Complete Plays, The (75 page)

Source
.—The development of the story has been traced from Luigi da Porto's history of
Romeo and Giulietta
(pr. 1530 at Venice) through Bandello, Boisteau, and Painter's
Palace of  Pleasure
, to Arthur Brooke's poem
Romeus and Juliet
(1562), and to a lost English play which Brooke says in his address "To the Reader" he had seen on the stage, but is now known only through a Dutch play of 1630 based upon it.

The part in which Shakespeare altered the action most notably is the first scene, one of the most masterly expositions of a dramatic situation ever written. The nurse is borrowed from Brooke, the death of Mercutio from the old play. The whole is, however, completely transfused by the welding fire of genius.

Love's Labour's Lost
.—Obviously imitative of the comedies of John Lyly,
Love's Labour's Lost
is a light, pleasant court comedy, with but a slight thread of plot. The king of Navarre and three of his nobles forswear for three years the society of ladies in order to pursue study. This plan is interrupted by the Princess of France, who with three ladies comes on an embassy to Navarre. The inevitable happens; the gentlemen fall in love with the ladies, and, after ineffectual struggles to keep their oaths, give up the pursuit of learning for that of love. This runs on merrily enough in courtly fashion till the announcement of the death of the king of France ends the embassy, and the lovers are put on a year's probation of constancy. In the subplot, or minor story, the play is notable for the burlesquing of two types of character—a pompous pedantic schoolmaster, and a braggart who always speaks in high-flown metaphor. These two, happily contrasted with a country curate, a court page, and a country clown with his lass, make much good sport.

It is often said, but as we believe without sufficient proof, that the wit combats of the lords and ladies,  and the artificial speech of the sonneteering courtiers, were also introduced for burlesque. These elements appear, however, in other plays than this, with no intention of burlesque; and it seems probable that Shakespeare greatly enjoyed this display of his power as a master in the prevailing fashion of courtly repartee. In this fashion, as well as in the handling of the low-comedy figures, and in other ways, Shakespeare followed in the steps of John Lyly, the author of the novel
Euphues
and of the seven court comedies written in the decade before
Love's Labour's Lost
. Shakespeare's play, however, far surpasses those which it imitated.

Date
.—The date of
Love's Labour's Lost
is entirely a matter of conjecture. It may well have been the very earliest of Shakespeare's comedies. Most scholars agree that the characteristics of style to which we have referred, together with the great use of rime (see p. 81) and the immaturity of the play as a whole, must indicate a very early date, and therefore put the play not later than 1591.

A quarto was published in 1598, "newly corrected and augmented by W. Shakespere." The corrections, from certain mistakes of the printer, appear to be in the speeches of the wittiest of the lords and ladies, Biron and Rosaline. The play next appeared in the Folio.

Source
.—No direct source has been discovered. In 1586, Catherine de' Medici, accompanied by her ladies, visited the court of Henry of Navarre, and attempted to settle the disputes between that prince and her son, Henry III. Other hints may also have come from French history. The masque of Muscovites may have been based on the joke played on a Russian ambassador in York Gardens in 1582, when the ambassador was hoping to get a lady of Elizabeth's court as a wife for the Czar. A mocking presentation of this lady was made with much ceremony.

The Comedy of Errors
.—Mistaken identity (which the Elizabethans called "Error") is nearly always amusing, whether on the stage or in actual life.
The Comedy of Errors
is a play in which this situation is developed to the extreme of improbability; but we lose sight of this in the roaring fun which results. Nowadays we should call a play of this type a farce, since most of the fun comes in this way from situations which are improbable, and since the play depends on these for success rather than on characterization or dialogue.

A merchant of Syracuse has had twin sons, and bought twin servants for them. His wife with one twin son and his twin slave has been lost by shipwreck and has come to live in Ephesus. The other son and slave, when grown, have started out to find their brothers, and the father, some years later, starts out to find him. They come to Ephesus, and an amusing series of errors at once begins. The wife takes the wrong twin for her husband, the master beats the wrong slave, the wrong son disowns his father, the twin at Ephesus is arrested instead of his brother, and the twin slave Dromio of Syracuse is claimed as a husband by a black kitchen girl of Ephesus. The situation gets more and more mixed, until at last the real identity of the strangers from Syracuse is established, and all ends happily.

