the hand of Margaret, daughter of Reignier, Duke of Anjou. An alliance is formed quickly with her father, and the duke is sent to France to accompany the princess to England. With the consummation of this fatal marriage for England concludes the drama.

In the play of Henry the Sixth, Shakespeare deals in three parts with a weak king, Henry the Sixth; in one part with a strong king, Richard the Third. The subject is a splendid one for the dramatist. On the one side is the narrative of individual love; on the other, the overthrow of a kingdom and a throne. The love of Guinevere and Lancelot of old is reproduced in the guilty love of Margaret and Suffolk, leading to the bloody wars of York and Lancaster, which filled England with civil war and lost her the realm of France. The fair Margaret was turned by ambition into "the she-wolf of France." Her pride was so overweening, that it caused her to level the noble Humphrey, the sole support of her husband's throne, and thus makes room for all the angry turmoils of the nobles and the designs of the bad and crafty Gloucester to work their way.

And then the ruined queen, bereft of husband, love, child, throne, has nothing left to console her, but

THE FIRST PART OF KING HENRY VI. waits grimly for the overthrow of her enemies, chuck

See Page 389.

HAKESPEARE, in producing this work, was per

ling over the villanies of Richard and the storm that is gathering to overwhelm him at Bosworth Field. The characters of the far-seeing Exeter, the noble

Shaps indebted only to the Holished Chronicles, Talbot, that splendid soldier, the gallant Salisbury and

which, however, was handled with poetical freedom, without binding himself to dates regarding the historical facts. It was written in 1597, as Malone informs us, but according to Chalmers in 1593. The play is ushered in with solemn music.

SCENE. Partly in England and France. The drama opens with the scene of Henry V.'s body lying in state previous to being solemnly buried at Westminster. The crown of England has scarcely been transferred from the head of the conqueror of France to that of his son, yet a tender child, when the French, animated by the spirited courage and valor of the maid Joan of Arc, seize the favorable opportunity to reconquer their old possessions and to take the oath of allegiance to Charles, their hereditary prince.

[ocr errors]

the generous Bedford, stand out among a host of traitors, or worse, that figure on the scene. The cruelty of the English and the indifference of the French to that splendid woman, Joan of Arc, appear in bold and sad relief. There is noble material for tragic poetry here. On the side of Lancaster the chief personal force lies in Queen Margaret. The great Duke of York dies, but his place is filled by the portentous figure of Gloucester, so terrible by his energy, his disregard of moral restraint, and his remorseless hatred to all who are opposed to him. Henry VI. is the feeblest of Shakespeare's English kings. Possessed of that negative kind of saintliness which shuns evil, but shunning courageous effort also, he becomes the cause or occasion of almost as much evil as if he were actively criminal.

THE SECOND PART OF KING HENRY VI. is cruelly treated by the revengeful Queen Margaret,

See Page 410.

who places a paper crown upon his head and taunts him, and while offering a handkerchief dipped in the blood of his recently murdered son, asks the duke to dry his tears with it. Soon after this scene the Duke of York is murdered. The powerful assistance renMaker," now gives the vanquished hosts of York strength to turn the tide of war and to defeat their adversaries near Towton, in Yorkshire, and Duke Edward is raised to the throne. King Henry flees to Scotland, but is afterwards captured and placed in the Tower. Queen Margaret and her son go to Paris to obtain possible aid from the King of France, whose willingness to aid them is much weakened by the presence of Warwick. The latter had received from his liege lord orders to sue for the hand of the Princess Bona, King Lewis's sister. Suddenly a messenger arrives from England, bearing the news of Edward's marriage to the beautiful widow, Lady Elizabeth Grey. Enraged at this insult, Warwick concludes a treaty with Margaret and Lewis, and dethrones Edward, who escapes to Burgundy. Here he obtains troops, which enable him soon to effect a landing at Ravenspurgh. The people of England flock to the standard of King Edward,-who, from his social and kindly manners, has always been a favorite with the populace,— and look upon Warwick and his allies as favoring the cause of the nobles. The city of London, too, espouses the side of Edward, and furnishes men to swell his constantly increasing army. Finally, in the decisive battle of Barnet, Warwick suffers complete defeat, and dies on the field. Prince Edward and his mother, Queen Margaret, being taken prisoners in the still more conclusive battle of Tewksbury, where the remnant of the Lancasterian power is really annihilated, are brought before the victorious Edward, who roughly charges the prince with rebellion, but is so forcibly answered by the royal youth, that Gloucester, Clarence, and their followers assassinate the prince almost in the king's presence. The imprisoned king, Henry VI., is afterwards murdered in the Tower by the duke, Richard of Gloucester (afterwards Richard III.). With an expression of Gloucester's intended villany upon the offspring of Edward, and the banishment of Queen Margaret by Edward IV., the tragedy is concluded.

