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University of Texas Bulletin

No. 1701: January 1, 1917

A Memorial Volume to Shakespeare and Harvey

EDITED BY

A. C. Judson, J. T. Patterson, J. F. Royster

Published by the University six times a month and entered a?

second-class mail matter at the postoffice at

AUSTIN, TEXAS

The benefits of education and of useful knowledge, generally diffused through a community, are essential to the preservation of a free govern- ment.

Sam Houston-

Cultivated mind is the guardian genius of democracy. ... It is the only dictator that freemen acknowl- edge and the only security that free- men desire.

Mirabeau B. Lamar

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to

351726

PREFACE

The University of Texas set apart five days for its Com- memoration of the Shakespeare Tercentenary and of Harvey's discovery of blood circulation, April 22-26, 1916. As part of the program four addresses were delivered in the main audi- torium. That on Monday morning was made by Professor John M. Manly, Head of the Department of English in the University of Chicago; Judge R. L. Batts, of the Federal Bench, spoke Monday afternoon; Professor Barrett Wendall, of Harvard University, on Tuesday morning; and Professor "Wm. E. Ritter, Director of the Scripps Institution, California, on Wednesday morning. Their spoken words are herein given the permanence of print.

Professor James W. Bright, of Johns Hopkins University, was the principal instructor of Doctor Galloway, to whom, in honor, this volume is dedicated. Professor BaskerviLl, of the University of Chicago, and Professor Gray, of Leland Stanford, Jr., University, were formerly teachers of English in the Uni- versity of Texas. The contributors of the other essays still are members of this university's faculty.

CONTENTS

Shakespeare Himself, by John Matthews Manly 1

The Growth of Shakespeare, by Barrett Wendell 28

Shakespeare, Purveyor to the Public, by R. L. Batts 47

Rhythmic Elements in English, With Illustrations From

Shakespeare, by James W. Bright 68

The Quarrel of Benedick and Beatrice, by Charles Read

Baskervill 89

Shakespeare's Conception of Humor as Exemplified in

Falstaff, by Henry David Gray 97

The "Dying Lament," by Robert Adger Law 115

Shakespeare and the Censor of Great Britain, by Evert

Mordecai Clark 126

Shakespeare and the New Stagecraft, by William Leigh

Sowers , 138

The Stratulax Scenes in Plautus' Truculentus, by Edwin

W. Fay > 155

William Harvey, by A. Richards 179

"Know Thyself" — Interpreted by Socrates, Shakespeare,

Wm. Harvey, and Modern Men, by Wm. E. Ritter. . . . 185 Appendix 204

SHAKESPEARE HIMSELF BY JOHN MATTHEWS MANLY

Not many years ago it was currently admitted that the earth had a north pole and a south pole, but it was held that the difficulties of reaching either were so great that the task would probably never be accomplished. Yet both the north pole and the south have been reached.

To-day it is admitted by scholars as well as by the general public that somebody wrote the poems and plays commonly known as Shakespeare's, but it is doubted by many scholars whether it will ever be possible from the information at our disposal to determine what kind of man he was, what were his tastes, his special accomplishments, his main interests, and the experiences of life by which these were developed and culti- vated. The difficulties which seem to lie in the way of such an inquiry are neither few nor insignificant. In the first placer the records and traditions remaining of the man himself and the impressions he made on his contemporaries, though more numerous than for almost any other dramatist of his time, still are too vague, too lacking in detail to be satisfactory to an age like ours, which in the case of its favorite writers is mainly con- cerned with items of petty personal gossip — where they will spend the summer, whether they write best in the early morn- ing or toward midnight, whether for breakfast food they prefer rolled oats or baled hay. In the second place, the other sources of information — the poems and plays themselves — offer special difficulties of interpretation.

The plays are dramatic, the poems are narrative and imper- •onal, and the sonnets are said to be conventional and equally incapable of personal application. In no passage can* we be sure, it is said, that the ideas or the attitude expressed are the ideas or attitude of the author. His dramatis personae say and do what is not only appropriate to them but is the natural and inevitable expression of their own characters and social expe- rience. Furthermore, it is argued, the various characters in the plays display a range of experiences and of technical knowl-

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edge covering every field of human activity and thought; and consequently we cannot infer anything in regard to the author's experience and training except that they were universal ; and we must . maintain either that he had specialized in every occupa- tion— as butcher's boy, wool dealer, glove maker, horseman, dog fancier, doctor, lawyer, sailor, musician, schoolmaster, sol- dier, and statesman — or that he was of so universal a genius that he knew all things without specializing in any.

Such contentions as these might have been successfully main- tained half a century ago, but I hope to show that the most im- portant of them are no longer tenable and that from the plays and poems it is possible, by the exercise of care and judgment, to learn much more about Shakespeare himself than we have been accustomed to suppose. We cannot expect to-day to -establish permanent habitations at either the north or the south pole of his personality; but we can, I hope, make a brief flight across the most interesting regions and fix some landmarks that may re- ward us for our present efforts and perhaps guide us in future journeys.

With this hope in view, I shall ask you to make with me a rapid survey of the following features as displayed in the works :

1. The native endowments of the author.

2. His accomplishments and interests.

3. The changes of interest in the plays, considered in order of composition.

4. The changes of creative power in the later plays.

I shall then ask you to consider briefly how far it is possible to adjust the personality and career revealed by the plays with the life history of William Shakespeare as vaguely given in the records and traditions.

Of the native endowments of the author of the plays the most outstanding is perhaps his exuberant vitality. This is visible not only in the enormous number of living characters created by him, but most strikingly in the effervescent, limitless vitality of single characters from every period of his work. There are Biron, Longaville, and Dumaine in Love's Labor's Lost, each one, singly, enough to exhaust the wit, the humor, the animal spirits of any author, and yet each only a part of a play which

Memorial Volume to Shakespeare and Harvey 3

is itself a complete bubble of vigorous and extravagant youth. There is Mercutio, such an embodiment of fantastic, ebullient wit and humor that one critic has declared that if he had not died early in the play he could not have failed to be the death of the author. There is Sir John Falstaff, gross as a mountain, inexhaustible — "The brain of this foolish-compounded clay, man, is not able to invent anything that tends to laughter more than I invent or is invented on me : I am not only witty in my- self but the cause that wit is in other men. ' ' There are Rosalind and Touchstone, Portia and Nerissa and Gratiano; and, in one of the latest plays, Perdita, a vivid incarnation of the light and color and sweetness of early spring, "Flora, peering in April's front," and Autolycus, "littered under Mercury, a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles," "once," as he says, " a servant of the prince," "then a process-server, a bailiff; then he compassed a motion of the Prodigal Son and married a tinker's wife; and having flown over many knavish professions, he settled only in rogue. ' '

No less indicative of the author's exuberant vitality are the reckless volubility of almost every character, the piling up of fancy upon fancy, of jest upon jest, the long embellishment of humor and foolery and horseplay for no other reason than the delight they afford. ' ' Come, come, ' ' says Miercutio to Benvolio, "thou art as hot a Jack in thy mood as any in Italy. . . . Nay, an there were two such, we should have none shortly, for one would kill the other. Thou! why, thou wilt quarrel with a man that hath a hair more or a hair less in his beard than thou hast." This would suffice any fancy of ordinary luxuri- ance, but to Shakespeare 's teeming brain it is only a beginning : "Thou wilt quarrel with a man for cracking nuts, having no other reason but because thou hast hazel eyes. What eye but such an eye could spy out such a quarrel? Thy head is as full of quarrels as an egg is full of meat, and yet thy head hath been beaten as addle as an egg for quarreling. Thou hast quarreled with a man for coughing in the street, because he hath wakened thy dog that hath lain asleep in the sun. Didst thou not fall out with a tailor for wearing his new doublet before Easter ? With another for tying his new shoes with old ribands ?

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And yet thou wilt tutor me from quarreling. ' ' What has Queen Mab to do with the action of the play of Romeo and Juliet f Nothing; but Mercutio mentions her, and before anyone can stop him he has poured forth fifty lines of purest fantasy:

"She is the fairies' midwife, and she comes In shape no bigger than an agate stone On the forefinger of an alderman — , ' '

and so he goes on with her horses, her chariot, her charioteer, and the dreams she brings as she gallops night by night through lovers' brains, o'er courtiers' knees, ladies' lips, lawyers' fin- gers, the parson's nose, and the soldier's neck. "Peace, peace, Mercutio," — interrupts Romeo — " peace! Thou talk'st of noth- ing."

Whole scenes exist for no other reason than that the author's brain is teeming with situations and characters and humor or infinite jest. "But, Ned, to drive away the time till Falstaff come, I prithee do thou stand in some by-room while I question my puny drawer [waiter] to what end he gave me the sugar; and do thou never leave calling 'Francis,' that his tale to me may be nothing but 'Anon' [Coming!]." Then follows that famous scene of purest foolery. To drive away the time, indeed! Say rather to permit the author, that reckless spendthrift, here as elsewhere to throw away his dramatic material with both hands, as a drunken sailor scatters his money. No other writer in the whole range of literature, with the possible exception of Fran- gois Rabelais, is so extravagant, so prodigal, so scornful of lit- erary economy, or makes upon his audience such an impression of inexhaustible vitality.

Nature-s of such abounding vigor are rarely distinguished by delicacy of perception, of feeling, or of utterance. And Shake- speare often has the coarseness of both thought and expression commonly associated with big, rough men — horse-breeders, coun- try-squires and the like — but also, as everyone remembers, his plays contain a thousand delicacies of perception, of sentiment, and of expression, — notable among which and familiar to all are the lines spoken by Othello, as he approaches his dreadful self-imposed task of killing Desdemona :

Memorial Volume to Shakespeare and Harvey 5

"It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul;

Let me not name it to you, you chaste stars!

It is the cause. Yet I '11 not shed her blood,

Nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow,

And smooth as monumental alabaster,

Yet she must die, else she'll betray more men.

Put out the light, and then put out the light ;

If I quench thee, thou flaming minister,

I can again thy former light restore,

Thou cunning 'st pattern of excelling nature,

I know not where is that Promethean heat

That can thy light relume. When I have plucked the rose,

I cannot give it vital growth again,

It needs must wither : I '11 smell it on the tree.

[Kisses Tier.]

0 balmy breath, that does almost persuade Justice to break her sword! One more, one more, Be thus when thou art dead, and I will kill thee, And love thee after. One more, and this the last. ' '

Closely related to this delicacy of feeling is the tenderness which appears in many phases and which is often so undramatic that it must be attributed not to the speaking character but to the author himself. You will recall many passages of sympathy with birds and other animals — the classic one being that in As You Like It, in which not only the melancholy Jaque-s but even the Duke and the nameless First Lord speak of the sufferings of the stricken deer in language which must have seemed strong- ly sentimental to an age devoted to hunting. That this was Shakespeare's native feeling is indicated by the long passage in Venus and Adonis describing the hare-hunt from the point of view of the hare — a passage recalling in its spirit the later lines addressed by Robert Burns to a field mouse.

The sympathetic unde-rstanding displayed in such passages is doubtless the result of dramatic realization working on physi- cal senses unusually keen and powers of observation unusually fine. "Keenness of sight, hearing, and smell are illustrated on

6 University of Texas Bulletin

«very page of the plays. Examples of keenness of sight are so numerous that one hardly knows where to begin or end ; but one may take at random the passage in The Tempest in which Cali- ban enumerates the riches of the island — the springs, the ber- ries, the crabs, the jay's nest, the nimble marmosets, the clus- tering filberts — or the description of the applauding crowds in Coriolanus, or the spreading of the news of Arthur's death in King J*ohn: —

" Young Arthur's death is common in their mouths; And when they talk of him, they shake their heads And whisper one another in the ear ; And he that speaks doth gripe the hearer's wrist, Whilst he that hears makes fearful action With wrinkled brows, with nods, with rolling eyes. I saw a smith stand with his hammer thus, The whilst his iron did on the anvil cool, With open mouth swallowing a tailor's news; Who with his shears and measure in his hand, Standing on slippers — which his nimble haste Had falsely thrust upon contrary feet — Told of a many thousand warlike French, That were embattailed and rank'd in Kent. Another lean, unwashed artificer Cuts off his tale and talks of Arthur's death."

,

Sensitiveness of vision and images of form and color drawn from objects of all* sorts we have come to expect of all poets, and most poets have been well endowed with such riches. Sensi- tiveness to sound is also common, but besides Shakespeare I can recall no one but Wordsworth to whose imagination sound made so constant an appeal. Every sound of the audible universe — loud and low, sweet and harsh — seems to have sprung to his thought in a multitude of associations — the big church-bell that swings of its own weight after the ringers have ceased to pull it, the carmen whistling popular tunes on the London streets, the screeching of the metal as the workman turned a brazen candlestick, a dry whe-el grating on its axletree.

It is curious to note how large a part odors, pleasant and un-

Memorial Volume to Shakespeare and Harvey 7

pleasant, play in his work. He seems to have been as sensitive to them as to sounds; and indeed, as is well known, the two seem to have had similar pyschological effects upon him. "That strain again, ' ' says the Duke in Twelfth-Night,

"That strain again! it had a dying fall: Oh, it came o 'er my ear like the sweet sound That breathes upon a bank of violets, Stealing and giving odor."

With this should be recalled the first hundred lines of Act V, Scene 1 of The Merchant of Venice — wonderfully interwoven of moonlight and music and perfume and young love.

Shakespeare's susceptibility to sweet odors is shown most sur- prisingly in a passage in Macbeth. Wishing to give an idea of the fine situation and impressive architecture of Macbeth 's castle, he does so by means of a conversation between Duncan and Banquo which appeals primarily to the sense of smell:

" Dun. This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself Unto our gentle senses.

Ban. This guest of summer,

The temple-haunting martlet does approve By his lov'd mansionry that the heaven's breath Smells wooingly here: no jutty, frieze, Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle. Where they most breed and haunt, I have observ'd The air is delicate."

In like manner, wishing to express the utmost limit of bore- dom, Hbtspur uses a figure compounded of unpleasant sounds and unpleasant odors. He says of Glendower and his incessant talk:

"Oh, he is as tedious As a tired horse, a railing wife; Worse than a smoky house: I had rather live With cheese and garlic in a windmill, far, Than feed on cates and have him talk to me In any summerhouse in Christendom."

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Whether Shakespeare approved of democratic ideas or not, we may at least infer that what he found most offensive about the lower classes was the filth and unpleasant odors. Coriola- nus says:

"Bid them wash their faces And keep their teeth clean";

and again, addressing the mob of citizens1:

"You common cry of curs! whose breath I hate As reek o' the rotten fens, whose loves I prize As the dead carcasses of unburied men That do corrupt my air";

and again in the same play Menenius expresses his deepest con- tempt for them in such phrases as "the breath of garlic eaters";

"You are they

That made the air unwholesome when you cast Your stinking, greasy caps in hooting at Coriolanus' exile."

This fastidiousness is not confined to Shakespeare's mature? years. Notable examples of it may be found in so early a play as The Two Gentlemen of Verona. Had it been a conventional fastidiousness, due merely to training and association with men of refinement, he would probably have been content, as most Elizabethans were, to have the stenches which assailed the nose at every turn overpowered by perfumes, but the description of the perfumed lord whom Hotspur met after the heat of the bat- tle of Holmedon, and Touchstone's comments on civet may in- struct us that Shakespeare 's taste was for odors that were clean as well as sweet.

Of impressions of taste and touch almost no use is made in the plays. Only a very few passages could be cited showing any keenness of these senses or any vivid associations -with them. This might not seem strange in lyric poetry — though even there one recalls in other poets not a few figures from touch and taste, as in Ben Jonson's The Triumph of Charis:

Memorial Volume to Shakespeare and Harvey 9

Have you seen but a bright lily grow, Before rude hands have touched it ? Have you marked but the fall of the snow, Before the soil hath smutch 'd it? Have you felt the wool of the beaver ?

Or swan's down ever? Or have smelt o' the bud of the briar?

Or the nard in the fire? Or have tasted the bag of the bee ? Oh so white ! oh so soft ! oh so' sweet is she !

If a man is to become a great creative artist, it is not enough that his senses and powers of observation should be keen and extensive. He must remember, and remember vividly. Words- worth, to be. sure, speaks of poetry as taking its origin from emo- tion recollected in tranquillity; but in the same paragraph he not only calls it the spontaneous overflow of powerful emotions but also tells how, as the recollected emotion is contemplated, the tranquillity disappears and an emotion akin to the original one is born in the poet's mind. No one will be disposed to doubt either the vividness of Shakespeare's emotions or the tenacity of that memory which seems to have held everything, from a stray epithet in classical mythology to the look of the sham Hercules in some worm-eaten tapestry that once met his eye. For my part, I am ready to believe that he had every kind of memory known to the modern psychologist — visual, auditory, muscular — for I am confident that he did not store up in neat verbal formulas, ready for some future use, his wealth of observations of man's nature, a method practiced by Tennyson and many other writers. He rather recalled, by a process of association, when he was composing his speeches, vivid images of the objects which he was writing about, with all their color, their sharpness of outline, and their characteristic actions. This process, which I call visualization, could be illus- trated from every page of his work. Indeed in any description of men or things one of the most striking features Is that Shake- speare seems to describe what is present at the very moment of writing. Many of the passages already quoted would illustrate

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this admirably, but we may take a brief scene drawn 110 doubt from a memory of his youth in Gloucestershire :

"Fuls. Will you tell me, Master Shallow, how to choose a man? Care I for the limb, the thews, the stature, bulk, and big assemblance of a man ? Give me the spirit, Master Shallow. . . . Put me a caliver into Wart's hand, Bardolph."

This is done, and Wart obviously shows no notion of how to use it, for Shallow cries:

"He is not his craft's master, he doth not do it right. I remem- ber at Mile-end Green, when I lay at Clement's Inn, .... there was a little quiver fellow, and a' would about and about, and come you in and come you in; 'rah tah tah' would a' say, 'bounce' would a' say, and away again would a' go, and again would a' come; I shall ne'er see such a fellow!"

Before leaving the matter of Shakespeare's native endow- ments — which might well occupy us all day — we shall note only one more feature, but that one of uncommon significance for his art. He possessed in singular combination freedom and breadth of emotional swing together with an unequalled ca- pacity for self-criticism, for ridiculing the very emotions to which he had just given free and full indulgence. Love's Labor's Lost is all compact of this. Every emotion, every fancy, every fad, is entertained with zest and enthusiasm, and each in turn is heaped with ridicule or censure. Romeo and Juliet is the epitome of passionate and tragic love, but the play itself contains jests and mockings of the very soul of love.

That Shakespeare was not unfamiliar with tavern scenes and caroused in many a merry party at the Mermaid may be inferred not merely .from tradition and from his creation of Sir John Falstaff and the world in which he moved, but above all perhaps from Sir John 's famous apostrophe to the virtues of sherry wine :

"A good sherris-sack hath a two-fold operation in it. It ascends me into the brain ; dries me there all the foolish, dull, and crudy vapors which environ it : makes it apprehensive, quick, forgetive, full of nimble, fiery and delectable shapes: which de- livered over to the voice, the tongue, which is the birth, becomes exoellent wit, — " and so on through a dozen nimble and de-

Memorial Volume to Shakespeare and Harvey 11

lectable shapes which, we shall all agree, were never conceived in the brain of a teetotaler. Yet despite this evidence of his own susceptibility, it is Shakespeare who of set purpose creates the episode in Othello in which Cassio is disgraced by drunkenness; and it is he who puts into the mouth of this same Cassio his Ovvn condemnation: ''Drunk! and speak parrot! and squabble, swag- ger, swear, and discourse fustian with one 's own shadow ! 0 thou invisible spirit of wine! if thou hast no name to be known by, let us call thee devil !" And it is Shakespeare who, in play after play, with no dramatic reason or excuse, criticizes his fellow countrymen for that heavy-headed revel which makes them tra- duced and taxed of" other nations. The traditions of Shake- speare's later life and of his death hardly allow us to take such expressions as the utterances of a reformed drunkard. We may more easily credit him with being — like the rest of us, though in a higher degree and with more vivid sensations — one who feels the attractions of the sensual temptations of life, the cakes md the ale, but is none the less responsive to the ideal, the ethical, even the ascetic.

If we now attempt to discover from the plays the main in- terests and concerns of their author, we shall, I think, find them not unlike what might be expected of a man with the native qualities which we have just surveyed so sketchily and inade- quately.

And first, we may state positively that the interests which above all other are exploited in the poems and in the plays down to a rather late period are those of the sportsman: horses, dogs, hunting, hawking, and, in a less degree, fishing, bowling, tennis, fencing, and archery. Most of these — especially those that predominate — were in the Elizabethan age the occupations of gentlemen, as distinguished from the common people. Bowl- ing and tennis were more or less open to men of all ranks of society, as taverns had public bowling greens and tennis courts : archery was familiar to high and low, but had long been urged upon the middle and lower classes for reasons of state. Angling was not yet a fine art; it was merely fishing, and was within the scope of anyone who could find an unprotected stream and

2— S

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provide a hook and line — or, failing them, knew simpler methods of taking fish. In the light of Shakespeare's preference for other sports, his slight interest in this is not surprising. He knew it, as he knew bear-baiting, dice, and card play, but if we may judge from the evidence of the plays, he cared little about any of these things.

With horses, dogs, hunting, and hawking, the case is very different. The language of the stables, the kennel, and the hunting field runs through all the works from Venus and Adonis to Othello. It is used with a freedom and frequency unintel- ligible except from a sportsman, and occurs under all conceivable circumstances and in the mouths of all classes and conditions of men and women. Some of the terms and expressions are purely general, such as might be picked up by any casual mem- ber of polite society; others are so technical that they would be expected only from a professional or a skilled amateur.

The language of the stable is all pervasive. A technical in- terest in the qualities of horses, their breeding, their training, and their management is displayed from first to last. Of course there were then in existence books on horses, as there were books on dogs, on hunting, on hawking, and on all the other con- cerns of a gentleman ; but no man ever became saturated with horse-talk, as Shakespeare was, by reading a book on the horse. In the plays we find the language of the stable appropriately enough in the mouths of such persons as Petruchio, Biondello, Grumio, Falstaff, Nym, Hotspur and the Carriers; but what are we to say of its use by Touchstone, Hamlet, Rosalind, Maria, Dogberry, or the Fool in King Lear? For technical language let us hear Biondello, as he describes the fantastic array in which Petruchio came to fetch his bride: "Why, Petruchio is coming, in a new hat and an old jerkin ; a pair of old breeches that have been thrice turned ; . . his horse hipped with an old mothy saddle and stirrups of no kindred ; besides, possessed with the glanders and like to mose in the chine; troubled with the lampass, infected with the fashions, full of windgalls, sped with spavins, rayed with the yellows, past cure of the fives, stark spoiled with the staggers, begnawn with bots, swayed ,in the back, and shoulder-shotten ; near-legged before ; and with a half-

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checked bit, and a headstall of sheep's leather, which, being re- strained to keep him from stumbling, hath been often burst and now repaired with knots: one girth six times pieced, and a woman's crupper of velure, which hath two letters of her name fairly set down in studs, and here and there pieced with pack- thread. ' ' This is not copied from a horse-book : it is the copious extravagance of a man who had lived with horses for years. The author's fondness for dogs and knowledge of their kinds, their habits, and their qualities are strikingly displayed in Venus and Adonis, and in no less than seventeen plays; and there are casual undramatic allusions to dogs in about ten other plays. In the early work the interest is that of a sportsman in the qualities of hounds; in the late, merely what may be called a recognition of dogs as members of the social organization. Com- pare Theseus' summary of the points of his hounds with Lear's querulous complaint of. the ingratitude of his pets and Edgar's railing at dogs of all breeds. On the one hand, we have :

The. My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind, So flew 'd, so sanded, and their heads are hung With ears that sweep away the morning dew; Crook-kneed, and dew-lapp 'd like Thessalian bulls ; Slow in pursuit, but match 'd in mouth like bells, Each under each. A cry more tuneable Was never holla 'd to, nor cheer 'd with horn, In Crete, in Sparta, nor in The-ssaly. Judge when you hear.

On the other :

"The little dogs and all,

Tray, Blanch, and Sweetheart, see, they bark at me. Edgar. Tom will throw his head at them. Avaunt, you curs ! Be thy mouth or black or white, Tooth that poisons if it bite ; Mastiff, greyhound, mongrel grim, Hlound or spaniel, brach or lym, Or bob-tail tyke or trundle-tail ; Tom will make them weep and wail: For, with throwing thus my head, Dogs leap the hatch and all are fled."

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Except the brief hue and cry with hunting dogs in The Tem- pest, there is, after Lear, not a single striking reference to dogs. The few allusions that occur are casual and often contemptuous. This is the more remarkable as the hunting scene in Cymbeline gives every opportunity for their effective use.

Cats are rarely mentioned and always with indifference except as to their mousing ability. The epithet ' ' cat ' ' is used to express extreme contempt for a man; and in The Merchant of Venice the phenomenon of cat fear is recognized.

Hunting terms are found in one poem and twenty-four plays. They are of the most varied character, ranging from elaborated narratives and descriptions to casual figures and images, and from technical expressions to utterances of sympathy for the hunted animals. Mbst of the references are to the nobler sports of hunting the deer and the hare, but there are many scattered allusions to fox-hunting — then a less systematized and less digni- fied branch — and even to the disreputable delights of poaching. To a vast number of the characters who use hunting terms the use of them is naturally entirely appropriate — as, for example, the courtiers and keepers of Love's Labor's Lost, Falstaff, the Duke in As Yvu Like It, Jaques, Orlando, Rosalind, Benedick, Ford, Page, Shallow, Sir Toby, Fabyan and many others — but the appropriateness to Titus Andronicus, Aufidius, Scarus, Adri- ana, Dromio, Ulysses, lago, Roderigo, and Prospero is not very clear. After the date of Othello, the references, as we shall see later, are few and slight. Specific references to hawking, the sport par excellence of the nobility, are fairly common and usually very technical.

All these matters have been studied in great detail and with great enthusiasm by Mr. D. HI. Mjadden in his volume entitled "The Diary of Master William Silence." Mr. Madden is not only convinced that the author of the plays spent a number of his youthful years in these noble sports, but is able to produce several very convincing arguments to prove that the scenes of this early training were Warwickshire and that part of Glouces- tershire which lies among the Cotswold hills and which was inhabited in the sixteenth century by Justice Silence and his friends, Shallow and Slender and his humbler neighbors, William

Memorial Volume to Sliakespeare and Harvey 15

Visor of Woncot, Clement Perkes of the Hill, Goodman Double of Dursley, and Mouldy, Shadow, and Wart.

Into harmony with this view may be brought not only the general acquaintance with outdoor life and farm matters — such as might be expected of any one who in the sixteenth century had spent his boyhood in the country or in a country village — but also such specific facts as the knowledge of sheep raising, the principal industry of the Cotswold district of Gloucestershire; the assignment of the sheep-shearing of The Winter's Tale to a date in the summer too late for a low country like that around Stratford but entirely appropriate for the Cotswold hill region ; and the rather striking though trivial circumstance of the sowing of the headland with red wheat, mentioned in 2 Henry IV — a practice which seems to be confined, in the late summer, to this sole district of England.

Mr. Madden even argues — and to my mind convincingly — that when Queen Elizabeth commanded Shakespeare to produce in two weeks a play showing Falstaff in love, the ingenious author supplied much of the atmosphere and many of the characters of this impromptu by transferring bodily to the purlieus of Windsor the little group of Gloucestershire worthies whom Fal- staff had — to our eternal advantage — so unnecessarily visited in the play that had just preceded. With this demonstration, Mr. Madden seems to have disposed for a time of the deer -stealing tradition and Shakespeare's flight from Stratford — not that the proof that Shakespeare was a poacher in his youth would put him morally lower in our estimation than the many worthy citizens who at one time in their lives have been chased by irate owners of apple-orchards and watermelon patches, but merely because we are friendly to the truth.

If Shakespeare had been merely a sportsman, he would of course never have been the author of the plays we know. But we have already seen that he was rich in many native endowments of far different quality.

Of these the most striking are perhaps his endowments for I music and art. No one can have failed to note the large extent to which music figures in the plays. Not only are about a huii-

16 University of Texas Bulletin

dred songs introduced or mentioned, not only are the whining tunes of popular ballads characterized contemptuously, not only is a general acquaintance with the terminology of music displayed, but allusions to music meet one at every turn, many long and beautiful passages are devoted to celebrating the charms and the influence of music, and characters of the most varied intelligence and training are made to exhibit such a knowledge of musical technique as could fairly be expected only of an accomplished musician. The aged John of Gaunt in Richard II says:

"Oh, but they say the tongues of dying men Enforce attention like deep harmony."

. Says Mercutio of Tybalt's swordplay:

1 'He fights as you sing prick-song, keeps time, distance and proportion ; rests me his minim rest — one, two, and the third in your bosom."

"Will you play upon this pipe?" says Hamlet to Guildenstern.

"My lord, I cannot."

"I do beseech you."

' ' I know no touch of it, my lord. ' '

" 'Tis as easy as lying. Govern these ventages with your fin- ger and thumb, give it breath with your mouth, and it will discourse most eloquent music. Look you, these are the stops."

"But these cannot I command to any utterance of har- mony. . . ."

"Why look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me. You would play upon me ; you would know my stops ; you would pluck out the heart of my mystery; you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass; and there is much music, excellent voice, in this little pipe, yet cannot you make it speak."

The most specific references are to singing and to instruments used for accompanying the voice. It is true that these are the times in which the development of music had reached its highest

Memorial Volume to Shakespeare and Harvey 17

point in Elizabethan England, but the form of some of the references makes it practically certain that Shakespeare himself sang — or thought he sang — and knew enough of some instru- ment, the lute perhaps, to play accompaniments:

"For government, though high and low and lower, Put into parts, doth keep in one consent, Congreeing in a full and natural close, Like music."

"I did but tell her she mistook her frets, And bowed her hand to teach her fingering."

The passage which perhaps shows most vividly the author's technical familiarity with singing is in the repartee between Julia and Lucetta in Two Gentlemen of Verona. I quote it, italicizing the technical terms :

Jul. Some love of yours hath writ to you in rime, Luc. That I might sing it, madam, to a tune :

Give me a note : your ladyship can set. Jul. As little by such toys as may be possible;

Best sing it to the tune of 'Light o' Love.' Luc. It is too heavy for so light a tune. Jul. Heavy! belike it hath some burden, then? Luc. Ay; and melodious were it, would you sing it. Jul. And why not you?

Jul. I cannot reach so high.

Jul. Let's see your song [taking the letter]. How now;,

minion ! Luc Keep time there still, so you will sing it out:

And yet methinks, I do not like this tune. Jul. You do not ?

Luc. No madam ; it is too sharp.

Jul. You, minion, are too saucy. Luc. Nay, now you are too flat'

And mar the concord with too harsh a descant:-

There wanteth but a mean to fill your song. Jul. The mean is drown' d with your unruly b'ass."'

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It may even be suspected that the elaborateness of Hortensio 's technique in The Taming of the Shrew — if indeed it is Shake- speare's — is due to the newness of his technical knowledge of music and his consequent pride in it.

But so much is known of this matter, and the celebrated pas- sages on music are so familiar, that we need not dwell upon it further, except to note that, like sport, music was especially af- fected by the upper classes.

The interest in art and the technical knowledge of it mani- fested by the author of the plays have attracted less attention, probably because most of the allusions are casual or figurative. Allusions to art occur in fourteen plays, in Venus and Adonis, Lucrece, and one sonnet; and only once — in The Winter's Tale — is the use of art topics motived by the dramatic situation. The iirst scene of Timon of Athens is largely occupied, as everyone knows, with an elaborate and rather technical discussion of the relations of painting and poetry ; but the most remarkable docu< mentation of Shakespear.e's interest in painting and knowledge of it is found in The Rape of Lucrece. Two hundred lines — near- ly one-ninth of the poem — are devoted to the detailed description of a picture of the Siege of Troy. No motive for the introduction of the picture can be given, unless it is alleged that the poet must In some way indicate the passage of time before Collatine can obey the summons ; but even then the choice of a picture to en- gage the attention of Lucrece during this time becomes signifi- cant.

The description of this picture deserves attention in many ways. Not only is the description very detailed, but the details are not such as would impress the ordinary gazer at a picture. They may be the impressions of an absolutely naive vision which has never before been confronted by a picture, or they may rep- resent what is seen by the trained eye of the artist, which has recovered its naive power, its capacity to see only what is actually on the canvass, and not, as ordinary eyes do, what the painter wishes to imply and suggest.

I cannot find that any English artist ever painted such a picture, but the combination of large masses with infinite indi- vidual detail recalls the work of certain Italian painters of the

Memorial Volume to Shakespeare and Harvey 19

fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, for example Giulio Romano, the only artist named in the plays or poems. There are, indeed, grounds for believing that the author had Giulio 's work in mind; but the discussion of this problem is too important to be a side-issue in the present inquiry.

Eeturning to the description, note the sweep of vision and the detail :

' * There might you see the laboring pioneer, Begrimed with sweat and smeared all with dust ; And from the towers of Troy there would appear The very eyes of men, through loopholes thrust, Gazing upon the Greeks. . . .

"There pleading might you see grave Nestor stand,

As 'twere encouraging the Greeks to fight;

Making such sober action with his hand

That it beguil'd attention, charm 'd the sight:

In speech it seem'd his beard, all silver white,

Wagg'd up and down, and from his lips did fly

Thin winding breath, which purl'd up to the sky.

" About him were a press of eager faces, Which seem 'd to swallow up his sound advice ; All jointly listening, but with several graces, As if some mermaid did their ears entice, Some high, some low, the painter was so nice ; The scalps of many, almost hid behind, To hump up higher seem 'd, to mark the mind. ' '

If this is not sufficiently in the manner of the early Renais- sance painters, note the following details :

"Here one man's hand lean'd on another's head, His nose being shadow 'd. by his neighbor's ear; Hlere one, being throng 'd, bears back, all boll'n and red; Another, smother 'd, seems to pelt and swear.

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For such imaginary work was there; Conceit deceitful, so compact, so kind, That for Achilles ' image stood his spear, t Grip 'd in an unseen hand ; himself, behind, Was left unseen, save to the eye of mind: A hand, a foot, a face, a leg, a head, Stood for the whole, to be imagined. ' '

Is this the description of a picture which our author had seen in some great house in England or Italy ? Or is it his own device, his own vision of what some painter might put into a picture of Troy? In either event, it betrays the closest observation of the methods of Renaissance painting in general composition and individual detail; and tedious as so much quotation may have been, it seemed necessary to bring before you this, significant passage from a neglected poem.

In general, the allusions to art, though brief and scattered, suggest something more than the interest of the critic ; they sug- gest the attitude of one who knew the feeling of the brush in the hand and the application of color. This is far from saying that Shakespeare was an artist or ever had any technical training; but it is in keeping with the fact — especially characteristic of the period of the Renaissance — that a richly endowed nature often seeks expression through all the kindred arts of music, poetry, and painting. But the whole subject of the art references should be studied by one who understands the technicalities of painting.

With the passages which indicate that the author was an actor, or at least was keenly interested in the actor's art, I will not de- tain you. The most important of these passages — those in As Ton Like It, in Hamlet, and in Troilus and Cressida — are fa- miliar to everyone. Allusions of this nature begin in King John and continue to Antony and Cleopatra and The Winter's Tale; but, as compared with the allusions to sport, they are few in number, as if the author were a little shy of " talking shop."

Phrases and figures from two fields of human — or inhu- man— thought occur in such numbers in the plays as to have suggested that the author was a specialist in each; I mean

Memorial Volume to Shakespeare and Harvey 21

the field of law and that of medicine. Was Shakespeare a learned lawyer? With due deference to Lord Campbell, I am con- vinced he was not. Was he a skilled physician? With due deference to Drs. Bucknill and Orville W. Owen, I am confi- dent that he was .not. That he had some knowledge of both law and medicine cannot be denied. But it may be safely asserted that in Elizabethan England every man at some time in his life became ill and went to law. The law that Shakespeare knew is perfectly accounted for by the suits — mainly about land — ii^ which his father and he himself were involved and by the fact that in such a town as Stratford the most exciting entertainment an ambitious boy could find was a trial at court in which dis- tinguished lawyers contended. The medicine that he knew was either such as was practiced by his mother and his wife, or such as he might as a boy have read in the garret in the cyclopedia of family medicine in vogue in his day — say Batman's version of Bartholomaeus Anglicus. That the blood "visited" the heart was no anticipation of Harvey's discovery; that "the sovereign 'st thing on earth was parmaceti for an inward bruise" involved the same skill in materia medica as is today involved in pre- scribing Sloan's Liniment or St. Jacob's Oil for the same ail- ment.

Shakespeare was not a bookish man. I will not say that he did not derive much from books; yet his debt to them shows rather that he read comparatively few but read them with eager interest and an unfailing memory than that he read many. You may cite the list Dr. Anders gives of books that he knew, but the length of this list does not shake my opinion. You yourself — whether a bookman or not — probably read as many books a year as Anders can list for Shakespeare.'s whole life. If it has taken scholars many years to trace all his bookish borrowings to their sources, this also is not against my contention that Shakespeare was not a bookish man. If a honey bee should fly over a field of clover and leave his sign manual on every clover head from which he sipped his honey, it would take a diligent "research man" many years to list the sources of the honey, even if the bee had visited only a hundred clover heads. Shakespeare 's classical learning and his knowledge of foreign literatures are not those

22 University of Texas Bulletin

of a scholar but those of a man possessed of quick intelligence, boundless curiosity, and a memory tenacious of everything that engaged his interest.

Shall we inquire whether the author of the plays was a-pro- testant or a papist, a democrat or a conservative? Articles and books have been written on these questions, but they have little bearing on our present inquiry. It is, however, possible, I be- lieve, to show a gradual deepening of the author's thought about life, from facile and trivial epigrams, through a period of some- what cynical worldly wisdom, to a sense of the mystery of life; but this topic we may leave for another inquirer or another oc- casion.

A friend who is a connoisseur in children insists that I shall not blink the fact that Shakespeare knew very little about children and except for sentimental purposes cared less. In little girls he shows scant interest; Baby Juliet is more sympa- thetically treated by Brooke. All the boys introduced for dra- matic purposes — the young princes and Clarence's son in Rich- ard HI, Moth, Prince Arthur, Macduff's son, the son of Cori- olanus, Mamilius — are of much the same type, pert and older than their years. The slight sketch of the stolid William strug- gling with Latin grammar in The Merry Wives of Windsor, which has no dramatic purpose, is the most natural portrait of a boy in the plays, and reads like an amused reminiscence of the author's school days.

One shrewd passing remark by Beatrice shows indeed keen observation, but scarcely love, of children*: " — like my lady's eldest son, evermore tattling."

The changes in the kinds of subjects most often referred to casually and most often drawn upon for metaphors, compari- sons, and other figures of speech are of importance for two rea- sons. In the first place, the fact that there are such changes, conforming roughly to the order in which the plays were prob- ably written, proves that the method of the dramatist was not the impersonal, objective, inhuman method it is so commonly represented as being, and that interests which predominate in the plays may safely be assumed to have predominated at the

Memorial Volume to Shakespeare and Harvey 23

same time in the thoughts of the dramatist. He wrote about horses and hounds and hawks and music and painting, not mere- ly because some people liked such things, but because his own thoughts were at the time full of them. In the second place, the succession of interests in the .plays may inform us primarily of the succession of interests in the life of the dramatist,, and sec- ondarily may be used in connection with the life records to test whether the author of the plays can have been the actor Wil- liam Shakespeare who was born at Stratford-on-Avon, and who after a notable career in London retired to Stratford to lead the life of a well-to-do citizen and to die there. In both these re- spects it is worthy of attention that outdoor interests continue throughout the plays, but with a change of direction and form. The interest in limiting and hawking, of which the early plays are full, almost disappears after Othello (1604). Horses are of interest from first to last, but the dogs of the early plays are hunting dogs, hounds, and such like, while in Lear (1606) and later plays the few dogs that are mentioned are either house dogs or hounds that are off duty, as it were. Archery is often mentioned in Love's Labor's Lost, but the allusions gradually fall off and after Hamlet there are perhaps only three. Fencing seems to have been confined practically to the period from Romeo and Juliet to Hamlet. Fishing, which figures comparatively little at any time, comes in with The Merchant of Venice and increases slightly as time goes on. Agricultural phrases and figures are used practically throughout the plays and by persons in all walks of life, but after Shakespeare began to form an estate at Stratford and especially after his purchase of one hun- dred and seven acres of land in 1602 — or shall we say, from and after Troilus and Cressida? — such matters as gardening, grafting, pruning, transplanting, plowing, appear frequently; while, curiously enough, Coriolanus contains a number of allu- sions to the work of the miller.

Of the changes in power displayed by the plays I shall say little. In the first place, because it is too large a topic to form a mere paragraph in another subject. In the second place, I have just seen the title of Professor Wendell's address of to-

24 University of Texas Bulletin

morrow, and it suggests that he will treat this topic fully. But, for the purposes of this discussion, I must remind you that the plays actually do show changes in tone and in power which can- not be without significance in regard to the author himself. We know that the early plays were partly apprentice work in re- touching and revising old plays, and partly somewhat tentative and timid but still independent experiments in lines already pursued by other men; that the time before 1600 was the time of rich productiveness — counting twenty-three plays for a period of ten years or little more ; that from 1600 to 1606 wa& the period of the greatest and most serious plays. Only six plays were produced in these six years, but all are concerned with the most serious problems of life, all are marked by a tone which approaches and often reaches pessimism; and all possess an intensity of conception and phrasing elsewhere unexampled. The plays in question need only be named to recall their prob- lems and their mode of treatment : Measure for Measure, Ham- let, Troilus and Cressida, Othello, Macbeth, and King Lear.

From 1606 to 1609 there comes a lapse, not merely of activity, but of power. These years give us only Timon of Athens and Pericles, both written in collaboration and both containing even in their best passages only faint or sullen gleams of the ancient magical fire.

From 1609 to 1612 or 1613 we have a sort of rekindling of energy and as a result six plays: Antony and Cleopatra, Cori- olanus, The Tempest, The Winter's Tale, Cymbeline, and part of Henry VIII. All of these either repeat ancient themes or are imitations of current successes, and the only one which shows the old power of creating vital human figures is Antony and Cle- opatra. In all the other plays the dramatis personae are for the most part either not new or not human. Leontes is a faded Othello, Perdita a resuscitated Kosalind; Ferdinand and Mi- randa are sweet but thin and bloodless abstractions of forgot- ten youth, and Prospero exists in our imagination and memo- ries mainly because he buried his books deeper than ever plummet sounded and spoke those unforgettable lines about the insubstan- tiality of material things:

' ' We are such stuff

As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep."

Memorial Volume to Shakespeare and Harvey 25

I have tried thus far to set before you a few of the most strik- ing facts of personality — not a tithe of the whole evidence — evinced in the body of work which is, as 'all judgments agree, the most wonderful produced as yet by any mind. Is it possi- ble that such a brain belonged to the man of Stratford? Let us briefly compare the recorded facts and traditions of his career with the testimony that, as we have seen, is embodied in the plays and poems.'

The man, William Shakespeare, came of farming stock and was born and lived as boy and youth in a country village. Hbw could it have been otherwise with the dramatist who in speaking of fair weather friends says that ''they will out of their burrows, like conies after rain"? So casual an allusion could have grown only out of an experience so familiar that it had come to be a mode of thinking.

Ben Jonson says that his friend Shakespeare was lacking in education ; tradition points to the Stratford grammar school as the place where he learned "small Latin and less Greek"; the plays are not merely — for an age that reveled in classical cul- ture— unscholastic, but reveal the practical man's contempt for bookishness.

Tradition and the known facts of Shakespeare's marriage at- test a wild youth, such as the old shepherd de-scribes in The Winter's Tale: "I would there were no age between sixteen and three-and-twenty, or that youth would sleep out the rest: for there is nothing in the between but getting wenches with child, wronging the ancientry, stealing, fighting [Horns] — Hark you now ! Would any but these boiled brains of nineteen and two-and-twenty hunt this weather?" As the passage is totally unwarranted by dramatic purpose, it is strongly sugges- tive of personal reminiscence.

In the Gloucestershire town of Dursley, in the Cotswolds, there is a belief held from time immemorial that Shakespeare spent part of his youth there ; and it is a fact that a family of Shakespeares lived in that place. You will remember that in Richard II and in 2 Henry IV the dramatist went out of his way to bring in these Gloucestershire wilds and their inhabi- tants. For what possible reason except his own abiding interest in them?

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The facts show that Shakespeare early shook off provincial- ism and domestic ties and worked out a successful career; and the dramatist, late in life, remembers how

" .... the spirit of a youth That means to be of note, begins betimes."

The recorded facts deal with the career of the actor-manager who expresses at length in Hamlet views on contemporary drama, methods of acting, and the public taste.