Date
.—There is much wordplay of a rather cheap kind, much doggerel, and much jingling rime in this play. All these things point to early work. A reference (III, ii, 125-127) to France "making war against her heir" admits the play to the period 1585-1594, when Henry of Navarre was received as king  of France. The play was probably written not later than 1591. The play was first printed in the First Folio.

Source
.—Shakespeare borrowed most of his plot from the
Menaechmi
of Plautus. Shakespeare added to Plautus's story the second twin-slave and the parents, together with the girl whom the elder twin meets and loves in Syracuse. This elaboration of the plot adds much to the attractiveness of the whole story. From the
Amphitruo
of Plautus, Shakespeare derived the doubling of slaves, and the scene in which the younger twin and his slave are shut out of their own home.

The Two Gentlemen of Verona
is the first of the series of Shakespeare's romantic comedies. Our interest in this play turns upon the purely romantic characters; two friends, one true, the other recreant; the true friend exiled to an outlaw's life in a forest, the false in favor at court; two loving girls, one fair and radiant, the other dark and slighted, and following her lover in boy's dress; two clowns, Speed and Lance, one a mere word tosser, the other of rare humor. The plot is of slighter importance; a discovered elopement, and a maiden rescued from rude, uncivil hands, are the only incidents of account. All ends happily as in romance, and the recreant friend is forgiven.

The Two Gentlemen of Verona
was an experiment along certain directions which were later to repay the dramatist most richly. Here first an exquisite lyric interprets the romantic note in the play; here first the production of a troth-plight ring confounds the faithless lover, and here we first meet one of the charming group of loving ladies in disguise.

But as a whole the play is disappointing. The plot is too fantastic; Proteus too much of a cad; Julia, though brave and modest, is yet too faithful; Valentine  too easy a friend. The illusion of romance throws a transitory glamour over the scene, but, save in the development of character, the play seems immature, when compared with the greater comedies that followed it.

Date
.—The first mention of the play is by Meres (1598); the first print that in the First Folio (1623). The presence of alternate riming sonnets and doggerel rime on the one hand, and of a number of double endings on the other, render 1592 a reasonable date. In its development of character it marks a great advance over the other two comedies of this period.

Source
.—The chief source was a story of a shepherdess, an episode in the Spanish novel,
Diana Enamorada
, by Jorge de Montemayor (1592). Shakespeare probably read it in an English translation by B. Yonge, which had been in Ms. about ten years. This story gives Julia's part of the play, but contains no Valentine. The Silvia of the story, Celia, falls in love instead with the disguised Felismena, and when rejected kills herself. Whether it was Shakespeare who felt the need of a Valentine to support the tale, or whether this was done in the lost play of
Felix and Philiomena
, acted in 1584, cannot be told. The Valentine element may have been borrowed from another play, of which a German version exists (1620).

Midsummer Night's Dream
is Shakespeare's experiment in the fairy play. Four lovers, two young Athenians of high birth and their sweethearts, are almost inextricably tangled by careless Robin Goodfellow, who has dropped the juice of love-in-idleness upon the eyes of the wrong lovers. King Oberon tricks his capricious and resentful little queen, by the aid of the same juice, into the absurdest infatuation for a clownish weaver, who has come out with his mates to rehearse a play to celebrate Theseus's wedding, but has fallen asleep and  wakened to find an ass's head planted upon him. All comes right, as it ever must in fairyland; the true lovers are reunited; the faithful unloved lady gets her faithless lover; Titania repents and is forgiven; and Theseus's wedding is graced by the "mirthfullest tragedy that ever was seen."

We have in
Midsummer Night's Dream
three distinct groups of characters—the lovers, the city clowns rehearsing for the play, and the fairies. These three diverse groups are combined in the most skillful way by an intricate interweaving of plot and by the final appearance of all three groups at the wedding festivities of the Duke of Athens and his Amazon bride Hypolita. The characterization, light but delicate throughout, the mastery of the intricate story, the perfection of the comic parts, and the unsurpassed lyrical power of the poetry, are all the evidence we need that Shakespeare is now his own master in the drama, and can pass on to the supreme heights of his art. He has learned his trade for good and all.

