together thirty-six plays under the three divisions of Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies. “Pericles” was omitted. The title-page declared that the plays were printed “according to the true originall copies"; the text was probably that of the acting versions in the possession of the company with which Shakespeare had been associated, in which there were great variations from the dramatist's original work. For this reason the text of the First Folio is in many places inferior to that of the sixteen quartos, which, although surreptitiously issued, gave the text of acting versions in use at an earlier date. The Droeshout portrait was engraved on the title-page of the First Folio, and the edition was dedicated to William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, and to his brother Philip Herbert, Earl of Montgomery. The editors declared that their object in issuing the plays in this form was to “keepe the memory of so worthy a friend and fellow alive as was our Shakespeare.” “I doubt," writes Mr. Lowell, “ if posterity owes a greater debt to any two men living in 1623 than to the two obscure actors who in that year published the first folio edition of Shakespeare's plays. But for them it is more than likely that such of his works as had remained to that time unprinted would have been irrevocably lost, and among them were Julius Cæsar,' 'The Tempest,' and 'Macbeth.'” The noble eulogy with which Ben Jonson enriched the First Folio was in the key of the entire body of contemporary comment on Shakespeare's nature and character. The adjective “sweet” was commonly applied to him ; he was described as "friendly," as having “a civil demeanor” and “an open and free nature"; and tradition later affirmed that he was very good company, and of a very ready and pleasant smooth wit.” The two or three vague traditions of irregularity of life may be dismissed as unsubstantiated. The standards of his time, the habits of his profession, the circumstances of his early life, and the autobiographic note in the Sonnets make it probable that in his youth, at least, he was not impeccable. That he was essentially a sound man, living a normal, wholesome life, is rendered practically certain by his success in dealing with practical affairs, and by his long-sustained power of producing great works of art on the highest levels of thought and workmanship. Such industry, sagacity, and thrift as Shakespeare showed are never associated with disorderly living ; while the consistent objectivity of his attitude toward life is impossible to any man whose moral or intellectual sanity is seriously impaired. Shakespeare's resources, both material and spiritual, were harvested with a steady hand. While many men of his profession wasted their means and their strength in disorderly living, he invested the money earned in London in building up the fortunes of his family in Stratford. Generous by nature and richly endowed with imagination and passion, he was never prodigal either of his genius or his estate. Early in his career he laid the foundations of a solid prosperity, and when he had secured a competence he retired from active work to enjoy the harvest of a diligent and well-ordered life. Among the many great qualities which combined to make him a master of life and of art, sanity must be given a first place ; and sanity is as much a matter of character as of mind. When one takes into account the power of passion that was in him, and the license and extravagance of his time, his poise and balance become as marvellous as his genius. He avoided as if by instinct those eccentricities of taste, interest, subject, and manner to which many of his contemporaries fell victims, and which men of sensitive imagination often mistake for evidences and manifestations of genius. Shakespeare kept resolutely to the main highways of life, where the interest of the great human movement is always deepest and richest if one has adequate range of vision. He dealt with the elemental and universal experiences in broad, simple, vital forms, and in a language which was familiar and yet of the largest compass. There was nothing esoteric in his thought or his method; he was too great to depend upon secret processes, or to content himself with any degree of knowledge short of that which had the highest power of diffusion. Although the keenest of practical psychologists, he did not concern himself with curious questions of mental condition, nor with spiritual problems which are elusive and subtle rather than vital and profound. He was too great an artist to mistake psychological analysis, however skilful and interesting, for literature. As he studied life and passed through its experiences he saw with increasing clearness the moral order of the world, the ethical relation of the individual to society and to his environment, the significance of character as the product of will, and the gradation of qualities in a scale of spiritual values. His work as an artist deepened and widened as he grew in the wisdom of life. Such wisdom, and its expression in work of sustained power, come to those only whose natures are harmonious with the fundamental laws of life, and who keep themselves in wholesome relations with their kind. Too great in himself to become a cynic, and of a vision too broad and penetrating to rest in any kind of pessimism, Shakespeare grew in charity as he increased in knowledge. He loved much because he knew men so well. A deep and tender pity was distilled out of his vast experience, and his last work was the ripe fruit of the beautiful humanization of his genius accomplished in him by the discipline and the revelation of life in his personal history. “The Tempest and “The Winter's Tale," coming at the end of a long and arduous career, are the convincing witnesses of the harmony of life and art in which resides the secret of Shakespeare's noble fertility and sustained power. The path which led from “Titus Andronicus” to “The Tempest" must have been one of gradual but unbroken ascent. To keep in one's soul the freshness of perception and imagination which touches “The Tempest” with the light that never fades, one must be great in heart and in life as well as in creative power. When Prometheus brought the arts of life to men, he did not leave them skill without inspiration; he brought them hope also. Shakespeare's genius, shining on the darkest ways, seems to touch the sky beyond the horizon with light. INDEX Actor, Shakespeare as an, 80, 91. to, 48, 72, 138, 143, 309; sources the Moralities, 13; their posi- popularity of, 161. Arden, Mary. See Shakespeare, played by Shakespeare, 90. Arden, Robert, of Wilmcote, 204 speare, 105-106, 107–112, 115. to Shakespeare by some critics, Armada, the, alluded to, 20, 107. Lost," 130. “Arte of English Poesie," by to among the poetical writings “As You Like It," Warwickshire little else is known of it, 177. 214; alluded to, 133. 21. |