period intervening between dered by the Earl of Warwick, King

SCENE.—In various parts of England. HE second part of this tragedy, considered by the marriage of the king to Margaret and the first battle of the St. Alban's, covering a period of ten years. Scarcely have the nuptial ceremonies between King Henry and Margaret of Anjou been celebrated, when the new queen develops a plan to obtain unlimited control over her husband, and by the aid of several powerful nobles, especially by that of her lover Suffolk and of Cardinal Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester, to force the Duke of Gloucester from his position of Regent. Their first attack is aimed at the wife of Gloucester, the ambitious Eleanor Cobham, who is accused of witchcraft, sentenced to recant in public and to endure an imprisonment for life. Immediately upon this, the virtuous Duke of Gloucester himself is taken in custody, and charged with high treason. All this is done against the will and desire of the king, who entertains no suspicion against the Regent, whose accusers, becoming aware that their evidence of guilt is insufficient, cause the Regent's assassination, and on the day set for his trial he is found dead in his bed. The Duke of Suffolk is accused by the popular voice of having murdered the Regent, which obliges the king to send Suffolk into banishment. He was afterwards taken at sea by pirates, and in a little cockboat beheaded. Meantime, Salisbury and Warwick, who, from the first dispute in the Temple-garden, became convinced of Plantagenet's claim to the crown, having had first removed from him the "attaint of blood," and reinstated in the dukedom of York, now salute him as king. The scene of the terrible end of Cardinal Beaufort, uncle to Henry VI., is graphically delineated in the third act. A prey to the keenest remorse, the wretched prelate is represented on his death-bed. The king, with his nobles, pay him a visit; but the cardinal, disregarding all, raves incoherently about his crimes. At the moment of his death, the king demands a sign of his hope; but instead of giving it, he grins, gnashes his teeth, and expires, leaving Henry horror-struck. Meantime, the government of Ireland is intrusted to the Duke of York, who, before his departure, in order to test the feelings of the populace, induces an Irishman, a bold commoner, named Cade, to announce himself as a descendant of Edmund Mortimer, and to aspire to the latter's pretensions to THE TRAGEDY OF KING RICHARD III. the crown.

See Page 458.

THOSE deep mines of historical wealth, the Chron

icles of Hall and Holinshed, furnished Shake

THE THIRD PART OF KING HENRY VI. speare with the data for this play, which was entered

See Page 434.

SCENE.-During part of the Third Act in France; during the rest of the play in Eng

land.

THE

HE play begins with the Duke of York's triumphant entrance into the city of London, where he wrests from the weak Henry an acknowledgment of his inherited right to the throne, and between them the agreement is consummated that the duke, as Regent, shall rule over England with the fullest sway, while Henry VI. shall, during his lifetime, remain in undisturbed possession of the throne and royal dignities. The opposing factions, however, soon cause a breach of this contract. The Duke of York, defeated in a battle near Wakefield, in Yorkshire, and captured,

at Stationers' Hall, by Andrew Wise, October 20, 1597, and published in a quarto volume the same year, though it was probably written in 1593. The length of time comprised in this drama is about fourteen years, covering the last eight years of King Richard's life beginning with Clarence's imprisonment, 1477, and ending with Richard's death at Bosworth Field, 1485.

SCENE.-England.

The threatened extinction of the house of Lancaster, as well as the failing health of King Edward, impel the ambitious Richard, Duke of Gloucester, to begin his struggle for the throne by thrusting aside the Duke of Clarence, his older brother, whom he causes to be murdered in the Tower. King Edward died soon after this event, after having seemingly

reconciled his blood-relations and followers with the brothers and cousins of his wife, the Queen Elizabeth, and having appointed his only living brother, Richard, Duke of York, as guardian over his minor children, first conferring on him, during the minority of the

THE LIFE OF KING HENRY VIII.