Both facts and tradition show that Shakespeare had the friendly patronage of the Earls of Southampton, and Essex. The plays and poems reveal decided interest in the pursuits of the gentleman, and complimentary allusions to both these noble- men are not wanting.

The records show that Shakespeare lost his son Hamriet, eleven years old, in 1596. Whether or not the grief of Constance at the loss of her son was added to King Jdhn after that experience, we find in Much Ado About Nothing, written not long after Shakespeare's own loss, the dramatist expressing with an in- tensity, not in keeping with a comedy, a father's grief for the supposed death of a child. Again, tradition quotes Shake- speare's father as saying that "Will was a good son"; and the play of Hamlet, which appeared immediately after John Shake- speare's death, emphasizes far more than the source of the plot warrants the affection of a son for a father.

The records show the acquisition of landed property and the retirement from the stage of the actor-manager; and the- dra- matists's later plays show increased interest in agriculture, and gardening, and sheep-breeding.

The brief records of Shakespeare's later years are of money matters and of lawsuits connected with them. The plays are few in number, show a falling-off of power, and an atmosphere of pessimism and gloom. The last tradition told of him is that he died as the result of a drinking bout.

What are we to infer from all this?

It is not impossible — so much only is it safe to say — not im- possible that both records and plays point to one conclusion,

Memorial Volume to Shakespeare and Harvey 27

the exhaustion of the exuberant vitality of early life and the consequent inroads of a hypersensitive spirit upon the weak- ened body, resulting in premature loss of power and illness that interfered with outdoor interests and a; active life. And in that case, the lawsuits that have so trouble^ .dealistic critics are a mere sign of the deeper irritation that

"Hath puddled his clear spirit, and in such cases Men's natures wrangle with inferior things."

Hiow this may have be-en, perhaps we shall never know. Yet I am held by a growing conviction that infinite patience and in- finite care in sifting out the personal from the dramatic ele- ments in the Shakespearean plays will not only identify beyond the shadow of doubting the author of them with the Stratford player, but will tell us more than we now dream it is possible to know of the man himself.

3— s

THE GROWTH OF SHAKESPEARE BY BARRETT WENDELL

In all great literature there is no quality more certainly con- clusive than its incessant freshness. One final test of whether a familiar poem or a familiar poet is truly to be held enduring is a marvellous sense, whenever you turn to the lines — or at least to such of them as prove significant for you — that these utter- ances are as little staled by familiarity as if you had never glanced at them before. In this perennial freshness, the while, there is something delusive; for as the conditions amid which poets lived pass from life, and their poems survive, there must come to human beings of later and remote times some gathering perception if not of obstacle, at least of perplexity as to just what this passage and that may mean. In the matter of language, this is obvious. For ages the tongues of antiquity, deathless though they be,' have been intelligible only by means of study. They have not used the words, nor 'even the precise forms of language, in which any living man has actually thought. To a less degree this is true even of those poets who long ago ex- pressed themselves in languages which we still use, hardly aware that they are always flexibly and insensibly growing or fading. No generation, and still more no century, thinks and speaks and lives in quite the same terms as that which preceded it ; and per- haps a deeper change still is the change in the daily aspects of earthly experience. So, when a poet begins to pass — still more when he has finally passed — from the transitory circumstances of his human life into the enduring immortality of assured greatness, each fleeting generation must find new perplexities in the lines which record the message of his spirit. Therefore study grows needful — study of the conditions which surrounded his life, study of what words meant to him and no longer quite mean to us.

This very study, though, concerning itself not so much with the poet himself and his works as with things about them, has a danger of its own to which scholarship is prone to succumb. Nowadays those who study poetry are increasingly apt to occupy

[28]

Memorial Volume to Shakespeare and Harvey 29

themselves not so much with the truth which poetry contains, with the secret of its deathlessness, as with variously relevant facts, themselves mortal, which may often rather obscure it than illuminate it.

These generalizations are nowhere more obviously true than in the case of Shakespeare. Three hundred years ago there died in a Warwickshire town a self-made local worthy, who had ac- cumulated his small fortune by honest work in London as an actor, as a popular playwright, and as a shrewd theatrical man- ager. That was probably what the friends thought about who laid him to rest in Stratford Church. To-day people are gath- ering all over the Engish-speaking world to celebrate his mem- ory as chief poet of our ancestral literature, and perhaps the chief poet of all the modern world.

You can hardly have a greater contrast than this — between the Shakespeare whom a few Englishmen knew in the fle-sh and what the name of Shakespeare means after the lapse of three centuries. Every condition of his earthly life is a thing of the past. The trivial circumstances of his personal career are dead and gone; so are the strangely outworn and forgotten conditions of the theatre for which he wrote ; so even are the historic facts of Elizabethan England and of that Stuart England which in his later years was already started on its course toward so great a political and social revolution that the England he had known was extinct before those who might have seen him in the flesh were all in their graves. Even the native language he used is not quite that in which we try to celebrate his memory; for in his time English was making and in ours it has long been breaking. Quite to understand what his words mean, we must study their history. Still more we must study even to guess what scene after scene in his plays, allusion after allusion, probably meant to the audiences for whom they were written. And yet all the while this work of his, mostly made, so far as we can now tell, only to respond, like popular literature at any time, to the demand of the moment, lives today, and will live so long as our English language means anything to any human being. For as the years and generations and the centuries begin to pass, men have long since come to know that only the

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body of him is dead. Even though the squalid theatres he wrote for have long since vanished into thin air, the lines which he meant mostly for their mortal public have never ceased to ap- peal to generations in his day still unborn. Audiences care for them still; still more, they reward thoughtful study. You cau hardly turn to any of his greater works — indeed, you can hardly let your eye fall on the memorable passages in those lesser works of his which comparatively seem trivial — without the constant sense, which is so final a test of poetic greatness, that you are reading these familiar scenes or pondering on these familiar passages for the first time. What in all likelihood he meant only to be the work of the moment has long since proved itself deathless.

During the present year these considerations have happened to impress me deeply. Since last June, for accidental reasons, I have twice read through the whole work of Shakespeare in what is conjectured to be its chronological order. Such sum- mary reading has its disadvantages; it gives one no time to pause and consider the myriad questions of technical scholarship which are bound to gather about any enduring work of the past; it gives no time to trace intricacies or perplexities of allu- sion, no time to do anything like justice to the work of those countless scholars who have long since discovered and recorded more things about the poems and the poet than the poet could ever consciously have known or dreamed of. At least, however, it has one advantage; you turn to each work somewhat as the poet expected that it should be turned to ; you take each play by itself all at once, as playwrights always mean their plays to be taken. And, no matter how familiar the plays may have be- come to you, not one of them fails to meet the test of greatness on which we have been dwelling. Each time you read any of them, you find that it impresses you as if you had never read it before. In this aspect, indeed, the literature of all Europe has only two other poets comparable with Shakespeare: one is Homer, the other is Dante.

Reading Shakespeare's plays in chronological order, the while, you will hardly find astonishing power in those which the gen- eral consent of modern critics places earliest. Though the

Memorial Volume to Shakespeare and Harvey 31

stage for which Shakespeare wrote was hardly in existence when he was born, it had already developed, by the time when he began to write, fairly fixed conventions of its own; and though none of the works attributed to him lack admirable passages, those which are thought to be his earlier will probably impress you as little more than conventional Elizabethan dramas illumi- nated by occasional splendors of phrase.

At least to me, the first play where my sense of freshness be- comes a sense of wonder is, curiously enough, a play which is often thought characteristic rather of his time than of himseJf. This is so much the case, indeed, that the most literate of Amer- ican critics, Mr. James Russell Lowell, was disposed to think Shakespeare's share in it no more than that of occasional re- vision. When doctors disagree, who shall decide? In Shakes- peare's own life-time, this play was certainly attributed to him. In the first collection of his work it was certainly included. Cer- tainly, too, so long as Shakespeare familiarly held the stage it was among the plays which were most popular, and even though it. bear so many marks of the outworn conventions amid which he began to write, it surely impresses one who reads it not by itself, but in its order among his works, as incontestably marked by the touch which is his alone. I mean Ricltard III.

In the First Folio, you remember, the plays of Shakespeare were divided into three classes: comedies, histories, and trag- edies. Without troubling ourselves to define what comedies and tragedies are, we may properly assume that they are species of drama familiar throughout literature. What the editors of Shakespeare called histories, on the other hand, are things almost peculiar to the stage of Shakespeare's time. The later part of Queen Elizabeth's reign was a time when books of his- tory were not generally accessible. It was a time, as well, when the art of reading was by no means so generally mastered as has been the case between whiles; and it was a time when the accidents of political history had excited in England a patriotic enthusiasm for heroic English tradition unparallelled before. As a matter of fact, the defeat of the Spanish Armada took place almost at the moment when Shakespeare probably began his theatrical apprenticeship. Under these circumstances, hack

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playwrights took the chronicles where the traditional facts of English history were most accessibly recorded; and with little more concern for dramatic form than to reduce the story of a reign to a length which could be acted in one or two sessions, they translated the long, discursive narrative into manageable dramatic terms. The earliest examples of this kind of work in the plays commonly attributed to Shakespeare are the three formless and undoubtedly collaborative dramas known as the three parts of King Henry VI. As you read these through, and du}l work it is, one fact impresses you toward the end. Among the very numerous characters presented by means of shapeless and blatant conventions long since outworn, one emerges as dis- tinctly individual. That is the brilliant, unscrupulous, evil, Richard, Duke of Gloucester. Thus we begin to know the cen- tral figure of that far more nearly great play, Richard HI.

This play, which in the sequence of Shakespeare's English histories immediately follows on the third part of Henry VI, continuing the hardly broken story, differs from its predeces- sors in one noteworthy aspect: it brings English history to a point which at the time when it was written had not only his- torical but also political, or rather dynastic, significance. Dur- ing the fifteenth century the crown of England had been mostly in dispute, and the civil wars which had vexed the country had retarded the progress of English prosperity and society. These wars came to an end in 1485 at the Battle of Bosworth Field, where a fresh usurper, the Earl of Eichmond, defeated the last king of the house of York, and founded a new ' dynasty, des- tined to survive unbroken for more than a hundred years, and to reach its culmination in the person of that great Queen, Eliza- beth, who seems to have stirred the loyal enthusiasm of Eng- lishmen beyond any other sovereign who ever sat on their throne. Pretty clearly though, the original title of Henry VII to the throne was based on no more divine right than that of con- quest— successful brute force. A state of political feeling en- sued which we of America should be among the first sympathet- ically to understand. In order to kindle enthusiasm for what amounted to a revolutionary government, it was highly desira^ ble to represent the government which this had superseded as thoroughly bad. The American analogy is clear. Our inde-

Memorial Volume to Shakespeare and Harvey 33

pendence was based on armed revolution; and for 140 years American school-children have been deliberately taught to be- lieve ancestral England tyrannical and hostile, and to suppose King George III, who was really an honest and respectable Ger- man gentleman, to have been a deliberately blood-thirsty tyrant. Similarly, any presentation of the life and character of King Richard III which would have been tolerated by the government of Elizabethan England was compelled to set him forth as a deep-dyed villain.

By the time when the play of Richard III was producedy somewhere about 1593, the dramatic means of doing so were conventionally established. The playwright either took some old play, if he had it, or, if he had none, went straight to the pages of the chronicler — in this case the loyal Elizabethan, Holinshed — and turned what he found there into the most effective dra- matic speeches which he could devise. For such speeches, at that time, there were two or three conventional requisites now completely obsolete. Elizabethan audiences liked the sort of thing which we call rant — long, sonorous, extravagant outbursts of utterance. More subtly, but just as certainly, they delighted in mere novelty of phrase. They liked to hear for the first time new words and new combinations of words. Until very lately, their English language had long been poor and feeble in the mat- ters of variety and ease. For half a century or so, the chief energy of English poets, who had often been men of fashion as well, had been directed to enthusiastically ingenious attempts to show what could be done with this language, — by 1500, for poetical purposes, almost barbarous. In Shakespeare 's time this effort, originally fashionable, had grown popular too; so who- ever should write an acceptable play must fill it from beginning to end with what his audience would feel to be fresh turns of phrase, much as a modern composer of popular opera must glad- den his auditors with what they take to be brand new tunes.

Most likely we have now reminded ourselves of how the play of Richard HI was conceived .by whoever wrote it, and of all that Shakespeare, whatever his part in it, ever intended it to be. It was meant for a dramatically popular presentation, in fresh and sonorous terms, of a reign in English history which

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for dynastic reasons had to be set forth in extremely unpopular light. Every one of these conditions is now a matter of the past. There is nothing about any one of them a bit more vital in our time than the bones of William Shakespeare in his Strat- ford grave. And yet the play lives, and so far as I can discern, it lives mostly because from all these dead conventions of pur- pose and of construction, and from amid a numerous group of characters almost as remote from our unstudied sympathies as the conventions which surround them, there somehow emerges, all the more vital for the archaic strangeness of his surround- ings, one character, the crook-back king, monstrous, if you choose to analyze him, in spirit as in form, and yet somehow elusively, yet certainly, human.

This Richard, Duke and King alike, is the same human being who emerged distinct in the later scenes of King Henry VI. In Colley Gibber's revised, or rather reconstructed, version of the play, indeed, which for a century or more was the form commonly acted, a certain number of passages from Henry VI were included. But in Richard III, as preserved in the canon of Shakespeare, the central character is so distinct that we should know him for an individual, different from any other in life or in literature, without a line from any but the play which bears his name. From beginning to end his wits are alive. He is always aware not only of the circumstances which sur- round him, but of his purpose to control them. He has in view the single, unswerving end of making himself not only liter- ally but actually royal. Beside him, the men who surround him are mere puppets with whom he can play at will; and the will of him, unfathomably and wholly selfish, prevails until it finds itself at last broken only with life in its clash with the inexor- able course- of history, itself a part of the course of nature.

Monstrous though this conception may seem, — monstrous if only because it so tremendously assumes a pet folly of mankind, -the notion that earthly affairs can actually be controlled by dominant human will, — the character of Richard is somehow iso presented that the oftener you read and put aside the lines which set it forth, the more instinctively you think of him as a real man. In view of this, one of the surprises which con-

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stantly recur when you turn back to the lines is the amazing remoteness of the method of his presentation from anything which would now be conceivably possible.

Take, for example, the most familiar speech he makes, familiar, to be sure, mostly because it happens to begin the play. In point of fact, that opening soliloquy :

"Now is the winter of our discontent

Made glorious summer by this sun of York;"

is not exactly a speech at all. It is rather a prologue, dis- guised only by the chance that it is spoken by one who is sub- sequently to take part in the play which it introduces. Thus it proves hardly more than a typical example of a convention familiar to the English stage long before that stage took ma- ture form. You will find the same sort of thing in moralities, in miracle plays, in mysteries. The only difference is that while you instantly recognize the conventional character of the older work, you somehow feel that the lines spoken by Richard are spoke-n by somebody, and that his determination to be a villain is something more than a mere preliminary statement of what he is going to do in the scenes which -follow. Then take what presently follows: Richard's meeting with the Duke of Clarence, arrested, and on his way to the Tower from which he is never to emerge. Offhand you woulcl think that nothing could be more preposterously absurd than such a casual inter- view, in what the stage directions generally accepted during the last two centuries profess to be a public street. If anything could be more preposterous, you might think it the immediately ensuing street talk with Lord Hastings. But both of these pre- posterous incidents fade into something like the light of com- mon day beside what comes next — the blazing absurdity of Gloucester's street courtship with the widowed Princess of Wales over the coffin of her royal father-in-law, lately mur- dered, like her husband, by the hand of the wooer. And so you may read on, through scene after scene, act after act, none conceivably actual, until the puppet ghosts on the eve o£ Bosworth Field, though their utterances may frighten the King—

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conscience stricken at last — seem each time you recur to their lines, more and more unimaginably remote from anything act- ually supernatural.

From beginning to end, indeed, the play of Richard III, as we have it, is presented in terms as far from actuality as ever were the terms of the primal tragedy of Greece. While through- out the conventions of that primal tragedy, however, there is a vast splendor of conception, this English chronicle history seems in every conventional aspect a thing poor enough to deserve all the strictures which Sidney put upon such absurdities less than ten years before this familiar example of them came to the light. Yet one cannot too wonderingly repeat that despite these archaic means of its presentation the character of Richard cer- tainly seemed living to the audiences for whom it was written; that it has stayed living for countless readers and auditors through the generations since ; and that, -read it ofteli as you will, it seems so even to us of the twentieth century. Monstrous though he be as a conception, uninterruptedly conventional though every syllable of the setting forth of him be, presented from begin- ning to end With hardly a touch of what we may call living actu- ality, Shakespeare's Richard III stays human. You may call him monstrous as long as breath lasts. You may assert, if you like, that human will, however brilliantly incarnate, cannot so master the stops of human nature and govern the ventages of time as to fulfill its purposes by mere dint of unfaltering de- termination. Even while you are thus decrying him, you will fir,d that you are thinking about him not as a creature of imag- kation, or of fiction, but just as if this Richard had been the Richard who lived and breathed and died in his fifteenth century flesh. Beyond peradventure, the Richard of English tradition is not the Richard of recorded history, nor the Richard of Hblin- shed or of Sir Thomas More. It is this diabolical but still human being brought into undying existence by the genius which was Shakespeare's and Shakespeare's alone.

The chronology of Shakespeare, though nowise definite, is at

least so well made out that, as we have reminded ourselves

before, this play of Richard III may confidently be put among

1 the earlier. It was probably reduced to its present form some-

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where about 1593. Partly from the very fact that it so fully embodies the conditions amid which he_ began to work, the play may be taken as an example of what the Shakespearean touch could do in the earliest days of its mastery. Some fifteen years later, probably about 1606, this same Shakespeare who had mean- while produced most of the comedies, histories, and tragedies alike now recognized as his masterpieces, wrote another play even more familiar to modern readers and theatre-goers than Richard III. This, often supposed to be the latest written of his four principal tragedies, is Macbeth. Just as you may take Richard III for an example of the state of the drama when his power began to show itself, so you may take Macbeth as an ex- ample of the kind of work which he did when the drama was fully developed, when his power was still at its height, but when his production was drawing to a close.

It is hardly excessive to say that the contrast between the two plays thus put side by side is as great as the contrast between either of them and some work of modern times. They have in common, no doubt, characteristics which belong to the English and to the English theatre of their day, as distinguished from any other. Both, when you study them, prove adapted to the stage conditions of their time rather than of ours, and one of the miracles about both is that they can survive translation from the day-light platform of an unroofed London pit to the recesses of embossed prosceniums and the glow of graduated % electric lights which happen to be properties of our modern theatres. But, putting aside what common traits these two plays possess, take, to illustrate the difference between them, the most obvious passage in each, namely, the opening lines. In Richard III, as we have already reminded ourselves, the Duke of Gloucester walks out on the stage alone and delivers in sonorous phrase that familiar soliloquy which avows his villainy and states his pur- poses. A dramatic convention, perhaps, and therefore conven- tionally tolerable, this incident is one that could never possibly have occurred. What is more, while it tells the audience pretty clearly what they may expect, it does not so touch their emotions as to lure them into any particular mood. Now compare with this the opening scene of Macbeth, which, by the way, has only

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twelve lines as against forty-one in the soliloquy of Richard. The three witches, at the end of some unholy sacrament, whirlingly part — to meet again, when the hurly-burly is done and the battle lost and wbn. We may tell ourselves, if we like, that there are no such things as witches. We may tell ourselves, too, that no beings, human, or divine, or diabolical either, ever actually communi- cated with each other in madly tripping trochaic rhymes. But nobody can deny that if there ever had been such things as witches, this is the how we might have expected them to behave. Then take the scene where they reappear, weaving together the spell which is to enchant Macbeth. More and more you feel that even though the words they utter have the pregnant aptitude and the superhuman rhythm of poetry, the thoughts and the moods which these words embody, the conduct and the character which these words set forth, are such things as, if witches were real, witches would think and witches would do and be. To them enter the victorious chiefs, Macbeth and Banquo. The scene, as a familiar line in it reminds us, is on a blasted heath in the midst of a Scottish tempest. If such things as witches could be, and if such things as the work of them could be wrought, this is just where and how their devilish wiles would be most likely to bewilder and enmesh human victims. We need not admit even to ourselves that such things as this could possibly take place anywhere else than in poetry. No one can deny that if they could take place, they might take place just so.

In the play of Macbeth, this scene between the witches and the generals whose fates they doom has exactly the same place as is taken in the play of Richa-rd III by that preposterous woo- ing of the Princess Anne in London streets over the bier of the murdered Henry. What is true in the contrast between these opening scenes of the two plays remains true throughout. As a matter of actual incident, the literal story of Richard III is Gen- erally a good deal more probable, a good deal nearer what misrht occur in real life, than is the literal story of Macbeth. But com- pare, if you will, the rhetorically prolonged murder of the Dnkc of Clarence with the appallingly compact murder of the sleeping Duncan. Then read, if you will, the interview between the anointed King Richard, surrounded by his train with all their

Memorial Volume to Shakespeare and Harvey 39

drums and their trumpets, and his wrathful mother and the widowed queen of his brother Edward. Compare this theatrically effective but actually unimaginable incident with the scene of the banquet, where Macbeth trembles before the gory locks of the murdered Banquo, invisible to all but himself. Compare again that ghostly visitant in his awful silence with the loquacious pup- pets that vex the last moments of earthly sleep granted to doomed King Richard. So far as mere language goes, the mie, you may say, is as far from literal as the other. But granting the superb license of phrase which is the outward and audible body of poetry, you cannot but feel more and more that except for the splendor of their phrasing the incidents in Macbeth might ac- tually have occurred and that what happens in Richard III could not possibly have happened anywhere but on the stage.

This is one reason why Macbeth is so much more effective as a stage play. Another reason, though harder to specify in detail, must grow evident to whoever reads. One fact which you may feel rather than point out in all the historical plays of Shake- speare is a sense of surging historic force. The days which suc- ceed on the days, and the years which succeed on the years,. and the generations which succeed on the generations breed, each of them, we know not how, the days, the years and the genera- tions to come, wherein, dominant or not, no man can finally pre- vail. This surge of history you can feel even in Henry VI, and still more in Richard III. Now compare this with what you feel in Miacbeth; the surge is no longer only that of history, it has be- come the surge of fate. Whence man comes, he knows not, nor whither he goes. All he can tell is that amidst the storm of force which sweeps him on, he is conscious, he reacts, and he now and again does things which help toward the end whither something else than he is whirling everything. In Macbeth, perhaps more than in tfther drama since the great tragedies of Greece, you feel this resistless fate, the evil phase of it flickeringly incar- nate in the witches, until the human victims of it — themselves all individual, all distinct, all, like the circumstances which en- viron them, almost actual — finally group themselves much as human beings group themselves before our eyes throughout the daily experiences of our own earthly passage.

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So it is only after a good while that you begin to feel emerging from the sweep of fate in this tragedy and from the commingled human victims thereof one supremely distinct individual — the protagonist, Macbeth himself. As we remember the play, indeed, or as we grow to know it better, he stands forth in no such theatrical isolation as that in which we perceive the character of Richard III • he stands forth rather in some such manner as that in which amid the confusion of human actuality we somehow grow to discern and to know one man apart from his fellows. It is not that the play of Macbeth, any more than any other work of poetic art, is set forth without regard for literary con- ventions. The scenes, the speeches, the words, the thoughts, are no more literal than such things were in Shakespeare's earlier work. But the conception, for all its heroic grandeur, has such true relation to life that just as one thinks of Richard — for all his individuality — as a great figure of the stage, so — for all his measureless dramatic aspects — one thinks of Macbeth as if he were human — a man grandly tempted, diabolically enmeshed, accursed, damned in the very flesh before the gates of hell are opened to receive him, and yet, for all that, so deeply our brother man that in recognizing him as man, one hardly realizes the fact that, like Richard himself, he is a royal villain.

Yet such he is, beyond all manner of doubt. Like Richard-, Macbeth first appears not as a sovereign, but as a subject. Like Richard, he deliberately clears from his way all who stand be- tween him and the throne. Like Richard, he strides before us crowned and anointed. The chief difference between them in this aspect is that while Richard's villainy is instigated by his own evil nature, the villainy of Macbeth is instigated by evil powers beyond his control, though not needfully beyond his power of re- sistance. It may be that Macbeth is victim ; yet as a victim, even though sometimes hesitant, he is not unwilling. Apart from the fact that we may sometimes sympathize with him, when we think of him as the sport of fate, Macbeth is a murderer, a usurper, such a miracle of broken faith as should shame Carthage or Kaiser, royal at last only in the dignity of soldierly courage, rightly laid low by the hand of a wild justice which must do its relentless work before it can stop to submit itself to the condi- tions and limitations of established and beneficent law.

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Yet established law is the triumphant end towards which the whole tragedy tends. The last lines of the play, rhyming tags though they be, are spoken by the sovereign who is to be crowned at Scone to succeed the criminal usurper, and to replace his murderous tyranny by a system of beneficent rule. The words have a certain resemblance to the words which occupy a similar place in Richard III. There the victorious Richmond makes a rather long set speech, ended, too, with rhyming tags, and pro- phesying how

"peace lives again: That she may long live here, God say Amen!"

In that case, the political intention of the speech is evident. The speaker is the founder of that native Tudor dynasty under which, when the play was written, England had enjoyed a century of something more like peace than had occurred there before since the dethronement of King Richard II. Richard III, in fact, is regularly classed as one of Shakespeare's histories, and though written earlier than those which deal with Richard II, Henry IV and Henry V, it really concludes the long historical story which these begin. So, in a way, those last words of it are like the playing of the "Star Spangled Banner" at the end of some patriotic performance which should celebrate the tyrannies of momentarily Germanized Hanoverian England and the purity of the ends achieved by the American Revolution. The peace to live again when the tyrant Richard was overthrown was the bene- ficent, rule of the Tudors, still on the throne when that old play was written.

Offhand, the resemblance between that final speech of Rich- mond and the final speech of Malcolm in Macbeth may well seem accidental, hardly more than the repetition of a device needful under the theatrical circumstances of the time to get a consid- erable number of characters off the stage with a dead body on. their hands. When we stop to think, however, of what the pro- jected coronation at Scone signifies, and of who Malcolm was; when we remember the fantastic procession of crowned appari- tions passing one by one in the witches ' cave before the desperate

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eyes of Macbeth ; when we remember how the eighth and last of them holds a glass wherein are reflected the images of count- less such kings to follow, some of them bearing two-fold balls and treble sceptres; when we remember that the ghost of Banquo points at these foreshadowed royalties, as those of whom the witches have prophesied that even though no king himself, he should beget kings, we can begin to feel a deeper resemblance be- tween these two final passages than at first appeared. In point of fact, the death of the usurping Macbeth cleared the throne for another line than his own, just as the death of the usurping Richard cleared the royal path for the Tudors ; and the dynasty for which the death of Macbeth cleared the way was that which succeeded the Tudors on the throne of England. When Macbeth was written, Queen Elizabeth was dead. Her kinsman, King James I, had ascended the throne, and her kingdom, after its crescent century and more of native Tudor rule had passed peacefully into the foreign hands of the Scottish Stuarts.

As a matter of history, no doubt, the story of Richard III comes fairly near the facts; and at the time when the play was written, these facts were less remote in time than the American Revolution is from us. In comparison, the story of Macbeth, placed in the long vanished days of King Edward the Confessor, and suffused with supernatural incident, seems legendary, and must have seemed so even in Shakespeare's time. None the less there is one clear fact about it: this almost antique Macbeth bore to the ancestry of the house of Stuart some such relation as was borne to the house of Tudor by the last sovereign of the house of York. What is more, when students of Shakespeare begin to consider where the stories of the two plays come from, they will find the sources of Richard III and of Macbeth to be substantially the same. Both plays are taken from Holinshed's Chronicles, and Macbeth is taken, on the whole, with less de- parture from the original texts. So far as the relation of sources to plays goes, there is hardly any difference between this stu- pendous tragedy of Shakespeare's later years and the com- paratively conventional history of his earlier.

Once realize this, and a rather unexpected conclusion seems reasonable. What Shakespeare actually tried to do in both

Memorial Volume to Shakespeare and Harvey 43

cases was to set forth, perhaps with old plays to help him, and certainly with easy reliance upon the Chronicles in which Eng- lish history was at the time most accessibly recorded, the story of how the beneficient dynasty which, in each case, happened to occupy the throne, had come gloriously to its right by heroic conquest of a wicked predecessor. It is hard to resist the belief that the writer of two plays so similar both in purpose and in relation to their sources could hardly have thought of them as very different in general character. Most likely, if Shakes- peare himself considered Richard III as a history he would unhesitatingly have considered Macbeth as a history too. To him the general character of the two plays must have seemed, almost identical.

No text of Macbeth exists before the folio of 1623, and in that volume, of course, it was placed not among the histories, but among the tragedies. This classification, however, was un- doubtedly that of the editors, and not very careful. Indeed, they excluded from the group of histories all plays which did not have as the central figure a fully recognized predecessor of the actual sovereign of England. Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra, themselves as historical in character as anything which Shakespeare ever wrote, are thus classed as tragedies. So is the legendary King Lear. And Macbeth, like the earlier Stuarts, was not an English sovereign, but a Scottish. This fact alone might have taken the play out of the group of his- tories. In calling Macbeth a tragedy, however, the first editors of Shakespeare nowise erred. No play in modern literature, and hardly any anywhere, more completely embodies that sense of resistless fate which animates the primal tragedy of Greece. The manner in which Shakespeare sets forth the appallingly tragic story, to be sure, is nowise classic. In certain stage de- tails, indeed, it is even less so than a casual reader nowadays might be disposed to think. Quite apart from the ribaldry and the topical allusions of the drunken porter, there are in Macbeth a good many pasages which, like the madness of Le-ar or of Hamlet, may originally have been performed in a manner so grotesque as to supply for the original audiences an element analogous to comedy, something at which they might laugh.

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Yet we need not remind ourselves that all vestige of this gro- tesque phase of Macbeth has long since faded, not only from practice, but even from tradition itself. So any notion has faded that this tremendous surge of fate could ever for a mo- ment have been considered in the light of a presentation of actual history. Tragedy the story has truly become. Tragedy it will remain so long as literature survives.

So long as our literature survives, too, Richard III will not be forgotten ; and tragedy though it be called on play-bills, it can never impress a reader or play-goer with anything ap- proaching the tragic sense which all must feel in Macbeth. In point of fact, however, as the considerations on which we have been dwelling should by this time lead us to perceive, the great contrast between these two plays, in themselves hardly fifteen years apart, is probably a question not of difference in purpose but mostly of the growth of the poet.

His growth was nowise solitary. The fellow-poets who sur- rounded his earlier years, and who faded out of life long before his work was half done, wrote on the whole in the manner ex- emplified in Richard III. The younger poets, who began their work after the work of all but Shakespeare among their elders had come to an end, and who surrounded his later years of production, were more sophisticated; and by 1606 the general manner of English dramatists was far more like that of Macbeth. The extraordinary development of Shakespeare from his earlier work to his latest may therefore be held partly due to the accident that he lived and was at the height of his powers during, just the years when the school of which his work forms part was most swiftly developing. But the man himself de- veloped, too, and wondrously. Even though to himself and to his time he may often have seemed little more than a highly skilled craftsman, even though he never disdained, or apparently tried much to modify, the theatrical conditions under which his plays were to be presented, even though, like all his fellows, he seems to have devoted the great part of his conscious energy to the making of phrases which should impress his hearers as novel, the great fact remains that the course of his production shows, at least from the period of Richard III to that of MacbetJi,

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his constantly increasing mastery of imaginative truth. Apart from everything else, apart from the compact intensity and pregnancy of his later style as compared with his earlier, apart from the fact that in neither case — nor in any other throughout his work — does his style descend to vulgar actuality, apart from his contented acceptance of theatrical conventions and conditions long outworn, there can be no question that in incident and in character Richard III, whatever its power, ap- pears artificial, and that Macbeth comparatively seems a part of Nature itself. Such was the growth of Shakespeare in the days of his pilgrimage, from craftsmanship to Art, from Art to Nature.

It is now a full three hundred years since Shakespeare died. The lapse of time has made every convention of the theatre and of language to which we are now used measurelessly differ- ent from anything which he could ever have dreamed of. Yet the very fact that in these passing days multitudes are gather- ing together all over the English-speaking world to celebrate his memory proves that Shakespeare is not dead, but living. He is living, too, in a grandeur of immortality inconceivable to such human beings as three centuries ago may have known him in the flesh. Just as in the flesh he grew from the poet of Richard III to the poet of Macbeth, so in the spirit he has grown from the hack playwright of Elizabethan London to the supreme poet of the language in which we still live out our conscious beings.

The secret of th^t growth is what we all yearn to know. It is the search for that secret, perhaps, as much as mere rev- erence for the spirit which enshrines it, which is everywhere gathering together our tercentenary companies. The secret of poetry has never been snatched from the heart of it. Po- etry itself has never been imprisoned within the bonds of definition. But if there be one sure test of what makes poetry true, that test is a sense in the reader that the poet is marvellously and inexhaustibly his fellow in feeling. Your real poet is one who learns from life to perceive in the depths of its mysteries more than eyes less keen than his could ever begin to discern. He is one, as well, who somehow can express

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what he sees and* what he feels in such manner that more and more of his fellow-beings can be guided by him to see and to feel that to which, without him, they would be blind and deaf. He is one, too, who feels, no one can tell how, the strange felicity, with which the arbitrary terms and the almost for- tuitous rhythms of language can somehow be fitted to their task of meaning in a manner which all mankind must feel beautiful. At heart, the secret of poetry lies in feeling, in fellowship of feeling; and fellowship of feeling is just what is meant by the Greekish word ' ' sympathy. ' '

What marks the difference most of all between Richard III and Macbeth is the marvellous growth in sympathy quivering throughout that final tragedy. What. makes the marvel of the Shakespeare whom we venerate today is that the lapse of three centuries has proved his sympathy with humanity so perdurably wondrous in its fresh appeal to each succeeding generation that no change of earthly conditions has yet begun to dim its radiance.

SHAKESPEARE, PURVEYOR TO THE PUBLIC BY R. L. BATTS

I do not speak as a Shakespearean scholar. I know very little of what has been said of Shakespeare and his works. Whether most of the views I shall express are very commonplace or very heterodox, I do not know. They are doubtless too conservative to be interesting, too crude to be useful.

MJy first knowledge of Shakespeare came during the period that followed the horrors of the Civil War and the miseries of Reconstruction. It was a period of poverty in the South, and there was little money with which to put books into the homes. Among the books of my own home there was no juvenile except Shakespeare. With intense interest I read those universal stories that the great dramatist utilized and glorified — ignoring the unfamiliar words, but getting all the tale, and not failing to appreciate somewhat the beauty of thought and word that gave life and blood to the great men and lovable women created for me.

While yet I was very young,' Edwin Booth came to Texas, and at Galveston played greatly in ten great plays. Among these were Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, The Merchant of Venice, Richard III, and Julius Caesar. Booth's Hamlet was the first play I ever saw. Since, I have read it many times ; many times seen it played ; many times seen plays almost as great ; but once only have I been so deeply stirred by anything in art — when from sublime sound measures of Das Rheingold, grandly crashed by a great orchestra, came liquid, vibrant, sweet, strong notes, and first I realized, in exquisite pain, the overwhelming majesty and beauty that may be in the human voice.

Two or three years after- this, my introduction to the drama, sometime I sat at the feet of a rare teacher of English who loved Shakespeare. Beauties new to me he pointed out, and I learned to find delights before unknown. My vision clearer, my view-point was unchanged. I have not greatly cared to read the things said about1 what Shakespeare wrote, when I have been able to read the things he wrote, and some-

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times privileged to see them interpreted by a master player. If I had read other than for the pleasure of the reading, doubtless a different would have been a better course. But I have been of the class for whom Shakespeare labored, and I have needed neither glossary nor commentator — the only equipment required a little ordinary intelligence, a little ordinary power of imagination, a little ordinary capacity for enjoyment.

I am of those for whom he wrote. There are three hundred years of us. There are to be many centuries more. The critics. the scholars, the philosophers are to give way to us. We are to pass the final judgment on his work. Those who would usurp our function can not permanently maintain that the creatures of Shakespeare's intellect and imagination are for the learned alone. The assumption can not persist that there is more to be gained in the study of his unfamiliar words than in the enjoy- ment of his plays. Nor can it always be that his doubtful read- ings will receive more consideration than the imposing array of language which expresses all that is magnificent in thought. It is well that the various readings be given discriminating at- tention. The words he used and the manner of their use are amply worthy of study. The details of the life of the over- shadowing literary genius are, of course, most interesting. But after all, that which he wrote, — that which he expressed to the people for whom he wrote, — is the thing worth while, the thing most worth while in all literature.

I think very many people of this period have been fright- ened into the assumption that Shakespeare's plays are an affectation of the "high brow," an occupation of the scholar. More than three hundred years ago they were written by a democrat for the public. By democrat I mean one capable of affiliating with all classes, one who gets pleasure from such association. By public I mean all who have the ordinary feel- ings, the standard emotions, the average intellects, the normal aspirations, the conventional hyprocrisies. Shakespeare's pub- lic included men of every grade of social standing, every level of intellectual endowment, every degree of mental training. This public understood and approved, enjoyed and rewarded. It provided a competency for his age. It accorded to his call-

Memorial Volume to Shakespeare and Harvey 49

ing as am actor unaccustomed respectability. It encouraged into being his new profession of playwright.

It would be humiliating to assume that in the years which have intervened there has been so serious a deterioration in the public intellect that that which interested and amused the peo- ple of the Elizabethan period can not now be understood. It may indeed be true that overindulgence in aenemic literature and decadent dramatic art has created a chronic intellectual lassitude that hesitates before a Shakespearean play as involving mental exertion — unnecessary, disagreeable, and unjustifiable mental exertion. But the infection of cerebral cessation is not universal, and neither excess of insipid literature nor plethora of plays from which thought has been expurgated has rendered obsolete the dramatic work of Shakespeare.

Notwithstanding the play as "the abstract and brief chronicle of the time" is usually, as a play, ephemeral, and notwithstand- ing the lapse of more than three hundred years, many of the dramas of Shakespeare are available for present use upon the current stage, as Hamlet, Macbeth, Julius Caesar, The Merchant of Venice, Othello, A Midsummer Night's Dmim. Twelfth Night, The Taming of the Shrew, King Richard III, The Comedy of Errors, As You Like It. A great actor may anywhere in Amer- ica present Shakespeare to crowded houses, even in the great cities. Forbes Robertson may do so now, as Booth did in his day, and Irving. The mediocre may conjure with the mighty name and secure undeserved successes.

It is doubtful if all the other playwrights together have during the years since Shakespeare began to write produced as many permanent plays, plays that may be read with pleasure and played with profit. No play of any English predecessor or contemporary survives as a practical play. His successors have contributed, She Stoops to Conquer, The Rivals, The School for Scandal, a few others perhaps that have long enough lived to bid for place among the plays that are permanent. Some of the plays of the present generation have literary merit; some have dramatic merit. I do not think of one combining these qual- ities. The works of Bernard Shaw are tempting to read, as unwholesome diet may be spiced to be as delightful as indi-

50 University of Texas Bulletin

gestible. But no one of his plays has relation to life as it is or has been. They are comedies aspiring to smartness — shams fired at shams. The play to be permanent must deal with per- manent things; with things that are common to all mankind; with the things that are a part of every human period; with things that all people and all peoples may understand. . If there is to be smartness, it must be incidental.

The plays of Shakespeare were not written for the cultured,

/nor for the learned, nor yet for the ignorant, or those lacking

/ in culture, but for all men and women who have the normal

\ I faculties of men and women and the normal interest in men

^ I and women. They reached the understanding and met the re-

I quirements of the groundlings, not more nor less than of the

I class called better. It need not be argued that those who came

to pay for the pleasure of the play understood the meaning

of the player's words. Attendance was not on compulsion, not

even the compulsion of public opinion. The play is subject

to the supreme test, the inexorable test of success. It must

amuse, interest, satisfy, or the play house must close. The

plays of Shakespeare have stood this test of his own time and

of the centuries since. For the test literary merit was essential,

and very much more.

For one thing, so great and so simple a result is beyond the power of any save a very human man. There are those who would invest Shakespeare with qualities no man may be given. There are those who would account him not more than an ignorant person who achieved a bad reputation and a mediocre competency. The latter are confined to the victims of the Bacon- ian theory, an amusing literary joke so cleverly conceived as to make ' ' convertites " among every class of readers, except those who read Shakespeajre and Bacon. Those inclined to apotheosize the very great dramatist have among them poets and philosophers who can not separate the words of Shakespeare from the lofty thought structures these words have inspired. There are those who would invest him with a developing mysti- cism, an ever changing philosophy ; one who from merry dal- liance with "such stuff as dreams are made on" passed to a dark and savage conception of life of which Caliban was the degraded exponent.

Memorial Volume to Shakespeare and Harvey 51

These ideas concerning Shakespeare, except when entirely with- out foundation, are based upon interpretation of language in his plays and poems; and must presuppose that his time was principally employed in carefully selecting words sufficiently enigmatic to require much time and study, but from which the very learned, if very persistent, might ultimately determine the profoundly mystic philosophy he had worked out during the very busy days of his very practical life.

In some of the sonnets there are expressions hardly to be explained save on the assumption of a personal reference, and in the plays there are doubtless frequent expressions of per- sonal opinions, yet to undertake to determine his philosophy of life from the words he puts into the mouths of his characters would be to invest him with all that is noble and majestic and all that is mean and degraded. For his plays chronicle all crime, detail all follies, expound all ignoble thought, analyze all worthy action, express all that is honorable, dignified and noble. Take him for what he was, and no one shall look upon his like again, but this does not warrant clothing him with the qualities be shaped into men to walk upon the stage. He did not for him- self exclaim:

"How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable, Seem to me all the uses of this world!"

If I should look for words of his own to describe him, these

upon occasion, I would take:

•

"But a merrier man, Within the limits of becoming mirth, I never spent an hour's talk withal; His eye begets occasion for his wit, For every object that the one doth catch The other, turns to a mirth-moving jest, Which his fair tongue, conceit's expositor, Delivers in such apt and gracious words That aged ears play truant at his tales And younger hearings are quite ravished, So sweet and voluble is his discourse."

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Yet, I would know it described only a phase of his many sided self. Be was not Hamlet, nor Brutus, nor Shylock, nor Falstaff. They are among the many creatures of his brain. Somewhat he gave of himself in their making; gave as the reader gives, but more; gave as the actor gives, but less.

Shakespeare is among the very greatest men of earth, with Caesar, Mahomet and Napoleon. But he was very human, as were they. And that part of his work which was greatest was in- cident to the very human living of his life. That he has become the most important literary character of history obscures, but does not change, the fact that that which brought him immor- tality was done in the ordinary course of laborious and exacting business. The noblest thoughts that have been expressed since men have given thought expression were shaped into 'the noblest words that have been used since words have been in use, to supply amusement for a price, that for the price might live their author and the lowly workers at a scarcely tolerated trade. These labors in his business removed at length the restrictions of a binding poverty, and something of recognition of his talents brought general association with the mighty of the land, but his connection with the stage and his work as a practical play- wright continued, and to the time of his death immortal lit- erature was produced at the demand of material prosperity.

It is not uninteresting to consider whether Shakespeare real- ized that in meeting the exactions of his business he was achiev- ing lasting literature. It may be he was not without some ap- preciation of the value and quality of his plays and yet without conception of the supremacy they would be accorded. Much of the strength of the language is born of a bold carelessness that could not have given much thought to the future. But there is not lacking evidence that he highly valued his poems. Possibly the plays, as part of his daily work, were unconsciously great, or greater than he knew, while the poems were a bid for reputation. With prosperity and improved social standing, probably came literary ambitions, seeking realization in poetry. Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece, and the sonnets rank high in English poetry, and entitle Shakespeare to stand with Chaucer, Milton, Spenser, and Tennyson. But if he had not,

Memorial Volume to Shakespeare and Harvey 53

in the course of business, written greater poetry than these am- bitious efforts, fame would not have placed him among the great who have been of earth and given names to epochs in its history.

"Not marble, nor the gilded monuments Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme"

expresses, I think, his own conception of the merits of his poems. And again:

"Your monument shall be my gentle verse, Which eyes not yet created shall o'er-read, And tongues to be your being shall rehearse, When all the breathers of this world are dead; You still shall live — such virtue hath my pen- Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men. ' '

Such virtue had his pen used in the ordinary course of busi- ness that these gentle verses have been saved from being im- mured and lost in the countless non-read volumes of the British poets. There is that in conscious, ordered, purposed poetry that doth depart from all the ordinary thoughts and acts of men. The metre, the rhyme, the dainty words expressing del- icate ideas or lofty feeling, have that of artificiality which rarely fits their daily doings. There are little bits of poetry that burn with passion; little bits, which sounding, soothe or stir; little bits that come into the universal life of men. But save as lyrics of human love or songs of Heavenly devotion, poetry is not an ordinary part of ordinary life; it is something for poets to write, something for potential poets to enjoy. In its more usual forms, it rarely deals effectively save with. the grandest or the most delicate of human actions. Many things men do neither very great nor very dainty but not lacking in virility and strong human interest. To these it is difficult to give ade- quate and satisfactory poetic expression, except in the dramatic form. Poetry as a form of expression for the drama, giving feeling and beauty to action, is its happiest use. And because of

54 University of Texas Bulletin

this use, and not because of his formal efforts at the art, Shakes- peare must be named the greatest poet.