It is not a bad way of placing the last of the comedies in the first period of Shakespeare's production, to say that it is the counterpart in comedy of
Romeo and Juliet
. Like Romeo, Lysander has made love to Hermia, has sung at her window by moonlight, and has won her heart, while her father has promised her hand to another. Like the lovers in the tragedy, Lysander and Hermia plan flight, and an error in this plan would have been as fatal as it was in Romeo and Juliet, but for the kind interposition of the fairies. Again, the "tedious brief scene" of Pyramus and Thisbe, performed by the rustics at the close of the play, is  nothing but a delightful parody on the very theme of Romeo and Juliet, even to the mistaken death, and the suicide of the heroine upon realization of the truth. At the end of the parody, as if in mockery of the Capulets and Montagues, Bottom starts up to tell us that "the wall is down that parted their fathers." Finally, the whole fairy story is the creation of Shakespeare in a Mercutio mood.

In the diversity of its metrical form,
Midsummer Night's Dream
is also the counterpart of
Romeo and Juliet
. The abundance of rimed couplet, combined wherever there is intensity of feeling with a perfect form of blank verse, is reminiscent of the earlier play. Passages of equally splendid poetic power meet us all through, while at the same time we feel the very charm of youthful fervor in expression that the tragedy displayed.

Date
.—There is nothing certain to guide us in assigning a date to the play, except the mention of it in Meres's list, in 1598. The absence of a uniform structure of verse, the large proportion of rime (partly due, of course, to the nature of the play), the unequal measure of characterization, and the number of passages of purely lyric beauty argue an earlier date than students who notice only the skillful plot structure are willing to assign. Perhaps 1593-5 would indicate this variation in authorities. Some evidence, of the slightest kind, is advanced for 1594. A quarto was printed in 1600, another with the spurious date 1600, really in 1619.

Source
.—The plot of the lovers has no known direct source. The
Diana Enamorada
has a love potion with an effect similar to that of Oberon's. The wedding of Theseus and the Amazon queen is the opening theme of Chaucer's
Knight's Tale
, and some minor details may also have been borrowed from that story. No doubt, Shakespeare had also read for details North's  account of Theseus in his translation of Plutarch. Pyramus and Thisbe came originally from Ovid's
Metamorphoses
, which had been translated into English before this time. Chaucer tells the same story in his
Legend of Good Women
.

The fairies are almost entirely Shakespeare's creation. Titania was one of Ovid's names for Diana; Oberon was a common name for the fairy king, both in the
Faerie Queene
and elsewhere. Robin Goodfellow was a favorite character among the common folks. But fairies, as we all know them, are like the Twins in
Through the Looking-glass
, things of the fancy of one man, and that man Shakespeare.

There is the atmosphere of a wedding about the whole play, and this fact has led most scholars to think that the play was written for some particular wedding,—just whose has never been settled. The flattery of the virgin Queen (II, i, 157 f.) and other references to purity might show that Queen Elizabeth was one of the wedding guests.

[
1
] Schelling,
Elizabethan Drama
I, 264.

[
2
] See Chapter I.

CHAPTER XI

THE PLAYS OF THE SECOND PERIOD—COMEDY AND HISTORY

It is difficult for us of to-day to realize that Shakespeare was ever less than the greatest dramatist of his time, to think of him as the pupil and imitator of other dramatists. He did, indeed, pass through this stage of his development with extraordinary rapidity, so that its traces are barely perceptible in the later plays of his First Period. In the plays of his Second Period even these traces disappear. If his portrayal of Shylock shows the influence of Marlowe's Jew of Malta, it is in no sense derivative, and it is the last appearance in Shakespeare's work of characterization clearly dependent upon the plays of his predecessors. However much Shakespeare's choice of themes may have been determined by the public taste or by the work of his fellows, in the creation of character he is henceforth his own master. Having acquired this mastery, he uses it to depict life in its most joyous aspect. For the time being he dwells little upon men's failures and sorrows. He does not ignore life's darker side,—he loved life too well for that,—but he uses it merely as a background for pictures of youth and happiness and success. Although among the comedies of this period he wrote also three historical plays, they  have not the tragic character of the earlier histories. They deal with youth and hope instead of crime, weakness, and failure. In the two parts of
Henry IV
there is quite as much comedy as there is history; in
Henry V
, even though the comic interest is slighter, the theme is still one of youth and joy as personified in the figure of the vigorous, successful young king. For convenience' sake, however, we may separate the histories from the comedies. To do this we shall have to depart somewhat from chronological order, and, since there are fewer histories, we shall consider them first.