See Page 486.

published until 1643, when it appeared in

Prince of Wales, the office of Protector and Regent. NOT pubism. It is the Epilogue to the historical

Richard, however, upon the death of his royal brother, immediately takes the two young sons of Edwardthe Prince of Wales and the Duke of York--away from the control of the relations on their mother's side, Rivers, Grey, and Vaughan, and has these unhappy noblemen, under the charge of high treason, executed. A like fate meets Lord Hastings, whom, having proved himself utterly averse to Gloucester's plans of usurpation, he denounces as guilty of treason and sorcery at the Council table, and procures an immediate condemnation and execution. Through the powerful assistance and connivance of the Duke of Buckingham, who insidiously spreads a report of the illegitimate birth of the late King Edward, as well as of his two sons, Richard succeeds in having the crown formally offered to him, which offer he accepts, and with hypocritical reluctance. The sons of Edward, having been placed in the Tower, are, soon after the coronation of Richard, and by his order, murdered by his creatures, Deighton and Forrest, who execute their cruel task at midnight by suffocating the royal boys.

The king's next crime was the poisoning of his wife, so that he might be free to marry the oldest daughter of his brother Edward, Princess Elizabeth. Buckingham having opposed the murder of the sons of Edward, soon becomes a thorn in Richard's side, and he punishes that nobleman by a refusal to fulfil the promises that had been made him prior to Richard's ascending to the English throne. This duplicity on the part of the king causes Buckingham's defection, for which he is arrested and at last executed.

Richard III. is interrupted in his schemes of violence and murder. Henry, Duke of Richmond, lands with a large army near Milford-haven, and is marching towards London, when on the way thither he meets the army of Richard, who meets the death of a warrior in the battle of Bosworth Field. The crown now comes to the victor, who rules under the name of Henry VII., and by his marriage to Elizabeth, daughter of Edward IV., unites in firm and enduring amity the houses of York and Lancaster, and thus forever settles the fierce quarrels and bloody conflicts between the rival races of the White and of the Red Rose.

It may be here stated that the ancestors of Shakespeare are said to have fought at the battle of Bosworth Field, and derived their warlike name from military services rendered to the cause of Richmond in that famous action.

Shakespeare has most powerfully depicted the contending motives and feelings in the character of Richard III. His depressing and insulting his victims with the zest of grim humor, and his delight in gulling fools and in his own villany, are admirably and frequently brought out. Villain as he is, he has the villain's coolness, too. He never loses temper, except when he strikes the third messenger. Richard is a skilful general, looking to things himself, and prompt to take proper measures. He dies a soldier's death, and in the last and effective battle-scene, where, unhorsed, he so gallantly fights on, we almost admire him. The action of the play covers fourteen years-from Henry VI.'s murder, May 21, 1471, to Richard III.'s death, August 22, 1485.

cycle of the bard's dramas, and was probably written in 1601.

SCENE.-Chiefly in London and Westminster; once at Kimbolton.

This historical drama comprises a period of twelve years, commencing in the twelfth year of King Henry's reign (1521), and ending with the christening of Elizabeth in 1533. The Duke of Buckingham (son of the same duke who had been executed by order of the tyrant, Richard III.) becomes unfortunately entangled in personal disputes with Cardinal Wolsey, who, under the reign of Henry VII., had obtained great influence and power, and now finds means and ways to bribe several intimate attendants of his rival, and thus to convict the duke of treason. Soon after this, Henry meets, at a grand masquerade given by Wolsey, Lady Anne Bullen, and, struck with her beauty, immediately singled her out from all the ladies present, and falls violently in love with her. Anne Bullen's charms enhance the scruples he had long pretended to feel as to the legality of his marriage to Queen Katharine, his deceased brother's widow. Cardinal Wolsey fears the connection of his monarch with an English woman, who is suspected, moreover, to favor the doctrines of the Reformation; considering this affair also as prejudicial to his own dignity and that of the Pope, he sends a message to the Pope, to whom Queen Katharine had appealed, to delay the decree of divorce. This letter, and a statement of the immense possessions and wealth of the Cardinal, by a singular mistake, fall into the hands of the king, who, enraged at this treachery, immediately divests Wolsey of all his worldly pomp and offices, and the fallen favorite is only saved from being found guilty of treason by his sudden death. The new queen, Anne Bullen, is now crowned with great state and ceremony, while Queen Katharine dies heart-broken at her divorce from the king. Meantime, a conspiracy is planned against Archbishop Cranmer, to whom the king is indebted for the ecclesiastical consent to the divorce. Cranmer meets his royal master, to whom he had been accused by enemies who had been eagerly plotting his destruction for favoring the doctrines of the Reformation. The prelate, glad of the opportunity, kneels, pleads his cause, and so well satisfies the king of his innocence, that he raises him, and restores him to more than his former share of favor. The play closes with the ceremony of christening Princess Elizabeth, the afterwards famed Queen Elizabeth of England.