But the life work of Shakespeare as Shakespeare looked upon it was not poetry as Shakespeare looked upon it. His business was acting, conducting playhouses, and writing plays. He was actively so engaged at the time when the modern business of furnishing amusement to the public was in its infancy. There is nothing to indicate that he achieved notable success as an acftor. The time indeed was not long past when it was difficult to distinguish between the actor and the vagrant, and greatness seems not to have been predicated of the player's art. But Shakespeare was not lacking in knowledge of the art. In a paragraph he has summed it up:

"Do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a temper- ance that may give it smoothness. 0 ! it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tat- ters, to very rags. ... Be not too tame, neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor; suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance that you o'er- step not the modesty of nature; for anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end is to hold the mirror up to nature."

This knowledge of the actor's art and his amply rewarded capacity as a theatrical manager are unimportant save as factors in his success as a playwright. It was a part of the business of this man of greatest intellect to make himself understood by those of every grade of intellect, of this greatest poet to secure appreciation from those without conscious knowledge or love of poetry. There were things to be done which he knew how to do — so well knew how to do, that nowhere in all his plays is there evidence of labored effort.

So erroneous is the sometime conception of the equipment re- quired that it has been argued that the plays ascribed to Shakes- peare must have been written by one of better education. This involves two errors : that these great plays could be the product of education; and that Shakespeare was lacking in education.

Memorial Volume to Shakespeare and Harvey 55

Foolish things are said of education. It is a satisfactory sub- stitute for many little things, many important little things. It can not take the place of a single essential thing. It is a skill- ful hand, a useful tool, a lubricant, a paint to cover defects. If education were greatness, or could breed it, Shakespeares would be plenty as blackberries. That which made immortal the plays of Shakespeare was genius and learning, wisdom, experience, necessity, labor. No education could have given the genius; it is from the Source of Power that put the suns in motion and keeps the stars in their courses. It was not with- out dependence on these lesser forces, these forces that are edu- cation; learning, that brought to his aid nature's legal code; wisdom, that lit up for him the obscure places of the human heart and intellect; experience, efficient guard against error; necessity, persistent prod to labor; labor, the curse with which God blessed mankind.

But Shakespeare did not lack even the inadequate education of the schools. A1 the Grammar School at Stratford was laid the foundation for all the learning to be had from books. If the diffused instruction of the schools of our time may be best measured in the sum total of valuable results, it is not the best for those who are potential scholars and thinkers. The teaching of Shakespeare's day was concentrated. From the standpoint of the erudite scholar of that day, Shakespeare had "little Latin and less Greek," but he had as much as the average university graduate of today. And he had enough for his needs. The ending of his short school career did not conclude his acquisi- tions from the books. With the advantage that a few only were available, he read and appropriated. And thus he acquired the necessary history, the essential poetry, the fundamental fiction.

While much has been said about his lack of education, there has been as much comment upon the astonishing scope of his learning. The one involves a conclusion not more accurate than the other. A comprehensive knowledge of the law is ascribed to him, and wonder is expressed at his learning in medicine, agriculture, mechanics, natural history — in nearly everything •Ise. As to the law, he may have known a great deal. There

56 University of Texas Bulletin

is nothing in his plays or poems to indicate it. He utilized, principally for puns, legal phrases and terms, as "fine," "re- covery," "fee," which must have been in very general use in his day. In one instance, in the grave-diggers scene in Hamlet, he evidences familiarity with a contemporaneous legal decision. This indicates nothing further than that with the limited literature then accessible those with whom he associated found more time than can now be commanded to laugh at the absurdities of the administration of the law, though it is per- haps now a much more fertile field for laughter. For the law solemnly reveres, tenderly preserves, and laboriously catalogues its absurdities. The Court had gravely considered and learn- edly argued whether a person suffered death before he com- mitted suicide or committed suicide before his death. Shakes- peare egotistically assumed that he could caricature the case. Most of the legal expressions used by Shakespeare are from the law of realty. He indulged in enough litigation to have learned them. The expense of the acquisition, explained, if it did not justify, the effort to make the knowledge useful by making it amusing.

His references to other sciences show the intelligent familiarity every intelligent man must have with the things going on around him and constituting the labors and studies of the intelligent men with whom he comes in contact. He had a sufficient knowl- edge of Latin, French and Spanish, Italian and Greek, Law an.d Agriculture, Astronomy, Physics, History and Mythology to serve the purposes of a playwright undertaking to serve a pub- lic that knew not nearly so much. He could doubtless have got along on less ; and he would doubtless have had the good sense not to have burdened his plays and his poems with pedantry if he had had the scholarship of Bacon or Selden.

Shakespeare's appropriation from the books by no means mea- sures the accretions to his knowledge. That which he acquired was not "lean and .wasteful learning"; that which came to him made the foundation of wisdom. His business was to purvey to all the public, and it was necessary that he know their needs. Or at least their wishes. He had the requisite versatility. No doubt your Shakespearean scholar could, by ample quotations,

Memorial Volume to Shakespeare and Harvey 57

prove him servile to the great; prove that always he would

"Crook the pregnant hinges of the knee Where thrift might follow fawning."

But so you could prove him anything. Undoubtedly he ca- tered also to the great, and by no means would have offended those of his patrons by a failure to render unto Caesar the things that Caesar thinks he ought to have. And thus also he made available for professional uses the manners and habits of thought affected or indulged by those of noble birth and high position. He flattered and pleased the great, and pleased not less the lowly who revered them and the ambitious who envied.

So also contributed to his wisdom the low associations and un- restrained conduct of his early days and the more conventional immoralities of his maturer years. His youthful blood ran riot- ous. He did that which was criminal, and that which was im- moral, and that which was foolish. For his crime of poaching he compensated the injured by conferring lasting fame through immortal doggerel. Tradition says he was a member of a drink- ing team that engaged in championship bouts with ambitious herds from neighboring villages. That he was guilty of graver indiscretions rests upon safer ground than tradition. That the rising spirit of Puritanism affected him little his writings and his deeds attest.

The recorded lives of men cover a very great period and the overlapping generations have accumulated and transmitted vast stores of statements, thoughts, facts, conjectures. But though man has been the most important and the most assiduous study of mankind, and though learned essayists and wise dramatists may cast up the general average of human conduct and motive, no man can most effectively teach save as he has seen and felt and done. No man can in his own proper self feel all the emo- tions men may feel — live all there is in all lives. But who lives intensely the little span, who lives freely the little span, who lives boldly the little span, is wise, though it may be he has not wisely lived. If he is brave enough and honest enough and

58 University of Texas Bulletin

not lacking in memory and the power of thought, he will have within him that worth while for his fellows to know. And if he has capacity for expression, measuring that to be told, he will be an ample pool of pleasure, from which a stream of wisdom flows.

There are, it may be, things abstractly right and things ab- stractly wrong. For good and evil are measured by what is wholesome or harmful to the human body and the things of the soul which timely abide with the body. But ordinarily ethical questions can not be determined without considering something more personal than abstractions, and every man is entitled to the alleviating defense that he should not be ex- pected to be markedly better than the period in which he lives. And whether he be better or worse than his time or ours, we are not forbidden to profit by the teachings of the wicked, nor should the sinner be denied the atonement of a universal service through giving a universal pleasure.

My thesis is that Shakespeare save in being a genius was not different from the ordinary run of men. I do not therefore defend him against charges of vice, immorality, folly. If Heaven has pardoned his sins, we should not hesitate to forgive his follies. For out \>f the bold waywardness of youth and the discreter deviations of advancing years came first-hand knowl- edge of yearnings, ambitions, temptations, weaknesses, emotions that are the mainspring of action. With all his power of imagi- nation, of assimilation, of quick perception, of universal appro- priation, he could not have been the greatest .of poets and dra- matists without these fundamental experiences, this personal knowledge of fundamental emotions, without this wisdom born of folly.

There is much poetry lacking life that nathless I love, — for its musical numbers, for its well-chosen words. Yet I know it factitious, its numbers made musical by slow and labored processes, by additions, eliminations, substitutions. There are in Shakespeare thngs hot from the heart, words not the pro- geny of words, but born of ecstacies or things deeply suffered. And always he speaks as one who knows.

By the standards ordinarily used to test human knowledge.

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he was neither ignorant nor erudite. He knew enough to amuse and instruct. And he knew how to amuse and instruct both the ignorant and the erudite. One of the present day not learned of books might consider, detached from the text, the unfamiliar words of Shakespeare, and assume that he had writ- ten alone for scholars. No such impression could arise from an unalarmed reading of the whole. Probably he used words that were not understood by all the playgoers of his day. It is not unusual for intelligent and even educated people of our time to be compelled to resort to the dictionary for the meaning of words used in public discourses and current literature. So it must have been then. And so it especially must have been in reading or hearing the words of one whose wealth of words was unapproachably marvelous. He used all the words of his day that were usable in literature, and more. He gave new mean- ings to old words, made new verbs of old nouns, ventured some- times to make new words. The thing to cause astonishment is not that he should have words unfamiliar to twentieth century readers, but that the number is not vastly greater.

So nearly is the language the language of today as to suggest that his plays are entitled to divide with the King James trans- lation of the Bible credit for fixing English speech. Many of the phrases and expressions have been adopted into the common language of the people, and many more are so freely used by the cultured that acknowledgment of source is unnecessary. Note the following from a single play :

"The time is out of joint." "Something is rotten in the State of Denmark." "The glass of fashion and the mould of form." " The primrose path of dalliance. " "When we have shuffled off this mortal coil." "A custom more honored in the breach than the observance."

Probably some of the graphic expressions which may be quoted from his plays, and which are now in common use are not of his own creation, but were discriminatingly adopted from the spoken language of his own day. Possibly he neither phrased, nor preserved, but merely used as the generations have used "eaten out of house and home," "dead as a door nail," "stiff and stark." Now and then are found words, as "holp" and

5— S

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"mighty" and "fetch" that have disappeared from current written language, and survive only in the rustic speech.

The erratic training of his boyhood, the untamed doings of his youth, his early venture into tardy matrimony, the hard- ships of his first years in London, his experiences as an actor, his induction into the social life of the metropolis, all these fitted him for his life's work and made it possible for his genius to attain immortal results. That which he essayed was so to por- tray all the phases of life as to make the portrayal interesting to all who live any of the phases of life. And he did not fail.

In the making of his plays he used the oft-repeated stories, the constantly recurring incidents of history, the primary trage- dies and comedies in life that are very new and very old to every generation. Concentrating all his gorgeous splendor of imagina- tion, all his facile power of words, he builded upon the old standard frame works of story and brought forth that of com- pelling majesty or exquisite beauty. Those who hear need not bear the burden of the unfamiliar, but may know a developing delight like the pleasure born of a recurring Strain of dainty melody. So rare his vision, he could see the obvious. From things plainly to be seen and seldom seen were shaped "wise saws and modern instances." So patent the thought, so apt the words, they seem the reader's own. And thus he is flattered, and flattered, pleased. Except in a few comedies where farcical situations were the occasion for riotous fun, the incidents por- trayed were such as easily and naturally arise. Save as the playwright to meet mechanical requirements and to aid and excite the imagination introduced the familiar ghosts and fairies of his day, the plays were free from psychological or other prob- lems and all manner of mystery or mysticism. At least if they were not absent, there was always an easy interpretation that excluded them ; and every play-goer that chose mental relaxation rather than mental exercise was without trouble in ignoring the subtler intellectual phases of Shakespeare's art. In every play there was a perfectly easily understood tale entirely interesting in itself, and so developed as to retain and increase the interest. He used no tricks. Evidently he saw no merit in a development that brought suspense and surprise. There is an increasing

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pleasure in watching the unfolding of a drama and contemplat- ing and forecasting the logical result that can be little compen- sated for by the momentary thrill of an unforeseen conclusion. Or, at all events, if this is not true of those who are mentally very alert, and whose pleasures come largely from a gratifying consideration of their mental agility, it is true of thje masses of mankind who see plays for simple amusement rather than intellectual exercise.

The humorous and amusing element was introduced in all but three or four of the plays. So it is in life, and so it should be when the mirror is held up to nature. Few tragedies escape their comic incidents. And if life be very sombre, all the mor« reason for sunshine and the relieving smile. Practically, too, this playwright, this very capable business man, realized that people better love to pay for the sweet experiences of pain when a little punctuated with a pleasing mirth. Besides, with all his good sense, good judgment, with all. his majesty of imagination, all his majesty of language, could he not have said of himself :

"This is a gift that I have simple, simple; a foolish extrava- gant spirit full of forms, figures, shapes, objects, ideas, appre- hensions, motives, revolutions; these are begot in the ventricle of the memory, nourished in the womb of pia mater, and de- livered upon the mellowing of occasion"? (Pre- Whitman, mak- ing sense the first reading.)

None knew better than Shakespeare that:

"A jest's prosperity lies in the ear Of him that hears it, never in the tongue . Of him that makes it."

Unhappy the man unable to awake to the pert and nimble spirit of mirth, whose nature precludes enjoyment of the jester's innocent efforts to season life, or whose culture bears a faculty »o critical that the quips and quirks, born to bring a smile and be forgot, lose power and their cunning in his presence. The most of Shakespeare's public, as the most of the public today, have pleasure from the labors of these "corruptors of words." A "wit peddler who retailed his wares," for his own practical

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purposes, and for the "world's pleasure and increase of laugh- ter/' he furnished all the different types of wit and humor which have since his day been essayed. Perhaps he found them in use and did nothing except produce acceptable specimens; perhaps they have always been in use — a part of the equipment for life.

Much of all wit and humor is malicious or malodorous. And so of Shakespeare's. H'e indulged in horseplay which passed for comedy and coarse allusions which went for wit. But also he had a wit that was concentrated wisdom. And most of all a wit that is finest of all, smile-provoking rather than laughter- compelling.

"This passion and the death of a dear friend would go near to make a man look sad. ' '

The wise and steel-tongued Portia comments:

"God made him, therefore let him pass for a man."

The delightful Portia says:

"I dote on his very absence."

And these among many : "I have a good eye, Uncle — I can see a church by daylight." "In the managing of quarrels you may say he is wise; for either he avoids them with good 'discretion, or undertakes them with most Christian-like fear."

He speaks of "voluble delay in telling"; and illustrates: "He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument."

"If ladies be but young and fair, They have the gift to know it. ' '

' ' A coward, a devout coward, religious in it. ' '

. Half the lines of As You Like It illustrate this delightful quality.

Shakespeare indulged constantly in puns. There is a dis- position in those lacking capacity to make them to speak of puns as the lowest form of wit. The criticism lacks discrimination. A pun may be very witty, or not very witty, or not witty at all. The puns of the latter class are in large majority; and if the observation were confined to those of Shakespeare, it would

Memorial Volume to Shakespeare and Harvey 63

still be true. I am not, however, sure they were used unwisely. Fun is very easily provoked when people are waiting for and demanding it. Mere iteration reiterated may produce laughter. Current slang has often only the merit of repeated repetition. Some puns are witty at their first use, and all of them humorous seasoned to a sufficient staleness.

If, however, in the building of plays for public use, Shakes- peare utilized these incidents of human nature, he realized that the gripping and enduring play must have more than wit, more than humor, more than beauty. While his business success was promoted by his humor, and while he has produced many gems of wit that are priceless, his lasting fame must depend prin- cipally upon the more substantial parts of the tragedies and histories.

In these he dealt with the fundamental passions, the passions which touch the lives of all men and women. Love and lust, hatred, ambition, avarice, revenge, remorse, — all these he painted with bold broad strokes in crude colors, never crudely. But not always he so painted, for there are dainty bits, delicate in detail, exquisite in color. These primary forces are portrayed in thoughts simple and direct, though ofttimes in glorious bursts t and rolls of words. Hamlet is his creation, Hamlet a new man to every man at every view of him. Yet Shakespeare rarely essayed the subtle and complex, rarely shaped a character not within 'the easy range of every understanding.

If he had written no plays except the Comedies, some of them would have survived; but they would have given fame to their author as a poet rather than as a playwright. A Midsummer Night's Dream is immortal because of the poet's power "to give to airy nothings a local habitation and a name"; because of his power

"To make a dulcet and a heavenly sound,"

"clear As a morning rose newly washed with dew. ' '

There is all this and much more in, the great tragedies which have brought him literary universality and immortality. Little

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flashes of genius are at many places to be found by those who "feed upon the dainties that are bred in a book." Byron has them, and Burns. Passages of Milton show genius or infinite pains. Then there are David and Dante and Job and Homer. And these do not complete the list of those whom Genius has pecked at. Shakespeare she "tapped on the shoulder"; nor sporadic nor exceptional were the manifestations. There are whole plays, as Hamlet and The Merchant of Venice, in which every sentence proclaims this servitor of the people the favorite.

No medium save the drama would have served. The pack of genius is a sufficient burden for genius. It cannot carry per- sonal ambitions, literary forms, conventional literary restrictions. In these plays, where the playwright made the men and women of his intellect, of his experience and knowledge, do and say the things that men and women do and say, the artificial limita- tions and barriers are ignored or broken down. Thought is unrestrained. The expression of thought is unrestricted. The playwright puts into the mouth of his creature freedom and recklessness of speech. There is no occasion for anything to be haltingly stated, weighted with exceptions, pruned. For the man of the mind recklessness is not dangerous.

The plays were written, moreover, to be played. If they had been written merely to be read, they would doubtless have had the artificiality, the wasteful and tiresome adherence to form that characterized Shakespeare's other poetry and most poetry. As plays, they have gracious, pleasing breaks, ellipses, elisions, words not shaped into formal sentences, rough efficient carriers of thought, crude thought breeders. There is life, action — all the powerful, all the erratic motion of life.

Shakespeare's practical knowledge of the actor's art doubtless furnished a training invaluable in the mechanism of his work, and enabled him within the limits of a page to fit and test all the parts crowded into its lines. Always, too, it enabled him to work with appreciation of the public's wishes, prejudices, and demands, and always with a knowledge of its limitations. These limitations did not so cabin, crib, and confine as to create em- barrassment, for Shakespeare realized that, outside the technical details of particular sciences, the man who understands the

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things he would understandingly express must rather fear his own poverty of appropriate words than mental lack in those who willingly listen.

If Shakespeare's knowledge of human nature and his knowl- edge of his public contributed greatly to the greatness of his- plays, they are responsible for some features which, if they cannot be kept out of life, can at least be advantageously eliminated from the stage. It is not to be expected of a dram- atist that he will disregard the conventions of his time, or fail to go as far as the conventions will permit. The Elizabethan period was not characterized by delicacy of speech. It recog- nized no reason why a spade should not be called a spade. There is no reason now. But there were reasons enough then, as now, why certain words should not have persistent and un- necessary public use. The drama and the book of our own day are not distinguished by delicacy of thought. There is not a thing so sacred, nor yet a thing so far from holy, that it can not be the subject of discussion in any character of company, at any time, in any place. But if we lack in delicacy of thought and modesty of conversation, there is a becoming daintiness; of words, a saving euphemistic linguistic hypocrisy.

Shakespeare's knowledge of what some of his patrons wanted and what all of them would stand resulted in a very great deal of coarseness and even an ample excess of obscenity. But the value of Shakespeare 's compendium of life incidents, life emotions, life's manners of doing would be greatly reduced if his audiences had been more modestly discriminating. It is quite possible that in many cases he could have developed the character intended without indulgence in boldness of obscenity, but those who have come into contact with many phases of life will excuse much to have all the aspiring Falstaffe of the memory done into one character lacking not at all in complete- ness. And always he was purveying to the public.

After all, the dramatist may not make men without giving them all the characteristics of men. Shakespeare peopled a little world. This little world of words was to be as the larger world of flesh and blood and deeds. He did not take a char- acteristic or an attribute, clothe it with adjectives, give it a.

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name, and try to have it pass for a man. He invested the peo- ple of his plays with the ordinary incidents and characteristics of mankind, and emphasized some one or more of them as nature does for most men. He made men men could understand. Each human being has an individual conception of human nature. These conceptions vary. Of a Shakespearean creation different men have widely different views. So they would of a man in the flesh. Created he men in the image of the men created in the image of God.

He tilted with history. And won. The Caesar of the play has superseded the Caesar of history. Perhaps he was more nearly the Caesar of fact. And so of Coriolanus, Richard III, Henry VIII, Brutus. The Macbeth of history is obscured by the mists of centuries; Shakespeare's Macbeth will not be forgot. Demosthenes was not so great an orator as Mark Antony. Ham- let is admitted among the intellectual of Earth, though alienists and psychologists raise question as to his complete sanity. Few names are so well known as Hamlet, Othello and Shylock. The gifted women of time do not rank with Portia, Miranda, Viola and Rosalind, and the rest of the brilliant group to whom Shakespeare has given, by words, being and beauty and intellect, chastity and all goodness and all things lovable in woman. Portia's masterly rescue of the Merchant of Venice is uncon- sciously used as an argument in favor of women entering the learned professions and the law. Highest achievement in the art of painting with words is the limning of Lady Macbeth. Delicately minute as a Velasquez, bold in action as a Detaille or a Messonier, a picture of the savage love, the unselfish am- bition, the calculating cruelty, the fearsome courage, the fierce tenderness that may be woman. Savagely ambitious for the man she loved, Lady Macbeth screwed his courage to the stick- ing-place, and compelled with ruthless words the double crime .of murder and ingratitude:

"I have given suck and know

How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me: I would, while it was smiling in my face, Have pluck 'd my nipple from his boneless gums And dash'd the brains out."

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When the deep damnation of the bloody deed strikes terror tq the partner of her crime, she takes the dagger from his shaking hand, and makes it perjured witness to another's guilt. When the ghost of Banquo comes unbidden to the feast, she prays the guests be gone, and with tender care and capable ministers to a mind diseased. Comes at last all this woman strength to woman weakness, to look upon the damned spot that will not out, to know that all the perfume of Arabia will not sweeten the little hand. But always, through the brooding thought of crime, through the bloody deed of crime, through the fearful punish- ment, always a woman!

Not alone has Shakespeare put in mighty words the majesty of his imaginings; he has nurtured the men and women of his brain that they need no help from masters of the mimic art to take their place among those who live and move and have their being. The master playwright has made them, and given them immortality to add somewhat to the lives of each of us in the little time we tread upon the bosom of the Earth.

RHYTHMIC ELEMENTS IN ENGLISH, WITH ILLUSTRA- TIONS FROM SHAKESPEARE

BY JAMES W. BRIGHT

Dr. Furnivall once expressed to me his conviction that any interpretation of the principles of English versification brought forward as having been unduly neglected in prosodic theory carries the weight of a strong presumption against it. He be- lieved the externalities of English versification to be for the most part indisputably simple; and as to whatever peculiarities may pertain to the established practice, these he thought had too long been competently studied to leave a margin for a reasonable suspicion that something of importance had escaped expert at- tention. In this judgment there is more than a moiety of truth. The- essential simplicity of the external rules of the art cannot be denied. The uninstructed man is found writing good verses, that is, verses that are accurately measured and pleasingly rhythmic. When a Southey exercises himself in an indulgent estimation of uneducated poets, he will, like the self-styled "Lord Keeper of the King's taste," have little or no occasion to urge the prime necessity of knowing one's Bysshe. Self- taught poets seldom commit irregularities in verse-stress and rhythm. Nor will children instinctively accept lines that are faulty in cadence. They will recite their "rimes and jingles" in conformity to a strictly rhythmic pulsation, until they become bewildered, / with advancing years, by the obtrusive and pe- dantic admonition to read poetry as nearly as possible as they would read prose. It is also true that of all the effects of stress and rhythm that may be comprehensively classed as pe- culiarities of English versification none can be declared to have escaped observation and comment. At this point Dr. Furnivall's conviction shades off into benevolent confidence in expert opin- ion. This would be satisfactory enough, if the disturbing fact could be ignored that expert opinion is at variance with itself, as is shown by the uninterrupted stream of articles, monographs, and books in which the principles of the art are variously ex- pounded.

[68]

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According to the foregoing statement, therefore, there is much in the art of English versification that is unmistakably simple, but also much, or at least something, that is presumably so com- plex, or special, or subtle as to beget diversity of doctrine and its inevitable accompaniment, endless controversy. In this mat- ter there is, however, no variation from the rule that controversy is usually ardent and irreconcilable in direct ratio to the dif- ference between the points from which the subject is approached. To the same degree differences in convictions are kept alive by neglect of the initial requirement in a discussion, that of clear definition of the matter to be considered, and close agreement as to the specific factors that are to be admitted into the problem. Moreover, not the least hindrance to a closer agreement among students of versification has been a very general assumption that what, for convenience, have just now been designated the pe- culiarities of the English code are strictly so peculiar to English that the subjective judgments of a reader responsive to artistic effects are more trustworthy than technical evidence that may be cited from the wider region of rhythmic art. It is, of course', not to be denied that this subjectivity of the reader is of the highest value, but it may be invalidated by preconceptions, es- pecially by an attitude of mind that does not admit the im- portance of viewing the principles or conventions of the art in the light of the historic processes of its development, codification, and transmission.

What then is simple in the making of an English verse ? The question is answered with sufficient completeness for the present purpose by pointing to the rhythmic character of a " regular line, ' ' a line in which all the verse-accents fall on primary word- accents of approximately equal weight. It is a common observa- tion that lines of this type do not (except for special effect) occur in extended and unbroken sequence. Usually some varia- tion of stress is employed to modify the monotonous beat on uniformly strong word-accents, and to secure thereby a pleas- ing variety in the melody of successive lines. A passage taken at random will illustrate the point :

70 University of Texas Bulletin

When remedies are past, the griefs are ended By seeing the worst, which late on hopes depended. To mourn a mischief that is past and gone Is the next way to draw new mischief on. What cannot be preserved when fortune takes, Patience her injury a mockery makes. The robb'd that smiles steals something from the thief; He robs himself that spends a bootless grief.

Othello I, iii, 202ff.

This is a harmonious passage. The melody of each line is like that of every other line, and yet there is no instance in which- two lines in strictness agree in having identically the same melody. The variations are slight but effective; and only the last line is, according to the preceding definition, absolutely ' ' regular. ' '

Taking the last line as an exact notation of the ''normal rhythm," and applying "routine scansion" to the other lines of the cited passage, a view is given of the means by which va- riation in line-melody has been produced. In the order of the lines, the last syllable of remedies receives a verse-stress; seeing represents a "resolved stress" (the two syllables are combined under the stress; the first couplet has also feminine rime) ; that is stressed; Is the next way represents perhaps a trochaic be- ginning -,'be is stressed; Patience her injury is either a trochaic beginning or (more probably) has a stress on the second syllable of Patience, and there is a stress on the final syllable of injury as contrasted with mockery, the last two syllables of which con- stitute a resolved thesis; in the seventh line, the preposition from is stressed.

Let it be noticed now that the lines thus subjected to routine or "normal" scansion exhibit no device of stress that is peculiar to Shakespeare's practice. They are rhythmically true to the principles of English versification from Chaucer to the present day. The faultless harmony and the pleasing diversity of mel- ody are just what the reader has always demanded and still demands of good poetry; and, if not unfortunately schooled into a fantastic notion of rhythm, the responsive reader must be believed to find artistic satisfaction in the scansion as described.

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But, if it be admitted, as it must be, that the cited passage is sufficiently representative of Shakespeare's versification and yet represents no aspect of the art (within the limjts here kept in mind) that distinguishes his practice from that of other English poets of whatever period, it becomes necessary at this point to give a view of the specific purpose of this discussion. In other words, if, in respect of externalities that determine mere scan- sion, Shakespeare's versification is indistinguishable from Eng- lish versification in general, it follows that a specifically Shake- spearian problem in this art must lie in details that are sub- ordinate to general principles.

Subordinate details of a poet's versification have in many instances been minutely studied. In the case of Shakespeare, his works as a whole and many plays taken separately have been scrutinized in this manner. A usual practice of editors of a single play is to find a place in an introduction or an appendix for an exhibition of the poet's mode of versifying in the par- ticular text, and additional references to the matter will be sup- plied in commentary or notes. This procedure is in itself good, for English poets em-ploy the language at different periods of its history, and the fashion of word-accent (and consequently of verse-stress) has changed from period to period.

<

Ye knowe eek, that in form of speech is chaunge With-inne a thousand yeer, and wordes tho That hadden prys, now wonder nyce and straunge Us thinketh hem; and yet they spake hem so.

It is also true that the works of some poets may with special profit be studied with reference to individual progress (or de- cline) in the art of versification; and viewed from this point Shakespeare's practice has been regarded as showing highly significant changes. But the specific purpose of this discussion is not to be concerned with any special characteristics of Shakespeare's art. It is merely to show, on the one hand. witH the help of a few representative illustrations that his ver- sification is normal in respect of all that pertains to the un- broken tradition in the use of the rhythmic elements of the language; on the other hand, attention will be directed chiefly

72 University of Texas Bulletin

to the underlying necessity of understanding the character of the more important of these rhythmic elements. The discus- sion may be interpreted as an appeal to the readers of the poet to set aside all indoctrinated hindrances to an unbiased read- ing of his lines in accordance with the notation given in what has been called the "normal line," and to fit themselves for the correct reading of all the poets by historic inquiry into the character of the native system of accentuation and emphasis.

Prosodists have been clever and industrious in devising hind- rances to a ready understanding of the rhythmic elements of the language, of the fundamental principles of English versification. Although these elements are easy of recognition, and these prin- ciples inherently simple and easily verified by the average reader, all has been not a little mystified by sophistications so as to persuade a large class of readers that it is hardly possible in the case of this art to reduce principles and conventionalities to a simple and systematic grammar.

A more or less close relationship unites many of the unwar- ranted tenets of prosodists, which just now have been described as hindrances in the way of correct progress in understanding the principles of English versification. Thus, when the rule is accepted to read poetry like prose, a wide and inviting margin for consequent theorizing is spread before the ingenious mind; and surprisingly fascinating questions arise to evoke replies that come to be valued for subtlety that is mistaken for sound- ness. If poetry is to be read like prose, let it be asked, why is it not written like prose? How can there be two methods of writing, but one only of reading? The questioning is artless, but the reply advances step by step in fineness of distinctions. It is replied that the difference in method of writing will show through the common method of reading; that the art of prose and that of verse will remain distinguishable. The interrela- tion of the two arts must now be defined, and the point is soon reached at which the rich suggestiveness of the subject gives it rank with those that, by common consent, will always keep •con- troversy alive.

To begin a series of brief comments on some aspects of this endless strife, attention may be directed to an article entitled

Memorial Volume to Shakespeare and Harvey 73

"The Rhythmic Relation of Prose and Verse (The Foru-m, May, 1909). The writer, Mj*. Brian Hooker, rests his contention in the following statement : ' * Tennyson once said in reply to those who objected to the complexity of his verse: 'If they would only read it naturally, like Prose, it would all come right.' : And Mr. Hooker concludes his article in full confidence that he has rightly understood the words of Tennyson. "It cannot be too strongly emphasized, ' ' he writes, ' ' that the whole science of Prosody rests upon Tennyson's principle that English verse is to be scanned precisely as it is naturally read to bring out the sense." This conviction is finally enforced by the concrete de- claration that ' ' The man who scans the opening line of Paradise Lost without stressing the word first will never learn any more (sic!) about verse. "

Mr. Hooker has, indeed, in his own way, shown how funda- mentally important it is to test the rule to read poetry like prose ; but has he understood Tennyson's reply? Would not the poet's quick perceptions have led him to discern in the singularity of an objection to "the complexity of his verse" readers that are for the most part superficially curious and perhaps rather pre- tentiously desirous to learn? With this class of objectors in mind, he could not have done otherwise than dismiss the sub- ject (whether graciously or not) with a class-room precept, which he believed could not do much harm. But whatever in- terpretation be read into Mr. Hooker's citation, it is to be re- membered that Mrs. Ritchie has reported how Tennyson himself read his lines:- "Reading is it? One can hardly describe it. It is a sort of mystical incantation, a chant in which every note rises and falls and reverberates again."1 Tennyson might have replied, 'sing the verse as it is written'; but that would have betrayed a lack of discernment of which he was incapable. He knew that many do not or can not sing well enough to suit his delicate cadences. As for Mr. Hooker's confident judgment with reference to the stress of the word first in the opening

i Annie Ritchie, Records of Tennyson, Ruskin, and Browning, 1893; quoted in An English Miscellany, presented to Dr. Furnivall in honour of his seventy-fifth birthday, Oxford, 1901, p. 27.

74 University of Texas Bulletin

line of Paradise Lost, that exposes a fault in singing that has come to be widely accepted as a virtue.

The problem in hand is clearly indicated. It is assumed that the rhythmic art of versification has a grammar of definite rules and principles, by which it is distinguished from the art of prose-writing. But it is also true that verse-form is not ex- clusively a mere externality of poetry. It is an all-important truth that rhythm is an effective "cause" of poetry, contributing to its elevating and transporting effects and to its power; that it is a help to inspiration and ' ' echoes and answers to fundamental factors in our emotional life. ' " When, therefore, the principles of verse-rhythm are handled capriciously, there must result a perversion of the essential characteristics of the supreme" art of poetry.3

Routine scansion is very generally understood to result in a monotony of cadence that cannot be reconciled with the plain demands of the aesthetic sense. So mechanical a method does not comport — this is the argument — with the simple assumption of a refined and subtle art. The poet indeed constantly keeps in mind the monotony of the normal line, but chiefly to control him in the making of artistically necessary variations from it. This is the theory that is advocated in opposition to routine scansion. Its acceptance assigns logical consistency to the stresses, for verse-stress becomes identical with the emphasis of prose: But is not this a mechanical avoidance of monotony ? To allow the feet throughout a line to change in rhythmic char- acter in free compliance with logical emphasis, as the reader may judge that emphasis, — for the poet is without a device to

2I take pleasure in thus finding an occasion to refer to an article on the question, "What, do we mean by poetry?" (The Unpopular Re- view, July-Sept., 1916.) The writer defends regularity of rhythm and strictness of verse-form with philosophic and artistic insight, and the title of the periodical itself contributes an inference that is not with- out a meaning.

»A caprice may, of course, become conventionalized, but that is another matter. The vers libre may seem to be far removed from the standard requirements of 'verse,' but it owes its tolerance and its best effects to a considerable degree to the retained device of line-arrange- ment, of the marked 'turning' at the line-end.

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indicate his own notion of the emphasis, — is not this an external and mechanical subterfuge ? And what of the principle of con- ventionalized compactness and restraint, which is supposed to be fundamental in the arts? Is the figure in gebundene Rede mis- applied ?

It is all a matter, let it be said, of aesthetic and pleasing effects, and surely puerile monotony condemns itself. But does routine scansion result inevitably in puerile monotony ? Is that the effect produced by reading the passage cited above according to the subjoined indication of the stresses? Does "conflict" in the Latin hexameter hold the cadence in subjection to an artless regularity in the temporal recurrence of the beats, and to an intolerable sameness in the melodic effects of the line? Now "conflict" implies that a stress is placed on a syllable that does not carry the chief word-accent but an accent subordinated to it — a secondary word-accent ; or the stress may be placed on a word or syllable that is usually unemphatic in prose. To these is to be added the still larger group of stresses on syllables with a secondary word-accent, employed without occasioning "conflict." To admit the artistic use of these devices of stress is to admit the argument in defense of routine scansion. The resultant modulations of line-melody then become analogous to the modulations of a musical composition, in the rendering of which there is no thought either of wilfully ignoring the reg- ularity of the beats (as required by the time-signature), or of giving them, in a mechanical way, uniform weight or prom- inence. No modern Aristoxenos has yet appeared to effect an undisputed recognition of this fundamental analogy (with its restricted implications) between the rhythms of poetry and the rhythms of music.

As in all serious inquiry, preconceived notions must be dis- missed or at least held in abeyance in an honest effort to test the validity of the method of scansion now to be more minutely described. This will be found to be somewhat difficult by read- ers accustomed to cherish an unreasoned conviction that because of their fine sensibilities their subjective judgments in matters of artistic response must be superior to conclusions reached by the dull and plodding processes — as they regard them — of the

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grammarian. Their defense, in the words of Chaucer, who of all the great poets does most surely not sustain it, is :

I can no more expounde in this matere; I lerne song, I can but smal grammere.

More than that, — the argument may run, — if a technical knowl- edge of the language is required to understand the principles of English verse-rhythm, how have the poets acquired mastery of the art? Aristotle answers the question. H'e is discussing the acquisition of virtue (Ethics, Bk. II), and assumes that some- one might say, in contradiction of his argument, "if men are doing the actions, they have the respective virtues already, just as men are grammarians or musicians when they "do the actions of either art." Be meets the objection by suggesting "that it is not so even in the case of the arts referred to ; because a man may produce something grammatical either by chance or by the suggestion of another; but then only will he be a grammarian when he not only produces something grammatical but does so grammar-wise, i. e., in virtue of the grammatical knowledge he himself possesses." This is pertinent to the present discussion. That the poets have been the most intense students of their fel- low craftsmen, — is not a large portion of literary history devoted to making this clear, to showing how much one has learned from another? As diligent and discriminating students of the works of predecessors, the poets have become finely responsive to all the effects of rhythm, and by imitation, suggestion, and persistent practice have acquired the art of versification in accordance with the finest perception of the rhythmic permissibilities of the lan- guage. This usual experience does not exclude a varying degree of attention to the rules and principles. of the elementary gram- mar of the art, but it gives no assurance necessarily of an inquiry into the remotest technicalities of the subject. The pertinent analogy may be repeated : Correct speech does not give assur- ance of a technical grammarian.

It should now be stated that the following description of ele- ments available for stress in English versification is submitted for consideration to two principal classes of students of prosody.

Memorial Volume to Shakespeare and Harvey 11

One of these classes has already been brought to mind. It con- sists of those who deny that routine scansion is the artistic method of reading poetry. The other class — and this not a small class — follows the method, but neglects to point out the inherent characteristics of the language underlying it and making it artis- tically acceptable to the ear.

What the unbiased reader must regard with least surprise an.l be most ready to accept as inevitable is the "conflict" with the primary word-accent when the verse-stress (ictus) strikes the second member of substantive compounds, such as daylight, mid- night, eye-glass, and thus consigns the first member to the thesis.

O weary night, O long and tedious night, Abate thy hours! Shine comforts from the east, That I may back to Athens by daylight, From these that my poor company detest:

M. N. D. Ill, ii, 431ff.

Nay, then, thou mock'st me. Thou shalt buy this dear, If ever I thy face by daylight see:

Id. Ill, ii, 26-27.

A treacherous army levied, one midnight

Thou call'dst me up at midnight to fetch dew

Tempest I, ii, 128, 228.

Ha' not you seen, Camillo, — But that's past doubt, you have, or your eye-glass Is thicker than a cuckold's horn, — or heard, — W. T. I, ii, 267ff.

The prevailing "regularity" of these lines co-ordinates the rhythmic correctness of variation from the usual word-accent with the agreement of word-stress and ictus. In other words, the poet has given the clearest indication, by the rhythm of the line- end, that there is no "inversion of the foot" to avoid placing, at discretion, a stress on the second syllable of the underscored compounds. Let the following lines also be scanned now:

Yon light is not day-light, I know it, I: It is some meteor that the sun exhales, To be to thee this night a torch-bearer,

R. and J. Ill, v, 12ff.

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We have not spoke as yet of torch-bearers I am provided of a torch-bearer

Fair Jessica shall be my torch-bearer

M. of V. II, iv, 5, 24, 40.

Here the stress just proved by the line-end is employed within the line; and by the same evidence it is shown that a compound of the type represented by torch-bearer may correctly be stressed on the last syllable (-er). The added result of what has thus been observed is that each of the three syllables of a compound word like torch-bearer is available for the rhythmic stress, and, conversely, each of these syllables is available for the thesis of a rhythmic foot. The prosodist must now reckon with a gram- matical principle of fundamental importance. The syllables of the language are accented according to inherent and historically perpetuated laws and conventionalities. Taken separately, words have a grammatical word-accent; in connected discourse, sen- tence-emphasis establishes degrees of prominence and of suppres- sion of this accent of the independent word ; and in versification both word-accent and sentence-emphasis are controlled by the requirements of artistic rhythm.

Word-accent and its function in verse-rhythm direct attention to aspects of the inherent character of the language that should reward study with intellectual and aesthetic profit and pleasure. Dr. Johnson confirms this statement by the full import of the lament that "the want of certain rules for the pronunciation of former ages, has made us wholly ignorant of the metrical art of our ancient poets" (The Plan of a Dictionary of tlie English Language, 1747) ; and by his confessed inability to discover an "antecedent reason for difference of accent in the two words dolorous and sonorous," as confirmed by Milton's verse-stress, dolorous sonorous. The great lexicographer labored to give due consideration to all accessible knowledge relating to facts and principles of the language, but he was at the mercy of an un- developed state of philological science. To-day "certain rules for the pronunciation of former ages" are well understood, and the historic method of investigation by which they have been dis- covered has effected a quickened sense for close and unbroken sequence in linguistic phenomena ; indeed, it has so shortened dis-

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tances in time as to stamp the designation "former ages" with a mark of peculiar inappropriateness in this connection. More- over, linguistic science has exalted the importance of accentua- tion as a principal feature in that peculiar character of a lan- guage by which it maintains itself through successive genera- tions. To say nothing of the results in comparative grammar attained by more exact attention to the laws and effects of ac- centuation, it has become clear that the study of an individual language must be based on the recognition of a system or code of accentuation that has been developed as one of its main char- acteristics. Can anything, therefore, be more obviously true as an initial tenet than this, that versification in a language is in- timately bound up with the special system of accentuation of that language ? And if a special prosody is founded on a special sys- tem of accentuation, does it not behoove the prosodist to reckon first of all with that system? This insistence on the obvious must be laid to the charge of those prosodists who, in their treat- ment of accentual versification, afford no evidence of an ade- quate understanding of that chapter of grammar from which the art derives its specific designation.

This is not an occasion for a detailed report of the laws and principles of English accentuation ; and nothing more shall be attempted than an indication of some of the simple facts of Eng- lish grammar that are at the same time of first importance in a consideration of the basis of the conventionalities established in the rhythmic use of the language. What shall be added in this way is, therefore, merely to enforce the appeal to the student to withhold no degree of earnest attention from all the historic phe- nomena of English accentuation observable in both prose and verse.

English accentuation (which is Germanic in character) makes prominent in utterance the radical or most significant syllable of a word, which, in uncompounded words is the first syllable. This law of accenting the first syllable underlies the accentua- tion of a substantive compound. The first member receives the primary accent, and the second member with equal regularity receives a lessened degree of stress, which is called the secondary accent. The first member of a verbal compound is, however, too

80 University of Texas Bulletin

subordinate in meaning to receive the primary accent, to which its position in the word would otherwise entitle it. The primary ac- cent, therefore, remains on the radical syllable of the simple verb and the prefix is unaccented, or at most may be accorded a sec- ondary accent. But, if the second member of a substantive com- pound is thus entitled, by the inherent constitution of the lan- guage, to a secondary accent, this right is not cancelled by the wearing down of this second member to a derivative syllable or formative element, from which it may be easy or difficult (or altogether impossible) to conjecture its original form. Thus, when god-like becomes godly, the secondary word-accent is not relinquished. What is true of the accentuation of this clearly understood formative syllable -ly is true of the entire list of for- mative and derivative syllables with which it must be classified. The Germanic principle of accenting syllables in accordance with their relative weight in meaning is exemplified in this un- broken tradition of secondary word-accents.

How does the grammarian come to be so certain of this sec- ondary word-accent ? It is incontestably proved by the art of ver- sification in the earliest period of English and confirmed by the rhythm of all subsequent English poetry. Anglo-Saxon poetry is composed in conformity to the demands of a highly developed art. It is notable for exacting precision of technique, conjoined with vigor of thought and a matured refinement of taste. Skill- ful craftsmanship is required in the strict observance of re- straints and of a code of conventionalities, which contribute to the holding of a poetic composition to the elevation of its proper plane.. In this form of versification the rhythmic elements of the language are so clearly exhibited as to remove all doubt from in- ferences to be drawn respecting word-accent and its relations to rhythmic stress. The early Germanic form of the art has, of course, been superseded by another, an imported prosody ; but the native accentuation of the language has remained unim- paired; the inherited rhythmic elements have been subjected to the demands of the new versification (which has now been culti- vated for centuries as the almost exclusive form), but this has not rendered them obscure to the instinctive perception of the vernacular reader. When, therefore, the poet puts a verse-stress on the second syllable of day-light and on the last syllable off torch-bearer, he makes legitimate use of the rhythmic value of

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secondary word-accents, and is in accord with the practice of poets from Caedmon to Tennyson.

