He assumes also that Hamlet'could not have been more than twenty years old' at the date of his father's murder, and also that he was in college at the time. As the gravedigger says definitely that he was twenty-eight or thirty, we must take it for granted that it is the wreck of early manhood, not of youth, that the dramatist took as his theme. Horatio came from Wittenberg to the funeral. Had Hamlet been there, they would probably have come together, and certainly Hamlet would have known a fellow countryman in a strange city well enough to make it impossible for him to express the doubt implied in,—

Horatio, or I do forget myself.

It is true, Hamlet has expressed a desire to go 'back to Wittenberg,' but that may as readily mean, back after an absence of four years, as back from a short absence. We must take it that Hamlet was at Elsinore at the time of his father's murder. In his paper on Lear Mr. White assumes that the 'Fool and Lear have grown old together.' 'The Fool has the marks of time upon his face as well as upon his mind, though the King is much the older.' The better opinion is that the Fool is a young man, an affectionate feather-head, a contrast to the King in age and physique.

These are blemishes of no great importance, compared with Mr. White's appreciation of the plays as artistic creations, as poetic representations of strong men and beautiful women in beautiful places. He pays no attention to the fact that the tragedies show us what we can never learn from real life-how great men meet great trials and overwhelming misfortune. In his long chapter in Shakespeare's Scholar on that powerful play Measure for Measure he takes a much lower view of the character of Isabella than most commentators do. He

regards her as radically cold-hearted, a professional prude, and a very disagreeable young woman, and it must be allowed that he makes out his case with great acuteness. It is easier to agree with him than with Gervinus, who calls her a 'complete human nature,' or with Mrs. Jameson, who gushes over her as an embodiment of angelic purity. The play is, however, such a tremendous indictment of sexual impurity as to be beyond the scope of ordinary criticism.

No one ever saw better than Mr. White how a Shakespearean play should be acted to bring out the dramatic truth as opposed to the theatrical effects. His sense of artistic propriety is unerring, and is especially evident in the chapters on 'the acting of Iago' and on 'Stage Rosalinds.'

Of Rosalind he says that she was thoroughly disguised by the trunk hose of the period, and that she should allow no suggestion of her feminine character to escape her when disguised, except when she is alone with Celia. The audience are in the secret, of course, but they do not wish to have Orlando seem like a fool in not discovering that Ganymede is a woman. Mr. White says:

The absolute incongruity between the real Rosalind and the seeming Ganymede is the very essence of the comedy of the situation. One example of this, which I have never seen properly emphasized upon the stage: at the end of the first interview with Orlando in the forest, after she has wheedled him into wooing her as Rosalind, she asks him to go with her to her cot.

'Ros. Go with me to it, and I'll show it you: and by the way you shall tell me where in the forest you live. Will you go?

'Orl. With all my heart, good youth.

'Ros. Nay, you must call me Rosalind. Come, sister, will you go?'

Now, here most Rosalinds go shyly off with Celia, and leave Orlando to come dangling after them; but when I read this passage I see Ganymede jauntily slip his arm into Orlando's, and lead him off, laughingly lecturing him about the name; then turn his (or her) head over his (or her) shoulder and say, 'come, sister,' - leaving Celia astounded at the boundless cheek' of her enamoured cousin. 6

The article shows a very delicate appreciation of the comic spirit. Mr. White's sarcastic wit makes his textual notes entertaining, especially the long excursus in which he ridicules Schmidt's Shakespearean Lexicon. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, interest in industrial and scientific questions, fostered by the writings of Darwin, Spencer, and their disciples, brought about, as we said before, a temporary reaction against the romantic spirit. The world was to be interpreted in the terms of every-day phenomena, and the artist was no more than a superior workman. The spiritual was the unknowable, and the mysterious and awful, only something not yet understood. The old metaphysic was discredited, and the new not established. Mr. White's criticism reflects this passing temper of mind, which examines the phenomenon before it and refuses to investigate obscure motives or delicate mental reactions. But as he is an artist himself,-not merely a literary artist, like Coleridge, but a lover of beautiful things made by man, he views the plays from an artistic standpoint, in spite of his unconscious deference to the spirit of the age. To him the drama was always an actable play, and as he knew better than any other writer on the subject how it ought to be acted, his criticism has justness and novelty even when he aims at common sense alone and scorns æsthetics, the soul of art.

CHAPTER X

THE LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE

MR. SWINBURNE's Study of Shakespeare (1880) is the first detailed criticism of the plays by a poet of high rank (if we except the essays of Thomas Campbell) since the lectures of Coleridge seventy years before. Many others have left in short papers or poems testimony to their admiration. Many men of poetic sensibility, though not poetic craftsmen, as Hazlitt and Lamb, have expressed at length their appreciation of Shakespeare's poetic power, for it is not necessary that a man should possess technical skill in order to comprehend and criticise intelligently the highest expression of human thought and feeling. If he really loves art and has learned something of its historical development, he may be able to justify his love by a reasonable analysis and to touch other minds with something of his own enthusiasm. Nevertheless, what one great craftsman has to say of another has a peculiar interest, even when it is as hopelessly inadequate as Tolstoy's views of Shakespeare, for he rarely fails to take at least an independent and personal standpoint.

Mr. Swinburne's prose style is a very vicious one, but is full of animation and sonorous clangor. Excessively long and involved sentences containing from one hundred to one hundred and fifty words often bury the meaning in a redundancy of adjectives. These sentences are not only long, but they are neatly tied in an ornamented bow-knot, and if we can find the ends and pull on them they readily straighten out into a line of

thought, usually a truism which Mr. Swinburne's hatred of the commonplace has led him to adorn with extravagant rhetoric. One reason for his obscurity is that he rarely states his subject or predicate definitely, and we frequently have to wait till the next sentence to be sure of his meaning. If he wishes to speak of Shakespeare, Rabelais, and Cervantes, he calls them the divine and human trio of humorists whose names make radiant forever the century of their new-born glory.' We know that Shakespeare is one, for he is the subject of the book; we learn soon that Rabelais is the second, and on the next page the mention of Sancho shows us that Cervantes is the third. We could not have been certain of this till the name is mentioned, for Mr. Swinburne is so whimsical in his judgments that he might have been referring to some obscure writer. If he has occasion to mention Ben Jonson and Fletcher, he calls one the author of Volpone,' and the other 'the creator of Valentinian.' Mr. Swinburne would say that he writes for intelligent adults only, and that his conundrums are not difficult ones; but they sometimes call for more ingenuity than a writer should demand of a reader. Lucidity is, after all, an artistic quality of prose. Mr. Swinburne's dislike of personal names is noticeable even when speaking of his contemporaries. His loathing and scorn for the members of the 'New Shakespearean Society,' especially for the estimable and laborious men who count the ten-syllable, elevensyllable, rhymed and unrhymed, weak-ending and lightending lines, is unmeasured, and expressed in unmeasured terms; but he mentions no names, and we can never be positive whether he is referring to Mr. Furnivall or Mr. Fleay or some one else who has excited his wrath. His sense of propriety forbids more than evident allusions, like the initials in eighteenth-century