Written, as this play was, at a period treading close upon Shakespeare's life, in the reign of the great, but at times irascible daughter of Henry VIII., Queen Elizabeth,- we can well understand how Shakespeare was obliged to temporize and sacrifice the opinions and unities largely to policy. The strongest sympathies which have been awakened in us by the play run opposite to the course of its action. Our sympathy is for the grief and goodness of Queen Katharine, while the course of the actor requires us to entertain, as a theme of joy and compensatory satisfaction, the coronation of Anne Bullen, and the birth of her daughter, which are in fact a part of Katharine's injury, and would seem to amount to little less than the

triumph of the wrong. This defect mars the effect of the play as a whole. The scenes in the gallery and council-chamber are full of life and vigor, and are, besides, picturesque and historical. Note that scene between Gardiner and Cranmer. Cardinal Wolsey is drawn with superb power. Ambition, fraud, and vindictiveness have made him their own, yet cannot quite ruin a nature possessed of noble qualities. In the fate of Cardinal Wolsey our second interest centres; and his soliloquy upon his downfall from power is among the finest the poet ever wrote. The opening of the play-the conversation between Buckingham, Norfolk, and Abergavenny-has the full stamp of Shakespeare's genius upon it, and is full of life, reality, and freshness.

A

TROILUS AND CRESSIDA.

See Page 510.

TRAGIC comedy, founded on Chaucer's "Epos Troilus and Creseide.' The play was written in 1602, and entered in Stationers' Hall, February 3, 1603, but not printed till 1609.

SCENE.-Troy, and the camp of the Greeks in front of that city.

Calchas, a Trojan priest, treacherously leaving the cause of his country, is taking part with the Greeks, to whom he becomes of great service. As a reward for these services, he demands the exchange of an eminent Trojan, named Antenor, for his daughter Cressida, who lives under the protection of her uncle Pandarus, in Troy, where her beauty and charms have made a deep impression on the heart of Prince Troilus, a son of Priam the king, Cressida has already accepted the suit of her lover, and was betrothed to him, when her happiness is interrupted by the arrival of Diomedes, who is ordered by her father to have her exchanged, and brought back to him. The lovers, on parting, swear eternal fidelity, and Troilus soon finds an opportunity to reach the camp of the Greeks. Here he learns the sad news of the unfaithfulness of his betrothed, who had already transferred her love to Diomedes, and convinces himself, by obvious proof, of her defection. Meantime, Andromache and Cassandra, the wife and sister of Hector, alarmed at the prognostics they have had of his fate, write, entreating him not to go to battle, Andromache making his infant join in their prayers to dissuade him. But affirming his vow to the gods, his honor, and his fame, he resists, rushes to combat, and is slain by Achilles. Troilus now vows to avenge the death of his brother Hector on the Greeks, and by such vengeance to stifle his grief. With a terrible curse against the pandering Pandarus, the drama is concluded.