Let the reader now, if he will, turn investigator and bring to- gether what he recognizes as derivative syllables; and then let him test his unbiased response to a slight accent on these sylla- bles— slight but sufficient to distinguish these syllables from those that receive the primary word-accent and from those that are "unaccented." He will find that the secondary stress gives a satisfactory report of the function of these syllables, and con- tributes, therefore, to a truer utterance of the full import of the complete words. The test may be begun with -er, which will bring torch-bearer into association with a large class of old arjd new nouns of agency. This suffix is held in the mind as a sym- bol of agency, and its function in these words is perceived to be most like that of a familiar word used as the second member of a substantive compound; and a new word is formed as freely and as naturally in the one class as in the other. A process allied to this conscious making of new words, with the same im- plications of a graduated word-accent, is the comparison of the adjective by adding -er and -est. The nouns of rela- tionship, father, mother, brother, sister, constitute another cate- gory of formations in the pronunciation of which a secondary word-accent, under special exigencies,4 is altogether acceptable to the native ear. An inevitable consequence of this range of function of the formative and derivative syllable -er (Germanic, but variously derived) is, finally, observable in a margin of an

*What is meant by special exigency in prose-utterance, which is, in a way, comparable to the sustained exigency of poetic elevation, is Illustrated in Publications of the Mod. Lang. Assn. of America XIV, 363 ff. (This is a welcome occasion to ask the reader to cancel the word "not" at p. 363, 1. 11 from below, and read: "Such exigencies do arise in prose.") Another illustration may be added here, for what is true of -ness is equally true of -er. Ann Apperthwaite's treatment of "poor David Beasley" is described. "How did she treat him?" "Threw him over out of a clear sky one night, that's all. Just sent him home and broke his heart; that is, it would have been broken if he'd had any kind of disposition except the one the Lord blessed him with — just all optimism and cheerfulness and make-the-best-of-it-ness!" — Booth Tarkington, Beaslcy's Christmas Party. Ch. III.

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analogous use of the secondary word-accent in words like after, ever, never, further, either, neither, hither, thither, and even summer, winter, leather, silver, water, etc.

In a ceremonious utterance of prose — as formal as the read- ing of a church-service5 — the syllables bearing a secondary word-accent are made more than usually prominent, and the effect is twofold : the mind is quickened in the perception of the sense-value of these syllables, and the ear is gratified by a gain in rhythmic movement. The second of these effects is surely not the weaker. It is gratifying because- it is felt to be appro- priate to the solemnity of the thought and to the exaltation of the emotions. This common experience gives an apprehension of the highest function of verse-rhythm. It is a short step from the emotional reading of formal prose to the artistic (which is also emotional) reading of poetry. In both methods the rhythmic elements of the language, many of which are habitu- ally suppressed in unelevated utterance, are employed to attain and to sustain definitely desired effects. The average reader is, therefore, sufficiently prepared to verify the generalization that observance, at discretion, of secondary word-accents con- tributes to the freer rhythm of stately prose and to the artis- tically controlled rhythm of poetry. The second term of this generalization, which embraces the particular point at issue, may be restated in the formula, secondary word-accent is avail- able for verse-stress (ictus).

To verify the formula just arrived at, the investigating reader might now proceed with the several categories of sec- ondary word-accent already particularized. However, he had probably better take a wider view and add to his equipment

formal reading in the church has affected the delivery of the sermon. In both the secondary word-accents receive a degree of atten- tion that should be suggestive to the prosodist. The church, there- fore, rather than the stage, contributes to keep alive a sense for the meaning of syllables that are commonly slighted in distinctness of utterance. Very recently I heard a sermon in which was earnestly proclaimed the difference between "divine wisdom" and "human wise- ness.''

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an approximately complete list of these categories. Detailed assistance in this task, which is not a difficult one, need not be given here, if he will consent to be referred to Bright and Miller's Elements of English Versification (Ginn & Co.). And it may add something to his equipment to disengage his mind from connotations of the terms "routine" and "regular" as ap- plied to scansion; "routine" is especially suggestive of mechani- cal artlessness, and "regular" has come to be regarded as its ill- favored variant or substitute. Starting afresh with no hindrance in a technical term can, perhaps, be made possible by defining scansion as the reading of a verse according to its rhythm-sig- nature. The term is suggested by the musician's "time-signa- ture," which he sets to govern the reading of his compositions. The list of formative and derivative syllables (including a large number of prefixes) has been greatly increased by words of Latin and French origin, but these, for the most part, are scanned according to the rhythm-signature by prosodists in gen- eral, including those most insistent in their denial of the stress- value of the secondary word-accents of many native words. In the rhythmic use of these foreign words — especially of the poly- syllabic forms — there is a freedom in the distribution of the stresses that demonstrates in itself the availability of a second- ary word-accent for ictus. A line like

This supernatural soliciting

Macbeth I, iii, 130.

unites the native -ing with foreign elements, and clearly disal- lows a difference of interpretation with reference to the rhyth- mic use of secondary word-accents. Of course, the poet requires a stress on the alternate syllables and that — it is said — ex- plains the whole matter. This again illustrates the handling of artistic phenomena by some who protest most warmly against a "mechanical" method. 'The interlacing of a series of grada- tions in weight of meaning or emphasis with a series of grada- tions in stress, both subject to artistically imposed variations, results in the melody of the line; and this melody is, therefore, neither monotonous, nor identically the same in successive lines, except by unusual and deliberate design.

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The .matter is comprehensively stated by saying that the poet may lighten the heavy tread of a word or syllable that in prose would be more emphatic ; and, conversely, that he may raise to some degree of stress-prominence a word or syllable that in prose wo aid be Less prominent. The movement of the line is thereby made less pedestrian, more ''winged."

The house-keeper, the hunter, every one

And let us not be dainty of leave-taking

Macbeth III, i, 96; II, iii, 150.

Let the first of these lines be read in a sustained monotone (reading it as a succession of heavy spondees will not lead far astray), and it will be perceived that the stress on -er is an important element in the melody, which would indeed be hope- lessly damaged by displacement of this stress in conformity to any notion of the prose-accentuation of house-keeper. The reader should also respond to the notional stress thus secured (the notion of responsible 'agency' dominates the line and its context), which compensates for the weak rhythmic position of the repeated element -er (in hunter). The rhetoric of poetry abounds in subtleties of thought that are easily obscured when poetry is read like prose. To cite another example in this con- nection, how finely (and with what inner grammatical pro- priety) the stressed -er of the comparative answers back to the measuring demonstrative the (which, in its turn, is raised to a higher level as thesis), in these lines,

Give colour to my pale cheek with thy blood, That we the horrider may seem to those Which chance to find us

Cymbeline IV, ii, 330ff.

The second of the lines cited from Macbeth has a melody that is harmonious with that of the first but not identical with it. The stress on a proposition followed by a 'conflict' is the most distinctive feature of this melody. But the critical wren, "The most diminutive of birds, will fight," protesting that a preposition is accentually a proclitic. However,

Things at the worst will cease, or else climb upward.

Macbeth IV, il, 24.

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Dismissing a suspicion of a covert application of this line, let the phrase at tJie ivorst be freely tried colloquially, and the possibility of an accented preposition will surely be verified. A problem is now encountered that might be pursued in several directions, but nothing more shall be attempted here than a partial indication of the poet's use of the notional value of prepositions, conjunctions, adverbs, copulative and '.auxiliary verbs, articles, and pronouns, — words to which normal stress is often theoretically denied.

The following lines added to those already cited will keep the discussion concrete. Lines thus taken at random prove that an English verse is constructed not only according to a rhythm-signa- ture, but also according to a rhetoric of poetry ; and that this is a rhetoric of the finest distinctions in the notional function of the elements of the language, which are, by reason of the notional basis of the native system of accentuation, capable of being re- ported to the ear by some degree or sort of stress. Herein lies an important requirement of good poetry: The poet must keep his composition in a movement that holds it steadily and agree- ably above the level of prose. Obviously he must exercise a re- fined sense for the notional and rhythmic value of each sylla- ble admitted into a line. The artistic compactness of poetic expression alone must fatally expose the slightest fault or infe- licity in the selection of a word or syllable.

I draw the sword myself: take it. and hit The innocent mansion of my love, my heart; Fear not: 'tis empty of all things but grief: Thy master is not there, who wds indeed The riches of it: do his bidding; strike, Thou mayst be valiant in a better cause

As qudrrelous (is the weasel; nay, you must Forget that rarest treasure 6f your cheek

Cymbeline III, iv, 69ff; 161f.

There is no malice in this burning coal;

The breath of heaven has blown his spirit out

And strew'd repentant ashes on his head

And oftentimes excusing 6f a fault

Doth make the fault the worse by the excuse

that close aspect of his Does show the mood of d much troubled breast

K. J. IV, i, 109ff; ii, 30f; 72f.

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Thy father wds the Duke of Milan dnd A prince of power

Tempest I, ii, 54f.

Who needs must know of her departure dnd Dost seem so ignorant, we'll enforce it from thee

Wihat can from Italy annoy us: but We grieve at chances here

Cymbeline IV, iii, lOf; 34f.

To throw a perfume on the violet,

To smooth the ice, or add another hue

Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light

To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish,

Is wasteful dnd ridiculous excess

K. J. IV, ii, 12ff.

O God, thy arm was here; And not to us but t6 thy arm alone Ascribe we all!

K. H. V, IV, viii, lllff.

What is to be learned by observing the ryhthmic construc- tion of the lines now before the reader is unmistakably clear, and it is not denied that

The argument all bare is of more worth Than when it hath my added praise beside!

Sonnet GUI.

The observer shall be asked, however, to alloV a brief con- tinuance in the method of directing his attention to elementary facts and principles. Do not these lines then give an insight into the means, legitimated by the rhetoric of poetry, by which the poet secures variety of melodic movement? And do not these lines contribute to an insight into the principles of that rhetoric? The words marked for special attention are words that express the relations of the thought, the direction of its applications, its connections (coordinate, adversative, etc.), and its turnings on selected details (as in the use of articles and pro- nouns). These stresses and those of "conflict" and other uses of secondary word-accents as ictus constitute approved devices

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for sustaining poetic elevation of thought and artistic move- ment of expression; they contribute also to delicacy and pre- cision in the articulation of the thought: and they enable the poet to hold together more compactly the parts of emotional and figurative expressions.6 It follows that the principles ob- served in composing it are not to be nullified in the reading of poetry. In music the corresponding inference is not disputed; even a partial disregard of it is recognized as due to individual capriee.

Although the argument of this communication has been pre- sented in the most elementary manner, its complete significance must be apparent enough to the unbiased reader. But there has been recent advocacy of a theory of stresses by which the argument advanced here is so plainly though indirectly con- firmed that it should now be recalled, however briefly.7 It is contended that the light stresses are not marked off audibly but;

«These points should be discussed in an analysis of style in poetry; but only this shall be added, that "The essence of style," as described by Mr. Galsworthy (Foreword to W. H. Hudson's Green Mansions), will be made more clearly perceptible by reading poetry in such a manner as to hold each syllable to its notional and rhythmic function. These are Mr. Galsworthy's words, which are suggestively applicable to style in poetry: "To use words so true and simple, that they oppose no obstacle to the flow of thought and feeling from mind to mind, and yet by juxtaposition of word-sounds set up in the re'cipient continuing emotion or gratification."

?See T. S. Oman, "'Inverted Feet' in Verse" (The Academy, Oct. 2 and 10, 1908), and R. M. Alden, "The Mental Side of Metrical Form" (The Mod. Lang. Review IX, 297-308). Mr. Oman cites these lines; from Pope:

Or garden, tempting with forbidden fruit. And catch the manners living as they rise.

His comment runs: "No one would say that the words italicised in these lines carry a full stress. To call them 'metrically accented' is to juggle with terms. Does or does not this metrical . accent imply any corresponding speech-stress? Clearly it does not; only a child sing- songing its lines would lay stress on these words. Speech-stress and metrical accent are two different things, not to be confounded. Half the mistakes of prosodic theory come from supposing that a mental beat must needs receive physical expression. . . . rhythm can be fol-

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only mentally. The merit of this theory is that it maintains the signature-place of the stresses ; its defect consists in a psycholog- ical refinement (to the vanishing point of audible rhythm) of signature-scansion that contradicts the inherent character of English accentuation and denies the plain evidence of an un- broken tradition, through centuries, in the artistic use of the rhythmic elements of the language.

To suggest a method of study has been the primary aim in this discussion, and it must be closed with a mere enumeration of additional topics of importance in a complete exposition of the artistic effects of scansion according to rhythm-signature/ The stress of inflectional and conjugational endings; the ad- mission of extra syllables (the resolution of arsis and of the- sis) ; the conventional "trochaic beginning," and the "direct attack"; the use of pauses; the time-relations ("quantity") of the elements of a rhythmic pattern, and its tempo or rate of movement, — regrettably, it is necessary to refrain from even the briefest evaluation of these attractive divisions of the subject.

Overtopping all other considerations, the hope is entertained that nothing has been offered here to deserve the disapproba- tion of the spirit of Shakespeare, because this is

'Dulling my lines and doing me disgrace by distractingly directing the mind of my readers

To new-found methods and to compounds strange.'

The more positive side of the sustained hope has been to pro- mote true and complete response to the great master's art — the response he eould not have expected ever to become either dull or fantastic.

lowed even though an occasional beat be not emphasized by syllable- stress."

Professor Alden is incapable of such inexactness in the use of technical terms, and he gives assistance in the perception of the varied and subtle character of the disputed stresses. Further comment o» this theory must, however, be withheld for another occasion.

THE QUARREL OF BENEDICK AND BEATRICE BY CHARLES READ BASKERVILL

On the average modern reader the quarrel of Benedick and Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, II, 1, makes no exception- al impression. It seems little more than a renewed attack in the war of wits between the two which the reader has been following up to this point. Beatrice is accused of borrowing her jests from A Hundred Merry Tales, and retaliates by comparing Benedick's wit to that of the "prince's jester." Why is Benedick, who takes Beatrice's seemingly more bitter taunts in good part, roused to •uch wrath at this? The blow to his mere vanity as a wit does not seem to explain sufficiently the effect on him, -nor does the view that the sparring of the two here simply brings to a climax the rising anger of Benedick. Such an interpretation is not true to the spirit of the play or to the emphasis laid on the passage in the development of Shakespeare 's plot. For it is immediately af- ter this — after Benedick in recounting the quarrel to Don Pedro has declared that he would not marry Beatrice ' ' though she were endowed with all that Adam had left him before he transgressed ' ' — that Don Pedro proposes what is characterized as "one of Her- cules' labours," to make the two antagonists fall in love with each other. The truth is that the quarrel has lost for modern readers the force of its meaning; its richness in suggestion for Renaissance readers and hearers has faded out. Beatrice's taunt is not a last straw for the already nettled Benedick, but a most outrageous insult.

In order to understand Benedick's feeling that Beatrice has been guilty of an unpardonable insult, one must understand the exceptional value set by the courtly classes of the Renaissance upon a wit that represented humanistic culture, and the absolute condemnation of certain types of jesting. At an early period in the Renaissance, humanists began to formulate a doctrine of true wit, or wit that belonged to the ideals of courtesy and conse- quently differentiated the man of true virtue or distinction from

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the vulgar.1 Schoolboys as well as courtiers were trained in the types of jests appropriate to the man of culture.2 Even rhetorics like Wilson 's Arte of Rhetorique dealt with the matter as a phase of Renaissance education. Wilson classified types of jesting that were to be avoided, and distinguished ' * betwixt a common iester, and a pleasant wiseman."3 But to true or cultured wit the Re- naissance gave the highest approval. Some early humanists like Sir Thomas More were esteemed as highly for their wit as for any other quality. The stress laid on wit by the courtesy books has led some students to find the source of Benedick and Beatrice in the greatest of the courtesy books, 11 Cortegiano, as translated by Sir Thomas Hoby.4 It is more probable, however, that Shake- speare was merely sharing the Renaissance passion for wit, and in portraying his witty characters like Biron and Rosaline, and Ben- edick and Beatrice reflected simply the witty conversation af- fected by English gallants and ladies at Elizabeth's court and among those who imitated the customs of the court. Lyly's Euphues and his plays, as well as other novels and plays of the last quarter of the sixteenth century, illustrate the vogue.

In Shakespeare 's early comedies there is a great elaboration of the various types of wit current in the age, and his characters, along with those of his contemporaries in general, observe with a fair degree of consistency the laws of decorum in the use of types of wit and humorous language. We have the raillery and mockery of the courtly class; the plays upon words, antithetical retorts and logical fence; the hyperbole, the conceits, the far- fetched similes and metaphors of its love poetry. Nearest to wit of the courtly type and often not easily to be distinguished from it, is the wit of the page, with his perverse logic, his impudent mockery, and his shrewd waggishness. Dromio of Syracuse and Speed illustrate the type best in Shakespeare, though they have

iCf. Burckhardt, Renaissance in Italy, translated by Middlemore, 1914, pp. 154 ff.

2Cf. Erasmus, Colloquies, "The Religious Treat" and "The Fabulous Feast"; and Castiglione. II Oortegiano, translated by Hoby, pp. 152 ff.

•Mair's edition, pp. 137-139.

*Cf. Sir Walter Raleigh's introduction to the edition of The Cour- tier in the Tudor Translations, and Miss M. A. Scott in Modern Lang. Publications, XVI (1901), pp. 489-502.

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a stronger tinge of the clown than Lyly's pages. More clownish still is the type of wit seen in such servants as Dromio of Ephe- RUS and Launce, with their soliloquies and droll narratives in- terspersed with reports of conversations — characters akin in wit to the vices of the older drama. But to the Elizabethan the most degraded of all forms of wit arising from conscious effort was that of the professional fool, or jester, who in his worst form was known as the ale-house jester. Theoretically the wit of any of these less favored classes would have been disgraceful in a courtly person, marking him as an inferior in culture and social stand- ing.5

In Elizabeth's court, where gallants and ladies constantly paraded their wit and even pages revealed the same passion, the professional jester and the pure simpleton do not seem to have found an important place. Their function had not altogether died out, however. Some fools were retained in noblemen's houses,6 and the old jest books, whose tales were often grouped around the names of jesters of Henry VIII 's court, were exceed- ingly popular among the common people. Some of these stories set forth the jests of people of rank, but all were condemned by the courtly and cultivated at the end of the sixteenth century. The accusation that her jests were stolen from A Hundred Merry

<sin Love's Labours Lost, the play that best illustrates courtly wit before Much Ado, comparison of the types is invited in the page Moth and even in Costard, who is not always the pure clown. In Much Ado Shakespeare sets over against courtly wit the humor of the pure clown, and attains one of his most striking contrasts. In opposition to the wit of conscious effort is the unconscious blundering of the clown with his stupidity in the pretentious use of words and ideas. The most conventionally stupid clown was the constable. In him, as in his wits, Shakespeare was following the convention of the age. The constable appeared in plays like Endimion and Leir before the day of Dogberry and Verges. The "Stage-keeper" in the Induction of Jonson's Bnrtholo* meiv Fair, picturing Tarleton as acting at the Fair in a role appro- priate to him, with another actor playing the rogue, declares that at the end you would have seen "a substantial watch to have stolen in upon them, and taken them away, with mistaking words, as the fashion is in the stage-practice."

6Cf. Armins' Nest of Ninnies for an account of a number of such fools. Beatrice in I, 1, refers to her uncle's fool.

7— S1

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Tales was in itself an insult that Beatrice was not slow to resent. She repaid the insult with overflowing measure, however, when she not only called Benedick "a very dull fool" but added a turn that gave mortal offence. She described him unmistakably as the ale-house jester.

"Beatrice — Why, he is the prince's jester: a very dull fool: only his gift is in devising impossible slanders: none but liber- tines delight in him; and the commendation is not in his wit, but in his villany ; for he both pleases men and angers them, and then they laugh at him and beat him. . . * . .

Benedick — When I know the gentleman, I'll tell him what you say.

Beatrice — Do, do: he'll but break a comparison or two on me; which, peradventure not marked or not laughed at, strikes him into melancholy; and then there's a partridge wing saved, for the fool will eat no supper that night. ' '

The ale-house jester had been condemned earlier in the six- teenth century, as by Wilson in his Art e of Rhetorique, but by the end of the century he was one type of professional jester that was almost universally condemned and in the most indignant terms, particularly as one who misled young gentlemen, nobles, and princes. His jests were not mere second-hand tales and more or less stupid retorts ; they were scurrilous, degraded, and vicious — "villany," as Beatrice declares. His attraction lay in the sharp- ness of his raillery and abuse, and his was a studied art to amuse young men to their own damage and to the profit of this new type of professional parasite. The most exhaustive picture of him in his most detestable phase is given by Jonson in Carlo Buffone of Every Man Out of His Humour. Carlo represents in his main traits the buffoon as 'condemned by Aristotle and the ale-house jester as condemned by Wilson and other human- ists. Jonson 's character apparently reflects, also, the most famous of the actual jesters representing the type at the end of the sixteenth century, Charles Chester. All the vices ascribed to Benedick as the "prince's jester" are scathingly rebuked in the figure of Carlo. Though less complete than Jonson 's, there are also a number of illustrations of the type before Shakespeare. Nashe's picture of Chester in Pierce Pennilesse illustrates all the

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points of Beatrice's sketch, the slanders of the jester, the prince's laughing at his scurrility and yet beating him in anger, the "breaking of a comparison" as a feature of his art. Nashe con- demns not only the jester but the keeper as well:

"It is a disparagement to those that haue any true sparke of Gentilitie, to be noted of the whole world so to delight in de- tracting, that they should kee-pe a venemous toothd Cur, and feed him with the crums that fall from their table, to do noth- ing but bite euery one by the shins that passe by. If they will needes be merry, let them haue a foole and not a knaue to dis- port them, and seeke some other to bestow their almes on, than such an impudent begger."7

Shakespeare himself had used the type before Much Ado. When in Henry IV* he represented the youth of Henry V, who according to old stories was given to wild company, he changed the picture of a young prince who was merely an associate of robbers .in The Famous Victories of Henry V into that of a young prince misled by an ale-house jester. The age readily under- stood such an association, for men were seeing it and condemn- ing it, as I have pointed out. Shakespeare does not, however, make the prince who developed into his ideal king the patron of a mere scurrilous, railing parasite. The jester who exercises his wit to procure meals from Prince Hal is made the most subtle and genial humorist of all literature. But the essential basis of the sketch must not be forgotten. Falstaff gets his meals by his jest- ing; his jesting is frequently raillery and abuse; and his abuse of the Prince is rank enough to justify Hal, if he had been so dis- posed in beating him as other ale-house parasite-s are represented as being beaten when they went too- far with their patrons. Fur- ther, a large amount of Falstaff 's wit is in the nature of the "ab- surd comparisons" which are stressed so fully by Nashe and Jonson, and are imputed to Benedick by Beatrice.

It is worth noting that in spite of the sharp distinctions drawn between true wit and unworthy railing and in spite of the great pride in wit revealed among the cultured like Benedick and Beatrice i-n the Renaissance, both Benedick and Beatrice betray an unusual sensitiveness to the charge of grossness in wit. Mary

'WvrTcs, edited by McKerrow, Vol. I, p. 191.

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Lamb remarks in regard to Benedick, " There is nothing that great wits so much dread as the imputation of buffoonery, be- cause the charge comes sometimes a little too near the truth." Benedick in reflecting on Beatrice's charges says, "The prince's fool ! Ha ? It may be I go under that title because I am merry. ' ' But the hesitation about the worthiness of his wit is only mo- mentary; he immediately ascribes such an estimate to the "base, though bitter, disposition of Beatrice, ' ' and expresses afterwards nothing but indignation at the charges brought against him as a wit. Beatrice is forced to hear a similar estimate of her wit, though she is accused merely of pride and scorn, not of ' ' villany. ' ' when Hero and Ursula are baiting her in III, 1, knowing that she overhears, her raillery is condemned, and with a kind of poetic justice she is accused of transforming men with the absurd com- parisons that make up a part of her picture of Benedick as an ale-house jester.

"Why, you speak truth. I never yet saw man, How wise, how noble, young, how rarely featured, But she would spell him backward: if fair-faced, She would swear the gentleman should be her sistt-r ; If black, why, Nature, drawing of an antique, Made a foul blot ; if tall, a lance ill-headed ; If low, an agate very vilely cut; If speaking, why a vane blown with all winds; If silent, why, a block moved with none. So turns she every man the wrong side out And never gives to truth and virtue that Which simpleness and merit purchaseth."

In answer to this indictment Beatrice soliloquizes,

"What fire is in mine ears? Can this be true?

Stand I condemn 'd for pride and scorn so much? Comtempt, farewell! and maiden pride, adieu! No glory lives behind the back of such."

As a matter of fact, though courtly wit was sharply differ- entiated from all that savored of scurrility and clownishness,

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much of the wit of Lyly's courtly characters and of Shake- speare's in the plays up to and including Much Ado is of the rail- ing and personal type. The conventional treatment of heroines in Italian novelle and in the fiction of all Elizabeth's reign pre- sents them as unapproachable and scornful of all wooers, and their scorn is best expressed in their wit. The convention is con- spicuous in Love's Labour's Lost. But, at the end of the century, new developments in the idea of what was allowable in wit are very clear. Not only does the satire on the absurd similes or comparisons that appear in the accounts of Chester, of Falstaff, and of Carlo Buffone, and in the accusations against Benedick and Beatrice seem to have received fresh emphasis,8 but the scorn and pride of the unapproachable court lady was also going out of fashion. When Beatrice is being lectured into love, Ursula re- marks,

"Sure, sure, such carping is not commendable," and Hero replies,

' ' No, not to be so odd and from all fashions As Beatrice is, cannot be commendable."

Shakespeare has expressed here the verdict around 1600 on the disdainful type of heroine. The words are for the moment's ef- fect on Beatrice, and cannot represent any true estimate of her, for she is infinitely more complex and more witty than the sketch of Hero and Ursula shows her. Nevertheless, she is sufficiently akin to the type condemned by her two companions to make their verdict telling. In the year in which Much Ado probably ap- peared, 1599, Jonson, clearly glancing at the type as portrayed in Euphues, satirized in Saviolina of Every Man Out of His Humour the pert and caustic lady of wit as shallow and out of fashion among the courtly. Rosaline of Love's Labour's Lost is Shakespeare's first essay in the type. In Beatrice he has fur- nished the finest development of the conception; 'but even in Much Ado he has brought to light the essential weakness of such

8Cf. Hart, Wvrks of Ben Jonson, Vol. 1, pp. xxxvi ff., and Basker- vill, English Elements in Jonson's Early Comedy, pp. 174-177.

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an ideal of wit, and I think it can be said that he never again attempted to portray the type. Perhaps, indeed, the use in Much Ado of a type already going out of fashion may have been due to the fact that Shakespeare was here revising an old play, pos- sibly the Love's Labour's Won, which has been conjecturally identified with an early version of Much Ado.

SHAKESPEARE'S CONCEPTION OF HUMOR AS EXEM- PLIFIED IN FALSTAFF

BY HENRY DAVID GRAY

When I can induce the nice young people who make up my undergraduate classes in Shakespeare to tell me the very truth of the matter, I find that few of them really think Falstaff as- funny as the solemn critics have always made him out. They will admit that their sensibilities are more often offended by him than their risibilities axe roused (though they do not pu' it in just that way), and some are so hardy as to think that the fault lies as much in the too great freedom of Elizabethan times as in the ultra-modesty of themselves. I remember tjiat as an undergraduate this was -very much my own feeling. JL_ knew that Falstaff .was accounted the greatest humorous char- acter in all literature; yet I, who prided myself upon having. a sense of humor, would sometimes deliberately skip the Fal- staff scenes in Henry IV, because I felt in reading them more of anger, disgust, and even boredom than of genuine amuse-- ment and delight. Even those who have written on Falstaff with most authority have sometimes felt his extremity of wick-x edness as a limitation. Thus Maurice Morgann, whose famous essay on "The Character of Sir John Falstaff" toward the close of the eighteenth century has been the foundation of all later criticism, while recognizing that Falstaff is "the most perfect comic character that perhaps ever was exhibited," yet says: "It must be a strange art in Shakespeare that can draw our liking and good will toward so offensive an object . . . Is the humor and gayety of vice so very captivating?" In like manner, Professor Stoll, whose "Falstaff" forms one of his series of studies in Shakespearean characters exemplifying the New Criticism, can scarcely find terms sufficient to con- demn Falstaff 's character and conduct. "Falstaff . . . already a cheat, a liar, a boaster, a glutton, a lecher, and a thief, could hardly help being a coward as well." "All this [' wrecking one's self on a dead body' and the like] once was funny," says Stoll, "and now is base and pitiful."

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The question is therefore before us: has the humor of Fal- sfoff become^ antiquated? Nothing is less permanent than humor, since it depends so largely on the element of surprise, and on the appeal of the familiar seen in an unaccustomed light; and after three hundred years what once was surprising becomes familiar, and what WflS fa.miligy'T^pp.nTnp.fl strange. Yet even in humor there are certain elements which are permanent; and if a character is conceived in accordance with the funda- mental principles of what is necessarily and • eternally comic, he should be as truly humorous in one age as another. Let us consider the characteristics of Falstaff, to see whether they _^ are such as were particularly appropriate to th ? period^or are :essential to a humorous character 1 times. This may lead us to a more important question. There are many indications in the Henry IV plays that Shakespeare was attempting as deliberately as the spontaneity essential to the true humorist permitted, to create a character as completely the embodiment of laughter as was possible. As Falstaff him- self comments: "The brain of this foolish-compounded clay, man, is not able to invent anything that intends to laughter, more than I invent or is invented on me, ' n On the other hand there are some signs that Falstaff ran away from Shakespeare, and in doing so ran away as well from the New Criticism of Professor Stoll.

The first thing we think of in connection with Falstaff is that he is fat. Now to be fat, even extremely fat, is not necessarily funny. The fat lady of a circus side show is an object of curi- osity and pity rather than of laughter. Yet as incongruity is the, \ soul of humor, Falstaff, to be completely and absolutely amus- 1 ing in every particular, must be either too fat or too thin.2

H Henry IV, I, ii, 7.

2Or else, perhaps, too short or too tall. Every departure from the normal offers an opportunity for caricature, and there is probably no •obvious peculiarity which has not been humorously treated. Every ^phase of personal ugliness has been portrayed; every physical afflic- tion or deformity has been paraded. Anyone may recall abundant in- stances, from the mediaeval gargoyle to the modern vaudeville come- dian and circus clown. The grotesque, or physically abnormal treated humorously, usually contains, however, something repellent, and our

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In creating a character for the stage, who must be portrayed by an actor, Shakespeare's choice was inevitable. An actor can easily "make up" as fat as ever you will, but he cannot be any thinner than he is. On the printed page there is no such limitation. Cervantes created the tall and gaunt Don Quixote almost at the very time that Shakespeare produced his comic masterpiece; and the thinness of Don Quixote has remained for these three hundred years as essential an element of humor as the fat of Falstaff. Certainly, though it is the most obvious and least individual of his many extremes, the fat of Falstaff is as essentially grotesque in one age as another; and for him to be completely comic, it is a necessary and not a fortuitous condition.

That Falstaff is a glutton and a monstrous drinker of sack follows as a matter of course. Here it is not the much eating and drinking which produces the fat, but the fat of Falstaf? causes the eating and drinking! I do not mean that Shake- speare first determined upon the bulk of flesh and then added gormandizing and bibulous habits as corollaries. I am merely examining the possible sources of humor and arranging these in a logical not chronological order. The hungry and glutton- ous parasite comes, as every one knows, from Latin comedy; and Professor Stoll is quite right in recognizing that Falstaff *s

sense of amusement is therefore quickly exhausted. We cannot re- ceive the greatest possible amount of humorous delight from a character we despise, whom we merely laugh at. We must be rather fond of Falstaff, or at least somewhat in sympathy with him, if he is to please us utterly. Hence mere ugliness is given not to Falstaff but to Bar- dolph, just as mere braggadocio is given to Pistol, mere cowardice to Gadshill, Bardolph and Peto (in the robbery exploit), and various travesties of human infirmities are shown in the ragged recruits. Falstaff is on the whole a proper man. Gout gives him a momentary halting; the humor frequently derived from deafness is supplied in Falstaff by "the disease of not listening, the malady of not marking" (2 Henri/ IV, I, ii, 77, 138, 275). These may afford us amusement for the nonce; but to produce continuous- laughter on the physical side, ugliness, deformity, or even an assumed affliction could scarcely serve. If, then, a physical peculiarity is to be chosen at all, it should be one that is fundamental and symbolic, in the light of which all his othur characteristics must be read.

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characteristics are largely taken from the conventional humor- ous types of previous literature.3 Now the _fat of Falstaff is limited by the ability of the actor to perform his part; but there is no limit to the amount of meat and drink which he may be said to have consumed. It is as easy to say a barrel as a pint; but to attain the height of humor a wild and unimagi- nable exaggeration is quite as futile as the literal truth. Hence in the bill which the Prince rifles from the sleeping Falstaff 's pocket he finds the charge for "Sack, 2 gallons," with ancho- vies and more sack after supper. That is, the exaggeration is just as it should be in order to arouse the coveted laugh — preposterous but not unthinkable.

But there is one limit placed upon the drinking of Falstaff which is of genuine significance. Though drunkenness is an un- failing source of amusement to an audience, Falstaff, as Pro- fessor Bradley has noted,4 is never shown on the stage as drunk. The reason is that the drunken man is an object of contempt; and Falstaff to be greatly and victoriously humorous must hold the reins of humor in his own hands.

The Complete Drinker could not by any chance be unsocial. That which most endears Falstaff to us is his good fellowship. He is ever the booji^CjpjnjianLion. He makes no distinctions of high and low. We are made happy by Falstaff and laugh with him, says Bradley, because he is_happy and at ease ; and Henry's "rejection" of Falstaff seems to this critic a great blemish in the character of Shakespeare's supposedly ideal English king, arguing a sternness and coldness which contrast sadly with Falstaff 's warmth of affection for the Prince. But Falstaff 's friendly sociability, like the lip-loyalty of Fellow- ship in Everyman, fails to stand the test of true friendship; and Shakespeare seems to consider this as essential to a char- acter whose mission is simply and solely to supply humor. Any deeper note would be fatal. Though Falstaff. is so thoroughly

sEven the parasitic element usual in the glutton of Plautus and Terence appears in Falstaff's ever permitting Prince Hal to pay the charges of their drinking. See 1 Henry IV, I, ii, 55-62.

*"The Rejection of Falstaff/' in Oxford Lectures on Poetry.

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fond of the Prince,5 yet he speaks of him behind his back in a way that no true friend could ever do. It is always humor- ously put — for the laugh's sake; indeed on one occasion6 his abuse of the Prince and Poins is abruptly introduced the mo- ment the Prince and Poins enter in their disguise, obviously in order that the audience may enjoy the^situation. We should not take this more seriously than Prince Harry himself does ; but it must be noted that Falstaff's open disloyalty is only capped and completed by Henry's rejection of him on becoming king. This humorous retribution — if it is that — must be considered later, since it is one of the instances where the humor no longer appeals to us. The point under present consideration is only that mere sociability and comradeship, carried to their logical absurdity, preclude serious friendship, and to produce genuine humor must be merely the opposite extreme of such isolation, peevishness, and moroseness as we find humorously treated in Malvolio.

Though there is, of course, nothing comic about sociability in and of itself, it is the essential basis for the hilarity and boistrous mirth which engender a kindred jollity and good feel- ing in the audience. Nothing so quickly begets laughter as a hearty laugh. The mirthfulness of Falstaff is contagious. His laughter is exuberant, manifold, uproarious, recalling Rabe- lais. And if we are offended by the grossness and obscenity here also, that much must be \ put down to The change of taste, which is after all less complete than we might wish. The humor of the tavern is still the humor of the bar-room; and however low in sort and painful to the ears of most of us, we must agree that it is an essential part of the game. Here I admit gladly that the humor no longer makes a universal ap- peal ; but the alternative" of an over-refinement of language, though it yields such capital fun in Moliere's Les Predeuses ridicules, was here, of course, out of the question.

Falstaff's hearty enjoyment of life does not find its expres- sion in empty laughter"plie is supplied with an abundance- —

6"If the rascal have not given me medicines to make me love him, I'll be hanged; it could not be else; I have drunk medicines" (1 Henry IV, II, ii, 19).

*2 Henry IV, II, iv, 254 f.

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with a superabundance — of wit. Though the humor of charac- terization, as the surest basis for permanence, is at the center of Shakespeare's treatment of Falstaff, and the humor of jdt- uation, always essential in drama, is constantly made use of (exclusively in The Merry Wives of Windsor), the presence of witjs necessary if all possible sources of amusement are to be included. It is true that the utter absence of wit is also a sure cause of laughter. The absurdity of mere inanity is pat- ent, and Shakespeare frequently employs it for the sake of humor, the wit being supplied, if at all, at the character's ex- pense. But the extreme of stupidity, like physical ugliness or deformity, more quickly palls; and in a major character, and one who is sympathetically shown, this easier source of amuse- ment was quite impossible. Certainly the extreme of clever- ness, which we find in Falstaff, can produce a greater humor- ous conception than the most massive ignorance and stupidity that ever flourished.

Wit may find expression in speech or in action, and both the excellent jest and the cunning device are unfailing in Falstaff. On the verbal side his wit too often takes the form of personal abuse, the very essence of the old French farces (except in Pa- thelin, the best of all) ; and again we must admit that this gross banter and raillery no longer delights us. But at its best, Fal- taff's wj.t is unsurpassed. It is placed in rivalry with Prince Hal's and shines by comparison; at times it is placed in con- trast with the witlessness of Shallo^v or the unillumined liter- alness of the hostess, just as his very bulk is travestied by the presence of his diminutive page.7 His wit is not subtle like that of Benedick, not delicate and fanciful like Mercutio's, though he can spgak. the JLanguage of Euphues when he wishes ;8 it is 0]3en,coarse, plebeian — the mere consummation of such wit as was native to the audience. This again marks Falstaff as the ideal Elizabethan jester. He is not only witty in himself, not alone "the cause that wit is in other men"; he communi-

7"! do here walk before thee like a sow that hath overwhelm'd all her litter but one. If the Prince put thee into my service for any other reason than to set me off, why then I have no judgment." 2 Henry IV, I, ii, 11-15.

*1 Henry IV, II, iv, 437-461.

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cates his sense of the comic to the spectators standing in the~"7/ pit because he thinks their thoughts and speaks their language. I / His ir^pirjfy jfl a fit! on I13-" lasted better because this is less sub- II ••- ject to the change of taste. We still enjoy the devices of Key- ' nard the Fox and the exploits of Lazarillo de Tormes, as we do our contemporary Brer Rabbit and Huckleberry Finn.

It is a notable fact that this characteristic of an astute and ready wit is the only thing conspicuously absent from Falstaff as he is shown in The Merry Wives of Windsor. Here he ap- pears not as a sympathetic character but as a dupe and fool. He is not the purveyor of humor but the butt of ridicule. He is just as fat^just as crass and earthly, just as old^and sensual, as cowardly and boastful, as light-hearted and disloyal as ever; but lacking his former shrewdness and resource he seems but the portly shadow of himself. This proves, better than the old and wholly probable tradition, that The Merry Wives was writ- ten hastily and to order; for the wit and ingenuity of a Fal- staff may not be supplied, even by a Shakespeare, under the pressure of an imminent production.

But Falstaff 's fertility of fmagination results in his being a most inveterate and amazing liar. Morgann, in the remark- able essay I have referred to, says, "The fictions of Falstaff are so preposterous and incomprehensible, that one may fairly doubt if they ever were intended for credit." If not, so much the worse for Falstaff, so far as his possibilities for providing humor are concerned. Shakespeare makes Falstaff a liar always and only for the sake of humor; he does not seem to care whether the lie_ is intended for credit or is not. If to tell a lie apparent in the telling isjhmny, Falstaff will do* that; if to attempt a deception and be convicted of it is amusing, Fal- staff will deceive ;9 if to swear upon a parcel-gilt goblet to marry a woman whom he merely means to cozen and betray is " to provide mirth for a rough and heartless audience, Falstaff will not scruple. But after hearing Falstaff tell so many lies as innocent as Munchausen's because they are as incredible and

'Thus, in his account of his- Gadshill exploit, where he raises the num- ber of buckram men from two till it reaches eleven, his lies are "gross as a mountain, open, palpable"; but his hacking of his sword is an attempt to deceive, not humorous except in its detection.

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irresponsible, the audience comes to accept him and to laugh at him in his capacity as liar; and hence they are prepared to laugh as often as Falstaff is prepared to lie (which is always). When he pacifies the credulous Hostess he is performing his role; and an audience nourished on Ibsen could no more be expected to discriminate against him than one whicli remem- bered the interludes of John Heywoody

The same attitude which makes Falstaff a liar makes him a boaster also, and his boasts are treated by Shakespeare in very much the same manner. Some are mere palpable impossibili- ties and whimsical absurdities; but at times Falstaff talks in quite the manner of the conventional braggart, and the humor lies injiis pxpn^rfi HJI^ hnmjJMop. It is true that he is never •qultejdiscomfited, for his _wi£. is always sufficient to save him (except in the final instance, of which I shall have more to say presently) ; but the implication of the boast is that Falstaff is / conceited. Now though nothing is funnier than vast conceit , (on the stage!) — Shakespeare is at great pains to save his hero j from such an excessive and unrelieved vanity as might make I him contemptible or offensive to an audience. There is some- thing about every sort of pride but the highest that arouses instant antagonism, and this (if we may dare in this instance to deduce his personal attitude from his dramatic work — always a dangerous and alluring thing to do) Shakespeare himself seems to have keenly felt. Mere pomposity is ridiculed in his first comic creation, Don Armado, and is travestied again with something of bitterness and spite in Julius Caesar. Fal- staff is^ egotistical, yes. He is called "a proudjack " ;10 he urges with much energy that his capture of Colville may be chronicled; enacting in turn King Henry and Prince Hal, he praises himself to his own hu£e heart's content. He is rich in egregious self-satisfaction and self-flattery. And yet, on the other" hand, he~!s~capable of jspeaking (as Bottom would put it) in a "monstrous little voice;" he confesses his manifold sins wkhoTit_the least reserve ; he expose-s his own weaknesses

™1 Henry TV, II, iv, 11. "John Falstaff, knight," says Poins; "every man must know that, as oft as he has occasion to name himself." « Henry IV, II, ii, 118.

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with complete abandon. Even his self-pity and self-exonera- tion are given with preposterous humility: "Dost thou hear, Hal? Thou knowest in the state of innocency Adam fell; and what should poor Jack Falstaff do in the days of villainy? Thou seest I have more flesh than another man, and therefore- more frailty." He repents (for the time being) in a way which would be utterly impossible to the merely proud and boast- ful. /Boasting so often of qualities to the possession of which everyone knows he really makes not the slightest claim, he makes it impossible for us to take his more serious braggado- cio amiss ; for he will boast of his injured innocence, which he solemnly maintains the Prince has corrupted, and assuming a virtuousness which he so sadly lacks, he will affect to grieve over the sins and evils of the world: "There lives not three good men unKang'd in England, and one of them is fat and grows old."

But Falstaff 's boasting of his virtue and his scrupulous re- gard for the truth is not the same thing as his boasting of his courage, for this quality he seriously believes he has. This is proved by the guarded way in which he sometimes puts it : " In- deed, I am not John of Gaunt, your grandfather; but yet no coward, Hal,"11 and yet the very fact that he does boast of his \ valor is all the proof we need that he is really a coward. This is the point in his character which is most under dispute. Mor- gann's famous essay is devoted largely to an attempt to clear Falstaff of the charge of cowardice. We are reminded that our comic hero is entrusted with a command; that he leads his sol- diers into battle; that he is present at an important conference with only the King, the Prince, and three or four others of high- est note ; that the famous rebel Sir John Colville surrenders be- cause of Falstaff 's reputation for valor. Morgann continues: "Rank and wealth were not only connected with the point of honour, but with personal strength and natural courage If the ideas of courage and birth were strongly associated in the days of Shakespeare, then would the assignment of high birth to Fal- staff carry, and be intended to carry along with it, the associated

Henry IV, II, ii, 70.

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idea of Courage." The same plea might be made for Sir An- drew Aguecheek !

