CHAPTER V STORY AND CHARACTER IN the Folio Shakespeare's work is divided into three kinds-Comedy, History, and Tragedy. The classification of the plays under these headings is artificial and misleading. Cymbeline appears among the Tragedies; while Measure for Measure, a play much more tragic in temper, is numbered with the Comedies. Richard II. is a History; Julius Caesar is a Tragedy. Troilus and Cressida, in consequence of some typographical mishap, was inserted, with the pages unnumbered, between the Histories and the Tragedies. The section headed Histories contains the historical plays dealing with English kings. This sort of play, the Chronicle History, flourished during the last fifteen years of Elizabeth's reign, and owed its popularity to the fervour of Armada patriotism. The newly awakened national spirit made the people quick to discern a topical interest in the records of bygone struggles against foreign aggression and civil disunion. In writing plays of this kind Shakespeare was following the lead of others; and the plays themselves, because they are based to a large extent on earlier dramatic handlings of the same themes, and frequently sacrifice the truth of history to the exigencies of the drama, are a less faithful record of facts than the Roman plays which derive solely from Plutarch. Doubtless where national memories were 128 concerned, the audience at the theatre was content with a comparatively diffuse style of play; and this looseness of structure, which is found in the weaker Histories, is the sole justification for the new name. But the threefold division has no value for dramatic criticism. The Histories were an accident of fashion, and claimed some measure of exemption, by virtue of their political interest, from the severer canons of At least they told a story, and the playgoers asked no more. art. Even the time-honoured distinction of Tragedy and Comedy gives no true or satisfying division of Shakespeare's plays. Othello is a tragedy; As You Like It is a comedy: so much may be admitted. But between the most marked examples of the two kinds there is every degree and variety of tragic and comic interest, exhibited in rich confusion; so that the plays might be best arranged on a graduated scale; comedy shades into tragedy by imperceptible advances, and he would be a bold man who should presume to determine the boundary. The crude test of life or death gives no easy criterion; in The Winter's Tale Mamillius, heir to the throne of Sicily, only son to Hermione, and one of the most delightful of Shakespeare's children, dies of grief and fear. Romeo and Juliet die, Troilus and Cressida survive. In some of the comedies the gravest infidelities and sufferings are lightly huddled up in a happy ending. Further, Shakespeare has no two styles for the two kinds of play. The echoes that pass from the one to the other would make a strange collection. Benedick and Hamlet speak the same tongue. “If a man do not erect in this age his own tomb ere he dies, he shall live no longer in monuments, than the bell rings and the widow weeps." So says jesting Benedick, at the height of his new-found I happiness with Beatrice. "Oh Heavens!" says Hamlet, in the bitterness of his soul, "die two months ago, and not forgotten yet? Then there's hope a great man's memory may outlive his life half a year: but by 'r lady, he must build churches then, or else shall he suffer not thinking on, with the hobby-horse." If Hamlet is a philosopher, so is Benedick. "Is it not strange," he says of music, "that sheeps' guts should hale souls out of men's bodies?" Another of these echoes passes from Justice Shallow to King Lear. "'Tis the heart, Master Page," says the thin-voiced little justice; "'tis here, 'tis here. I have seen the time, with my long sword, I would have made you four tall fellows skip like rats." How like to these are the words spoken by Lear, when he carries Cordelia dead in his arms; yet how unlike in effect: I have seen the day, with my good biting falchion, All the materials and all the methods of Shakespeare's Tragedy are to be found dispersed in his Comedy. Most of his themes are indifferent, and no one could predict which of them he will choose for a happy ending. Nor is there reason to suppose that the public called at one time for comic stories, at another time for tragic, and that his plots were adapted to suit the demand. The real difference is in his own mood; the atmosphere and impression which give to each play its character are reflected from his own thought, and cannot be ranged under two heads to meet the mechanical requirements of criticism. It is this which gives importance to the determination of the chronological order of the plays. Endless labour has been spent on the task; and although, in this question, as in all others connected with Shakespeare, there is a tendency to overstate the certainty of the results, yet results of value have been obtained. Plays of the same type have been shown to fall within the same period of his life. His early boisterous Comedies and his prentice-work on history are followed by his joyous Comedies and mature Histories; these again by his Tragedies and painful Comedies; and last, at the close of his career, he reverts to Comedy, but Comedy so unlike the former kind, that modern. criticism has been compelled to invent another name for these final plays, and has called them Romances. There is no escape from the broad lines of this classification. No single play can be proved to fall out of the company of its own kind. The fancies of those critics who amuse themselves by picturing Shakespeare as the complete tradesman have no facts to work upon. "One wonders," says Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, "what Heminge and Condell would have thought if they had applied to Shakespeare for a new comedy, and the great dramatist had told them that he could not possibly comply with their wishes, he being then in his Tragic Period." What they would have thought may admit a wide conjecture; what they got is less doubtful. If they asked for a comedy when he was writing his great tragedies they got Measure for Measure or Troilus and Cressida; if they asked for a tragedy when he was writing his happiest works of wit and lyric fantasy, they got Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare's Comedy is akin to his Tragedy, and does not come of the other house. The kind of Comedy which has been most famous and most influential in the world's history is satirical Comedy, which takes its stand on the best social usage, and laughs at the follies of idealists. Its feet are planted firmly on the earth beneath, and it pays no regard to the heavens above, nor to the waters that are under the earth. Socrates and the founders of modern science are laughed out of court along with the halfwitted fops and the half-crazy charlatans. But this is not Shakespeare's Comedy. His imagination is too active to permit him to find rest in a single attitude. His mind is always open to the wider issues, which reach out on all sides, into fantasy or metaphysic. He can study the life of his fellows as a man might study life on ship-board, and can take delight in the daily intrigues of the human family; but there is a background to the picture; he is often caught thinking of the sea, which pays no attention to good sense, and of the two-inch plank, which may start at any moment. Wit and good sense there is in plenty; and there is a woman, or a humourist, to show that wit and good sense are insufficient. Even in Love's Labour's Lost, Biron, the apostle of wit and good sense, is sent to jest for a twelvemonth in a hospital. In The Merchant of Venice the whole action of the play passes on the confines of tragedy, and is barely saved from crossing into the darker realm. On the leaden casket is engraved the motto of Shakespeare's philosophy : "Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath.” Bassanio is not called upon to pay the full debt; the voice of tragedy has been heard, as it is heard again in the passion of Shylock. The first breathings of tragic feeling, which are found even in the gayest of the early comedies, steadily increase in volume and intensity, until the storm rises, and blows all laughter out of the plays, except the laughter of the fool. It is as if Shakespeare were carried into tragedy against his will; his comedies, built on the old framework of clever trick and ludicrous misunderstanding, become but |