This is the most paradoxical and variously interpreted of all the dramas of Shakespeare. This heroic comedy, tragic-comedy, or parody, as some have termed it, is not merely written as a pleasant satire on ancient knighthood and heroism, but is perchance wrought out to serve a counterpart to Falstaffianism, with the intent of quieting or soothing the noble heroes of the 16th century with the dubious consolation that knighthood among the ancients was of no finer quality. The principal idea is rather intended to show the deeply founded and effective contrast existing between the spiritual and intellectual formation of the ancient Greeks, as compared with the modern aim of

Christianity. The play points to the fact that the Trojan war-as extolled by Homer-in so far as its real issue was concerned, turned simply upon the recapturing of an adulterous woman who had eloped with her paramour, and whose immoral conduct can by no means be excused on account of Paris's ideal beauty. In this play the moral is rendered prominent, that the kidnapping of Helen did not deserve the great Greek war of retaliation, since the honor of the people had not been more impugned by the action of Paris than by that of Helen. Thus the play causes the moral conviction of the reader to revolt against such an aim, and this effect of the drama becomes the lasting impression. The love-story of the faithful Troilus, and the false and lustful Cressida, which gives its name to the play (albeit it is not its real turning-point), serves only as a modified repetition of the history of Menelaus and his faithless spouse, Helen, and hence presents as all the more conspicuously glaring the crime that led to the famed Trojan war.

CORIOLANUS.

See Page 536.

HAKESPEARE derived his material from Plutarch's

SHAKESPEARE derived which he read in North's translation. This tragedy was neither entered at Stationers' Hall nor printed till 1623, but probably written in 1609 or 1610.

SCENE.-In the city of Rome and the ter

ritories of the Volscians.

Caius Marcius, a scion of one of the oldest and noblest families of Rome, who, after his father's early death, is educated by his mother, Volumnia, had already while a youth shown his valor as a warrior in the battles against banished Tarquin. Every war brought him fresh public acknowledgments of his merit and honor. Thus he had attained great dignity and renown, when a dispute between the senate and the people occurred, caused by the severe oppressions of the patricians and wealthy citizens, which the senate sustained. Owing to the humorous eloquence of Menenius Agrippa, however, the people were quieted, after granting them five tribunes and representatives in the senate-chamber. The people are now willing to serve as soldiers, a duty they had hitherto refused. But the patricians are at first discontented with the innovation, which is especially very violently opposed by Marcius. A war with the Volscians gives him occasion to renew his valorous deeds. The general, Cominius, who praises the greatness of his military exploits before the soldiers, gives him the name Coriolanus, for the victories he attained near Caroli. Soon after this occurrence, he is a candidate for the Consulate, but, against all precedent, he imprudently, in a speech, derides the people, and they withdraw their votes from him. Highly incensed at this defection, he assails the populace in an oration before the senate, demanding the abolishment of the tribunal. The people, embittered and enraged at this, threaten to throw him from the Tarpein rock, but he is rescued by the patricians. Failing to conciliate the plebeian faction, he is banished from Rome, and, burning with rage, vows the destruction of the city. He joins the Volscian forces, and by their prince, Aufidius, is made commander-in-chief of their army, then about to be led against his own countrymen. His mother, urged by the imperilled Romans, is prevailed upon to go with her kinsmen to the camp of the Volscians, to pacify,

if possible, her son. Listening to her entreaties, Coriolanus resolves to retreat, and thus Rome is spared. But the Volscians, fired by Tullus, are now displeased with Coriolanus, and call him to account for his action. He is about to defend himself in public, when Tullus, fearing the impression of his eloquence, under the tumult of his followers, assassinates him. His corpse is buried by the Volscians with all the honors due his noble memory.

Coriolanus is among the finest of the group of Shakespeare's Roman plays. The hero lived in the early days of Rome, in those pure, old, austere times when the great city had driven Tarquin from his lustful throne; for it was against that monarch that Coriolanus had won his first garland of oak by overwhelmingly defeating him. How nobly the pure white figure of Volumnia rises, clad in all the virtues that made the noble Roman lady. See how she overcomes her mother's righteous indignation against her townsmen's injustice to her gallant son; and how with happy victory won she returns to Rome to give the proud city its life!

Coriolanus is in many respects a noble character and among the "flower of warriors; " but his pride is overweening, and that flaws and ruins the jewel of his renown. Treated with ingratitude, base and outrageous though in his case it was, he cannot put his country above himself. His grip is on her throat, when his wife, Virgilia, stirs his mother to appeal to him, and in that scene in the Volscian camp, Coriolanus, who has thought himself above nature, cannot resist their appeals. His wife, mother, and boy prevail. Coriolanus is himself again, and takes death, as he should, at the hands of his country's foes.