Professor Stoll, on the other hand, is as solemn in his elabo- rate proof that Falstaff is_& coward as was Morgann in exon- erating him. Both alike miss the essential point :\that cowardice is supremely funny only when it is set in contrast with a show of courage.^ If Falstaff is not a coward (as Morgann will have it), he is not in this particular an amusing character but an heroic one, whose occasional weaknesses are to be pitied and con- doned; if he is the mere_ buffoon and poltroon that Stoll insists upon, he may be amusing certainly, but he is too contemptible to be greatly humorous. Falstaff is valorous enough to eject the quarrelsome Pistol, who is much more like the miles gloriosus of Latin comedy. When Snare is told he must arrest Falstaff he answers, "It may chance cost some of our lives, for he will stab."12 Justice Shallow remembers his breaking Skogan's head at the court-gate "when (a was a crack not thus high."13 But all this, like Falstaff 's knighthood, his going into battle, and the like, is only the essential setting for his running away at Gads- hill, for his falling down and pretending to be dead in order to avoid being killed by the doughty Douglas, for his stabbing the dead body of Hotspur, for his carrying in place of a pistol a bot- tle of sack. To the King's conference he contributes only a jest; and at its close, showing in contrast to the words we have just heard from the others, he has his famous catechism on Honor.

But the catechism on Honor is neither the confession of a mere craven, as is Parolles' soliloquy before his seizure by the soldiers,14 nor the silly waggery of a buffoon, like Launcelot Gob- bo's colloquy with his conscience.15 Read alternately with these Falstaff 's catechism seems to fall little short of sober wisdom. Indeed, Mr. Masefield, in his somewhat erratic little book on Shakespeare says: "Falstaff is that deeply interesting thing, a man who is base because he is wise. Our justest, wisest brain dwelt upon Falstaff longer than upon any other character, be-

123 Henry IV, II, i, 12.

132 Henry IV, III, ii, 33.

uAll's Well That Ends Well, IV, i, 27 f.

^Merchant of Venice, II, ii, 1-33.

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cause he is the world and the flesh, able to endure while Hotspur flames to his death." Falstaff 's cowardice has always some jus- tification in the coldjight of reason. ' ' The better part of valor is discretion/'18 is a proverb which the sane world approves. Fal- staff is an old man and fat ; he has no more chance against Doug- las than he had against the two young rogues in buckram after his companions had run away. (Any man who will let himself > be killed needlessly when he could save his life by a show of cowardice has no sense of humor !^ •'

In each of the qualities we have been considering, Shakespeare has given Falstaff one of two equally possible humorous ex- tremes. I have already referred to the supercilious aloofness and fatuxms virtuosity of Malvolio. It is so throughout. If a palpable lie on the stage will almost unfailingly provoke a laugh, we must remember on the other hand that the humor of Mol- ~ iere's great comedy, Le Misanthrope, consists largely in Alceste's \T inordinate propensity for telling the truth. Humor may be de- rived alike from extravagant ^rj£g_j>jL-ridwilf>iis modesty ; we y% may find it in the opulent megalomania of Sir Epicure Mammon or in the cringing, fawning humility of Uriah Heep. The alter- native to cowardice is foolhardiness, and this is just as legiti- mate a source of humor as faintheartedness. The heroism of Don Quixote is quite as humorous as the cowardice of Falstaff. With what magnificent courage he charges upon the windmills ! Indeed, the set of extremes which Cervantes chooses are through- out almost the exact opposite of Shakespeare's list. The Eng- lish knight is fat ; the Spanish don is gaunt and tall : the former is sensual and worldly-wise ; the latter is always visionary and a most lovable fool; the one is a boasting toward; the other is ridiculously heroic ; Falstaff is the quintessence of crass material- ism ; Don Q-uixote is the personification of an impossible ideal- ism. Between these two humorous extremes lies all humanity.

It is obvious from what I have just said that Falstaff could not be without that most distressing and distasteful of his many sins — his open and beastly sensuality. One wishes that this sub- ject might be avoided; but to leave sensuality out of Falstaff

i«l Henry IV, V, v. 120. *

*— s

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would be like leaving melancholy out of Hamlet. As in the case / , of his foul language on which I have touched, this is one of the things which offend us today, and which therefore we can hardly read of or witness with amusement. Yet how vast is the extent of humorous literature which finds its theme in this forbidden topic ! If, setting up his own taste as a criterion, one should solemnly declare that lechery is not a successful subject for hum- or, the mass of evidence to the contrary would overwhelm him. There can be no doubt that Falstaff's fat, his foul language, and his moral laxity were what most delighted his first audience, and there is no reason why they should puzzle his last critic. If, as we may fondly hope, the grossest of sins has passed forever be- yond the reach of humor, then Falstaff is in this particular a limited and not an eternally humorous character ; but if we may not nurse this pious delusion we must consider Falstaff 's lewd- ness as a humorous thing. As in the case of his other charac- teristics — his gluttony, his unconscionable lying, his braggado- cio, his cowardice — the fat knight exhibits that particular sort of humor in this connection which was consistent with his character as, fundamentally conceived. Imagine him if you can with the false sanctimoniousness of Tribulation Wholesome, or the ridic- ulous prudery of Joseph Andrews ! But as his lying is reflected in the light of his histrionic imagination, as his boastfulness is qualified by his naive and disarming lack of dignity and his cowardice by his witty interpretation of it as a worldly-wise dis- cretion, so even his rampant and insatiable sensuality is guarded from any cruelly directed lustfulness or waTtton disregard of in- nocence. Falstaff is no Tarquin, no Jack Cade.

I spoke of Falstaff 's character as fundamentally consistent; and so it is, even though he may drink more sack than is physio- logically possible or boast at times with a psychologically unat- tainable wink. Yet a certain inconsistency, or seeming incon- sistency is one of the ingredients of any humorous compound, and hence if Falstaff is to be made exactly as funny as he can possibly be, this essential element of humor may not be omitted.

That it ^jDrejsent^^ noted. Bradley, for

example, speaksofthe incongruity of Falslaff 's fat body and nimble wit, the infirmities of age and youthfulness of heart. As

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his knighthood carried the suggestion of a valor which (in spite of Maurice Morgann) was not there, so Falstaff 's years suggest- ed to the audience a dignity and sobriety which he most con- spicuously did not have. The sins of youth are to a certain ex- tent normal. What the Elizabethan audience would take as quite justifiable in Prince Hal would be regarded as grotesquely out of place in the white-haired Falstaff. ' ' That reverend vice, ' ' says the Prince, imitating his father's voice in their imaginary inter- view,17 "that gray^ iniquity, that father ruffian, that vanity in years"; and with each combination, if Shakespeare's art suc- ceeded, came a laugh.

A more serious problem attends our. consideration of the last two characteristics of Falstaff which we may regard as funda- mental,, his cruelty and his avarice. These may well be taken together, since they are for the most part associated in his actions, from his robbery of the travellers to his treatment of poor Shallow. Cruelty is a thing which is not easily associated with a humorous character ; and avarice, where it is so as- sociated, nowhere else, I think, is found hi one who makes his bid for our good will and hearty applause. Where we do find these traits in Elizabethan cnmpdy; as in Volpone or Sir Giles Overreach, we are alienated instantly, as was the author's obvious intention. Cruelty, moreover, and avarice are appropriate to Falstaff 's age, and lack the absurdity of incongruity which would attend a youthful sentimentality and recklessness, even though these could have been substituted without any essential inconsistency in the Falstaff formula. It is much more amus- ing to see a man soft-hearted and absurdly lavish than brutal and grasping. If Shakespeare was endeavoring to supply in Falstaff the greatest possible amount of fun, and to keep him well within the good will of the audience, why did he add these disconcerting and unnecessary attributes?

I venture an answer apparently quite out of keeping with all that I have been saying thus far: Shakespeare represented Falstaff as avaricious and cruel not because these were amusing qualities but because Falstaff was cruel and avaricious: because

ni Henry IV, II, iv, 449.

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he was above all things carnal; because he could not have been lavish and soft-hearted, — he was not that kind of man.

For I take it that no character was ever put together on a formula and forthwith went out and deceived the world with an assumption of reality that he did not have. Mr. Stoll com- plains that with our almost religious reverence for Shakespeare we are prone to interpret his characters not as fabrications of fiction but as living and breathing men and women, and that we judge their actions by the laws of men instead of by the canons of, art. But that which separates the mere literary pre- tender from the rightful heir is just this: the^true artist knows his people as people, not as phantoms in his brain. Various novelists have recorded that their characters would sometimes do things quite contrary to the author's own intention. I believe that no writer ever created a character who so successfully seemed to live as Falstaff does without giving him something more than the sum of his various characteristics. This some- thing more is life ; and in judging the actions of one of Shake- speare's men we do well to employ the same standards by which we judge all men.

When Falstaff plans so coldly to fleece poor Justice Shallow and sees no reason why he should not — "If the young dace be a bait for the old pike, I see no reason in the law of nature but I may snap at him ' ' — 18we resent his conduct, though we applaud as unscrupulous devices in many a picaresque hero. For Shal- low himself we care little ; but for Falstaff we do care. He has become for us so human and so real a character, so much our friend, that we cannot choose but resent his conduct. It is when a crime comes near to us that we feel its horror. In Synge's Playboy of the Western World, the peasants at the Mayo inn are charmed with Christy because he has "killed his da"; but when old Mahon arrives not killed at all, and Christy to regain his prestige apparently kills him in their very sight, they are justly horrified. It is too near to them now. "There's a great gap" says Pegeen, "between a gallons story and a dirty deed." It is so with our humanizing of Falstaff. We have taken him into

isg Henry IV, III, ii, 355.

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our hearts and our homes. His deception of Shallow becomes for us not a humorous exploit but a dirty deed.

Yet if we think of Shakespeare's people as real, we do no more than did the Elizabethan audiences ; we do exactly what the author wishes us to do, and just so far as Shakespeare is a suc- cessful dramatist we must do so. But the difference is this: their interpretation of Falstaff was no doubt of a jolly old buffoon who delighted them with his cowardice and sensuality and whose cruelty and avarice therefore no more offended them than it would have in such a Falstaff who lived around the corner. It offends us because our attitude toward life is dif- ferent.

A similar explanation, though pointing in the opposite di- rection, must be given to the "rejection" of Falstaff by the young King Henry V. When Shakespeare delivers Falstaff up to his punishment he does it apparently, as I have said, to get ft laugh: the fat knight's great expectations are brought to nothing, while Henry V stands before the audience a painted hero. To-day we rebel. The situation is essentially comic but we cannot laugh. As performed by the Stratford players it is quite as solemn and appealing as we now consider the final exit of Shylock. There is no doubt that in both instances the Eliza- bethan audience howled and hooted with joy — in one case at the just punishment of the cruel and avaricious monster, in the other at the sudden and complete discomfiture of the non- plussed boaster and buffoon.

Now the point of Mr. Stoll 's criticisms is that this Elizabethan attitude is the only proper one for us to take to-day ; that because the Elizabethan audience howled we should also howl; or, fail- ing to do that, remain critically silent, saying only that "this once was funny." This does not seem to me the necessary alternative. For it does not follow that to get a correct con- temporary view (if that is possible) exhausts the author's own reading of his character. "Our poet always stands by public opinion, ' ' says Stoll, ' ' and his English kings and Roman heroes are to him what they were to his age. ' ' He might as well have said that the actual people whom Shakespeare knew meant the same thing to him that they did to one another. The supreme

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\

genius always transcends his time and creates characters who may by no means be judged by a set of contemporary standards. How many a genius has himself realized that he stood ahead of his times! Turgenev wrote a novel which is still unread — which he arranged to have published a hundred years after his death.

The dramatist must of course appeal to his immediate au- dience; and we know that Shakespeare was not thinking of posterity, as Turgenev was. But one who writes as Shakespeare wrote gives forth what is in him without too complete a sur- render to the necessity of having his play "clapperclawed with the palms of the vulgar." He was one who would let the cen- sure of one of the judicious "o'erweigh a whole theatre of others." His last comment on Harry's rejection of Falstaff is to be found in a line in Henry V: "The King has killed his heart." But that still he was willing to throw a sop to Cer- berus, witness his speedy resurrection of Falstaff shorn of all his glory — (resurrection of the body!) — in The Merry Wives of Windsor!

The same thing is true of Falstaff 's great contemporary, Don Quixote, his only rival, in the realm of humor. Cervantes, who died in the same year as Shakespeare, rested no more than he in the narrow confinement of a particular age. The romances of chivalry had presented the adventures of many heroic heroes before Don Quixote; and though Cervantes' book was recog- nized as a burlesque, I see no reason for supposing that what contemporary Spain saw in the mild, erratic knight-errant was quite all there was to see ; nor because we find a deeper appeal in him to-day does it follow that we are reading meanings into Cervantes' work of which he was wholly innocent. So while we fairly shudder at certain things in Falstaff at which the Elizabethans may have punched each others' ribs and roared, we feel a sympathy almost tear-compelling for some of Don Quixote's oddities of behavior which could have made no such appeal to the contemporary Spaniards. The question amounts to just this: did Cervantes know what he was doing? And did Shakespeare?

So far, then, as Falstaff fails to be completely funny for us

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to-day, he fails because he is something more and better — a piece of real life. Shakespeare may have set out to portray a comic character; but if he did, he soon saw looking up at him from his manuscript a living man. Falstaff's humorous char- acteristics may have been derived from Latin comedy or JJrench farce or English interlude, but he made them his own and wore them bravely ; and I am not sure but that he would have been pretty much what he was if he had had no more antecedents than Deucalion 's stones. If we met a hungry hanger-on or a bragging bully in real life, we should not feel that he was what he was because he had been delving in Plautus. The great "source" of the great writer is contemporary life; but the char- acteristics of men do not differ vastly as the world wags on.

And so it is that the comic traits of Falstaff have not only their earlier "originals" but their later parallels. Lechery re- mains to the end a constantly recurring theme in Restoration comedy; diminutive stature is presented for our laughter in Fielding's Tom Thumb the Great; the tavern-haunting squire fond of low company appears in Tony Lumpkin, the jolly blus- tering coward in Bob Acres, the witty and ingenious liar in Figaro. Coming down to the dramatists of our own time, we have the lie for the laugh's sake in Wilde's The Importance of Being Ernest; we have thievery, gross language, and the triumph of cunning over justice in Hauptmann's Der Biberpelz and Der rote Hahn; inconstancy is humorously treated in Schnitz- ler's Anatol, the frustrating of great expectations in Pinero's Thunderbolt, and noise and bluster in Tchekhov's little comedy, The Bear.

But for the most part, the stock devices of comedy look some- what somber under the lengthening shadow of Ibsen, and hu- man frailties at which we used to laugh now make their bid for sympathy or even for approval. Thus the ridiculous nose of Cyrano de Bergerac, though a source of fun by the way, makes in the end a pretty tragedy. The coward and boaster becomes a triumphant hero in Synge's Playboy of the Western World. The triumph of worldly wisdom over heroic patriotism is ap-

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proved and applauded in Shaw's Arms and the Man.™ That old and unfailing comic device, the turning of the tables, affords but little mirth in Strindberg 's professed comedy, Comrades, and none at all in Hervieu's Les Tenailles. Cruelty and avarice form the theme of Becque's Les Cor~beaux, but at this "comedy" nobody was ever asked to smile.

All this argues an attitude of mind at the present moment essentially different from the Elizabethan. Yet there is no escape from Shakespeare's method, which is the essential method of all humorous characterization. The difference is only in the inevitable change of taste and of the actual behavior of con- temporary models.

i^Note the contrast in the treatment of a situation almost indentical in Falstaff's having a bottle for a pistol and Bluntschli's having choco- late. "I've no ammunition," he says. "What use are cartridges in battle? I always carry chocolate instead. . . . You can always tell an old soldier by the inside of his holsters and cartridge boxes. The young ones carry pistols and cartridges; the old ones, grub."

THE " DYING LAMENT* BY EGBERT ADGER LAW

I love a ballad but even too well, if it be doleful matter merrily set down. The Winter's Tale.

Both Kittredge in his notable introduction to the Cambridge Edition of the English and Scottish Popular Ballads, and Gum- mere in The Popular Ballad, find it necessary to differentiate several types of ballads which are not popular, which do not belong to the folk. Chief of these are the imitated ballad by the conscious literary artist, like Scott's "Jock o' Hazeldean" and Kipling's "Danny Deever"; the minstrel ballad, such as "The Boy and the Mantle"; and the broadside, otherwise known as the "street," or the "journalistic" ballad, of which perhaps the best known example is "The Babes in the Wood." Poems of all three classes are entitled to the name of ballads in that they are songs that tell stories. Moreover, they are generally written in conventional ballad meter, and they have consist- ently appealed to a large class of common folk, of whom, by whom, and for whom most of them were written. Neverthe- less authorities on folk-lore the world over rightly deny to these ballads a place amid the poetry of the people on the ground that they are the possession of individual authors, rather than of the whole folk. They are not handed down by oral tradi- tion, nor are they in any sense products of communal author- ship.

One type of these outlawed ballads that I have not seen an- alyzed I wish to discuss, making no plea for its consideration as genuine folk-literature, but rather as first cousin, so to speak, of folk-lore, showing the general family resemblance and differ- ing on such points as bring out most clearly what we mean by "poetry of the people." This might be called "The Dying Lamenf," a definitely marked genre of the broadside ballad, be- longing chiefly to the Elizabethan period.

By "The Dying Lament" I mean a ballad purporting to give the final speech of a man who knows that he is about to die. As a matter of fact, practically all the broadside ballads of the

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type have to do with a criminal on the scaffold addressing those who have come to see him hanged. Such speeches are sometimes made to-day. Three centuries ago they were more common and addressed to larger audiences. A fine collection of such speeches is found in Foxe's Book of Martyrs.1 But it is to be feared that these ballad-writers stick less closely to historical truth than did Foxe. The broadsides were written for tradesmen, mechanics, and the serving classes, and judging from contemporary allu- sions must have been extremely popular. Frequent allusions to them, almost all contemptuous, occur in the plays of Shake- speare, Dekker, Heywood, and other dramatists of the time ; and there is reason to believe that with them the walls of every ale- house were well plastered. These broadsides seem to have been composed by such homely craftsmen as the well-known Thomas Deloney, and printed on large sheets of paper, with a crude wood-cut generally for ornamentation. Many of them have been preserved and are to be found in the Roxburghe and similar collections.

The lives and adventures of outlaw heroes have furnished a favorite topic for the popular muse in all ages, and it is not surprising that the Elizabethan masses showed a morbid in- terest in the capital punishment of notorious criminals. It is an interest existing in a more civilized age. But in the days of Elizabeth men wished to see and hear all there was to a hanging. Since newspapers did not exist, they depended chiefly on the ballad-makers for the news; and these balladists strove to give them all information procurable or inventable concerning an execution.. To the act of hanging itself there was little out of the ordinary. What the ballad-readers wanted was the last speech of the criminal. Such farewell words are preserved in various examples of the ballad type I am discussing.

For instance, let us take several ballads on the hanging of

iFor example, note the dying speech of William Hunter (Foxe's Act* and Monuments, ed. Pratt, London, 1870, VI, 728-8) ; of Stephen Knight (ibid., VI, 740); of Master Bradfield (ibid., VII, 195); of John Bland (ibid., VII, 305-6); of Lord Cornwell (ibid.. V, 402-3); of Anne Boleyn (ibid., V, 135); of Lady Grey (ibid., VI, 424); of Dr. Barnes (ibid., V, 435-6).

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Mrs. Anne Page of Plymouth and her lover, George Strang- widge. They together murdered Mrs. Page's husband, and from Henslowe's diary we learn that Jonson and Dekker wrote a play on the subject, now unhappily lost.2 In one of the bal- lads preserved to us, "The Sorrowful Complaint of Mrs. Page/' she says:

"If ever woe did touch a woman's heart, Or griefe did gall for sinne the inward part, My conscience then and heavy heart within Can witnesse well my sorrow for my sinne. . . .

4 ' My watry eyes, unto the heavens I bend, Craving of Christ his mercy to extend. My bloody deed, 0 Lord ! doe me forgive, And let my soule within thy Kingdome live.

"Farewell! false World, and friends that fickle be; All wives, farewell ! example take by me ; Let not the Devill to murder you entice, Seeke to escape each f oule and filthy vice. ' '3

A rival balladist gives another version of the same speech under the title, "Lamentation of Master Page's Wife." Some of the verses follow:

"My loathed life too late I doe lament; My hateful deed with heart I doe repent ; A wife I was that wilfull went awry, And for that fault am here prepar'd to die. . . »

"Though wealthy Page possest my outward part, George Strangwidge still was lodged in my heart. . . .

"Mle thinkes that heaven cries vengeance for my fact; Me thinkes the world condemns my monstrous act; Me thinkes within, my conscience tells me true, That for that deed Hell fier is my due. . . .

20Op. cit., ed. Greg, London, 1900, Pt. II, p. 205. 8Ballad Society, Roxburghe Ballads, I, 561, f.

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. .

Well could I wish that Pagje enjoy M his life,

So that he had some other to his wife ;

But never could I wish, of low or hie

A longer life and see sweet Strangwidge die. . . .

"And thou, my deare, which for my fault must dye, Be not afraid the sting of death to try; Like as we liv'd and lov'd together true, So both at once we'le bid the world adue.

"Ulalia, thy friend, doth take her last farewell, Whose soule with thine in heaven shall ever dwell, Sweet Saviour Christ ! doe thou my soule receive : The world I doe with all my hart forgive."4

The accomplice's words are given in "The Lamentation of George Strangwidge, ' ' part of which runs :

"The deed late done in heart I doe lament; But that I lov'd, I cannot it repent. . . .

' ' Wretch that I am, that I consent did give ! Had I denied, Ulalia still should live:

' ' Blind fancy said, this sute do not denie ; Live thou in blisse, or else in sorrow die. 0 Lord! forgive this cruell deed of mine; Upon my soule let beams of mercy shine. ' '5

It is notable in all these lamentations that the criminal is made to declare the justice of his punishment and his forgive- ness of those responsible for his death. At the same time he speaks his confidence that Heaven has forgiven his sin, and he is assured of eternal bliss. These two thoughts are expressed again in one stanza of "The Lamentation of Bruton and Riley," dated 1633:

*Roxburghe Ballads, I, 555-556. *IMd., I, 559-560.

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"Thy mercy, Lord! is greather than our sinne, And if thou please in heaven to let us in, We doe repent us of our wicked deed, The thought of which doth make our soules to bleed. ' '8

Even more assured is the criminal in ' ' The Lamentation of John Stevens," 1632:

"Vaine world, farewell! I am prepar'd to die; Mjy soule, I hope, shall straight ascend the skie : I come, Lord Jesus ! now I come to thee ; To thee, one God, yet holy Trinitie."7

So the refrain to "Luke Button's Lamentation" (1595) :

"Lord Jesus, forgive me, with mercy relieve me; Receive, 0 sweet Saviour, my Spirit unto thee.

But while acknowledging his guilt of the crime charged, the dying man frequently mentions some other sin of which he might have been guilty but was not. Thus Luke Hutton in the ballad just quoted:

"Yet did I never kill man nor wife, Though lewdly long I led my life, But all too bad my deeds have been, Offending my Country, and my good Queen. ' '8

The best example of this quality I have met is connected with the hanging of a certain notorious horse-thief. The "Lamentable New Ditty on Stoole" runs:

' ' I never stole no Oxe nor Cow, nor never murdered any ; But fifty Horse I did receive of a Merchants man of Gory."1(*

., Ill, 145.

., Ill, 159. *Il>id., VIII, 56. •Ibid., I, 580.

., VIII, 631.

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The explanation of this turn in so many broadsides is simple enough. The balladist, wishing to> retain the sympathy of his audience for the condemned man, endeavors to show that the latter might have been more wicked than he really was. But still he, as a conserver of public morals, must justify the hanging and make it clear that the prisoner was rightly condemned. The moral lesson is frequently emphasized by special appeals of warning to those present. Thus a late ballad, "The Berkshire Tragedy," about 1700:

"Young Men, take warning by my fall: all filthy lust defy. By giving way to wickedness, alas ! this day I die. ' '

"The Lamentation of John Stevens," already quoted :

"And children all, doe you example take; Oh, let me be a warning for your sake!"11

"The Downfall of William Griswold" (c. 1650), tells us:

"Now, young men, take warning, you see my fault is great, 0 call to God for mercy, God's grace do you intreat."12

Finally, "The Lamentation of Master Page's" Wife" already quoted :

"You De'nshire Dames and courteous Cornwall Knights, That here are come to visit wofull wights, Regard my griefe, and marke my wofull end, And to your children be a better friend."13

Enough has been quoted, I think, to indicate the general na- ture of these ballads, and of their moral and religious teaching. Whether or not they contain the real sentiments of the supposed speakers, they undoubtedly reflect the mood of their writers and of the people by whom they were purchased and sung. Now a few items more to show the extent of their vogue. The Sta- tioners' Register notes the entry on June 15, 1579, of a ballad on

., ill, 158. ., VIII, 71. is/bid., I, 557.

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one Halfpenny executed for felony; on July 4, 1581, "a ballad of Tyborne tyding of Watt*foole and his felloes, of the lamenta- ble end they made at the galloes"; on August 19, 1584, "a bal- lade of Clinton's lamentation," Clinton having been executed shortly before; on July 19, 1584, a ballad "of the traditor, Frauncis Throckmorton, " executed at Tyburn, July 10; on July 10, 1592, ballads on the Bruen hanging, June 28; on December 5, 1592, a ballad on C. Tomlinson, hanged December 4 ; on Jan- uary 27, 1594, a ballad on Sturman, hanged January 24 ; on Feb- ruary 23, 1594, a ballad on Randall, hanged February 21 ; on December 6, 1594, a ballad on Banes, hanged that day.14 For the Elizabethan period the list could be extended almost indefi- nitely. But on through the middle of the seventeenth century, into Restoration times, till 1700 they continue. John Ashton in Modern Street Ballads15 gives two texts belonging to the nine- teenth century of somewhat similar moral, though not distinctly pious, exhortations. One is entitled, * ' Life of the Mannings, Ex- ecuted at Horsemonger Lane Gaol, Tuesday, November 13, 1849," and the other, "Life and Trial of Palmer," who was executed June 14, 1856.

Indeed Mr. John A. Lomax has in manuscript an American ballad, sent to him by Mr. D. W. Gray of Hale, North Carolina, referring to the actual hanging of a woman, Frances Silvers, for the murder of her husband. She was executed in Morganton, N. C., on July 12, 1833. This ballad runs :

"This dreadful, dark and dreary day. Has swept my glories all away, My sun goes down, my days are past And I must leave this world at last.

"My Lord! what will become of me, I am condemned you all may see, To heaven or hell my soul must fly All in a moment I must die.

"See Arber's Transcript of the Stationers' Registers, vols. I and II at the corresponding dates. "Op. Git., pp. 386, ff.

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" Judge Daniel had my sentence passed, These prison walls I leave at last, Nothing to cheer my drooping head Until I am numbered with the dead,

"But Oh, that dreadful Judge I fear Shall I that awful sentence hear, Depart you cursed down to hell And forever there to dwell.

"I know that frightful ghosts I'll see Gnawing their flesh in misery, And then and there attended be For murder in the first degree.

"There shall I meet that mournful face Whose blood I spitted upon this place, With flaming eyes to me he'll say, 'Why did you take my life away?'

A

"His feeble hands fell gently down His chattering tongue soon lost its sound. To see his soul and body part It strikes with terror to my heart.

"I took his blooming days away Left him no time to God to pray, And if sins fall on his head Must I not bear them in his stead.

"The jealous thought that first gave strife To make me take my husband's life For days and months I spent my time Thinking how to commit this crime.

"And on a dark and doleful night I put his body out of sight With flames I tried him to consume But time it would not allow it done.

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* ' You all see me and on me gaze Be careful how you spend your days And never commit this awful crime But try to serve your God in time.

. "jMjymind on solemn subjects roll My little child, God bless its soul All you that are of Adam's race Let not my faults this child disgrace.

N

"Farewell, good people, you all now see What my mad conduct brought on me To die of shame and disgrace Before the world of human face.

"Awful, indeed, to think of death, In perfect health to lose my breath, Farewell, my friends, I bid adieu, Vengeance on me must now persue.

' ' Great God, now shall I be -forgiven, Not fit for earth, not fit for heaven, But little time to pray to God For now I take that awful road. ' '16

Such a firmly established and popular literary form must in- fluence some more dignified literary types. It is not, therefore, surprising to find echoes of these broadsides in the Elizabethan drama. Three examples of such an influence will suffice to make the truth clear.

The most realistic Elizabethan play I know is the Two Lamen- table Tragedies of Robert Yarington, published in 1601, but based

"Manuscript note: "These lines written by Frances Silvers, who was hanged in Morganton, N. C., on the 12th day of July', 1833, for the murder of her husband. The woman was in a few hundred yards of Bluemon, Buncombe Co., when she was caught. She was a very small woman, though she was dressed in men's clothes, her hair cut off, and driving a wagon. Mr. Gray adds that he has sung the song for sixty years."

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•on several murders and executions, two of which crimes and their consequent hangings actually occurred in London during August and September, 1594. Now just before Thomas Merry and his sister Rachel in the final act of this gruesome play, are actually "turned off" (I quote the stage direction for euphe- mistic purposes), each makes a long speech in the exact tone of, these ballads. They acknowledge their guilt, though Thomas adds, "I could say something of my innocence of fornication an] adultery, ' ' warn the spectators against following their examples, beg forgiveness, and declare their assurance of supping with Jesus Christ.

In Peele 's Edward 7, the Lady Mayoress of London, poisoned by Queen Eleanor, makes a dying speech, the text of which is probably corrupt, but the wording is similar to these ballads :

* ' Farewell proud Queen the Autor of my death, The scourge of England and to English dames : Ah husband sweete John Bearmber Miaior of London, Ah didst thou know how Mary is perplext, Soone wouldst thou come to Wales and rid me of this paine. But oh I die, my wishe is al in vaine."17

Finally, in the pre-Shakespearean Leir play, the old king thinks himself about to be murdered, and declares:

"Ah, my true friend in all extremity, Let vs submit vs to the will of God ; Things past all sence, let vs not seeke to know ; It is Gods will, and therefore must be so. My friend, I am prepared for the stroke : Strike when thou wilt, and I forgiue thee here, Euen from the very bottome of my heart. ' '18

"Farewell, Perillus, euen the truest friend, That euer liued in adversity. ' '19

. cit. (Malone Society Reprints), 11. 2340-2345. ., 11. 1655-1661. ., 11. 1663-1664.

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"Now, Lord, receyue me for I come to thee, And dye, I hope, in per fit charity. Dispatch, I pray thee, I have liued too long. ' '20

Leir, we may be sure, is here uttering his dying lament and looks upon the hired murderer as his executioner.

Though of course certain conventional thoughts will occur to almost all men facing a violent death, and though these ballads in many cases merely give expression to the conventional ideas occurring or supposed to occur to the dying criminal; yet, as I have tried to make clear, realities of experience will not account for their close kinship in phrase, or for all the parallels in thought-structure. In their borrowings from each other, and their incremental repetition, they approach very near their first cousins of the genuine folk-poetry.

For their literaiy value these broadsides of course demand no consideration at all. But for the light they shed on the social history of the time, for their relations to other literary forms, for their disclosure of what some would call "folk-psychology," I believe they are worthy of passing notice. Particularly in the case of us who feel called on so frequently to apologize for the silliness, the tawdriness, the crudeness of cowboy or negro bal- lads which we have collected, and which down in our hearts we really enjoy, these cheap, old dying laments rescued and re- printed by reputable scholars across the seas bring comfort, for they make us feel a little less ashamed of what we are doing to- day in the collection of folk-lore.

id., 11. 1670-1673.

11. 1670-1673. A similar note is sounded by the Queen in Thomas Preston's play of Cambises (1570) when she sings just before her execution:

"Farwell, you ladies of the court,

With all your masking hue I doo forsake these brodered gaides And all the fashions new." (ed. Manly, 11. 1121-1132.)

SHAKESPEARE AND THE CENSOR OF GREAT BRITAIN BY EVERT MORDECAI CLARK

The tradition of Shakespeare's pre-eminence in poetry, so firm- ly established even within the lifetime of the poet, has been con- tinuously current in the world now three hundred years. That his works are

such As neither man, nor muse, can praise too much

was the general verdict of his contemporaries ; it is today a judg- ment of universal acceptation. But to follow the thread of this tradition through the past three centuries is not the present task. Suffice it here to recall that Jonson's song of praise was sus- tained and amplified by Milton ; that it was one of the insistent notes of reviving romanticism ; that not even the heroic numbers of the Augustan regime prevailed against it. My general aim is merely to emphasize this last suggestion, that even in the heyday of English classicism, Shakespeare was sincerely cherished, by some at least, as the supreme poet of the world.

We have just been witnessing the unprecedented pageantry called forth by the tercentenary celebration of Shakespeare's long and unbroken reign. One hundred years ago there were also elaborate celebrations, notably at Stratford, which indicated no slight degree of popular appreciation, not to speak of the more significant enthusiasm of Coleridge and Hazlitt. But I have found no trace of Shakespeare jubilees for 1716, or any similar evidence of popular interest in the fact that Shakespeare 's works had been abroad in the world one hundred years. I do not mean that the poet had been forgotten. Rowe's editions of 1709 and 1714 are proof that he was being read. Nor were his plays by any means driven from the stage. There were, in fact, no fewer than sixteen Shakespearean performances at the Lon- don play-houses during the centennial year alone. But these plays as a rule appeared in strangely distorted adaptations, and even so did not largely attract the crowd from its feastings upon personal satire, pantomime, and puppet-show. How discerniiig-

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ly Shakespeare was being read outside the play-houses is not be- yond our conjecture when we hear Pope pronouncing anti-Eliz- abethan Rymer "one of the best critics we ever had."1 The praise from Addison was scant and qualified, and belied by his own dramatic practice. It was an age of reason, rule, conform- ity ; and critics great and small, with one or two exceptions, dealt with Shakespeare mainly to show how far he fell below prevail- ing standards of poetic art. With strange inconsistency they still repeated the tradition of his sovereignty, while in their hearts they acknowledged allegiance to Aristotle and Horace and the descendants of these worthies among the moderns. Of the best and most characteristic qualities of Shakespeare ihe poet, England had no intelligent conception or genuine appreciation in 1716.

But Shakespeare's reputation as the prince of poets has never lacked sincere defenders. And even in 1716, certainly the dark- est centenary year of all, there was one at least who dared to proclaim for the poetry of the great Elizabethan unfeigned and unbounded admiration, and who busied himself umveariedly with enduring service. It was Lewis Theobald, — a man whom I venture to call Shakespeare's best friend one hundred years after the poet's death.

For the service which he was destined to render to Shake- speare, Theobald's early training and natural endowments fur- nished the best possible preparation and equipment. As a boy he received an excellent education ; so well, indeed, was thia foundation laid that not even the most learned of his contem- poraries ever seriously questioned the scope or soundness of his classical attainments. Moreover, in these youthful literary en- thusiasms the best of the older English writers seem to have vied with the best of the ancients. "For my own Part," said he as early as 1715, "the Shelves of my Study are filled with curious Volumes in all sorts of Literature, that preserve the Fragments of great and venerable Authors. These I consider as so many precious Collections from a Shipwreck of inestimable Value."2

'Nettleton, Eng. Drama of the Restoration and Eighteenth Century, p. 89.

^Censor, No. 5.

128 University of Texas Bulletin

There could be no better proof of Theobald's antiquarian zeal in exploring neglected fields of English literature than his re- markable collection of two hundred and fifty-nine old plays. Tt was rummaging among these and some five hundred other early English plays that gave him the orientation in Shakespeare and the Elizabethan drama which Pope so conspicuously lacked. To wide reading in the drama Theobald early added the practical experience of a playwright. But, what was even more important than wide reading and a knowledge of the stage, Theobald pos- sessed certain native elements that fitted him uniquely for his task. His mind was capable of clear thinking and of indefatiga- ble attention to detail. His heart was filled with a love of things Elizabethan, of Shakespeare above all: "No Labour of Mine," he assures us, "can be equivalent to the dear and ardent Love I bear for Shakespear. "3 Furthermore, he was himself, in some degree, a poet; at least, in his heart was the poet's sense of the beautiful, in nature and in human life. And we are told by Mr. Stede, of Covent Garden, who knew him intimately for thirty years, that "he was of a generous spirit, too generous for his circumstances " ; and that ' ' none knew how to do a handsome thing or confer a benefit when in his power with a better grace than himself."* Thus by nature and by training was he equipped to understand the most magnanimous of poets, and to discern in his "works even that which was hidden from the wisest of the age.

It would be unnecessary, even were it not here beside the mark, to dwell upon Theobald's major achievements in Shakespearean criticism; although one finds it difficult to pass by Shakespear Restored, "the first essay of literal criticism upon any author in the English tongue,"5 especially as it contributed the immortal guess * ' and a ' babbled of green Fields, ' ' together with some three hundred other emendations that have met with universal favor. But Churton Collins, Professor Lounsbury, and others have al- ready reckoned up this obligation and bestowed the meed of praise. Now we know, what was not known for a hundred and

*W<orks of Shakespeare, Preface.

4Nicholls, Illustrations of Lit. Hist, of the Eighteenth Century, 2, 745.

BLounsbury, The Text of Shakespeare, p. 160.

Memorial Volume to Shakespeare and Harvey 129

fifty years after Theobald's death, that in the province of Shakespearean scholarship he stood head and shoulders above Kowe and Pope and Warburton ; that to him belongs the endur- ing distinction of being our greatest poet's first great editor. But I invite attention to the earlier and less heralded service which Theobald, self-styled ' ' Censor of Great Britain, ' ' rendered to Shakespeare in a series of critical essays during the period April 11, 1715 to June 1, 1717.

Theobald 's periodical, The Censor, i ' followed . . . close upon the Heels of the inimitable Spectator," and, in general, was patterned after it. The Censor himself purported to be "lineally descended from Benjamin Johnson of surly Memory." He there- fore declared himself the sworn foe of "Nonsense, bad Poets, illiterate Fops, affected Coxcombs, and all the Spawn of Follies and Impertinence, that make up and incumber the present Gen- eration." "The Beau Monde," he continues, "in all its Views and Varieties, I seize on as my proper Province to exercise my Authority in; not without a particular Regard to the British Stage, of which by right of Ancestry I claim the Protection."*' The paper appeared on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, ancfc ran for ninety-six numbers. Its range of topics was fairly wide;, some of the non-dramatic subjects being wine and wit, religion, scholarship, popular superstitions, female dress, the laureate- ship, prose style, antiquities, coffee-house types, forced mar- riages, Wyatt and Surrey's poems. But, true to promise, the Censor gave the lion 's share of space to the British stage.

So far as I am aware, the dramatic criticism appearing in The Censor has never been reprinted. Yet very few of these papers are without interesting allusions to Elizabethan drama- tists, nearly .a score are given over to dramatic criticism, and no fewer than ten are devoted, wholly or in part, to the criti- cism of Shakespeare. Nor is it possible to reproduce the body of this criticism here. But upon that portion of the comment which has to do with Shakespeare I shall make a number of observations, and support them with brief but representative quotations.

«Censor, No. 1.

130 University of Texas Bulletin

One approaches thi,s early eighteenth-century criticism of Shakespeare expecting to find the earmarks of the time, and does indeed find some insistence upon the moral of a play and at least one expression of preference for poetic justice; but he is much less impressed with its conventionalisms than with the differences between it and the Shakespearean comment of Theo- bald's contemporaries. In the first place, it is more liberal than theirs in aim and method, more temperate and just in tone. A critic, in Theobald's opinion, should be something more than a pedant acquainted with classical rules. He should be a man of sound judgment, of candor, moderation, and humanity. "I shall look with a severe Eye on the Labours of my Contempor- aries," announced the Censor with gruff humor. "Folly shall no more be baul'd in our Streets, nor Sense and Nonsense sold currently at the same Price, if the Spirit of Ben. Johnson can work any reformation." But with characteristic tolerance he added: "However, I shall not allow my Spleen to get the better of my Humanity, but qualify my Corrections with good Humour and Moderation. "7 Moreover, the true critic should be as far removed from the hireling hypocrite as from the bump- tious and intolerant pedant. But the liberality and justice of Theobald as a critic are particularly apparent in his criticism of Shakespeare. Here there is no yielding to the tyranny of dra- matic rules; indeed, Theobald boldly declared that Shakespeare is not to be judged by time-honored rules: "A Genius like Shakespear's should not be judg'd by the Laws of Aristotle, and the other Prescribers to the Stage; it will be sufficient to fix a Character of Excellence to his Performances, if there are in them a Number of beautiful Incidents, true and exquisite Turns of Nature and Passion, fine and delicate Sentiments, un- common Images, and great Boldnesses of Expression."5

Holding such conceptions of true criticism and true critics, .and believing with Shakespeare that tragedy and comedy are '"Two Opposite Glasses, in which Mankind may see the true Pigures they make in every important or trifling Circumstance

^Censor, No. 1. *IUd.t No. 70.

Memorial Volume to Shakespeare and Harvey 131

of Life,"9 Theobald considered Restoration and contemporary drama very poor indeed. His allusions to the plays of the last two generations are, for the most part, in the nature of strictures upon their immorality or absurdities in plot and characteri- zation. For the drama of his own day, if we except one polite allusion to Cato, he felt and expressed nothing less than dis- gust: "To look on some of the Motley Performances of these Mistaken Poets, one would imagine that Tragedy, in their Def- inition, were but a Rhapsody of Dialogues; that the Passions would be sufficiently refin'd, if they can contrive in one Place for a Perriwig-pated Fellow, as Shakespear has express 'd it, to rant till he splits the Ears of the Groundlings."10 He com- plains that comedy has degenerated into personal satire, and "hopes that Apprehension of personal Inflictions will in time extirpate the Generation * of Libelling Wits."11 It strikes him "with a very dee-p Concern to find that Scene where Shake- spear, and the Immortal Ben, had gained eternal Glory, dwin- dled into Entertainments of Show and Farce unbecoming the Genius of a Brave, Gallant, and Wise Nation."12

As a kind of panacea for all these dramatic ills Theobald steadfastly held up Shakespeare and promoted, through the me- dium of The Censor, the production of his greater plays. Thus, for example, he followed up an extended critical discussion of Julius Caesar with the announcement and admonition: "This excellent Play is to be acted on Thursday next for the Benefit of Mir. Leveridge ; as he has shown his good Sense by his Choice, I shall think but meanly of the Taste of the Town, if Shakespear is not honour.'d with their Company, and he rewarded by a full Audience."13

I have already pointed out that Theobald was exceptionally well prepared, by temperament and by training, to be the champion of this worthy cause. But in the Censor papers we have something more than a priori evidence : it is apparent that

^Censor, No. 7.

No. 63.

No. 39.

No. 31. 13IUd., No. 70.

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Theobald really knew Shakespeare as no one else in England knew him in 1716. He knew Shakespeare the man. Observe the truthfulness of the impression conveyed by this sketch of the poet as he appeared a't an imaginary election of laureate: "Shakespear, with a negligent Air, and Boldness of Spirit, fol- low'd him [Jonson], with a vast Company of Minor. Poets at his Heels, who pick'd his Pockets all the way he walk'd, with a low thankful Bow, and poll'd for Mr. Dryden."14 His famil- iarity with Shakespeare's works is apparent in even the non- dramatic papers of The Censor in the frequency and the felicity of his quotations and allusions. "The cold Reception which a poor Scholar meets with," says the Censor, "and the Con- tempt which patient Merit of the Unworthy takes, as Shake- spear finely observes, has made Learning an Object of our Fears."15 "This fantastical Narration," says he again, "put me in Mind of Hamlet's Disquisition with Horatio, about Alex- ander's Dust stopping a Beer-barrel."16 In fact, he "cannot avoid falling upon those fine Passages of Shakespear, . . . who as he drew always from Nature, gives ... so much the better Testimony."17 That he was able, a little later, to "restore" the text of the plays from "the many Errors, as well Committed, as Uhamended, by Mr. Pope"18 is final proof of Theobald's ex- traordinary familiarity with Shakespeare.

Moreover, it is apparent in the Censor criticism that he was responsive to the beauty of Shakespeare's poetry to a degree quite unusual in his day. I do not find any other commenta- tor of that time confessing to such sincere, warm-hearted im- pressions as the following: "My Purpose at present is the Examination of a Tragedy of Shakespear's, which, with all its Defects and Irregularities, has still touch 'd me with the strongest Compassion, as well in my Study, as on the Stage.18 . . . Never was a Description wrought up with a more Masterly

No. 41.

No. 48. No. 18. No. 84. ^Shakespear Restored, Title-page.

i»Censor, No. 7.

