"The Merchant of Venice" and "Much Ado about Nothing." To these "Romeo and Juliet" might well succeed, after which a return to the comedies would be advisable, except that I should recommend that "All's Well that Ends Well," "The Winter's Tale," and "Measure for Measure" should be left until the last, and indeed until the reader shall have made further acquaintance with the tragedies, and read at least two of the histories -the First and Second Parts of "King Henry IV." To these it would be well to pass from "The Merry Wives of Windsor," because of Falstaff, whose humor appears in its lowest (yet high) form in "The Merry Wives," and in its highest in the Second Part of "Henry IV." The reader cannot now well go astray; but I should advise that the Roman and Grecian plays should be left until the last, "Troilus and Cressida" being read last of all; not because of any superiority, although it is one of Shakespeare's greatest works, but because of a peculiarity which I shall speak of further on. The plays (with the exceptions named) having been read in this way once (but two or three times would be better), the Shakespeare-lover will wish to know them more intimately, to study their language, to understand their construction, to fathom their thought and their feeling. But before doing this he should read the poems, remembering that "Venus and Adonis" is a very youthful production, and not in Shakespeare's peculiar manner, but in the manner of the time, and that "Lucrece," although freer in style, is open to the same criticism. One reading will suffice for these. The "Sonnets" are of an altogether different cast. Whatever was their occasion, they came from Shakespeare's heart of hearts. Whoever can read them once, and not read them again and again, borne on and up by their strong flow of feeling, lost in the fascinating mystery of their allusions, has not the root of the matter in him, and may as well attempt to see no further into Shakespeare than a very little way below the surface. This done, in the more thoughtful re-reading of the plays it will be well to take a course which follows the development of Shakespeare's mind, reading his plays in the order of their production, so far at least as that has been discovered with reasonable probability. For we know so little about Shakespeare that even the order in which he wrote his plays must be determined by inference from internal and external évidence. It is as a guide to such a course that the following remarks upon the plays are offered. The reader who, having mastered and enjoyed the whole of the plays, although only in outline as it were, returns to "Love's Labour's Lost," or then takes it up for the first time, will see one of the most striking examples in all literature of the difference that exists between mature and immature genius of the highest order. The whole play is stiff and crude (remember that we are standing upon the Shakespearean plane); its personages show germs of character or imperfect outlines, rather than character; they are book-made, and, like most very youthful work, show reminiscence, with little of that modification and enrichment by which greatly gifted minds, imparting their gifts, render reminiscences their own. The play is constructed upon a fantastic conceit, and indeed, with "The Com 1 In the Introduction and Notes to this play in my edition, 1857, this view and what follows are more particularly set forth. . measure upon edy of Errors" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream," belongs to the region of pure fantasy. The first and last of these three plays are almost like glorified fairy pieces or masques; the "Errors" being like a glorified burlesque. Shakespeare doubtless formed it in a the model of the court comedies of his elder contemporary John Lilly, the author of "Euphues," a very clever book, but quaint, stiff, little read, less understood, and therefore much misrepresented. But fantastic and jejune as the play is, observe in the drawing of Birone and Rosaline, stiff and formal although it is, like that of one of Raphael's early Perugine Madonnas, tokens of the hand which afterward drew Benedick and Beatrice with such freedom and such strength. Note the worldly wisdom which appears in this work of a young man of twentythree or twenty-four; of which I cite first three well known surprisingly sagacious lines: A jest's prosperity lies in the ear Of him that hears it, never in the tongue Of him that makes it. Act V. Sc. 2. Then these not less sagacious, but not so well known as they should be: Small have continual plodders ever won That give a name to every fixed star Have no more profit of their shining nights Than those that walk and wot not what they are. Act I. Sc. 1. But remark chiefly the wisdom with which Rosaline disciplines Birone, almost "chastising him with the valor of her tongue." She preaches at him too much, it is true; but none the less it is great sermonizing to come from a young actor's pen. This play, Shake woman speare's first, has the remarkable distinction of being the only one which contains a passage in praise of theme a upon which other poets have been so copious. Shakespeare's women are far beyond the creative power of other poets and dramatists; but only in this play, of all the thirty-seven, does he speak one word in praise of the sex, and that with no very exalted feeling, so that it does not amount to praise of woman in the abstract. This neglect to pay tribute of praise to the sex, and the fact that passages of an opposite bearing may be found in Shakespeare's works, cannot be without significance; and I attribute it to his ill fortune in his wife and afterward in his mistress - that beautiful dark woman whose infidelity to him with his best friend he reproaches so bitterly in the "Sonnets." For that the more important of those "Sonnets" were not written as an expression of personal feeling is to me improbable to the verge of incredibility. The next play of this little group, "The Comedy of Errors," is a mere interweaving of farcical contretemps which come of the likeness of two twin masters and two twin servants who have been separated since childhood. It is an imitation of Plautus's "Menæchmi," of which Shakespeare saw a translation which he took, as a mere playwright, and worked it over into something that would please his audience. In this "Errors" the thought is of lighter weight than in any other of his undoubted works; lighter even than in "Love's Labour's Lost" or "A Midsummer Night's Dream." Naturally it is so from the character of the plot, which 1 The few lines of Act IV. Sc. 3, beginning "From women's eyes." When, some fifteen years ago, I made the assertion that Shakespeare had written nothing in praise of woman it was received with astonishment, denial, and derision. is not only, like those of the two others, impossible, although supposable, but coarsely farcical rather than fanciful. It is a burlesque of the supposable impossible. Yet observe how, notwithstanding this, in the serious passages which merely serve as a stable framework for the fantastic fun, a knowledge of human nature crops out as it had done in no other play written before by a modern dramatist. Here is Shakespeare's first exhibition of jealousy; and it is the woman who is jealous. And indeed women only are truly jealous. To this rule the exceptions among men are very rare; sexual jealousy being essentially a feminine passion. This we shall see when we come to consider the cases of Othello, Claudio, and Leontes. Adriana, being jealous of her husband — that is, suspicious that she has not his love, that he slights her person - breaks out thus against him to her sister: I cannot, nor I will not, hold me still. My tongue, though not my heart, shall have his will. He is deformed, crooked, old and sere, Ill-faced, worse bodied, shapeless everywhere; Vicious, ungentle, foolish, blunt, unkind, Stigmatical in making, worse in mind. Act IV. Sc. 2. To which the sister thus unanswerably replies : — Who would be jealous then of such a one? Act IV. Sc. 2. Then comes the fine feminine touch : Ah! but I hold him better than I say, And yet would herein others' eyes were worse. My heart prays for him, though my tongue do curse. Woman is very concretely faithless in this matter, and will slander sometimes, to her rival, the very man she dotes upon, in hopes that thereby she may |