1

Your patience and your virtue well deserves it.

[To Orlando] You to a love that your true faith doth merit. [To Oliver] You to your land and love and great allies. — [To Silvius] You to a long and well-deserved bed.—

[To Touchstone] And you to wrangling; for thy loving voyage Is but for two months victual'd.-So, to your pleasures;

I am for other than for dancing measures.

Duke S. Stay, Jaques, stay.

Jaques. To see no pastime I; what you would have I'll stay to know at your abandon'd cave.

Duke S. Proceed, proceed; we will begin these rites, As we do trust they'll end, in true delights.

EPILOGUE.

[Exit.

[A dance.

Rosalind. It is not the fashion to see the lady the epilogue; but it is no more unhandsome than to see the lord the prologue. If it be true that good wine needs no bush,1 'tis true that a good play needs no epilogue; yet to good wine they do use good bushes, and good plays prove the better by the help of good epilogues. What a case am I'in, then, that am neither a good epilogue nor cannot insinuate with you in the behalf of a good play! I am not furnish'd2 like a beggar, therefore to beg will not become me. My way is to conjure you; and I'll begin with the women. I charge you, O women, for the love you bear to men, to like as much of this play as please you; —and I charge you, O men, for the love you bear to women— -as I perceive, by your simpering, none of you hates them that between you and the women the play may please. If I were a woman 3 I would

1 "Good wine," etc. "It appears formerly to have been the custom to hang a tuft of ivy at the door of a vintner. I suppose ivy was chosen rather than any other plant as it has relation to Bacchus." (Steevens's note, quoted by Furness.)

? Dressed.

3 There were no actresses on the stage in England before the time of

kiss as many of you as had beards that pleased me, complexions that lik'd me,1 and breaths that I defied not; 2 and, I am sure, as many as have good beards or good faces or sweet breaths will, for my kind offer, when I make curtsy, bid me farewell.

[Exeunt.

Charles II. Women's parts in plays were performed by men. Samuel Pepys has this note in his Diary: "January 3, 1660. To the theater, where was acted The Beggar's Bush, it being very well done; and here, the first time that ever I saw a woman come upon the stage.'

2 "That I defied not," i.e., that were not repulsive to me.

NOTES AND SUGGESTIONS FOR

STUDY.

THE "FOUR PERIODS."-For a century or more, scholarship has been striving to follow Shakespeare from his fourteenth to his eighteenth year; to discover where he obtained his marvelous knowledge of medicine, law, and theology; to learn where he accumulated and assimilated the enormous body of practical psychology which must have been his even before he went up to London-and a host of similar things. Among the most interesting and instructive results of all this work is general agreement regarding the so-called "four periods" of Shakespeare's development as a writer of plays. By collating historical facts, accounts written by persons who attended the plays, private references to the dramas, and casual mention of Shakespeare by his contemporaries, but chiefly by studying certain differences within the plays themselves, the investigators have substantially agreed that Shakespeare's work falls into four periods which probably correspond to his experience of life:

1. The first, which extends from his arrival in London to 1595, was a period of experimentation. It was marked, as might be expected, by sanguineness and exuberant imagination, and was productive principally of comedy. Typical plays of this period are Love's Labour's Lost, Comedy of Errors, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Romeo and Juliet, and Richard III.

2. The second, 1595-1600, was a period of rapid growth and remarkable technical development, characterized by deeper insight into human nature, greater dramatic power, and, towards the end, by just a touch of sadness. (Jaques in As You Like It.) Among the plays representative of this period are Merchant of Venice, Taming of the Shrew, Much Ado About Nothing, Henry V, and As You Like It. 3. It was in the third period, 1601-1608, that Shakespeare reached the full maturity of his powers. Characterized as a period of "gloom

and depression," these six or seven years produced in rapid succession the most powerful group of tragedies ever penned. The causes of his manifest sadness are not certainly known; but we attribute it to the death of his father, the imprisonment of one of his friends, the execution of another, and the sickening disappointment caused, probably, by the act of a third who had deceived him. Julius Cæsar, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, and King Lear are the great plays of the period.

4. Shakespeare's productive life closed with a period of peace and serenity. He had practically withdrawn from the turmoil of London to live his own life at quiet Stratford. Written here among the earliest recollections of his childhood, the plays of this period breathe the spirit of peace and forgiveness, of atonement and reconciliation. Of these latest works, The Winter's Tale and The Tempest are the best known.

Shakespeare was first an actor; then a reviser of old plays; and finally an independent dramatist. His first plays are relatively crude; his work increases in power and in dramatic technique; his finished productions came only after years of assiduous labor. Granting then, that his was transcendent genius, we are greatly helped to understand both the man and the plays by knowing that it was the orderly development of that genius through years of study and labor that produced the works which all the world loves. He, like the rest of mankind, had to learn his business; and it was our great fortune that his genius fell into just the world needed to energize it.

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY.

The following outline aims almost solely at the development of the literary side of the study; questions of parsing, points of Elizabethan grammar, lists of subjects for compositions, and so on, have all been intentionally excluded. It is believed that whatever of these matters is necessary to understanding the play can be best dealt with by the teacher, who will probably touch them as lightly as possible and go on with the main business of the literature lesson, viz., the study of literature.

It is hoped, then, that the following outline will prove a real stimulus to literary appreciation. Variously modified, it has been tried in

mary classes; it has almost always proved its worth. It is not “originai,” nor startling, nor brilliant; it is practical. It is appended here not because it offers the only way to teach this play, but because it has proved, in many cases, a stimulating way. It is only hoped that whoever may use it will find at the end of the study that his students have come to some sincere appreciation of the play itself, and to a reasonable understanding of Shakespeare's genius.

I. PREPARATION.-If the class has already worked through one or more of the Shakespeare plays, a good approach to the study of As You Like It will include a rapid review of the facts previously learned about the author and his work-say, an amplification of the matter on these points summarized in the introduction to this volume. Special emphasis might be laid upon one- any one-of the points so treated. This work will naturally send the students to the authorities, and one of its results may well be the formulation of a number of questions regarding general qualities of Shakespeare's work which the class may lay aside to answer at the close of the study of this play. If, however, this is the first experience in Shakespeare, the best introduction is, of course, reading the play itself.

II. THE FIRST READING.-As far as possible every play should be read aloud in class; but owing to lack of time, this counsel of perfection can rarely be followed. The chief purpose of the first reading is to get a clear idea of the development of the story. Often this can best be done by having the pupils outline the movement in their notebooks, scene by scene, as the reading proceeds, the teacher examining the books at convenient intervals. The teacher might begin the reading in order to strike the keynote and put the class in the right attitude toward the play. If lack of time forbids reading the whole play in class, part of it may be done at home; then a few pointed questions at the beginning of each lesson must determine how intelligently the students have read out of class. As You Like It especially repays oral reading; even if some other phases of the work have to be abridged, the finest passages should be read aloud. While this is going forward, the memory passages, which should have been announced at the beginning of the study, may be recited, one or two at each lesson.