Memorial Volume to Shakespeare and Harvey 133

Hand, than the Poet has here done on the Inclemency of the Season; nor could Pity be well mov'd from a better Incident, than by introducing a poor injur'd old Monarch, bare-headed in the midst of the Tempest, and tortur'd even to Distraction with his Daughter's Ingratitude. How exquisitely fine are his Expostulations with the Heavens, that seem to take part against him with his Children, and how artful, yet natural, are his Sentiments on this Occasion ! . . . There is a Grace that can- not be conceiv'd in the sudden Starts of his Passion, on be- ing controul'd. ... I cannot sufficiently admire his Struggles with his Testy Humour, his seeming Desire of restraining it, and the Force with which it resists his Endeavors, and flies out into Rage and Imprecations: To quote Instances of half these Beauties, were to copy Speeches out of every Scene. . . . The Charms of the Sentiments, and Diction, are too numerous to come under the Observation of a single Paper."20 He was im- pressed with the " beautiful Incidents,, . . . exquisite Turns of Nature, . . . and fine and delicate Sentiments"21 in Julius Caesar. Speaking of Dryden's comparison of the quarrel scene of this play with similar scenes in the plays of Euripides and Fletcher, he says : ' ' Mr. Dryden does not seem to have fix 'd upon the true Cause of the Superior Beauty in Shakespeare. . . . Our being moved depends more on the Poet's touching our Passions nicely, than our being acquainted with their Persons as they are recorded in History. It signifies nothing where a Man was born, or who he is, the thing that touches depetids upon the Character that the- Poet gives of him at first. ... In Shake- spear, there is a Beauty which is not in any of the Others from the Original of the Quarrel, which is, that Two Wise Men commence a Dispute about a Trifle: And in the Sequel of it a great many severe Truths, which they never intended to tell one another, are naturally introduc'd from the violent "Working of their Passions. . . . But there is another Beauty in Shake- spear's Reconcilement, which is, that the Cause of Brutus 's giving way to his Choler, does not appear till after they are rec- oncil'd, to which Shakespear gives the most excellent Turn

No. 10. 2i/Md.f No. 70.

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imaginable."22 "I never see the Rage of the Moor," he tells his readers, "without the greatest Pity.23 . . . For the Crimes and Misfortunes of the Moor are owing to an impetuous Desire of having his Doubts clear 'd, and a Jealousie and Rage, native to him, which he cannot controul, and which push him on to Revenge. He is otherwise in his Character brave and open ; generous and full of Love for Desdemona; but stung with the subtle Suggestions of lago, and impatient of a Wrong done to his Love and Honour, Passion at once o'erbears his Reason, and gives him up to Thoughts of bloody Reparation: Yet after he has determin'd to murther his Wife, his Sentiments of her sup- posed Injury, and his Misfortunes are so pathetic, that we can- not but forget his barbarous Resolution, and pity the Agonies which he so strongly seems to feel."24 Everywhere he is re- sponsive to "the exquisite Justness, as well as Beauty of the Poet's Thoughts."25

Feeling thus the power and beauty of these great Eliza- bethan plays, Theobald unequivocally asserted Shakespeare's su- periority over all other poets of the world. "Poets," he de- clared, "should look on Shakespear with a Religious Awe and Veneration; . . . as an inimitable Original whose Flights are not to be reach 'd by the weak Wings of his Followers. . . . And indeed there is not a greater Difference between the Flow- er of our Years, and the Beginning and Decline of them, than there is between Shakespeare, and all other English Poets."-6 In depicting the madness of King Lear, "Shakespear has wrought with such Spirit and so true a Knowledge of Nature, that he has never yet nor ever will be equall'd in it by any succeeding Poet."27 Not only in holding the mirror up to na- ture was Shakespeare supreme — there were other critics who ad- mitted that; but even in the arts of poetic expression Theobald perceived in Shakespeare a superior excellence. Here Theobald

., No. 70. ., NO. 16. . 2*JM<f., No. 36. tf., No. 84. ., No. 73. No. 27.

Memorial Volume to Shakespeare and Harvey 135

stands out most sharply from the neo-classical commentators upon Shakespeare, who were forever hammering at Shakespeare 's lack of poetic art. Dry den finds him * * many times flat, insipid ; his comic wit degenerating into clenches, his serious swelling into bombast."28 To Rymer Othello was "a Bloody Farce without salt or savour";29 and Rowe concedes that Rymer "has certainly pointed out some faults very judiciously."30 Of the school of Rymer is John Dennis, who " endeavor 'd to show under what great Disadvantages Shakespear lay, for want of the Poetical Art, and for want of being conversant with the Ancients." " There are Lines," says Dennis, "that are stiff and forc'd, and harsh and unmusical . . . ; Lines which are neither strong nor graceful. There are . . . Ornaments . . . which we in English call Fustian or Bombast. There are Lines which are very obscure, .and whole Scenes which ought to be alter 'd." Not knowing the ancients, Shakespeare "falls infinitely short of them in Art, and therefore in Nature itself."31 Even Addi- son considers Shakespeare "very faulty,"32 and he inveighs par- ticularly against his "sounding phrases, hard metaphors, and forced expressions." But Theobald has the warmest praise for Shakespeare's diction, imagery, and style in general. The di- alogue he finds "incomparable." For the "uncommon Images and great Boldnesses of Expression" he has the liveliest admira- tion. In reply to the charge of "Bombast and harshness of diction," he asserts that "where he is most harsh and obsolete he is still Majestic," and that "the Sublime Stile, with a great many Defects, is to be preferred to the Middle Way however exactly hit."33 As we have already seen, he completely eman- cipates Shakespeare from the tyranny of rules.

From this unqualified assertion of Shakespeare's two-fold su- premacy it is an easy and inviting step to the full expansion

**Essay on Dramatic Poesy.

29Nettleton, Eng. Drama of the Restoration and Eighteenth Century, p. 89.

"Smith, Eighteenth Century Essays on Shak., p. 20. *iJ6td., p. 42. ^Spectator, No. 39. No. 60.

136 University of Texas Bulletin

of this thought in Theobald's edition of 1733: "In how many Points of Light must we be oblig'd to gaze at this great Poet! In how many branches of Excellence to consider, and admire him! Whether we view him on the Side of Art or Nature, he ought equally to engage our Attention: Whether we respect the Force and Greatness of his Genius, the Extent of his Knowledge and Reading, the Power and Address with which he throws out and applies either Nature, or Learning, there is ample Scope both for our Wonder and Pleasure. If his Diction, and the Cloathing of his Thoughts attract us, how much more must we be charm 'd with the Richness, and Variety, of his Images and Ideas ! If his Images and Ideas steal into our Souls, and strike upon our Fancy, how much are they improv'd in Price, when we come to reflect with what Propriety and Justness they are apply 'd to Character! If we look into his Characters, and how they are furnish 'd and proportion 'd to the Employment he cuts out for them, how we are taken up with the Mastery of his Portraits! What Draughts of Nature! What Variety of Originals, and how differing each from the other ! ' '34 Indeed, the Censor comment throws an interesting light upon the sub- sequent achievements of Theobald as a Shakespearean critic — were this the place to dwell upon its biographical significance. Two facts it certainly establishes: that the later and larger service to Shakespeare was by no means accidental ; that through Theobald's life ran one increasing purpose — "to befriend the Memory of this immortal Poet," for whose works he professed "a Veneration, almost rising to Idolatry."35

The Censor papers on Shakespeare have also an historical significance, as they are "the first essays devoted exclusively to an examination of a single Shakespearean play."36 Moreover, they occupy an important place in that gradual revival of Shakespeare's proper reputation which began to be percep- tible in Queen Anne's day, and which was one of the earliest harbingers of reviving romanticism. I do not doubt that the Censor's hearty praise and advertisement of Shakespeare

s*Works of Shah., Preface. 35$7iafc. Restored, Introd.

, Eighteenth Century Essays on ShaJc., Introd.

Memorial Volume to Shafyspeare and Harvey 137

had much to do with doubling the average annual number of Shakespearean performances in London in 1716, and with bring- ing about a degre of popularity for the plays outside the play- house by 1726 which he can describe as follows : ' ' This Author is grown so universal a Book, that there are very few Studies, or Collections of Books, tho' small, amongst which it does not hold a Place. And there is scarce a Poet, that our English Tongue boasts of, who is more the Subject of the Ladies Read- ing. "3T Certain it is that the Censor rendered a service to Shakespeare which the "inimitable Spectator" had been un- willing or unable to perform.

As criticism this body of Shakespearean comment is not in- trinsically remarkable; its judgments seem quite commonplace to-day. It becomes remarkable only in comparison with corre- sponding utterances of two centuries ago. It is not entirely free from the conventionalisms of a classical age. But these are ac- cidental and not essential. We have found that it is singularly liberal in aim and method and attitude toward ancient rules; that it springs from an intelligent understanding of the form and spirit of Elizabethan plays, and that it is genuinely re- sponsive to the beauty of these plays as poetry; that it is out- spoken in its condemnation of Restoration drama and the degen- erate drama of the day; and, finally, that it proclaims, in the midst of a peculiarly unrom antic generation, the superiority of Shakespeare over all other poets whatsoever, both in the de- piction of nature and in poetic art. Indeed, it .does not seem extravagant to say that the Shakespearean criticism of the Censor papers is essentially un-Augustan, and that Lewis Theo- bald was doing more than any other man to uphold the im- perial reputation of Shakespeare at the expiration of the first hundred years.

ziShak. Restored, Introd.

SHAKESPEARE AND THE NEW STAGECRAFT BY WILLIAM LEIGH SOWERS

There is a frequently quoted generalization to the effect that the seventeenth century was noteworthy for great drama, the eighteenth for great acting, and the nineteenth for great stage mounting. But although it is true that the nineteenth century made remarkable improvement in the methods of stage setting and saw some notable productions, it seems likely that the stage mounting of the twentieth century will be even more note- worthy. In the last few years experiments have been carried on, both in this country and abroad, that are revolutionizing methods of • scenic production. Of late these experiments have become so numerous and so significant that they demand the attention of the student of the theatre, and since many of them have dealt with Shakespeare, they are of particular interest to the student of his work. In the last ten or fifteen, years there have been scores of Shakespearean productions with unusual settings, made according to new principles of scenic effect and illustrating new theories of the function of theatri- cal decoration. Already the artistic accomplishment of this new art of the theatre has been very considerable; and the movement is clearly not of to-day only, but of tomorrow. In the present paper I shall point out its relation to the repre- sentation of Shakespeare.

But before we plunge into a discussion of the new stagecraft, we should glance for a moment at Shakespearean production in general. It can be roughly divided into three schools, the re- alistic method, the Elizabethan tradition, and what is 'generally called the new art of the theatre or the new stagecraft. To prepare the way for our consideration of this last type, I must first present briefly its two rival schools.

The realistic tradition, or the Irving tradition, as it is often called because Henry Irving gave it its most artistic expres- sion, has been the gradual growth of the nineteenth century. Before the twenties there was little attempt at historical accu- racy and scenic completeness in Shakespearean production on

[138]

Memorial Volume to Shakespeare and Harvey 139

the English stage. But Charles Kemble with the 'assistance of the antiquarian Planche founded a new tradition of elaborate and accurate representation, which has been carried on in England by Charles Kean, Henry Irving, and more recently Sir Herbert Tree. It reached the Continent through the famous German Meiningen company, which spread its principles over Europe, and it is familiar to us in America in the productions of Mantell and of Sothern and Marlowe. As the name implies, the realistic school of mounting attempts a realistic, histori- cally accurate, and generally a detailed and elaborate repro- duction of the life and background of a definite period and place to which the play has been assigned. Antiquarians work out details of costume and design properties ; scene painters make studies of old English castles and halls, or sketch in Venice and Elsinore: everything is as exact and detailed as it can be made in canvas and ]*ipier-mache. Apparently the aim is to have the stage decoration reflect as minutely as pos- sible the actualities of real life.

In practice, the realistic method is both good and bad. To it we owe many beautiful individual scenes, especially from the work of Irving and Tree. Some of its great crowds and pa- geants haunt the memory, and the lavish antiquarian staging of the plays with a definite historical background has educa- tional value. But, on the other hand, its serious defects can be easily recognized. It invariably leads to lavish and overe- laborate mounting that too often "buries Shakespeare under the upholstry." Some of Shakespeare's plays cannot stand the weight of spectacle and elaborate mise-en-scene. The lav- ish decorations not only attract attention to themselves at the expense of the spirit of the play, but they often lack beauty and consistency because costumes, settings, and properties have been independently designed and have not been brought into artistic unity. Moreover, elaborate scenery puts the producer in an unfortunate dilemma: either he must have many long and tiresome waits while the scenes are being built up if he follows Shakespeare closely, or he must rearrange the text to fit a few lavish settings. He usually takes a middle ground with unsatisfactory results: not only are the waits tiresome,

10— s

140 University of Texas Bulletin

but the Shakespearean order is not respected, and the flow of scene, so essential to a true representation, is broken up. Many of the defects of realistic mounting on the English-speaking stage are merely the result of letting makeshifts harden into conventions. Any one can point out the inconsistent perspec- tive, the unnatural lighting, and the unillusive exteriors of the realistic stage ; but the producers have merely accepted them as necessary evils. In spite of its defects, however, tho realistic tradition, which has become a conventionally realistic tradi- tion, is the accepted method of mounting on our stage to-day. Fortunately there are many signs to show that it can and will be made over, through the influence of the new stagecraft, into what it should be- — a beautiful and imaginative realism.

The second school of Shakespearean production I have called the Elizabethan tradition. By it I mean the representation of Shakespeare's plays as they were given in his time. Of late such representations on reproductions of Elizabethan stages have become important enough to possess more than an antiqua- rian interest. Fortunately there is enough difference of opin- ion regarding the details of the Elizabethan theatre to en- courage varied experimentation. Since 1881 William Poel has been pointing out in England the advantages of the Eliza- bethan stage, upon which he has made many fine productions. In Germany it has bee-n known since 1889, when it was first used in Munich for mounting Shakespeare. And in America it has been tried again and again in the universities, notably at Har- vard. Mloreover, it will be remembered that one of the most beautiful of the New Theatre productions was The Winter's Tale in the old manner. The simplicity yet the richness of the background, and the rapid flow of the action made it one of the representations that can be remembered with the most pleasure. Within the last year there have been several inter- esting revivals in honor of Shakespeare's memory. Forbes- Robertson appeared in Hamlet on an Elizabethan stage at Har- vard; the Drama Society of New York presented The Tempest on an old stage of unusual design ; and the Irving Place The- atre of New York gave The Taming of tlw Shrew in German on an Elizabethan stage, freely adapted according to the meth-

Memorial Volume to Shakespeare and Harvey 141

ods of the newer German stagecraft. In its simplest form the tradition may be traced in the curtains that the woodland companies — the Greet, the Coburn, and the Devereux players — use when they act indoors.

One scarcely needs to point out the advantages and the de- fects of the Elizabethan stage for modern representations of Shakespeare. It yields simplicity; it provides an attractive background that is unobtrusive; it permits such rapidity of movement that a Shakespearean play can be given without cuts. And yet many think it bare, and desire more sugges- tion of locality and atmosphere for the individual scene. No one seems to accept the tradition in its simplicity, for we have grown out of sympathy with some of its conventions: we do not admire a male Juliet or Cleopatra, and we find exact Elizabethan costumes out of place in some of the historical and fantastic plays. So at best the tradition has to be adapted to modern requirements, and the disturbing question is how far should this adaptation go. Although it is not likely that the Elizabethan tradition in its simplicity will ever establish itself in general favor, it is even now doing a valuable service by furnishing suggestions to the new art of the stage. And it may be that ultimately the new stagecraft will not only make our threadbare realistic method of mounting over into a beau- tiful realism, but will also develop from the rigid conventional tradition of the Elizabethans a freer, more symbolic, more im- aginative conventionalism.

Now that we have considered the realistic and the Eliza- bethan traditions of stage-mounting, we are ready to turn to the new stagecraft, or the new art of the theatre. Although it is closely related to the two o'ther methods and has borrowed freely whatever good it found in them, it is a separate and clearly defined movement that can be distinctly traced. It arose on the Continent ; and in the last ten or fifteen years has developed chiefly in Germany and Russia, spreading to Italy, France, and England, and, in the last five years, to the United States. Although it is impossible to summarize the theories of a movement still in its experimental days, a few principles gathered from its practice can be pointed out. The new stage-

142 University of Texas Bulletin

craft questions and evaluates all traditional methods of pro- duction, and calls in expert advice in the attempt to solve such problems as lighting and scene shifting. At the head of each production it places one trained man who is to bring every detail into perfect harmony of effect. It plans settings not only for their dramatic appropriateness but for their pure beauty of design : decorations are not mere backgrounds, but symbols that interpret the spirit of the piece. Especially im- portant is the emphasis placed on the artistic and imaginative use of color and light. However, the new stagecraft has no one manner, but as many as there are producers and problems of design and interpretation. Perhaps we can most readily come to a clearer understanding of it by studying the work of some of the important and typical men who have used it in the production of Shakespeare.

Edward Gordon Craig stands out prominently as theorist, publicist, and practitioner of the new art of the stage, the un- wavering champion of the aesthetic theatre. Still a young man, he does not come to the problems of stage mounting as a mere theorist and revolutionist. He is the son of Ellen Terry, and has himself been an actor long enough to form an intimate ac- quaintance with the stage of our time. But he is also an artist; and finding the ordinary methods of production utterly unsatisfactory, he has tried by constant experiment to discover the true art of the theatre by getting back to fundamentals. In the early years of the century he produced several plays in London, and since then he has directed a few important revi- vals, but his theories have been spread largely by his exhi- bitions of models, by his magazine the Mask, and by his two important books, On the Art of the Theatre and Towards a New Theatre. More recently he has established in Florence a school where the craft of production may be learned by prom- ising young artists. The ideas of no theorist of the new move- ment in stage decoration have been so widely influential.

Craig turns his back squarely on realism and realistic plays, and confines himself entirely to the poetic and romantic drama. He believes that the setting which expresses the atmosphere and essence of a play has greater truth than one that merely re-

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produces actualities. He conceives scenery as decoration but even more as interpretation. And he tries to capture the mood of a play, not as the realists do by multiplying realistic detail, but by extreme simplification which eliminates any detail that is not significant and necessary.. He is artist enough, more- over, to make each setting a problem in pure design, a study, in line and mass and color, that rejects entirely the old false perspective of the stage. More and more his settings have shown the architectural note, but his great walls and towers and flights of steps have little resemblance to the architec- tural designs painted flat on the flimsy canvas of the "realis- tic" stage, for they are plastic three-dimension architecture against which plastic figures do not look out of place. More- over, by overseeing every detail personally and by taking end- less pains, he is able to give a remarkable completeness and unity to his productions. Since his sympathy is really with the mimodrama rather than with the literary drama, he puts great emphasis on the importance of movement, by which he means the * ' everchanging working out of artistic designs in, motion by a group of actors before a background."

Some of Craig's most valuable experimentation has been with lighting, a department of production of very great im- portance in the new stagecraft. The shortcomings of the usual methods of lighting the stage have long been known, but only recently have successful efforts been made to remedy them. Craig practically does away with the footlights and their un- natural shadows, and lights the stage from above or from the side. He does not use light realistically but aesthetically and symbolically: the tones of light, the shadows, the atmosphere correspond to the spirit of the piece at that moment and not to reality. By means of light he can always bring out the most important point on the stage at any given time. For instance, he sometimes arranges the stage with a crowd in front in the shadow and the speaker behind them in the bright light. He is particularly successful in painting with shadows and colored lights upon the great flat surfaces of natural tone that form his settings. Moreover, he can project designs upon his settings or throw images of distant trees and hills upon the rear screen.

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So amazing is his control over lights and so remarkable is the atmosphere that he can create with them that he can get very Different effects with only slight changes of scenery. All in all, Craig has proved perhaps the most imaginative reformer in stage lighting that the new movement has produced.

In his two books, On the Art of the Theatre and Towards a New Theatre, are a number of designs for Shakespearean plays that should be examined by all students of the drama. They include settings for Julius Caesar, Romeo and Juliet, Henry V, Macbeth, and Hamlet. The decoration for Hamlet, Act I, Scene 4, illustrates Craig's earlier manner: narrow cur- tains of great height rise vaguely above a few low steps, and part to give a narrow vertical strip of darkness and a glimpse of the moon. The setting for Romeo and Juliet, Act I, Scene 5, shows simple curtains to be bathed in warm yellow light and at one side a great silvery white seat for the lovers. The set- ting for the forum scene in Julius Caesar is decidedly original. High in the background is the great crowd sweeping up from left to right; high in the middle distance on a rostrum above flights of steps stands the man who is persuading the crowd; low in the foreground sit the group against whom he is per- suading the crowd. The Macbeth scenes are strikingly archi- tectural, glimpses of great towers, dark interiors with huge low arches, massive and endless corridors. Particularly interesting is the decoration for the sleep-walking scene. The greater part of the stage is filled by a huge round tower like a giant pillar, and around it from high on the right to low in the left curves the spiral staircase. For vigor, beauty, and appropriateness of design it ranks as one of the best Shakespearean decorations ever planned. Unfortunately the designs are not colored, but even in black and white they exhibit fine line and mass and suggest somewhat the atmosphere that the real settings would produce.

In his most recent settings Craig has used portable screens according to a system that he has invented and patented. These screens he tried out at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, but par- ticularly in his famous production of Hamlet at the Mbscow Art Theatre in December, 1911, a production that many con- gider epoch-making in the history of modern stage mounting.

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The whole decoration was based on the use of multiple screens of great height that could be bent or folded into a surprising variety of forms. The Moscow screens, which were almost a yard and a half wide and as tall as the proscenium, stood by themselves and could be rearranged rapidly according to a plan on the floor of the stage. By slight readjustment, they were made to form pillars, towers, interiors or exteriors of many shapes, and straight or semicircular screens across the stage. When they were used with great steps that Craig is so fond of, the effect was strikingly architectural. Although the screens were only undecorated panels in neutral tones of cream and gold, by skilful lighting and ingenious arrangement they became suggestive decorations that brought out to a marked degree the spiritual significance of the individual scene. In the grave- digging scene the setting suggested a subterranean chamber, with tombstones of different sizes and a little staircase — "the living world outside, the dead world inside." In the Court scene, Act I, Scene 2, Hamlet was a figure in gray against the gold of the Court. The King and Queen were seated high up in the back center of the stage in the full light : in front of them stood the crowd of courtiers; and still farther front, in the shadow, Hamlet reclined on a long couch that formed a barrier across the stage- — a barrier suggestive of the shrouded graves of his hopes. But when the courtiers went and Hamlet and the King stood face to face, the light shifted to Hamlet. In the last act the screens were arranged in three deep vistas, long avenues that disappeared in shadow. The artistry and the originality of the whole production, upon which Craig and Stanislawsky 's famous Moscow company worked for three years, made it one of the most notable of all Shakespearean represen- tations.

But it is in Germany, more than in any other country, that the new stagecraft has made greatest progress and has been most frequently applied to the production of Shakespeare. For our present purpose the work of Max Reinhardt of Berlin, Ger- many's greatest producer, may be taken as representative of the new art of the theatre in Germany. Reinhardt had a long experience as a successful actor before he became an important

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manager and producer in Berlin. For a number of years he has managed one of the first little theatres in Berlin as well as the famous Deutsches Theater, and recently he has also been director of the great People's Theater. He has so educated a following in Berlin that he can conduct artistic theatres on the repertory plan with financial success. Not 'only has he been very active in Berlin, but he has sent his productions over Germany, and even as far as England and America. Several of them have been given in London, and his Sumurun has been presented in New York. Perhaps he has attracted widest attention by his spectacular revivals of Greek plays in a great circus in Berlin, and by his Shakespearean productions at the Deutsches Theater. Ever since the remarkable success of his A Midsummer Night's Dream there in 1911, Shakespeare has had an important place in the bills of the theatre. Many Shakespearean plays have been given, some of them rnany^ times, and only the war caused the abandonment of a plan to present a great cycle of them. No theatre in the world can point to a more notable series of Shakespearean revivals in the last five years.

Reinhardt is not a scene painter, but a producer who has such an intimate knowledge of all departments of production that he can select the right scene painter, architect, and cos- tume-designer to carry out Ms ideas for a given play, and working through them, can bring every detail into unity of effect. In many respects his ideals are similar to Craig's. He eliminates false perspective; he insists on pure beauty as well as illusion in a stage decoration ; he emphasizes pantomime and movement. But he is more many-sided than Craig, for he experiments with realistic as well as symbolic decoration. In. some respects he is also more daring and less reverent. He frankly adapts Sophocles and Shakespeare to gain an imme- diate effect from a present-day audience. He likes to appeal directly to the simple human passions common to great masses of people, and he has tried in all of his productions to bring the audience and the actors into immediate contact with one another. By building out the stage, by presenting plays in great arenas, and by bringing the actors onto the stage from

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among the spectators, he has tried to make the audience have an important part in the play. On the whole, although he occasionally expresses his own individuality in the decoration of a play rather than the spirit of the author, and although he sometimes shows a tendency toward rather heavy, bizarre, and even grotesque effects, yet most of his work is highly sig- nificant, and all of it is interesting.

With characteristic efficiency Reinhardt and other German producers have called in scientists and mechanicians to solve difficulties of staging. Like Craig they have experimented a great deal with light, and as the result of a number of inven- tions they can obtain many unusual and striking effects. Rein- hardt uses the footlights very sparingly, but illuminates the stage from the gallery and wings or from over the proscenium, letting the light seem to fall from only one side at once. He makes great use of the spotlight in emphasizing the important point in the action, and like Craig he employs light less for realistic than for aesthetic and emotional effect irrespective of what it would be in real life. By means of the dome cyclorama which has recently appeared in the best German theatres, a surpris- ing variety in lighting can be secured, and some of the most evident shortcomings of our usual method of illuminating ex- terior scenes can be eliminated. "We are all familiar with the crude convention according to which sky is represented by a blue backdrop, shaking in the wind, and by narrow strips of blue cloth across the top of the stage .called sky borders. No matter how solidly a scene may be built up, its effect is lost against so disillusioning a background. Now Reinhardt and the Germans have used their ingenuity to get around this difficulty, and they have had considerable success. They curve the walls at the back of the stage around in a great semicircle that encloses the stage proper and raise them high up inside the proscenium in a great half dome of plaster or concrete that when correctly lighted gives from every angle the effect of real sky. Upon its neutral surface, sky and cloud effects may be thrown, and from it light may be diffused to the stage below. It is generally used in connection with another important invention, the For- tuny lighting system, which does away almost entirely with dl-

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rect lighting. The lamps are placed inside the proscenium above the stage, and the light is diffused and reflected by colored silks and thrown upon the dome cyclorama or directed to any part of the stage. Every conceivable shade of color can be obtained as well as effects of great distance. Moreover, Reinhardt has gained very illusive and beautiful effects of distance by means of net curtains that are cleverly lighted. Thus the Germans use mechanical ingenuity to secure a more beautiful realism. Another device that Reinhardt has brought into effective use is the revolving stage. One of the chief difficulties of realistic mounting is the length of time required for scene shifting; the waits are so frequent and so long that the flow of the action is destroyed. Reinhardt has largely corrected this defect by employing a revolving stage by means of which scene can fol- low scene in quick succession. As his stage at the Deutsches Theater presents one-fifth of its circumference at the proscenium every time, he can set at least five scenes at once, and by a few changes he can use most of the settings for more than one scene. He carefully plans how many effective scenes he can get into the available space, and builds them up solid, each one helping to support the others. If he arranges his scenes ingeniously, there is no need for any waits at all, except the one long wait that the German expects for relaxation in the middle of a play. For example in the production of Henry IV, Part I, the stage was set with five scenes : the tavern, a room in the castle, a room in the palace, "before the inn," and an elaborate s^ttin^ of the country road. But by a change of curtains the room in the palace could become other rooms, and finally the king's tent; the tavern became the rebels' tent; and "before the inn" became the battlefield. It is scarcely necessary to point out the value of such a stage in .the production of Shakespeare where many short scenes must be placed upon the stage. The revolving stage is by no means the only device with a similar purpose, for the sliding stage and the sinking stage are widely experimented wTith in Germany. All these devices are providing the producer with finer tools for his work. Although the problem of stage mobility has not by any means been solved, the Germans hare done a great deal to further its solution.

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Among the Shakespearean plays that Reinhardt has pro- duced at the Deutsches Theater are A Midsummer Night's Dream, Julius Caesar, A Comedy of Errors, A Winter's Tale, King Lear, Hamlet, The Taming of the Shrew, Henry IV, Much Ado About Nothing, The Merchant of Venice, Romeo and Juliet, Twelfth Night and Macbeth. The great success of A Midsummer Night's Dream in 1905 encouraged him to make Shakespeare prominent in the repertory of the Deutsches Theater. This production was in Reinhardt 's earlier manner, but although it was largely realistic and extremely elaborate, it brought out very successfully the romantic and fantastic spirit of the play. Among the great masses of tangled undergrowth and gleaming birch trees that filled the huge stage, hundreds of elves, gnomes, goblins, and fairies danced in the moonlight on the green- moss. In Julius Caesar, too, Reinhardt gave a series of elaborate pic- tures of the real Rome of the past. But he has no one manner, for he studies each play to be mounted as a new problem and seeks in his decoration to express its spirit. Moreover, he is fertile in original devices. For instance, his Comedy of Errors was presented on a purely conventional stage of unusual design : the stage proper was spanned by a bridge leading from one flight of steps to another and forming an upper stage; beneath it was a conventional glimpse of the harbor, and behind and above it the blue sky. Across the bridge, always from right to left, went the action, and the difficulty of making the rather steep approaches added to the hurry, the bustle, and the confu- sion of the farce. A Winter's Tale was set on an even more conventional stage. At right and left were placed two tall dark green screens, forming a deep inner proscenium1: a bright green curtain between the front two provided a small room, a dark green curtain between the rear two provided a large one. In these settings which merely suggested rooms in the palace of Leontes, the action of the first part of 'the play took place. For the judgment scene, across the back of the stage a dark wall against a great expanse of blue sky formed the background for a great crowd. For the action in Bohemia there was a pretty and fantastic pastoral setting in the conventional manner, green grass, a tree with a bench, a quaint cottage, and at ths

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back the masts and sails of ships to suggest the sea. King Lear was set almost entirely with simple tapestries in a conventional stage frame: for interiors, tapestries with designs that, while in a way realistic, suggested early Britain; for exteriors dark draperies with a glimpse of the sky or distant sea. Hamlet Reinhardt has mounted more than once, but always simply and suggestively. The production of 1910 relied almost entirely on very simple curtains on a stage that had been built out into the auditorium to gain intimacy : curtains of different designs sug- gested different rooms and permitted a very rapid change of scene. But although any of the Reinhardt productions repay the student of stage mounting, we must confine ourselves to one more typical example, The Taming of the Shrew. Rein- hardt retained the induction and consistently carried out the idea of the play within the play. After the induction Sly watched the action from the great stone seat on a low platform stage that was built out below the stage proper over the orchestra pit. O'n the stage proper a series of diminishing arches, one behind the other, led to a broad landscape at the back. Just in front of it a broad balustraded terrace, reached by a flight of three steps in the center, crossed the stage. The method of conduct- ing the play was original and effective. The act drop curtains parted to show landscape tapestries before which the drunken Sly appeared. The tapestries were then drawn aside to show the white satin hangings of the Lord's chamber farther up stage. In turn these curtains were drawn aside to show the whole stage. Along the terrace at the back the players entered and presented their play before Sly with what properties they had in their wagon or with furnishings appropriated from the palace. The main action of the play went on before improvised settings of screens or curtains held up by the servants and changed in full sight of the audience. A few heavy properties, such as the large canopied seat and table used in Petruchio's house, were raised into the flies. The banquet scene at the end of the play was set on the terrace against a background of dark blue Italian sky.

It must not be thought that Reinhardt is the only important figure in the new stagecraft of Germany; he is only one of

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many. In the last ten years there has been widespread ex- perimentation with stage mounting in German theatres which even the war has not entirely stopped. Many theatres beside the Deutsches of Berlin have given unusual and artistic representa- tions of Shakespeare in the new manner. But we must turn tc the new art of the theatre as it comes more closely home to vft on the English and the American stage.

In England the new stagecraft may be represented by the work of Granville Barker. Barker was well known as an actor, dra- matist, and producer of realistic plays before he undertook the production of Greek and Shakespearean plays in the new man- ner. Like Reinhardt he is not a scene painter, but a producer of the artistic type who can give a representation a very definite and unified effect. He has been fortunate in discovering Norman Wilkinson to design his settings and Albert Rotherstein to assist with the costumes. ' In London his stagging of A Winter's Tale, Twelfth Night, and 'A Midsummer Night's Dream attracted a great deal of attention, and it was much discussed when the plays were brought to the United States early in 1915. Un- fortunately Barker 's Shakespeare representations have not proved successful enough financially to encourage him to continue his experiments, but even now we are indebted to him for three unusually imaginative productions.

The settings of the three plays were of the same general type. By combining elements of the Elizabethan theatre and of the conventional stage of the Germans, Barker designed a stage that not only provided interesting decoration for the individual scene, but permitted so great a rapidity of movement that the plays could be given without cuts in a reasonable time. Just within the proscenium was constructed a conventional stage frame or inner proscenium in gold with a doorway at each side of the stage. Curtains could be hung along the back or the front of this narrow section, which formed the middle stage. Behind it was the rear stage taking up the greater portion of the stage proper, and in front of it was the platform or fore-stage built out over the orchestra pit into the stalls. By the use of these three stages, Barker had no difficulty in gaining rapidity and variety. The settings did not represent locality realistically,

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but were rather symbolic decorations of considerable individ- uality. As a rule, the backgrounds were kept simple in order that they "might bring out the costumes.

In A Winter's Tale the palace of Leontes was suggested by white classic columns around three sides of the stage, , hung with green gold curtains ; in the center were gold couches. For Bohemia there was a thatched cottage and a wicker fence — a considerable concession in the direction of realism. But other scenes were played before simple draperies hung from the inner proscenium, flat landscapes for exteriors and simple patterns for interiors. In Twelfth Night also conventional decorative curtains were largely used. There was, however, a beautiful built-up scene for Olivia's garden with many steps, a stiff gold throne with a pink canopy, and fantastically conventional yew trees and garden seats. In A Midsummer Night's Dream the inner stage was reserved for Titania's bower, and later for Theseus' palace of the last act; and long curtains painted • in arabesques or conventional designs were employed as backgrounds for the other scenes. For Titania 's bower fantastic curtains sug- gesting the forest half surrounded a green mound; filmy gauzes floated down around Titania 's head from a great wreath high in the air. For the last act an ingenious arrangement was found. The Court reclined on couches on the fore-stage, and like the audience looked back at the play given by the clowns on a ter- race to which a great row of steps led, and behind which towered a row of great pillars against a sky set with conventional stars. But although certain general characteristics of Barker's work can be pointed out, only a study of the designs themselves can do justice to their value as fantastic decoration. Barker un- doubtedly took suggestions from Craig, from Reinhardt, and from the Elizabethan tradition, but he worked them over in a.n individual and imaginative way. Work like his was partic- ularly needed in England where Shakespearean production had become traditional and unprogressive, and his revivals must be remembered as an unusually intelligent attempt to give us the real Shakespeare.

The new stagecraft reached America several years before Bar- ker brought us his Shakespeare, but at first it appeared at the

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-opera house and the experimental theatre. Its first appearance in connection with Shakespeare was not on the professional stage, but in an amateur performance of The Comedy of Errors by the Delta Upsilon society of Harvard, the same organization that this year presented Henry IV, Part II, very notably in the new man- ner. Two men have stood out as leaders of the new movement in the United States, Josef Urban and Livingston Platt, Urban, who did so much for the new staging at the Boston Opera House, designed the settings for Twelfth Night, given by Phyllis Neilson- Terry in New York in October, 1914, and more recently the elab- orate decorations of Macbeth and The Merry Wives of Windsor, for H. K. Hackett and Viola Allen. . But the work of Platt can best represent the relation of the new stagecraft in America to Shakespeare.

Platt, who had become familiar with the new movement abroad, was making interesting decorations for the tiny stage of the old Toy Theatre of Boston when he was given the opportunity of mounting The Comedy of Errors for the Castle Square Stock Company of Boston in the Spring of 1913. He was so success- ful that he later mounted Julius Caesar, Hamlet, and A Mid- summer Night's Dream for the same company. In spite of the fact that a stock company could not afford lavish productions, the settings were interesting and artistic. Platt uses a variation of the device we have already met, and frames his stage with a shallow inner proscenium pierced on each side of the stage by a door and connected across the top by a flat cornice that makes "sky borders" unnecessary. Interiors are suggested by differ- ent curtains hung from the back of this cornice; exteriors are represented by decoration farther back on the stage. A very slight rearrangement and relighting produces a great difference of effect. In Hamlet, for instance, a simple tower looming up on shadowy stage suggested the battlements; an ancient cross, the graveyard. For A Midsummer Night's Dream there was a beautiful setting of great tree trunks and heavy foliage seen through gauze. Beautiful effects were gained in The Comedy of Errors by the simplest means ; curtains and a few significant properties under illusive lighting for interiors, and a doorway, a wall, or a cypress tree against the blue cyclorama for exteriors.

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Platt's work at Castle Square attracted the attention of Miss Anglin, and she engaged him to make decorations for Antony and Cleopatra, As You Like It, The Taming of fhe Shrew, and Twelfth Night, in the season of 1913-1914. The settings at- tracted favorable comment in all parts of the country on ac- count of their beauty and simplicity. Although Shakespeare in the new manner had been given in the amateur and stock thea- ter, it first reached the regular American stage in the Platt pro- ductions for Miss Anglin.

In conclusion, I shall not attempt to codify the principles or methods of the new stagecraft. When dealing with a living movement that is reaching out in every direction in eager ex- periment, it is safer to present the practice by means of specific examples. This I have tried to do in the preceding pages; we have considered not only the realistic and the conventional meth- ods of stage mounting, but we have followed the work of such typical men as Gordon Craig, Max Reinhardt, Granville Barker, Livingston Platt, and others. From such a study it is clear that in many countries producers are seeking and finding little by little a new beauty and efficiency that, if present promise is fulfilled, will mean adequate representation of Shakespeare in the theatre of to-morrow.

THE STRATULAX SCENES IN PLAUTUS' TRUCULENTUS

BY EDWIN W. FAY

PREFATORY NOTE: In the transcription of Greek words small caps sometimes stand for unaccented longs; a, e, etc., re- present acute longs (but occasionally grave shorts). In Latin words the circumflex sometimes does duty for the scroll (as over n) • and a raised vowel is short or shortened. Inserted letters etc., are enclosed between "slants" — / /.

The Rudens parallel with the first scene

1. The striking resemblance in action and mise-en-scene be- tween Rudens II, iv (414 sq.) and Truculentus II, ii (256 sq.) has not, I believe, been adduced as a means of interpreting the Truculentus passage more precisely. In the Rudens, Ampelisca, a meretrix, armed with a water jug; knocks violently on the door of Daemones, whose manservant, Sceparnio, opens to her with the words :

414 quis est qui nostris tarn proterve foribus facit iniuriam? Ampelisca answers with

415 ego sum (c'est moi).

The cross old man (see Act I, sc. ii) immediately begins to ogle her with the words:

hem ! quid hoc boni est ? eu edepol specie lepida mulierem ! Later, in vs. 428 (431), the dialogue continues:

428 quid nunc uis? Am. sapienti ornatus quid uelim in- dicium facit.

429. Sc. meus quoque hie sapienti ornatus quid uelim in- dicium facit.

The commentators (v. e. g. Ussing ad loc.) have realized that in vs. 429 meus ornatus intimates a phallus ; cf . Skutsch, Kleine Schriften, 193 : fehlte der vers 432 des Rudens, so wiirden wir nichts davon wissen dasz der phallus zum kostiim des schau- spieler's der nea gehoren konnte.

[155]

11— s

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Not a phallus, but the sera or patibulum in the Rudens.

2. That a phallus actually belonged to Sceparnio's costume seems to me violently unlikely. But he might, with great dra- matic propriety, have come out of the door with an object suitable for the gesticulation of a phallus. He had opened the door to violent knocking and we might even expect him to step forth holding in his hand the doorbar, the sera (mochlos) or the pessulus (bdlanos). The identical situation recurs in the Ful- lones of Titinius:

si quisquam hodie praeter hanc posticum nostrum pepulerit patibulo hoc ei caput diffringam, a passage explained as follows by Nonius (582, 15), patibulum, sera qua ostia obcluduntur; quod hac remota valvae pateant.

What the sera was like and its suitability for phallic play comes clearly to light in Paulus-Festus 23, 27 : serae .... defixae postibus, quemadmodum ea quae terrae inserunt. With the sera1 or pessulus,2 with anything of that shape,3 the actor might easily, by a gesture, by a leer, by a pause or an intonation, have intimated a phallus.4 Thus with an excellent economy of stage properties and with due realism the playwright would have got his effect, availing himself at the same time of a motif of horseplay supplied to the kaine (New Comedy) from the archaia (Old Comedy).

1Serra in the sense of "stake" seems also to be used by Cato, de re mil. ap. Festum, 466, 30: sin forte opus sit cuneo, aut globo, aut for- cipe, aut turribus, aut serra, uti adoriare. As for the double rr of serra, Groeber in Archiv, V, 467 has abundantly demonstrated this rustic form, and it ought to be restored in Silius, Pun. 13,752, obices munimina ser/r/a /e/, cf. munimina portae in Ovid, *Am. 1, 6, 29.

*Cf. pdssalos denned by posthv; and Lat. palus as used by Horace in S. 1, 8, 5.

'This metaphor is of unlimited vadidity, cf. e. g. Eng. yard and even trolley.

4In Trunculentus 351, (fores) quae obsorbent quicquid uenit intra pessulos, a pause before pessulos would make it mean quasi "mentulas" (as Pompeius was named Sopio or Ropio, v. Friedrich ad Catull. 37, 9). Note that pessulos is here the last word in a scene; cf. commercium "liaison", spoken by the same Diniarchus (§3) as the last word of I, i.

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Inverted character of the first Stratulax scene

/

3. In the first Stratulax scene Astaphium, an ancilla mere- tricis, already proclaimed to the audience as Diniarchus' dis- carded mistress5 (§ 2, fn. ; § 5), knocks violently at a door which would be opened to her she knew by a very cross and surly doorkeeper (ostiarius), who hated her and all her sort (vss. 250 sq.), but she braved herself to the effort with these words:

254 sed fores quicquid est futurum feriam. Stratulax (§20), the Truculent, opens to her, crying out,

256 quis illic est qui tarn proterue nostras aedis arietat? Astaphium replies.

257 ego sum, respice ad me.

It is quite important for her to reach his young master and, with an inversion of the Rudens situation, she tries to cajole Stratulax : given a meretrix and an ostiarius, the Plautine audi- ence doubtless sat expectant of phallic play. But now Asta- phium's pretty speeches are of no avail, and Stratulax kept jawing and sawing back at her till she cried out :

262 comprime sis iram.6 St. meam quidem hercle tu, quae solita's, comprime.

263 inpudens, quae per ridiculum rustico suades stuprum! 2647 As. iram dixi : ut excepisti, demsisti unam litteram 265 nirni8 quidem h{c tru/n/cu/s/ lentus. St. pergin male

loqui, mulier, mihi?

2668 As. quid tibi ego male dico ? St. quia e^m me truncuro lentum nominas.

Sacerdos' citation of vs. 262.

4. Verse 262 had fallen into the hands of the grammarians, and Sacerdos (ca. 275-300 A. D.) cited the three first words, along with innocent instances of arrecti and testes, as an ex-

"This makes it clear why, later on (vs. 325), Astaphium called Diniarchus her abomination (odium). •See correction of text in §12 sq.

/Correction of vsi 264 in§ §15-16; of vs. 265-266 in §17. 'Note the change to iambic rhythm and see Lindsay's note ad loc.

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ample of aeschrologia: "est verborum turpitude, non intellectus, "comprime9 sis iram" (Keil, GL. VI, 453, 19) .... per cacem- phaton, ut est illud Plautinum "comprime sis iram"; nam rem turpem sonat utpote a meretricis ancilla dicta oratio" (ib. 461, 25). That comprime was the ugly word in this citation is generally assumed but, if we note Horace, 8. 1, 2, 71, Sacerdos may just as well have had iram in his mind. Or the abbreviated citation bears the character of the whole line and the alleged ugliness really lies further on in the retort of Stratulax, where- in even the pale word solita, if the least intoned in utterance, was suggestive of lewdness; while the words meam .... com- prime are, as we shall have to see (§13), highly indecent.

Error in text and current interpretation of vs. 262

5. It is clear from the language of vs. 264 that the equivoque in vs. 262 consisted in using two words reasonably identical in sound, the one of which contained a letter less than the other. Accordingly, iram has been spelt as /e/iram (ei=e, or close ei) and (m)eam altered to e/r/an. To me the words eram corn- prime, as addressed to Astaphium, seem worse than pointless, however Plautine aliquem comprime, spoken of master and man (but not conversely), would have seemed (v. exx. ap. Thes. LL. Ill, 2159, 66 sq.). To the discarded mistress of Diniarchus (see his boast in vs. 94, cum ea quoque etiam mihi fuit commercium) earn comprime (quam solita' s) would have point, if referring to a baubon (cf. Meister, Herond. 6, 19 and p. 859) ; and the grossly insulting meam comprime (§13) is a retort of great point; but a reference in earn to Phronesium, Astaphium's mis- tress, seems quite absurd. Even the converse taunt against Phronesium would be excluded, for that meretrix was other- wise fully engaged.