[merged small][merged small][ocr errors]

THIS HIS play is the tragedy represented by human depravity in its most vindictive form- a thirst for revenge. Whence the poet gleaned the material for this play has not been accurately ascertained. It was one of his first attempts at a drama, and was written as early as 1587, though some say 1589, when Shakespeare was scarcely twenty-five years of

A

Tamora), they deprive Lavinia of her chastity, cut off her tongue and both her hands. Thus mangled, the widowed Lavinia alarms her young nephew by following him and being unable to speak. The miscreants themselves report the cruel deed to the emperor, and charge two sons of Titus with the crime of having murdered Lavinia's husband. Titus, in the anxiety to save his sons, is insidiously advised by Aaron to cut off his own hand, which he sends as an expiatory sacrifice to the emperor. The latter returns his hand, accompanied by the heads of his already executed sons. The great afflictions suffered by Titus weaken his reason. By means of a staff held in the stump of her arm, Lavinia writes the names of the murderers of her husband in the sand, and causes thus the forming of a plan of revenge between her father, her uncle Marcus, and her now only brother, Lucius. Meantime, the empress bears a child. This illegal issue of the Moor, Aaron, by the empress, is, to avoid detection by her husband, the emperor, sent by its mother to be murdered. Demetrius and Chiron, the ready instruments of her crime, profess immediate compliance, and draw their weapons to dispatch it, but Aaron snatches his infant from its nurse, and vows vengeance to any one that touches it. To further conceal the foul deed, the Moor kills the nurse, and hastens with his child to the Goths. This same course is taken by Lucius, who now, like a second Coriolanus, advances against Rome at the head of a Gothic army. Dire punishment overtakes Saturninus and Tamora, who are slain; the latter had, however, before her execution, a thyesteic meal set before her that is, the flesh of her own slain sons were served up for the repast. Aaron is buried alive; Titus (a second Virginius) stabs his own outraged daughter, and is himself slain by the hands of Saturninus. Lucius, the son, and Marcus, the brother of Titus Andronicus, press a kiss of love upon the pale lips of the murdered hero. Lucius, the favorite of the people, is proclaimed Emperor of Rome, and rules wisely and well the lately terribly disturbed empire.

ROMEO AND JULIET.

See Page 584.

great many editors and critics have supposed the play ONE of the earlier productions of our poet, and one

spurious, for the color of style is wholly different from that of Shakespeare's other plays, but nevertheless the evidence is now strong in favor of its genuineness. SCENE.-Rome and the adjoining country. Titus Andronicus, a noble Roman general, victorious in the war against the Goths, returns, crowned with honors, to Rome, bringing back with him, as captives, Tamora, the queen of the Goths, with her sons, Alarbus, Chiron, and Demetrius. Of his own twenty-four sons, but four were left to him; the rest suffered death for their country on the battle-field. Through Andronicus's valor, Saturninus is raised to the vacant throne of the Empire. The emperor marries the captured queen of the Goths, and is by her goaded to bloody deeds of revenge against Titus, who had ordered the slaying of her son Alarbus as a sacrifice for the fallen sons of Rome. Tamora now instigates her wicked sons, Demetrius and Chiron, to murder Bassianus, brother to the emperor and husband of Lavinia, daughter of Titus Andronicus, whose dead body they remove; and still further urged on to diabolical deeds by Aaron, a Moor (who is beloved by

of the most celebrated of his dramas, this play appeared first in print in 1597, and had, up to the year 1609, been published in four editions, each issue with improvements and additions. It was written, without doubt, in 1592.

SCENE. - For the greater portion of the play, in Verona; in the Fifth Act, once at

Mantua.

Between two patrician houses of Verona, the Capulets and Montagues, existed from time immemorial a deadly feud. The family of Montague had an only son, named Romeo; that of Capulet but one daughter, named Juliet. Romeo's outward deineanor and education were the model of noble manhood, while Juliet's form and features were in unison with the purity of her mind, the ideal of noble womanhood. They did not know each other, when it happened that the old Capulet prepared a festival for his friends, and Romeo, the young heir of the Montagues, introduces himself, disguised, with some gay friends, his cousins Benvolio and Mercutio, who are also in disguise, to this grand entertainment of their enemies. Here obtaining a sight of Juliet, Romeo falls at once in love with her.

« SebelumnyaLanjutkan »