Harking back to §5

6. At a Plautine play, when an ancilla meretricis had sum- moned to the door a surly old ostiarius, the audience undoubt-

'Ms. reprime, which may be right, §12.

Memorial Volume to Shakespeare and Harvey 159

edly sat expectant of phallic play. But in our scene the comic poet attains to uproarious mirth by letting the ostiarius repulse — • and that with phallic gesticulation— the advances of the ancilla meretricis. To Astaphium it was most important to get past the ostiarius, Stratulax, in hopes of effecting a rencounter with Strabax, his young master, to whom the old servant played as it were the part of chaperon. To secure her end she was ready to make Stratulax any advances. To the audience, her discom- fiture must have afforded a situation very rare in the nea (kaine) or in life, one of the inverted situations that overwhelm with surprise and produce boisterous glee.

The control-scene, Truculent us, III, ii

7. The proof that our scene has the inverted situation just described is furnished later on by a contra-scene (III, ii), in which Stratulax cuts the usual figure by beginning to ogle Astaphium. By a review of the counterscene we shall put our- selves into a position to understand the original scene and shall learn how to correct its text where the actors and grammarians went astray. Be it here remembered that our play owes its name of Truculently to the violent character of Stratulax (§26) ; and entirely owes its individuality to his two appearances upon the stage. In his first appearance he shares in a dialogue of Jbut 66 lines; in his second, of but 33.10 We are accordingly justified in expecting to find these brief scenes crammed full of significance and overflowing with verbal quip.

Analysis of the contrascene

8. In the counterscene, in his very first remark to Asta- phium (673), Stratulax disavows his former fierceness; in the next (675), he offers to kiss her; next,11 he professes an entire change of character,

"It is very curious — but perhaps not significant — that, in the P Mss. of Plautus, these scenes, exclusive of the sceneheads, would have filled, the one precisely two pages, the other an even page of the manuscript.

"Cf. also, 673 nimio minus saeuos iam sum, Astaphium, quam fui, 674 iam non sum tru/n/cu/s/ lentus: noli metuere.

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677 nouos omnis mores habeo, uete-res perdidi.

678 uel amare possum uel iam scortum ducere.

In vs. 678 we must attach every importance to the words possum and iam, especially as, in her answer, Astaphium re- mains a little unconvinced,

679 lepide mecastor nuntias : sed die mihi

680 haben[t] — ? St. paxillum12 te fortasse dicere?

That in 680 Astaphium hesitated to complete her outrageous question, designed to probe the new powers alleged by Stratu- lax in 678, is most likely, though it is possible that here, as in the corresponding verse of the original scene (262), Stratulax rudely interrupted. The motive of his interruption would have been to counter, by means of te fortasse dicere?, on As- taphium's corrective dixi in vs. 264. Note Astaphium 's reply

"For paxillum te the Mss. read parasitumet. The sense of paxillum is the sense of palus as cited in §2, fn. Schoell first corrected (editio maior, p. 108) to peculium te; afterwards (ed. minor VII, p. xiii) to part *i tumet, wherein si is bad Latin. Either correction is tantamount in sense to paxillum, as the whole point of the lines is to render proof that Stratulax has passed out of his amorous lentitude (§9). Palaeo- graphically, parasitum would easily arise from paxillum (or even pasillum, cf. the spellings of pauxillum in § 9 fn.), spelt pacsilum as, in Vergil G. 4, 199, nee sib'.ifi is written for nexibus (see Havet, Manuel de Critique Verbale, §1061). With the riddlesome pacsilum before his eyes, the scribe guessed par/a/situm. Cf. on C/R Persa, 594, where ILLEDORTUS stands in A for ille doctus; Merc. 59, where conuirium in the P Mss. — B's coniurium, in spite of a recent mistaken defense, is worthless — is for conuicium; True. 104, where B reads fector' for fartor(es). This change from C to R may have gone through P (cf. Havet, op. cit. §§607, 609). — Besides paxillum te a number of other good ductus emendations for parasitumet present themselves: (1) pruritum te. See usage of prurio and perprurisco in the closing scene of the Stichus; on the a/u confusion in Caroline minuscules, Alcuin as cited by Lindsay, Latin Textual Emendation pp. 83-84; Havet, §6; for s/r cf. Cure. 318, Os amarum for Gramarum; Mo. 28, semet for rem et. Havet (621) pronounces this a characteristic confusion. (2) paralysin te (or liaben: paralysis tenet te?), with paralysis used as in Petronius, § 129 sq. We further have, scanning hdb&n, (3) pars tumet /mi, t/e; (4) pdrastatam te (p.='testiculum') ; (5) seram tume/ntG/ t/e/ (sera as in § 2); (6) pdresis tenet me te (for paresis, cf. parctois , . melesi, Anth. Pal. V, 55, a century before Plautus.

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681 intellexisti lepide quid ego dicerem,

("what I was to say, meant to say," cf. § 16). Whichever cor- rection we accept for parasitumet the whole context insists on the fact of Stratulax's renewed or released virility.

Stratulax' new-won urbanity; caullator=paxilli lator

9. In his next speech, countering Astaphium's taunt of rus- ticity (rus merum, 269), Stratulax asserts his new-won urban- ity (and wit).

682 St. heus tu, iam postquam in urbem crebro commeo

683 dicax sum factus: iam sum cau[il] lator probus.

684 As. quid id est, amabo? istaec ridicularia.

685 cauillationes uis, opinor, dicere/?/.13

Here the equivoque lies in caullatorf long since correctly ex- plained as a humorous formation based on caulis/caula (colis/cola, cf. colicula) "mentula," so that caullatorl*=quaisi "mentulatus. " This definition is certified by the hitherto mis- understood, or only half-understood, retort in

686 St. ita, ut pa[u]xillum differt a cauillibus

Well, about as a — peg differs from a ga-g-gabbage. Here paxillum15 not only vindicates paxillum in 680, but serves as a throwback to the se(r)ra or pessulus of the original scene (§§ 2 sq.).

687 As. sejquere intro amabo, mea uoluptas[t]. St. tene hoc tibi!

Here hoc is precisely the paxillum of vs. 686.

"Countering te fortasse dicer ef in 680.

"Probably not a genuine compound cauli-lator (i. e. "paxilli lator"), thugh peculator is, I take it, due to symphysis, with haplology, of pecw[H] lator.

"The copyists of P and the P precursors pronounced pauxillum as paxillum; cf. the glosses paxillum mensura est modica uel palus qui in pariete figitur; pasillum parvum. It follows that genuine .paxillumr especially when contiguous to differt (cf. paulum differt, etc.), might contrariwise be transcribed pauxillum. For the neuter form of the glossic word note that Varro ap. Nonium 219, 19 uses palum.

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The quip on (ar)rabo

10. Stratulax continues:

688 rabonem habeto, uti mecum hanc noctem sies.

689 As. peril, "rabonem," quam esse dicam hanc beluam?

690 quin tu arrabonem dicis[t] 1 St. "ar" facio lucri, ut Praenestinis "conea" est ciconia.

The ellipsis (procope) of ar is meant to counter on Astaphium's quip on double rr in vs. 264 (§§ 15-16).

Return to fhe original scene (II, ii)

11. So much for the phallic play and Stratulax' renewed virility in the counterscene. Let us return to the original scene, where Stratulax has come to the door, armed (ex hypo- thesi) with the sera (§ 2). He has scorned Astaphium's ad- vances, which were verbally timid and, as she always seems, decent, perhaps even restrained, in gesticulation. But what- ever she said he kept retorting, by way of jawing and sawing, till she cried out

262 reprime (Sacerdos) sis iram, etc. — corrected

12. The words sis iram (A reads COMPRIMESISIRAM) are profoundly, however simply, corrupt, even though they seem to make an obvious and quite appropriate sense. But it is hard to see — a point, it would seem, that the editors have never even raised — how, instead of SISIRAM the P Mss. came to read spero (Spero). As regards reprime or comprime, I had .almost as lief retain the one as the other, but incline to reprime (1) because reprime seems liable to assimilation to the com- prime of the retort; and (2) because the Greek original, as will ;appear later (§ 13), seems to have had anische retorted by an- \techou. For spero I read serram=" obiurgationem, " as found In the locution scrram ducere (Varro, r. r. 3, 6, 1, Fircellius, qui — tecum duceret serram : Sat. Menipp, 329, cum portitore ser- ram duxe). In the P precursors, thanks to a copyist's partial isolation of se as a word, serram would have been transcribed

Memorial Volume to Shakespeare and Harvey 163

.as seprd,16 and afterwards made into the word spero.17 In the A and Sacerdos' tradition, SISIRAM originated from

C

SER(R)AM, glossed asJ \\ or quite independently, the

1 >eram j

copyists, to whom se(r)ram was a hopeless riddle, got it down with dittography as SISIRAM. 17a It is to the reading siram (for serram) in the grammatical tradition prior to Sacerdos that we owe the gloss sira, saura,18 to\aidoion- though seira, "rope" may, like sclioimon (§ 17), have be-en derisively used for "mentula."

18On P/R (see also § 8 fn.; cf. Lindsay, TE. p. 87; Havet, 1. c. § 609 (§§582, 808). For inscriptional confusion of P/R see Schneider, dial, lat. prise, p. 129.

17On o for a in the Truculentus Mss. see e. g. the transcriptions of the name of Stratophanes in §22, below. In the scenehead of Trinummus II, ii A reads FILTA for PHILTO. On — a and — o cf. also cu.ro/cura in Horace, C. 1, 38, 6. In the inversion of seprd to spero the inter- changeability of P with E may have played a part, cf. Mo. 967, where \_a~\melius replaces amplius in the P Mss.; and see 'AJPh. 31, 84

"aThere is no limit to the palaeographic interchangeability of E with I. What Varro remarks (/. I. 9, § 105 sq.) about the liability of the copyists to confound the terminations E and I applies equally well to the transcription of E and I in any rare or recondite word; and editors who correct Varro's lavarc/i (in True. 323) to lavere have simply never read their Varro. Dittography in manuscripts is as little subject to limitation as the E/I shift. Thus in True. 380 A reads DUMUIUIXI for dum uixi; and in 257 the P Mss. read tetibi for tibi. For dittography in inscriptions, scarcely less common than in manu- scripts, see no's 2 and 72 in Diehl's Altlateinische Inschriften.

"On saura "lizard," whence "mentula," see Heraeus in Archiv. 12, 266. But Heraeus goes too far in explaining purpurilla as anything but a scribes' fault (P/T) for turturilla; cf. for P/T Mo. 842, where B reads trctium for pretium; 8. 87, MULPA (in A) for multa; further examples in AJPh. 31, 84. That turturilla should mean "the place of the Dovies" would seem easy enough if scholars had but bethought them of the Greek usage of hoi ichthus ("the fishes"), hoi drnithes and td drnea ("the birds") for the fish and bird stalls in the markets; cf. Catullus, 55, 4, where in omnibus libellis=apud omnes librarios. On turtur cf. Buecheler in 'Archiv, 2, 116, where note is made of the continuous expurgation to which modern lexica have been subject. Obscenities like "Duke," which recently fell under my eye, have next to no chance of ever being recorded, though the example represents a class.

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Further corrections of vs. 262

13. To Astaphium's hesitant reprime serram Stratulax, per- haps with rude interruption, retorted

262 meam quidem hercle tu, quae solita's, comprime. Here the P reading meiam (sc. seram, i. e. "mentulam") is right. The indecency of the retort is somewhat softened by the euphemistic ellipsis with meam,19 and the insult in quae solita's, quasi "thou expert quean," is likewise euphemistic. In the Greek original meam comprime may well have been represented by toud' antechou, a locution actually found in this sense, ellip- sis and all, in Aristophanes' Ach. 1120. I conjecture also that toud' antechou, retorts, in the original Greek, Astaphium's anische(s) stulon (§ 31).

Stratulax' retort in vs. 263

14. 263, inpudens quae per ridiculum rustico suades stuprum. Here nothing need be said save that stuprum quite adequately corresponds to the interpretation already given to reprime se(r)ra)m (§ 13).

Correction of vs. 264, the last half

15. This verse is extremely corrupt. It goes as follows:

A [As.] IRAMMXItfUTDECEPISTIDEMSISTIUNAMLIT-

TERAM

B iram dixi ut esse cepisti sidem sistun alteram

CD iram dixi ut esse cepisti fidem si est una altera.

After noting that in A decepisti may owe its de- for ex- to antici- pation from demsisti, I follow Lindsay and others in explaining P's esse as due to a ligature writing of ex- confounded with the ligature for et (cf. e. g. Havet 1. c. §721), and then for esse. But, to proceed curtly, I would read as follows the last half of vs.

"The A reading earn perhaps suggests Tianc in Ovid, Am. 3, 7, 73; ista in Priapea 56, 3; earn in Petronius 132, 7; ilia, i&. 11. Friedrich ad Catull. "04, 145 has a long list of similar indefinites such as aliquid, a thoroughly modern idiom.

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264 excepsti unam /r/20 litte-ram

From glossal interpretations of excepsti arose excepisti and [si] demsisti.

Correction of vs. 264;. the first half

16. This leaves us in A for the first half of our line

264 /As./ IRAMDIXLSZ7T

where for SUT Loewe thought that he saw UTTE. As regards sut, if we consider the lacerations indicated in Studemund's apograph, we might perhaps restore STIL (or -T, miswritten or misread for original -L; TI is for V, § 25). Before excepsti the AP precursors had, I surmise, STRATILAX, but the proper name in the text had been reduced by skipping and haplogra- phy to S [TRA] TIL [AX] EXCEPSTI. Accordingly, inserting duxe after the Varro citation of § 12, I thus restore the first half of the verse :

264 As. /s/er(r)am21 /duxe/ dix/e/i, Stratilax. Here Astaphium, harking back to vs. 262, completes, with some repetition, her interrupted sentence, reprime serram — ,21 in the form serram duxe. For the construction of reprime . . duxe cf. Ennius' Ann. 294, audere (i. q. audaciam) repressit. It Cicero could write reprimere susceptam obiurgationem we need not question reprime serram in Plautus. And as Plautus does say comprime orationem (uocem) we may not, on principle, exclude from his text comprime orationem facere, or even com- prime uociferari. It would be hypercritical, because of the tense of dixi (see on dioerem §8), to object that as Astaphium repeats only serram she may not complete her interrupted phrase by adding duxe. Indeed, her correction must also look

20The inserted r might be defended by the a of alteram in CD. On a/r cf. Most. 363, where the P Mss. have aedit for redit; see also Havet, 1. c. § 618. My interpretation of the passage in no wise depends on the actual insertion of this r, but it seems to me to supply a basis later on for the procope of ar in 'rafto (vs. 689, §10).

21The extra si in B's sldem (§ 15) is not likely to have come from ser(r)am glossed as siram. It is more likely to have got in from the preceding St(ratilax), reduced somewhere in the text transmission to a no ta personae (§24).

166 University of Texas Bulletin

to Stratulax' meam /seram/, and she had to reiterate serram with a sharp double r to bring out the trick she had put upon the rustic (§ 2, fn.) in using the word serr\a — and here Plautus added a quip the more to his original — which Stratulax was sure to understand of the ser(r)a22 in his hand. As regards the tense of reprime duxe, it is perhaps adequately accounted for by a negative imperative turn like noli devellisse (Poen. 872) ; but it may be remarked that any action must be in progress before it can be made to cease. Accordingly, the active turn reprime duxe corresponds to the passive reprime susceptam orationem; cf. desistat (0. 0. for desiste) combined in .an elegiac epitaph with the perfect infinitive sollicitasse (Buecheler, Carm. Epigr,, 1212, 13).

On tlie, reading truncum lentum in (26 5-) 266

17. It remains to explain vss. 265-266, and especially the curious reading truncum lentum (266), strongly confirmed by the quips with the paxillum in the counterscene (§ 9). Asta- phiuna went on, after excepsti unam /r/ litteram, with

265 nimis quidem h!c tru/n/cu/s/ lentus[t]. St. pergin male loqui, mulier, mihifes] ?23

266. As. quid tibi ego maledico? St. quia enim me truncum lentum nominas.24

In these lines we have the advance provocation for the play with the paxillum in the counterscene (§ 9), where Ussing rightly — as Lindsay cautiously admits — read vs. 674 as iam non sum tru/n/cu/s/ lentus, etc. (§ 8 fn.). For the interpre- tation of truncum lentum in 266 Leo made in his edition the apposite reference to truncus m^rs iacui in Ovid, Am. 3, 7,

etymology of serra "saw" has not been settled. The word is related with the root s(iv)er in sermo, and the tool was named from its grating buzzing humming. The double r, if not simply hypocoristic, will come from a rootstage ser-s (broken reduplication). Or the primate was reduplicated sesera, .whence ser(e)ra, with syncope of the penulti- mate vowel.

2SThis es of the P Mss. represents the illcopied nota As. of vs. 266.

"In the P Mss. nomines. Is -es a second copying of the marginal word es at the end of 265?

Memorial Volume to Shakespeare and Harvey 167

15 ;25 but for lentus express reference should also be made to Priapea, 83, 33 /mentula/ angue lentior (cf. schoinwn "rope" used in Aristophanes, Vesp. 1342 for a "mentula lenta"). Also cf. lentae salices in Petronius, § 132, 11. In the counter situa- tion of True. Ill, ii (§ 7) all the insistence is on Stratulax' renewed virility, and there the action is suited to the word by the obvious horseplay with the paxillum. In the first scene there was doubtless a similar inverted action. In vs. 262, with the words metim comprime, Stratulax had reached out to Asta- phium the sera (doorbar) in his hand, and she pronounced it (vs. 265) a truncus lentus (i. e., ou tetulomenos; cf. eu tetulom- enon hoplon, Anth. Plan. 242), that is the sera — as opposed to the ferrea sera of Persa 572 — was without a ferule and relatively flexible. So in the ejaculation and retort of vss. 265-266 we must read, with proper insertions,

265 As. nimis . quidem hjc tru/n/cu/s/ lentus. St.™ pergin male loqui, mulier, mihi?

266 As. quid tibi ego maledico? St. quia enim me truncum lentum nominas.27

*In connection with Truculentus II, ii, which but harps on Stratulax' amorous lentitude, the whole of Am. 3, 7 should be read. Petronius also deals with the same situation in §127 sq.

26This nota personae was caught up in the text. A reads truculentust ; the P Mss. truculentus. Cf. also § 24.

27The A reading is truncum lentum. Goetz and Schoell (ed. Min. vii, p. x) scorn it and jeer at its defenders. After Buecheler, they hold that truncum Ionium, which does in fact fall on the top line of a page in A, is due to the copyist's taking over from the pagehead the scroll- writing of the title line TRU'CU— which does not altogether account for the -m of truncum. Granting that the title line belonging to the rubric was written before the text, it would still seem far from credible that the copyist pronounced, and pronouncing miscopied, it as TRUNCU. It seems highly credible on the other hand that, if the original Astaphium said in vs. 265 nimis quidem hie truncus lentus, sub- sequent actors or readers, after final s began to make position, should have emended, particularly under the spell of the name of the play, to the traditional tru \_n~\culentus. Without going so far back, however, the copyist of the A precursor, with the title Truculentus in mind, < might have transcribed TRVNCVS as TRVCVS/TRVCV(S); or in transcribing VN he might have skipped to the V part of N.

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Summary of the preceding argument

18. So far the following points have been made :

(1) That for the phallic play of Rudens II, iv, the .actor availed himself of the doorbar or doorpeg (sera or

patibidum: or pessulus).

(2) That in Truculent us II, ii, in the like situation be- tween an ostiarius (Stratulax) and an ancilla meretricis (Astaphium), like (or here inverted) phallic play with the sera or pessulus was to be expected.

(3) That in the contrascene of the Truculentus (III, ii), phallic play with the paxillum (el § 9, vs. 686) is cer- tainly indicated; while the whole point of the scene turns upon Stratulax' amorous revivification.

After these points made it has been argued

(4) That amorous lentitude on the part of The Truculent is the dominant note of the first scene between Stratulax and Astaphium; the dramatic business being managed with a serra or patibulum, which Astaphium derisively •called a truncus lentus.

The Name Stratulax

19. We are now in a position to begin the discussion of the name S[TRA]TIL[AX] as restored to the text in § 16; and to see if it lends confirmation to the dramatic play with the sew, (truncus) or pessulus (paxillum>).

Evidence for the name Stratulax (P Mss., Stratilax)

20. In spite of "authoritative" denials to the contrary, if duly weighed, the evidence for the nomen personae Stratilax — rightly retained (pace Lindsay) by Goetz and Schoell — is as strong as any evidence for a nota can be in P. Nor, if the name ever occurred in the dialogue — as in fact I restore it in vs. 264 — 'could the P evidence be doubted. The fact that in A the nomen is solely Truculentus does not constitute valid counter evidence because, in view of the name of the play, which was

Memorial Volume to Shakespeare and Harvey 169

current in the time of Cicero (de Amic. § 50) and Varro (1. I. vii, 70), the designation of Stratulax as truculentus ser- uos may have yielded to Truculentus, seruos. Just so in P the name of Pseudulus gives place in one scene head to Seruos ebrius (cf. Lindsay, Ancient Editions of Plautus, p. 96s).

>/ The nomina peronarum in P

21. The nomina personarum of the Truculentus include, be- sides Stratilax } Stmtophanes and Strabax. This made the dis- position of the abbreviated notae personarum difficult, and the name Stratilax has been explained away as a mere misreading for Strauax'28 (u, i. e. v, for 6). But this explanation falls short for STRATILAX by one straight-shank letter (T I L; on VjTI see § 25). In Act III, sc. i, Strabax and Astaphium hold a dialogue and in C the nomina personarum stand

STRATILAX29 (D3 STRATI LAX) SERVUS ANCILLA Just 22 lines off the nomina in sc. ii occur as

ASTAPHIUM SERVUS ANCILLA30

In B the nomina for Act II, sc. i, are Stitattiex RUSTICUS31 ANCILLA, preceded at the end of the previous scene by Tru- culentus Astaphium. These facts signify that in the P Mss. the scenehead of Act II, sc. ii, had been transposed forward and put over sc. i. Now as the P precursor designated by Lindsay as PA had 19 lines per page in the Epidicus, 20 in the Casina

"We might almost as well, where the nomen Astaphium replaces Stratophanes (§§ 22-23), set that confusion down. solely to a mistaken ductus transcription.

"For Stratul-ax, due to the separation of STRATV, Latinized to strati; cf. the misdivisions of the name Stratophanes in § 22 fn.

«°Por STRAT. SERVUS ASTAPHIUM ANCILLA. See the scenehead of II, vii (§22), where in C the name of Astaphium has replaced the name Stratophanes.

S1ln the Italic recension (D3P) the nota RUSTICUS designates Strabax in the scenehead of V, i (before vs. 893). But rusticus cer- tainly belonged to the servus, Stratilax (cf. the text of vs. 263); not to the adulescens, Strabax. In vs. 246 Strabax was called agrestis and A adds rusticus, by taking up a gloss from the margin. It was from some such gloss that the epithet Rusticus was taken up by the Italic recension in V, i as a noman personae for Strabax.

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and Rudens, 21 in the Mostellaria; and as the text of our sc. i filled 22 lines;:2 the transposition of the scene-head practically covers a precise page. This means that the copyist's or rubri- cator's eye, after a period of diversion, had first fallen on the wrong leaf of his original, but at the corresponding horizontal level of the. opposite leaf.

The not a Z • confusion of nomina personarum

22. In Act II, sc. ii, the only other scene in which The Tru- culent has a place, F (representing the Italic recension) has the nomina Stratilax servus Ascaphium ancilla. If we go for- ward, however, to II sc. i (vs. 210), a distance (run-over lines not reckoned) of 45 lines (2X22+1), we find in B, instead of the name of Astaphium, a most unique scenehead, viz.,

n

ZASTEAPHIVC. VL

Here Z is the Greek letter used as a nota personae '(cf. Dziatzko in Fleck. JBB. 127, 61) ; while the R, so far as I can learn, has

n

not been in the least explained. Nor has VL been entirely explained. There lies over the V a sprawling minuscule n (or something like that), or an inverted omega, and the L is most imperfect in its horizontal bar. The C is of course for Canti- cum. Later on, in the scenehead of II, vii (before vs. 551), we discover the secret of the R. There the soldier Stratophanes, whose name is certified by the text,33 is designated in B as

*2The incomplete line quid eum ue[l]lit (651) was due to the mis- reading of perrogo in 650 as /in/terrogo (see on P/T § 12 fn.). Vss. 650-651 are in the "chopped hay" style:

650 quaerit patrem. dico esse in urbe. perrogo (with entreaties I ply him) ;

651 homo cruminam sibi de collo detrahit.

MVs. 500, Stratophones (Strata phones) ; 503, 8tratvo panes (statio-

1

panes); 513, Strata panem; 929, Staitophanes; note in the scenehead of II, vi STATOPHANES corrected to STRATOPHANES (D3) ; and in the scenehead of II, vii STATOPIMONES (B), with St corrected out of SA, while T(O) and P(I) are dittographic (§12 fn.), and M=PH, cf. PN for PH in ASTAPNIUM (B, II, iii).

Memorial Volume to Shakespeare and Harvey 171

ASTARC, but in C as ASTAPHIUM34 .0. (STAPHIUM, D3). Now if we count down our list of Dramatis Personae — of no Ms. authority, but arranged correctly in the order of appearance — the 6th character (reckoning the prologus as the first) is the soldier, Stratophanes. The riddlesome Z is the 6th character in the Greek alphabet and designated, as usual, the 6th char- acter in the play: cf. Lindsay, Captivi, p. 91, on the original Greek notae of the Trinummus, where the character of Lysiteles, there designated by Z, appears in our list of Dramatis Personae in the 5th place. But we know that in the Trinummus the old man Philto was designated out of order by, A (for A), an ar- rangement whereby Lysiteles becomes the 6th character. Be it added for the stake of completeness that the interfusion of the nomina Astaphium and Stratophanes in the nota ZASTRA-

n _ n

PHIVC. VL is proved by VL,35 i. e. NVL, a miswriting for

MIL(ES).

The nomen Stratilax in P

23. The fossil Z in the scenehead of II, i, is of the utmost significance, for it proves that in a now lost precursor of B

"It is not certain that Astaphium appears in this scene at all. Leo assigns a few words to her, and Lindsay follows him, but with the curious omission of her name from the scenehead. Goetz and Schoell give her no place in the scene, but assign her supposed words to her mistress, Phronesiiim.

^Dziatzko, l.s.c., explains VL as a substractive numeral=XLV, and the number of verses in the Canticum is, as we have seen, 45. Startling ae this coincidence is, it seems to be a mere accident, even when supported by the scenehead of Trinummus II, ii where, after the last word of the Canticum of II, i (58 verses in B) B adds LX, followed by the nomina filto lysiteles. Now it is at II, ii of the Trinummus that the P Mss. begin to indicate the notae personarum by the (Greek) letter A (for ^/\) to designate Philto and Z for Lysiteles. So I conclude that the LX preceding the proper names in the scenehead is a mis- writing of the notae L and Z (both=Lysiteles). For X miswritten tor Z cf. True. 954, where the P Mss. have xonas for zonam. Or LX=LV (nota for Lysiteles). — I find subsequently that Lindsay has given much the same explanation of LX. Nor does he accept Dziatzkb's

n explanation of VL. Anc. Edit. (p. 83).

12—

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certain information about the Dramatis Personae of the Tru- culentus was contained, just as in the Trinummus there is a record of the original Greek alphabetic notae. Whatever was the source of the Z was also the source of the nomen personae Stratilax (Strati lax in D3 accounts for B's Stratilex). This information will at least have consisted partly in abbrevia- tions, cf. B's ASTARC— C=Canticum— for STRAT., con- founded with ASTAP. in II, vii. It is clear that the n&tae for Strabax Stratulax Stratophanes and even Astaphium were all subject to concurrence and confusion, which accounts, among other things, for the elevation of the epithet Truculentus to a role-name; cf. Rusticus (D3 and F) for Strabax in Act V, Strabax' second and last appearance. But Stratulax was also Rusticus (cf. § 22 and vs. 262), which further accounts for the intrusion of the nomen Stratilax Rusticus at Strabax' first ap- pearance (III, i). For the confusion of the notae for Strato- phanes and Astaphium some marked and specific unclearness in the manuscript source for the Greek notae must be assumed.

Tlie nota St. for Stratulax

24. It is worth noting1, perhaps, that in III, ii, the scene of Stratulax' second and last appearance, the readings uoluptasi (vs. 687) and didst (690) may stand for uolupta/s/ St. and dici/s/ St.; cf. also on tru/n/cu/s/ lentus St., § 17. Leo found in these extra t's the nota for Tr., and included in his evidence haben[t] (vs. 680), where the error is of quite another sort; cf. dan\t] in vs. 373; As. 671 (correctly explained by Havet, 1. c. § 897) ; es[t] in vs. 586.

The name Stratulax in Cicero

25. But it now remains to discuss (1) the connection of Cicero's Antony epithet of Stratillax (so the Ms., but il is mis- written for u, se-e § 16, and cf . Lindsay, TE. p. 87 ; Poe'n. 314, PLELLI in A for pleni) • and (2) the quips suggested by the telltale name" to the Greek author of the Stratulax scenes. We have seen already (§ 7) how few lines fall to Stratulax, but

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yet his character so dominates the play that, in a paradoxical sense, his two scenes look almost like a mime — a Herondean mime — given length by contamination with the old stock busi- ness of the nea — a bragging soldier, two young men sowing their wild oats, a meretrix, a wronged young lady, mother of a child by her former fiance, to whom she is to be reunited be- fore the curtain falls. In the first scene, The Truculent, avail- ing himself of the doorbar (sera) or doorpeg (pessulus) to gesticulate a phallus, repulses and rebuffs, with comic inver- sion of the expected action, the amorous advances of Astaphium, once a meretrix, now sunk to an ancilla meretricis — a sort of duenna, perhaps, like Scapha in the Mostellaria. Later on, in the counterscene, his mood all changed to compliance and invi- tation, he reiterates the phallic play, actually employing a paxillum (i. e. a pessulus). Its grossness apart, this scene is supremely clever, and there is a positive stroke of genius at the end where The Truculent, in the height of his ogling, on learning that his young master has entered the lair of the mere- trix, flares up in a sharp outcry with the old truculence, cast- ing aside for the nonce his vaunted urbanity and new culture. No playwright, whether Shakespeare or another, has ever sur- passed in portraiture effect the result here so simply and eco- nomically achieved.

Proverbial character of the Truculent

26. A character like The Truculent 's was foreordained to become proverbial. See how the composer of the acrostic argu- ment seized on his traits in the words,

ui magna seruos est ac trucibus moribus, lupae ni rapiant domini parsimoniam : et is tamen mollitur.

His seachange also met the notice of Donatus (ad Terenti Ad. V, ix, 29) : bene in postremo dignitas personae huius seruata est, ut non perpetuo commutata uideretur, ut Truculenti apud Plautum. As a characterization of another, the name of The Truculent would be apt (1) for a change in general from trucu- lence to mildness; (2) for a like change in an amorous relation;

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(3) for an improvement in urbanity; (4) or merely to describe great violence of manner.

Stratulax and the Second Philippic

27. In a letter belonging to November-December B. C. 44, a time shortly after the incubation of the Second Philippic, which had been sent to Atticus only some three to five weeks before, Cicero at the end of his letter,36 hastening to the signa- ture (as we would say), writes this cryptic sentence:

Leptae litterarum exemplum tibi misi ex quo mihi videtur Stratillax (i. e. Stratulax, see § 25) ille deiectus de gradu. Now in deiectus de gradu we have an excellent interpretative clue. This is to be interpreted, after the good rule of explain- ing Cicero by Cicero, in the light of de off. 1, 80,

fortis vero animi et constantis est non perturbari in rebus asperis nee tumultuantem de gradu deici ut dicitur.37 Here, as in our homely figure of the barnyard, I take de gradu deici to mean "to be knocked off his perch," used of a quarrel- some cock, deiectus de gradu scalae gallinariae (cf. also Varro, r. r. 3, 3, 4, for the climbing ladder in an aviary). The stereo- typed explanation from the fencing of gladiators is a pure guess, certified by nothing; nor is de gradu, as in Thes. LL. V. 398, 16, to be closely grouped with de loco or de statu, a mis- take forbidden by Cicero's ut dicitur (cf. also Otto, Sprich- woerter, s. v. deicio). Again, it is a mere guess to interpret Stratulax ille, by ' ' imperatorculus, " an interpretation which Stephanus (s. v. Stratullax) properly challenged. Be it noted

"The remainder of the letter is a genuine postscript, subsequently added, before despatch of the missive, in response to a communication received meantime from Atticus.

37That is, not to be fluctuating and choleric. In this sense Tacitus, dial. 26, writes of Cassius Severus, . . . quamquam plus bilis habeat quam sanguinis . . omissa modestia ac pudore verborum, ipsis etiam quibus utitur armis incompositis et studio feriendi plerumque deiectus, non pugnat sed rixatur. Clearly in Cicero deiectus de gradu might refer to the "floundering" of an irate, but inexpert, speaker- like Antonius.

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in passing that, while I was correcting a proof of this essay, a negro servant boy answering to the name of il General" — and the sobriquet is not rare — brought a package fo my door.

Aptness of the name Stratulax to Antony

28. The Second Philippic reveals several points which would justify the application of the name of Stratulax, the Truculent, to Mark Antony: (1) to characterize the mere violence of Antony's reply, on Sept. 19, to the First Philippic; (2) to sneer at Antony's amorous reconciliation with Fulvia as re- counted at length and with gusto in Phil. II, 77 sq. ; (3) to characterize Antony's relatively mild demeanor to Cicero in the senate, after the fury of his edict ; (4) to sneer at the new "urbanity" of Antony's Ciceroniad and, the rhetorical coach- ing he had taken for it; (5) lastly, the Cicero who had written of Antony

dat nataliciam in hortis. cui ? neminem nominabo : putate turn Phormioni alicui, turn Gnathoni, turn etiam Ballioni might well, in a private letter, have branded Antony with the name of the most violent — with the possible exception of Ballio — of all the characters on the Roman comic stage. Leo's warn- ing (see his note on vs. 256) not to look to Cicero's Stratilax for the elucidation of the character of The Truculent (or con- versely) means a mere refusal to search for evidence: "nomen proprium non indiderat poeta. " Alack and alas!

Derivation of the name Stratulax; interpretative clues

29. Against the admission of the name Stratulax as the name of the servus rusticus (§21 fn.) et truculentus the argu- ment has been seriously advanced that Stratulax is not a nomen servile Graecum! Certainly "not, and neither is the name Pseu- dulus (haplologically shortened from Pseu/do/-dolos, quasi "Guile-tricker") a typical nomen servile, but a nomen signifi- cant a poeta quodam Graeco sive assumptum sive conflatum* Just so Stratulax38 (: * stratulos : : Strabax : strabos "squint-

"The long a may be due to Latin flexion types, cf. Gulax "Throaty" (Lat. gula). The derisive name Strabax is no typical nomen adulescen- tis, cither.

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eyed" : : litkax "stony": lithos "stone") will be a1 derisive name (nomen irrisivum), compounded (with haplology) from Strato— \-tulax (or -tolax), cL the gloss tolux, aidoion; or from strato-^-lax. The comic poet, like another Shakespeare, may be expected to have played at will with his telltale name, mak- ing quips (1) now on strata (i. e. "prostratus" or "stramen- tum, " cf. vs. 278, in stramentis pernoctare) • (2) now on lax (cf. vs. 268, pedibus proteram, translating, I take it, fakpateso;3* (3) now on -tulax or -tolax. As Vahlen rightly saw, the Greek author of the Truculentus translated the name Phronesium for the benefit of his hearers (in vs. 1S^), while for the Roman audi- ence, as Vahlen duly insisted,40 the interpretation of the name was indispensable.

Further interpretative clues from the telltale name

30. Numerous further suggestions for quips -.were likely to arise from the composition of strata- with -tulax. Thus if -tulax belongs with tide "culcita" the compound would indi- cate (1) very much what the compound Eunuchus ("chamber- lain") indicates, viz., "qui sternit culcitas. " The taunt of being a eunuch (cf. also the use made of a eunuch's disguise in

39No one who has ever read his Shakespeare can be at a loss for instances how one word suggests another and quip begets quip. But it is not only in the jocular sphere that one word so suggests another that words may be said to do 'our thinking for us. It is in this sense that Brunetie're criticized Victor Hugo: In the poet Hugo the quality of verbal cleverness . . often . . made up for the insufficiency of ideas. For words express ideas, although some of those who jingle them are not always fully aware of it; and one thinks just by "speak- ing", when one speaks* like Hugo, with that sense of the depth of vocables which he possessed and with that marvellous gift of, drawing from them unknown resonances.

*°Schoell's strictures on Vahlen (ed. major, p. xlvi) belong to the ancient days when the psychology of classical playwrights and their audiences was submitted to the rigid whimsies of Teutonic study-logic. To say nothing of the Roman audience, the original Greek audience would surely not have taken amiss the interpretation of Phronesion in terms of sophia (cf. on tautology in literature Friedrich ad Catull. 40, 5), quasi "Miss Prudence hath ta'en my wits away."

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Terence's play of that name) would apply to Stratulax' repulse, in his first scene, of Astaphium's amorous advances. If -tulax belongs with tiilos "paxillum" (cf. § 9) the compound amounts (2) to truncus lentus*1 (cf: § 17), in reverse order. (3) If, as a derisive epithet, the name Stratulax were ancient enough, -lax might have its original sense of "tun dens, tudicula" (cf. Meister, Herond., p. 749), cognate with Lat. lacerat and lacessit (=" provocat, irritat"). (4) As a passive noun, the same -lax might mean "provocatio, irritatio, " and the whole compound be equivalent to "qui prostrata est irritatione" (cf. OLat. lax "f raus" in Fe-stus, noting for the sense the metaphor whereby ferit percutit, etc., yield "fraudat"; see Lorenz's note in the preface to his Psendulus, p 48 sq.) (5) Again, if the name were old enough, -lax might mean "voluntas" or "ira" (lax : lema : : ptdx : petvos) . (6) Or it may be in gradation with Ivko to morion to andreion (cf. lEkdei as used in Aristophanes, Thesm. 493), and the name Strain-lax mean "prostrata mentula,'' de- scribing the lentitude of Stratulax in the first scene.

31. Thus it appears that the poet's choice or invention of the name Stmtulax hangs closely with the chief action of The Truculent, viz. the (inverted) phallic play with the sera or pessulus in II, ii (§ 3) ; and with the paxilliim in III, ii (§ 9). For the words reprime serram (§12) we may even hope to re- store the original Greek, viz. ani-sche/s/ stulon (quasi thiirsos, cf. Euripides, frg. 202; i. e. a phallus; note the Latin glosses caulus thyrsus tursus), the stnlos here being the mochlos or bdlanos (paxillum, pessidus, § 2). In the Greek original stulos was retorted, after anische/s/*z by some form of tulos=mdn- dalos, pdssalos, mentula, though the actual words of the retort may be restored as toud' (sc. till on) antechou (§ 13). Thanks to the Latin locution with serram diicere (§ 12), Plautus was able, in Astaphium's further retort, still more to deploy the jest from terra (rustic for sera) as echoed with an intimation of sera (mentula).

41As an epithet, the uncompounded truncus lentus may be compared with the Pompeius epithet of Sopio, cf. § 2 fn.

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Summary (see also §18)

32. I believe myself to have established in the foregoing paper the following points for the interpretation of the Trucu- lentus of Plautus :

(1) II, ii is a scene of (inverted) phallic play, exhibiting Stratulax ' amorous lentitude, coupled with great vio- lence.

(2) III, ii is a scene of direct phallic play, exhibiting Stratulax' amorous revivification and restored good temper.

(3) The telltale name Stratulax (§§ 29 sq.) either="qui prostrata est mentula, " characterizing the action of II, ii; or "qui prostrata est irritatione, ", characterizing the action of III, ii (§§ 7 sq; 11 sq.).

(4) The name Stratulax, become proverbial, was applied by Cicero to Mark Antony (§ 28).

"If to the correct form anische the Greek original added s it was because of doublets like pdrasche/pardsches (fdnasche/andsches) ; and for the purpose of establishing an equivoque between tulos and stulos.- On the distribution of Greek puns between word-final and word-initial see e. g. K. Ohlert, Ratsel und Ratselspiele der alien Oriechen, p. 8. Perhaps the rustic chose to hear Astaphium's anische sttilon as anisches tulon.

WILLIAM HARVEY

BY AUTE RICHARDS

William Harvey, son of a Kentish yoeman, was born at Folke- stone, Kent, April 1, 1578, when Shakespeare was a lad of four- teen years. The house in which he was born is now the prop- erty of Cambridge University, to which Harvey bequeathed it. His early school days, like those of Shakespeare's great con- temporary Christopher Marlowe, were spent in the King's School, Canterbury. Like Marlowe, Harvey went from this school to Cambridge University, matriculating at Caius College, where he took his B. A. degree in 1597. He had determined to study medicine by this time, and for 'this purpose journeyed to the continent. He traveled through France, Germany and Italy, and became a student at the University of Padua, the most famous school. of medicine at that time. "Fair Padua, nursery of arts" will be remembered as the background for most of the action in Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew. To that University Lucentio had come for "a course of learning and ingenious studies." During his period as a medical student Harvey was very popular and was chosen student "concillor" for England, a fact which bears testimony to his prominence among his fel- low students, for these student concillors in their deliberations very largely managed the University by their votes upon Uni- versity measures and instructors.

At Padua, Harvey came in contact with many famous people both in his own field and in others; for instance, Qallileo was at Padua at this time. The most important influence, however, came from his studies under the great Fabricius of Aquapendente, who developed for him a great friendship. The importance of this influence upon Harvey's later work is easily seen when it is remembered that his teacher, one of Europe's greatest anatomists up to this time, was already past sixty years of age and was at that time perfecting his knowledge of the valves in the veins. He took Harvey into his confidence and thoroughly instructed him in all of the knowledge of the circulatory system then extant. Harvey took his M. D. degree from Padua on the 25th of April, 1602. He then returned to England and was graduated in

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medicine at Cambridge in the same year. It is worthy of favor- able comment that even at this early date a great physician should have deemed it necessary to acquire a general education at Cambridge before spending four years in pursuing his special subject abroad.

Harvey, soon after taking his M. D. from Cambridge, set up a practice in London. There he may have seen acted for the first time any one of Shakespeare's greatest tragedies — Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, or King Lear; there is no basis, however, for any inference that he may have had a personal acquaintance with Shakespeare. He was married in 1604 to Elizabeth, the daughter of- Dr. Lancelot Browne, who had formerly been phys- ician to Queen Elizabeth. He was elected a Fellow in the Royal College of Physicians in 1607, and in 1609 became physician to St. Bartholomew's Hospital.

Early in his practice, 1604, Harvey had begun to give public lectures on anatomy ; and in pursuance of this task he had stead- ily continued his own investigations, making dissections when opportunity offered and studying the anatomy of animals as well. In recognition of his gradually increasing prominence and of his scientific attainments, he was elected Lumleian Lec- turer at the College of Physicians on August 4, 1615. and in the following year on the 16, 17, and 18 of April he delivered the lectures in which he first announced his conclusions in regard to the circulation of the blood. These three lectures were con- cerned with the subject of anatomy as a whole, and it is the second which is of particular importance to the physiology of the circulation. This lecture deals with the chest and its con- tents, and nine pages of the notes refer in particular to the heart. "He first describes the structure of the heart and the great blood vessels, explains the contraction of the several cavities of the heart, the form and use of its valves and of the valves in the veins, and he concludes by clearly stating that he has thus demonstrated that the perpetual motion of the blood in a circle is produced by the beat of the heart. " (Diet. Nat. Biog.} Har- vey continued his studies in this direction for a long period, wait- ing fourteen years to publish his results, until 1628 when his book "On the Motion of the Heart and Blood Vessels in Animals"

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(Exercitatio Anatomico de Moto Corfys et Sanguinis in Animali- frus) appeared. Thus he exhibited his great scientific patience and deliberation.

His theories on the circulation did not go unchallenged, and he had to defend them against a lively opposition. He, however, finally won his way of thinking with his medical associates, and at the time of his death his views were practically accepted by all the most prominent physicians. He demonstrated the circu- lation of the blood; but did not actually see it in the capillaries, for that waited until the perfection of lenses in 1661, which permitted Malpighi to see the movement of the blood through the capillaries of the frog.

.Harvey's later life was little less occupied. He was court physician to James I and Charles I, and, in this capacity, played his part in the tragic historic drama then being enacted in Eng- land. During all this period, however, he continually bent his efforts to solving the mysteries of the workings of the animal body. In 1646 he retired to private life and brought out' his second great book De Generatione Animalium in 1651, a work which in itself would have given him a place among the great- est names in the history of biology. On June 3, 1657 he ended an eventful and a forceful life, one rich in accomplishments. It is to its effects, however, rather than to its events that his great pre-eminence is due.

Personally Harvey was a man of great force, yet he pos- sessed a contemplative mind. Not even in youth did his bril- liant announcement show any undue haste or abruptness. He * was slow and deliberate, painstaking and careful. In scientific matters he was charitable, magnanimous, and even in his replies to his opponents well-mannered and considerate. But of his re- lations in private life the same cannot be said, for he is described as choleric and hasty; yet he made many friends whom he re- tained throughout life, and he was at all times held in the highest respect. He was by nature a man largely and thoughtfully generous, and his writings show him to have been of a reverently religious mind. It is to be inferred that he was a Protestant, though there is no complete verification of this in his writings,

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He was at all times a Royalist, and deeply regretted the change in government with the coming of the Commonwealth.

In the history of biology and medicine up to Harvey's time three broadly marked stages may be observed. First, there are the scattered and poorly systematized observations of the An- cients, lasting to about 200 A. D. Next followed the long period of the Dark Ages, a time of implicit reliance upon authorites. And then came a period of renewed observation, and with it the decline of authority initiated by the famous Paduan anatomist, Vesalius ( 1543 ) . Vesalius was the greatest biologist of the Ren- aissance up to Harvey's time, and to him was due the re-estab- lishment of scientific method. He was a pioneer in real anat- omical research, and from his investigations dates the period of anatomical ascendency. With Harvey came the period of physiology. It was he who coupled experimentation with anat- omical studies, and he was the first who made any careful studies upon living animals.

The circulation of the blood had to a certain extent been fore- shadowed by investigators of the sixteenth century, but Harvey was the first who fully grasped the idea, and to him only is due the credit for its proof. Serve tius, in 1553, had clearly stated the idea of the pulmonary circulation from the heart to the lungs in a book so revolutionary that for it John Calvin accom- plished his burning at the stake. This idea of the pulmonary circulation was also expressed by Columbus, professor of anatomy at Rome, in 1559, but it is thought that he merely stole Serve- tius' work, for he gives no record of experiments and repeats almost exactly the words of Servetius. His work was widely known, yet he had no clear idea of the greater circulation, for he says that the heart is not muscular, and he speaks of a "to and fro" movement of the blood in the veins. The last step prior to Harvey was taken by his teacher, Fabricius, to whose work on the valves of the veins reference has already been made.

Harvey's demonstration was the result of reasoning based on two kinds of experimentation : ligatures about the blood vessels, and the exposure of the heart and analysis of its movements. The true conception first came to him from a consideration of the action of the cavities of the heart and their valves and of the

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valves of the veins. "The central point of Harvey's reasoning is that the quantity of blood which reaches the left cavity of the heart in a given space of time makes necessary its return to the heart, since in a half hour (or less) the heart by successive pul- sations throws into the great artery more than the total quan- tity of blood in the body." (Locy.) The following additional propositions also had a place in his reasoning : the heart is an organ of propulsion of the blood; the auricles contract first, forcing the blood into the ventricles ; the ventricles then contract, forcing the blood into the arteries ; the blood returns to the heart by way of the veins ; the veins empty the blood into the auricles. From these facts Harvey was forced to the conclusion that the blood passes from the arteries to the veins.

Until Harvey's time it was generally assumed that the blood ebbed and flowed in the veins, while the arteries contained va- rious kinds of "spirits," the natural, vital, and animal spirits. To ths doctrine Harvey's demonstration gave the death blow.

"The new theory of the circulation made for the first time possible a true conception of the nutrition of the body, it cleared the way for the chemical appreciation of the uses of the blood, it afforded a basis which had not existed before for an under- standing of how the life of any part, its continued existence and its power to do what it has to do in the body is carried on by the help of the blood. And in this perhaps more than its being a true explanation of the special problem of the heart 'and the blood vessels lies its vast importance." (Foster.)

"The true idea of respiration, of secretion by glands, the chemical changes in the tissues, in fact of all the general activi- ties of the- body hinge upon this conception. It was these con- sequences of his demonstration rather than the fact that the blood moves in a circuit which made it so important. This dis- covery created modern physiology." (Locy.)

Finalty, Harvey's life as expressed in his scientific work was a genuine example of what we now term the scientific method. Possessed of a mind always curious to know more of the truth about the activities of the animal body, he ever gave himself

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to the minutest and most painstaking search, and was satisfied only when his observation and experiments forced him unques- tionably to the truth of his conclusions. In his quest for truth he had the spirit of a modern investigator, of a man many years ahead of his times; and the fact that time has not dimmed the brilliance of his demonstration is positive proof of his own great intellectual superiority.

"KNOW THYSELF" INTERPRETED BY SOCRATES, SHAKESPEARE, WM. H!ARVEY, AND MODERN MEN

BY WM. E. RITTER

Every wise modern heeds the admonition, Know Thou Thyself , no less religiously than did that one of the Seven Sages who uttered it first. What do the words mean to-day ? We no longer post them over the temple door of the Delphic oracle. But if we were to inscribe them on any of our temple-s, which should they be — those of Religion, Art, Education, or Science? Let my contribution to this festival week be a plea for renewed devotion to this injunction, and for the adoption of it in all our temples.

Historically the mandate recalls unending discussions on ab- stract philosophy in -a dusty, musty past, and causes something of a shudder; so the proposal to devote this hour to it may seem like proposing to make the hour dull and heavy. But we are living in a cruelly heavy time. No matter how determinedly we may resolve to forget for the moment the gigantic events in the midst of which we are, the deeper currents of our con- scious lives can not escape them. Calamity is the great tester of philosophy. A period like this reveals to men the sort of theories and ideals of life they have been nurturing as nothing else can.

The last few generations of Westerners have been boastfully confident that they have largely outgrown philosophy and have emerged finally into the clear light of practicality. But what disillusionment we are undergoing ! Who does not see now, as probably he never saw before, the necessity of probing the roots of every thing pertaining to human relations? And does not about the first move in this direction discover that our supposed practical age has in reality been permeated with the most di- verse and far-reaching though little criticized doctrines? A few students have been all along awake to the import of such doctrines as those of materialistic determinism in human history, of " economic society," and of Malthusianism ; but not till lately have any considerable number of persons supposed that those doctrines were of much practical consequence. How many in

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our country at least, had even guessed before these last months what a philosophy of militarism and a theory of the State are capable of doing?

To know one's self implies a theory of self. The bloody dis- order now filling the world is, I am persuaded, largely a conse- quence of inadequate and erroneous theories of self and of so- ciety that have prevailed through the centuries and, though im- proved, still prevail. It has seemed to me that the occasion will justify us in thinking on this great matter even though our thoughts can be in baldest outline only.

My fundamental thesis is twofold : there are many more vital constituents in human nature than dominating theories of man have taken account of; and these constituents interact upon one another far more widely and fundamentally than theory has recognized.

To each of the great primal divisions of man's nature taken separately, to spiritual man and to physical man, great atten- tion has been given. Particularly in previous centuries theology and philosophy wrought out doctrines of man's spiritual nature with unbounded zea] and industry and skill. And in modern times biology, with its numerous subdivisions, has builded in the realm of his physical nature with no less zeal and industry and skill. But never have the theories in the two realms been brought together into anything like a consistent, harmonious whole. In- deed it has too often been a cardinal doctrine of each side that no such getting together is possible; that its own triumph de- mands the utter subjugation of the other side. The misery that human-kind has brought upon itself through the false theory that success is attainable only by the complete overthrow of an ad- versary !

But it is undoubtedly true that in two great realms of so- ciology and medicine, the enormous activity of recent decade-s is resulting, however vaguely the fact may be recognized, in the breaking down of the impermeable bulkhead that has so long separated theories of man's spiritual being from theories of his physical being.

That manufacture, trade, finance, and industrial and political

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organization, sanitation, and criminology are intrinsically phys- ical no one can refute ; yet the occasional excursions I have made into these fields convince me of a growing recognition among leaders that no matter how severely material any particular problem may be, rational, moral, esthetic,, and religious elements are always present and demand consideration. I am quite sure - all economic theory to-day is seeing the inevitability and power of ethical factors far more than formerly.

In medicine, too, there is growing recognition that attention •to physical matters alone can not reach the highest success in the actual task of restoring sick men and women to health, and keeping them healthy. No successful physician ever, I believe, wholly ignores the psychical element in his patient, however scantily his formal training may have fitted him for this side of his work. The no distant future, is, I think, bound to see the now rudimentary psycho-therapy work great changes in medical theory and practice.

The "get together" slogan of modern business is needed in modern science and philosophy. As a man of science I am filled with consternation as I come to really think about the part science has been made to play in the present world holocaust. Superposed on the physical tragedy of the Lusitama I see an- other tragedy no less dreadful — a tragedy of the human soul.

The civilization of the modern West is the climax of all the civilization of the world, and its most distinctive attribute is physical science. So men of science have affirmed and hardly any one has questioned the affirmation. In no way, all agree, is the greatness of science more manifest than in its application to satisfying the practical needs and desires of man. And few achievements of applied science have been more applauded than the trans-oceanic liner.

Now behold the marvel that has come to pass! Science pro- duces and successfully operates these noble ships and at the self-same time and in much the same way, not only produces an instrument for instantly destroying them, but actually does de- stroy them heedless that hundreds of innocent human beings are involved in the ruin! Has the world ever seen or conceived anything more astounding at the hands of man! Is it really

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true that the motive power behind civilization can do nothing greater than find some means of destroying anything it can create? Is growth in civilization purely quantitative — purely a matter of giving the head-hunter's business greater scope and precision and power? Is the making of hell more hellish the supreme achievement of science? I do not believe so, despite the strong evidence pointing that way. But scien- tific men ought to recognize that the share of blame and shame which falls to science is not small.

It would be unjust and foolish to contend under prevailing conceptions of right and wrong that moral culpability rests upon the chemists, the physicists, the engineers, and others who have participated in making the war machine the dreadful thing it is. But when men shall come to know themselves and other men and nature as these really are, moral law, if not civil law, will, I believe, interdict science from lending itself to the dire business in such unrestrained way as it has hitherto.

To see something of the character of that knowledge of man and nature which would tend- to such an end, is the task be- fore us.

That wonderful period, the later sixteenth century and the earlier seventeenth, in which the two great Englishmen lived whose works are the occasion of this week 's meetings, contributed more, I believe, to such knowledge than any other period of equal length in the history of the world. Run over the list of familiar names belonging here. Galileo, Kepler, Tycho Brahe, Torrecelli, Giordano Bruno and Rene Descartes might have seen Shakespeare act had it been customary then for companies to which he belonged to tour continental Europe; and Francis BacOn and Wm Harvey may have actually seen him at the English court. Going only a trifle outside of Shakespeare's lifetime, the very year that baby Willie's little lungs filled with air for the first time, Andreas Vesalius died a hungry outcast because of his offense in proving that if man would really know himself, one source of his knoAvledge must be the dissection of the dead human body. And "these bones" of the great author of his own epitaph were not clean of organic matter before the mothers of Isaac Newton, John Boyle, John Mayow, Marcello

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Malpighi, John Ray and Antony von Leeuwenhoeck had given birth to the baby sons destined to develop into these notable men.

Entering now a little further into the historical side of our subject, I ask you to recall the conditions under which Socrates took the exhortation, Know Thyself, as the text of his life-long sermonizing to his fellow Athenians. For a century before Socrates, the atmosphere of the little Greek community was charged with speculation about the mode of origin of the world. We recall how a single, simple primal world-stuff as the basis of everything was a self-evident proposition to the Ionian school : while a thorough-going multiplicity or pluralism seemed equally certain to another school, the later elaborators of the doctrines of Being and Becoming, who contended for the reality of things as they transform into one another. We know too, the conclu- sive arguments by which it was proved that Water, Air, and Fire is, each in turn, the "real thing" in the cosmic matter theory. Further, we know as much perhaps as we need to know about the atomism of Leucippus, the mind-stuff-ism of Anaxa- goras, the numberism of Pythagoras, and so on. Some historians of philosophy have aptly called the first period of Greek phil- osophy a cosmological period.

Then arose, according to wont in such cases, the strong, eager, independent, and courageous protestant against the vapid mata- physics of nature then prevalent. The new seeker after truth was Socrates. ' ' For heaven 's sake, ' ' we seem to hear this young "knocker" exclaim after he had drunk his fill at the approved fountains of wisdom, "since we must philosophize, let us see if we can't find a way of doing it that will lead to something tangible and permanent; and above all, to something of conse- quence to human beings. ' ' About the chief ground of Socrates 's rebellion was that man seemed to him left out of the systems against which he fought, while the only subject, thought he, worthy of serious study by serious men, is man himself. "God has commanded me to examine men," and "In the city I can learn men, but the fields and trees teach me nothing," he said.

Despite Socrates 's failure to do all he started out to do and believed he was doing, we must, I think, recognize that he did

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two things that will endure forever and be true for all realms of knowledge. He drove home the truth that since all knowledge is man 's knowledge — is wrought out by man for man — the human element can never be eliminated from it no matter how purely objective it may seem to be ; and that the process of knowledge- getting itself must be critically examined in order that 'knowledge may be trustworthy. What greater service has ever been ren- dered mankind, what service is more needed in this very day, than that of convicting us of that "shameful ignorance which consists in thinking we know when we do not know?"

But while acknowledging Socrates 's great merit in recogniz- ing the necessity of critically examining the process of knowledge- getting, we must not be blind to the disastrous incompleteness of the results he reached by his own efforts. The theory of knowledge which he evolved was a theory of only one-half of knowledge. Know thyself meant to him know thyself subjec- tively only. It did not mean know thyself objectively. It meant know half of thyself, not thy whole self.

Recall the interpretation he put upon the Delphic oracle's pronouncement that he was the wisest of men. He was wise, he said, because he knew he knew nothing, whereas others re- puted to be wise did not know their own ignorance. But what sort of ignorance was it in which he gloried? Why, ignorance of everything except himself, and "himself" taken subjectively. Refuting the charge that "Socrates is an evil-doer, who meddles with inquiries into things beneath the earth, and in heaven," he insisted that it was false and unjust for Aristophanes to represent him as suspending himself in a basket and pretend- ing that he was walking on air when the truth is, he said, he had nothing to do with these matters as all knew who had conversed with him. No one, he said, ever heard him talk about anything earthy.

Now for the fatal practical weakness in the Socratic interpre- tation of man. Did its doctrine of self implicate nothing but a theory of concepts and cognition, while it would be of much interest to psychologists and logicians and epistemologists, it would not vitally concern the great rank and file of men. But owing to the fact, which Socrates recognized, that a theory of

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knowledge does finally and inevitably implicate a theory of morality, and to the further fact that a theory of moralit}* finally and inevitably implicates morality itself, it has turned out that this philosophy has been and still is of the utmost im- portance to the world affected by it; that is, to what we call the Western World. The kernel of the matter is that Socrates 's doctrine of self was a doctrine of myself and not of yourself. It gives an assumed reality and fundamentally to me that it does not give to you. It does not recognize that other selves are as essential to my existence as is myself.

The ethical system launched by Socrates and continued down . to this day is a system of subjective egoism. It never has recog- nized and is not capable of recognizing the real nature of human interdependence. It never has felt nor can it feel the full measure of man's obligation to man. That virtue which in the Socratic system is the concomitant of knowledge is not full and practical virtue. It is a virtue diluted with mock humility and aloofness from human affairs.

One other consequence of the Socratic theory of life must be noticed, though it will have to be touched even more cursorily than those previously noticed.

Socrates "had it in for" the poets quite as well as for the wise men, i. e., the philosophers of nature. Why was this ? That he should have had a grudge against the comic poets is not sur- prising, for he had felt the sting of their ridicule. But why did he pronounce the great tragedians and the others of his time as without wisdom, and so, according to his theory, without virtue ? Because they too were too much occupied with other things than concepts. Like the physicists, they treated the world outside of and beyond themselves with too much consideration. Even their gods were more external and objective than he could tol- erate. The point of consequence in this for us is that a great poet as Shakespeare, for example, deals with externality no less than does the physical scientist. The poet is an interpreter of nature — of sensuous nature — no less than is the naturalist. To him other selves are as real and significant and interesting as our own selves, just as they are to great naturalists.

Look now in summary at what man's effort to know himself

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had accomplished by the time Socrates was compelled to drink the deadly cup.

First, the urgency of the problem had been more definitely and keenly felt than ever before. In the second place, it had been formulated with a fullness and definiteness that had not hitherto been approached. Further, the twofoldness of man's nature, his spiritual group of attributes and his physical group had been so sharply differentiated from each other that they had seemed to belong to two distinct realms of existence. So different in kind were the two groups seen to be that it was conceived they must have originated in antipodal parts of the universe and that their being together must be more or less fortuitous and temporary. The ultimate essence of man could not contain so much that is incongruous, contradictory, and even actively hostile, reasoned the leaders of thought of this early period. And so the two great currents of interpretation of man were definitely started that have flowed down through the centuries of western civilization, each sometimes quite oblivious of the other's existence, while at other times mingling more or less, too often in bitter jealousy and strife as to their respective rights and powers and excellencies.

The discovery of the circulation of the blood was the first great demonstration by rigorous methods of observation, ex- perimentation, and reasoning, of the various anatomico-physi- ological systems that enter into the composition of each human being. Harvey did not discover the several elements of the cir- culatory mechanism: heart, arteries, veins, valves, and so on. These were known long before his time. What he did was to prove how these are interrelated ; how they operate together and depend upon one another; how the work of the heart is sup- plemented by the muscularity of the arterial walls; how the valves of the veins aid the veins in returning the systemic blood to the heart. Hitherto Anatomy and Physiology had been largely sciences of the members of the body. With this dis- covery they were started on their way as sciences of the systems of our members.

Discovery after discovery closely dependent upon that made by Harvey soon followed, revealing still further the nature and

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interdependence of the body parts. Only one group of these need detain us now. The demonstration of that interrelation- ship between the blood and nervous systems which constitutes the vaso-motor system, and which opened the way for our present insight into the so-called organic sensations and our physico- psychic conception of the emotions, must be counted as one of the greatest of the progeny of Harvey's germinal discovery. That the James-Lange theory of emotion may be regarded as a lineal descendant of Harvey's discovery — indeed was adum- brated by Harvey himself — is seen in his refutation of the old notion that the heart is the seat of the emotions. "Every affection of the mind, " he writes, "that is attended with pleasure and pain, with hope and fear, is simply the cause of an agitation which extends to the heart and there induces change from natural con- stitution, impairing nutrition, depressing the powers of life, and so engendering disease." Compare this with the following by Professor C. Lange, like Harvey a physician. "It is the vasomotor system that we have to thank for the whole emotional aspect of our mental life, for our joys and sorrows, our hours of happiness and misery. If the objects that affect our senses had not the power to throw this system into action, we should travel through life indifferent and dispassionate."

The conception of emotion held by modern psychology, un- doubtedly differs in important respects from that suggested by Harvey. But it is clear that they have this in common : all our deepest sentiments and passions, good and bad, are insep- arably connected with and dependent upon our general body constitution, especially upon our vasomotor mechanism.

It seems to be literally and not figuratively true that when we love or hate, are joyous or sad, feel exalted or depressed, kindly or hatefully disposed toward all about us, and are intense about it, our whole being, body no less than soul, is funda- mentally implicated. Nor does Harvey fail to let us know how his objective discoveries fitted into his deeper conceptions of life and nature. Two aspects of his researches brought him face to face with these larger problems. One was his study of the motion of the heart; the other his reflections on the blood as the vital fluid of the body. The high water mark of his ability

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as a philosophic biologist is reached, I think, in his handling of these two matters. His main treatise, entitled, "An Anatomical Disquisition on the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals," is devoted solely to an accurate and full description of the struc- ture and operation of the blood system. Questions 4of ultimate causes and reasons he hardly touches in this book and when he does, only to show the error of some- prevalent teaching. ''Whether or not," he says, "the heart, besides propelling the blood, giving it motion locally and distributing it to the body, adds anything else to it, — heat, spirit, perfection, — must be in- quired into by and by and decided upon other grounds." Obser- vable facts first, was his watchword. Causal explanations and appraisements of value must come afterwards.

Two things in his ability to combine observation and gener- alization are supremely important. First, he did not for an in- stant waver in accepting the validity and the worth of the sen- suous elements in knowledge. Socrates 's grilling dialectic would never have wheedled Harvey into admitting that there was no virtue in the knowledge he had acquired of the structure and movements of the heart, or that this knowledge had nothing to do with the sort of self-knowledge that saves souls.

The other notable thing in Harvey's mode of interpreting nature was his insistence on a certain inherency and virtue in each object itself. He gave no quarter to that kind of explana- tion which tries to refer everything wholly to something else; which is always assuming that the final and real essence of a sensible object is something behind the object and wholly and forever hidden from the senses. His position on this matter is well brought out in a treatise, written some years after the publication of the original disquisition, refuting objections that had been made to his teaching about the circulation. Speaking of the old theory of an imponderable, spirituous something in the blood, he says: "Physicians seem for major part to conclude, with Hippocrates, that out body 'is compose* d ... of three elements : containing parts, contained parts, and causes of action, spirits being understood by the latter term. But if spirits are to be taken as synonymous with causes of activity, whatever has f power in the living body and a faculty of action must be in-

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eluded under the denomination. It would appear, therefore, that all spirits were neither aerial substances, nor powers, nor habits, nor that all were not incorporeal. . . . The spirits which flow by the veins or the arteries are not distinct from the blood, any more than the flame of a lamp is distinct from the inflammable vapour that is on fire, but the blood and these spirits signify one and the same thing though different — like generous wine and its spirits."

This reasoning of Harvey's about the spirituous qualities of the blood is not materialism as some careless readers would take for granted. It is not materialism because it no more questions the reality of spiritual qualities, that is, qualities of whatever sort have "power in the living body," than it questions the reality of physical qualities. Blood, notice, not "living matter," is what Harvey is talking about. He is not postulating some- thing or other behind blood that explains its life-Giving at- tributes. Nor has the vast chemico-physical knowledge of the blood acquired since Harvey worked altered one whit his in- terpretation of the nature of blood. And his mode of reasoning is just as applicable to the brain as to the blood.

One of the worst misdemeanors the transcendental physiology of our day is guilty of, is the application of the term epiphe- nomenon to consciousness.

While Harvey's researches on the blood system were undoubt- edly far and away his best, what he did on generation can not be neglected even in a brief review of his contribution to man's knowledge of himself. The most important aspect of his treat- ment of this subject is the extent to which he compared man with other organisms. We have emphasized the fact that the dis- covery of the circulation was a preeminent forward step in man's perception of the order, the unification there is in his own individual being. The studies on generation coupled with those on the circulation (for whatever subject engaged him, Harvey never neglected to compare man with all the creatures high or low, he could get hold of) undoubtedly contributed greatly to man 's perception of himself as a member of the great system of the living world. The demonstration of the circulation was a revelation of a prime unity within the individual man. The

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studies on generation, while resulting in no single discovery of first rank, were definitely on the road to the demonstrati /m of the individual's unity with organic nature as a whole. "By the same stages in the development of every animal," he said, "passing through the constitutions of all, I may say — ovum, worm, embryo — it acquires additional perfection in each." He certainly came very near the now familiar truth that the egg is the starting point in the life career of almost all animals.

Is it not obvious, then, that by the end of the great era we are commemorating, men were coming to see, more through the work of Harvey than through that of any other one person., that the ancient motto, Know Thyself, could not be restricted to the temples of Religion and Philosophy, but must be placed in those of Science as well?

Now as to whether the work of Shakespeare likewise contains evidence of a growing perception of the essential unity between the physical and the spiritual. The poet seems to be the pre- eminently skilled guesser of the human species. He is endowed above all others with the faculty of apprehending from afar the hidden truths of nature. Not in imagination only, but in the quality of sense perception is he superior to other men. He seems to know what is "in the air" of his time better than anybody else.

To Shakespeare man was the most absorbingly interesting of all animals. He regarded his fellows, not as problems to be minutely investigated, but as creatures to be watched for the purpose of guessing what they would do under hypothetical conditions.

Just what sort of mixture of the natural and supernatural the animal is which interested him so supremely, seems always to have puzzled Shakespeare. That he could make Macbeth, about as unmitigated a piece of human animality as can be imagined, scare the Spirits into telling him what he wanted to know by threatening them with an eternal curse, illustrates the puzzled state of his understanding. But on the whole it appears that not only did Shakespeare find the natural the dis- tinctly larger ingredient in the mixture, but that as he grew in experience and insight, he saw more and more of the natural and saw its meaning more clearly.

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From Venus and Adonis, one of his earliest productions, to The Tempest, one of his latest, I seem to find a distinct advance in this matter. Possibly my interpretation of Prospero is forced into conformity with my preconceptions; but does not his setting free of Ariel and Caliban, half-natural beings upon whom he had relied for some of his wonder-working, and his abjuring of "this rough magic," and his breaking of "my staff" and burying it "certain fathoms in the earth", as he attains the highest level of forgivenness and well-wishing toward those who had wronged him, mean that only when he became a man and a man only, was he at his best?

One of the most useful bits of Shakespearean philosophy I have come upon is contained in the advice of Prospero to the King of Naples, who is perplexed because there "is more in this business than nature was ever conduct of."

"Sir, my liege,

Do not infest your mind with beating on The strangeness of this business; at picked leisure Which shall be shortly, single I'll resolve you, Which to you shall seem probable, of every These happened accidents; till then, be cheerful And think of each thing well."

Before you jump beyond the bounds of nature for the explana- tion of things that are hard and strange, think well and cheer- fully on each i^em and decide which of the several possible ex- planations is the one most probable. What more wholesome counsel was ever given ! I am sure Socrates never advised more wisely.

So I think we must conclude that this supreme poet, too, helped to convince man that if he would really know himself, he must' know himself as a physical as well as a spiritual being. The an- cient injunction must be adopted in the temples of Poesy and all Art no less than in those of Philosophy and Religion and Science.

What, finally, is our era contributing to man's understand- ing of himself? What does — what must — the injunction mean in the light of modern knowledge ? Under the necessity of being

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brief we will limit the inquiry to the realm of objective science, and will notice six great achievements during the three hundred years since Shakespeare and Harvey which seem to me of special importance in their bearing on the question. These are: (1) the formulation of the law of gravitation ; ( 2 ) the discovery of the conservation of matter and energy; (3) the demonstration of the absolute dependence of living beings on a few well-known non-living chemical substances; (4) the demonstration that both individual living beings and kinds, or species of such beings, originate from other individuals and species, and so far as can be made out, that they originate in no other way; (5) the demonstration of the enormously wide, if not the universal, prevalence in the living world of individual specifity, so deep- seated as to implicate much of the individual's chemico-physical constitution ; and finally ( 6 ) , the demonstration by anthropology, in all the human race so far rigorously investigated, of the whole range of major attributes, physical and spiritual, that are characteristic of the species. These achievements of science I count not necessarily as the most important from all points of view, but only from their bearing on the problem of the funda- mental unity or, as it seems to me better expressed, integrated- ness, of the individual man ; and of the fundamental integrated- ness among the individuals of the species man and of the species with nature generally.

(1) Let gravitation stand as the type of physical integration, and let us remember that we have absolutely no experiential ground on which to base a speculation as to how *any one of the myriads of bodies in the universe would behave were it entirely alone. The very terms in which the law is stated implies at least two bodies without an intimation that either is more im- portant, more ancient, or more causal than the other. Each not only moves but exists in virtue of the existence of the other. And do not neglect to notice that man is no less subject to the law than is any other body.

(2) The law of conservation practically implies transforma- tion coextensively with conservation. It would be meaningless without transformation. Evolution, taken in the most general sense, is but another form of statement of the laws of transfer-

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mation and conservation. Gravitation is a universal law of support for bodies, while transformation is a universal law of the origin of bodies.

(3) The dependence of living beings on chemical substances is only a special case of the general law of transformation and conservation; but the discovery of it merits inclusion in our list of science's prime achievements because of its great import- ance to the problem of man's dependence upon nature.

Concerning the origin of individuals and species, the transfor- mations involved are of two radically different sorts. First, there is the sort known as organic evolution, which does not consist in a literal transformation of parent into offspring, that is, in a changing over of parent into offspring without loss of weight as one physical or chemical body changes into another, but rather in a growth of the derived individual or species from a small portion of the parent. And second, this growth is ac- complished by the transformation of foreign substances into the growing organism through the nutritive process.

(5) The far-reaching facts of what I have called individual specificity among organisms have only lately come clearly to light, and even yet their significance is but vaguely seen. In the middle and later years of the last century, biologists talked much about Protoplasm, written with a capital P, the assump- tion being that there is one simple substance common to all life. But the capital P has gradually disappeared from scien- tific writing, for we are learning that each species and individual has its own particular protoplasm. Similarly the notion was formerly prevalent that germ cells of animals are " practically alike." But closer scrutiny has revealed the fallacy of this idea. We now know that the germs of different organisms are in their fundamentals as different from one another as are the full-grown organisms; and we view the egg from which an in- dividual animal grows as that individual in the one-celled stage of its life.

Do you not perceive something of the important difference of viewpoint here? If from the simplest and earliest stage of its existence, each individual is to some extent different from every other, it is so far self -responsible for its own future de-

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velopment and activity. Growing at the expense of the few in- organic substances which are the common bounty of all living beings, it and it alone must have the ability to transform the common substances into its own special substances. Each organ- ism is indeed a chemico-physical machine, if one chooses so to call it, but it is a particular machine — in deepest meaning a self, for it has an essential part in its own making and in the pres- ervation of its own identity. The supreme significance of mod- ern biology to philosophy is the establishment of both the in- violability of the individual and the interdependences within and among individuals, as never before have these truths been established.

(6) Another set of facts which science has only recently brought home to us is the universality in the human species how- ever low in culture, racially or individually, of at least the rudiments of all those attributes which chaiacterize the highest of the species. Although increase of information in one quarter has continually strengthened belief in the origin of man from some lower animal, accumulation of knowledge in another quar- ter has completely annihilated belief that there is on earth now or for milleniums has been a being even approximately transitional between man and beast-. All the races whose culture we know anything positive about are indubitably men. The existence of highly elaborated language, and of at least the beginnings of social institutions and laws, poetry, delineative art, religion, and reasoning about nature, among all people to which science has had access, has put a quietus forever on the old notion that certain primitive races are "hardly human" — are "little, if at all above the beasts of the field" — are "without souls."

A fact the significance of which seems not to have been dwelt upon by writers on morals is that anthropologists who study primitive races long and closely in their homes always, so far as I have observed, come to have a much higher regard for these races than chance acquaintance suggests. And frequently this regard ripens into genuine esteem, even affection. Inquiry into this matter ought to yield interesting results. Is the affection which grows up between the investigator and the savage whom he studies merely that which the owner of a pet dog or cat

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or horse has for his chattel, or is it more akin to the affection of friend for friend? Which cares more genuinely for nature people, the missionary who lives among them to save them for a future world, or the scientist who lives with them in order that he may know them? Is the missionary ever really successful until he comes to have a genuine interest in his people as physical beings — a genuine solicitude for their physical as well as for their spiritual welfare? I suspect that some of the strongest practical evidence there is in favor of the doctrine of the "brotherhood of man" is in the intelligent affection which grows up between highly cultured Caucasians who live long and intimately among primitive peoples for the purpose of know- ing them and helping them.

One of the significant things about the humanness of nature peoples is the seeming coincidence of the main categories of human faculty. There appears to be no observational evidence that some one or a few of these attributes are more primitive than all the others and gave birth to the others. There is, for example, no proof that rationality preceded and produced the esthetic, the social, and the religious instincts; or per contra. It seems that all these must have emerged together or nearly so, and that they must have always been.closely interlocked and interdependent.

The evidence as to the exact manner of man's origin con- tains much that is conflicting and exceedingly puzzling. The situation is certainly one in which Prospero's advice to Alonzo is in order. It calls for careful, cheerful search for what is most probable rather than for dogged defence of some theory held as though it were absolute and sufficient truth.

Does this meager narative of the achievements of science which bear on the problem of man's nature and his place in nature fail to convince you that science has something basal and indis- pensable to contribute to man's understanding of himself? Is there any question that the injunction of old should have a place in the temples of Science as well as in those of Philosophy and Religion and Art?

What bearing has the argument presented on the transcendent question of how men and nations should treat one .another—

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should behave toward one another ? Among the teachings about the nature of morality that have been potent in the history of mankind, here is one which says that "the world itself is a moral order — that all things work together for Good whether you love the Lord or not. I hope you see that the conceptions sketched this morning resemble this teaching more than any other with which you are familiar. But I hope you see also wherein they differ from it. That nature is moral I do not contend — I do not believe. So much destruction and suffering and death are brought upon man by flood, earthquake, pestilence and the rest, as to make this personified view of nature untenable. What I do say is that man as biology knows him, no less than as theology and philosophy know him, is a moral thing. Notice 1 do not say he is necessarily a good being. "What I mean is that he is a being who consciously estimates his reciprocal acts with his fellow's as good or bad and by this is moral. But since nature produces and sustains man, it must be so constituted that it can produce and sustain moral beings. I am judging nature in strict accordance with the laws of natural production as obser- vational knowledge finds them. An essential element in the law of organic genesis is that the germ plus its environment is suffi- cient to account for the completed organism. And this law is but a special case of the general law that everything found in an effect is implicit in its causes. This commonplace is brought forward to use as a stepping stone to what is not a commonplace : by examining nature broadly as we have tried to this morning, we are able to see something of what there is in her constitu- tion that enables her to produce moral beings. It is exactly that fundamental originative and sustentative interdependence among the parts, that basal integratedness of nature upon which we have discoursed, that endows her with this sort of creative power. To summarize : Scrutiny of the human species in the manner that descriptive biology scrutinizes all living things discovers this species to have certain very peculiar attributes: desire for companionship, sympathy with the unfortunate and the fort- unate, a sense of dependence upon and obligation to others, love of kindred and non-kindred, and so on. The possession of these attributes marks the species as not merely gregarious, but in the

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deepest sense social. Out of the observation and personal ex- perience of these attributes in their best development there has grown the conception that the members of the species consti- tute a brotherhood. And notice that the fact that each of these attributes has its antithesis does not in the least, affect the es- sential point before us. Day is no less day because there is also night. The social feelings one possesses are none the 1'ess positive because of unsocial feelings one may also possess. 'Love is none the less love because hate exists.

The historic doctrine of human brotherhood grew out of these germinal feelings of man. Speculation as to the origin and sanc- tion of these feelings has usually been sought, especially in the Western world, beyond nature. But now in these later centu- ries comes science to demonstrate the physical counterpart of the spiritual doctrine of brotherhood.

And now the final word: If ever we mortals attain to true self-wisdom, wisdom that is not alone saving but creative of Self, we shall win it by devoutly seeking in the temples of Religion, Art, and Science alternately. No man can become wise unto eternal life by worshipping in one kind of temple only.

And when such wisdom shall be reached, each self will have become conscious that he himself is because other Selves are. Each Self will know that however much of struggle ending in triumph or defeat, however much of ambition, mean or noble, enter into the great drama of human life, it is all only a part of the stupendous totality of things, the supreme glory of which is, so far as positive knowledge can reach, that it has produced and is producing man not only at his worst, but also at his best.

THE SHAKESPEARE TERCENTENARY COMMEMORATION AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS

Formal preparation for the Shakespeare Tercentenary Com- memoration at the University of Texas began when Professor R. H. Griffith offered a motion at a meeting of the General Faculty in the spring of 1915 that a committee of five be ap- pointed to prepare and have presented a suitable program. The vote upon the motion was unanimous in its favor. Doctor Battle, Acting President, appointed as the committee Messrs. Fay, Barker, Lomax, Young, and Griffith (chairman). Upon the resignation of Mr. Young from the University shortly after- wards, his place was supplied by Mr. Richards. At a meeting early in the summer the chairman was empowered to act for the committee.

The program decided upon planned a series of exercises on a much larger scale than had ever before been attempted at this University. First, there were to be commemoration exercises on the campus in April of 1916. Later, a memorial volume, con- taining addresses and essays, was to be published. The present volume is the accomplishment of the latter half of the plans. The warm commendation in the accounts of the April events published by both local and out-of-town newspapers attests the complete success of the first half.

The committee could and did arrange for addresses from dis- tinguished visiting scholars, for outdoor plays by a professional troupe, for an exhibit of Shakespearean books, maps, prints, and pictures — all for the delight and instruction of students and faculty. Addresses were delivered by Professor John M. Manly, of the University of Chicago ; Professor Barrett Wendell, of Harvard University; Judge R. L. Batts, of Austin; and Professor William E. Ritter, of the Scrips Biological Labora- tory, La Jola, California. In the foregoing pages are printed these addresses, together with articles contributed by friendly scholars, former instructors, and present members of the staff of the University of Texas.

[204]

Memorial Volume to Shakespeare and Harvey 205

But beyond these it was deemed highly desirable to arrange a portion of the program in which faculty and students should be actors, not merely spectators. A beginning was made with the department of athletics for women. For several years pre- ceding, it had given a spring exhibition of games, exercises, and dances. For 1916 it was willing, as a substitute, to take a part in the Commemoration program. Then a dozen sections from the freshman class of the men's gymnasium were invited to join the girls in preparing folk dances. Thus the first half of the program for the night of April 22 was arranged for. For the remaining part a Bartholomew Fair scene was devised, and Phi Alpha Tau, a society composed of members selected from the various dramatic and debating clubs of the University, agreed to undertake its preparation. In these two groups nearly a thousand students were included. The resulting com- bination of lights, music, color, and action — a goodly proportion even of the thousands of spectators came in Elizabethan cos- tume— was a spectacle of beauty and gaiety.

Active participation for the remaining students and for the faculty had to be arranged for. The chairman sought the advice and assistance of a committee of ladies, some of them wives of professors, some members of the faculty, some friends of the University of long standing. A pageant procession was decided on. One who has had no experience with such an under- taking can have little conception of the immense amount of work a pageant entails. To the ladies who assumed this whole burden and whose names are gratefully recorded in the subse- quent committee lists, the general committee and the whole University community owes a debt of thanks. They evolved a system of subdividing the students and faculty into groups; of assigning to each unit a play of Shakespeare to impersonate, or a period of his life to represent ; of providing troupes of minstrels to sing glees en route, and bands of halberdiers to keep clear the line of march. They designed perspectives and proportions, schemes of color and tints for each unit and for the procession as a whole : they studied numerous books and prints, drew and colored historically accurate pictures of old-time costumes, and posted dozens of them on the bulletin boards. They bought and

206 University of Texas Bulletin

sold at wholesale prices materials for hats and suits ; they prac- tically card-catalogued every dress-maker in Austin, and mobil- ized women and machines for the making of hundreds of costumes; they even went into the chemical laboratory and dyed scores of pairs of stockings to secure just the right shade. Their reward for it all was the brilliant parade in the late afternoon of Saturday, April 22.

In divers fashions Town joined with Gown for the Com- memoration. Wednesday afternoon the campus was given over to a thousand children from three of the ward schools for their folk-dances and fairy-playing. Sunday night many of the city ministers, adopting a suggestion of the committee, gave the Tercentenary a place in their sermons. And the women's clubs and a large number of Austin ladies not directly associated with the University were patronesses of our Commemoration, entering so heartily into the spirit of it as to make and wear such costumes as the old Globe Theatre itself must many a time have seen.

Our April days were a gala season most successful and long to be remembered.

itmitfltt nf % (tt0mm?m0raium

THE COMMITTEE OF THE FACULTY

PROFESSOR R. H. GRIFFITH, Chairman

PROFESSOR EDWIN W. FAY PROFESSOR EUGENE C. BARKER MR. JOHN A. LOMAX DOCTOR AUTE RICHARDS

EDITORIAL COMMITTEE

PROFESSOR JAMES F. ROYSTER PROFESSOR JOHN T. PATTERSON PROFESSOR A. C. JUDSON

BUSINESS MANAGER

L. THEO BELMONT, Director of Athletics

DIRECTOR OF THE LIBRARY EXHIBIT

JOHN E. GOODWIN, Librarian

DIRECTORS OF MUSIC

PROFESSOR FRANK: L. REED MB. GEORGE HOLMES MRS. J. A. DEHAAS

DIRECTOR OF LIGHTING

PROFESSOR S. LEROY BROWN

LADIES ADVISORY COMMITTEE

PROFESSOR MARY E. GEARING

MRS. R. H. GRIFFITH MRS. SPURGEON BELL,

Miss MARGARET BOROUGHS MRS. J. F. ROYSTER

Miss HALLIE WALKER MRS. A. C. ELLIS

MRS. S. E. GIDEON MRS. J. B. WHAREY

MRS. L. H. HANEY MRS. H. W. PECK

Miss MATTIE LOCKETT Miss ANNA MUCKELROY

Miss EUNICE ADEN . Miss E. C. MEGUIAR

Miss F. A. SIMMS [207]

208

University of Texas Bulletin

STUDENTS ADVISORY COMMITTEE

MR. W. R. ALLEN MR. M. A. KNIGHT MR. GEORGE HEXTER MR. BUFORD JESTER MR. FLOYD SMITH MR. J. R. PARTEN

MR. E. B. NAUGLE MR. HUBERT JONES MR. P. S. CLARKE MR. R. VANDER STRATEN MR. N. E. TRAVERS

DIRECTORS OF THE PAGEANT PROCESSION

MRS. R. H. GRIFFITH, Chairman MRS. J. F. ROYSTER, English Unit

MRS. E. W. PATTERSON, Law Unit

Miss HAZEL HORNSBY, Engineering Unit

MRS. E. T. MILLER, Social Sciences Unit MRS. E. P. SCHOCH, Natural Sciences Unit

Miss LUCILE M. RAWLINS, Education Unit

Miss ANN E. RICHARDSON, Domestic Economy Unit MRS. J. A. DEHAAS J Business Training and MRS. A. L. GREEN ( Journalism Unit Miss ROBERTA LAVENDER, Ancient Languages Unit Miss HILDA NORMAN, Modern Languages Unit Miss MATTIE LOCKETT, "Cap and Gown" Unit

DIRECTORS OF FOLK DANCES

Miss EUNICE ADEN Miss LOUISE H. WRIGHT

MR. ROY B. HENDERSON

DIRECTOR OF AESTHETIC DANCES

Miss ANNIE LEE COSBY

DESIGNERS OF COSTUMES

Miss FANNIE A. SIMS MRS. H. W. PECK

Miss ELIZABETH C. MEGUIAR MR. S. E. GIDEON

Miss ANNA MUCKELROY

Memorial Volume to Shakespeare and Harvey 209

DESIGNER OF ELIZABETHAN MENU

Miss JENNIE R. BEAR

GENEROUS PURVEYORS OF COSTUME MATERIALS

SCABBROUGH & SONS McKJEAN, ElLERS & Co.

Of Austin

SANGER BROTHERS Of Dallas

UmuerHttij of Qfcxas

APRIL 22 TO 26

1916

AUSTIN, TEXAS

FOUR ADDRESSES, POUR OUTDOOR PLAYS, FOUR MUSICAL ORGANIZATIONS, TWO SOLOISTS, A SHAKESPEARE PAGEANT, AN ELIZABETHAN REVEL, A LI- BRARY EXHIBIT

15— S

A !$>ljakesppare flagrant

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Sterultg aufc At &\x aUflrt GTrlork

1. Shakespeare as a Twelve Year Old Boy at Kenilworth

Castle English, General Literature, and

Public Speaking Unit.

2. London Life . Law Unit.

3. Merchant of Venice Law Unit.

4. Hamlet Selected Unit.

5. Midsummer Night 's Dream Business Training

and Journalism Unit. <6. Julius Caesar Ancient Languages Unit.

7. Merry Wives of Windsor Social Sciences Unit.

8. Winter's Tale Domestic Economy Unit.

9. As You Like It Natural Sciences Unit.

10. Richard III Education Unit

11. Taming of the Shrew Modern Languages Unit.

12. Shakespeare's Women Cap and Gown Society Unit.

Shakespeare and Bacon Bands of Minstrel Singers Glee Club and Associates.

The route of the Pageant is along certain Campus walks. Spectators will please KEEP OFF ALL WALKS.

The twelve units appear three minutes apart.

At advantageous spots each unit will pause for a tableau.

Each stopping point is marked by a flag.

Every unit pauses before each flag.

The tableau of the first unit is from the Revel at Kenilworth Castle in honor of Queen Elizabeth in 1576; Shakespeare as a 12-year-old lad is supposed to have been present. The London Life tableau is a Mermaid Tavern gathering of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. The tableau of each drama is a typical moment of the play. Shakespearer 's Women do honor to him

as their creator.

[212]

Memorial Volume to Shakespeare and Harvey 213

The bands of minstrels march between units, singing old English ballad-songs: "As I Walked through the Meadows/' "My Man John," "The Coasts of Barbary," "Midsummer Fair," "The Brisk Young Widow," "The Keys of Canterbury," "Green Broom," "Tree in the Wood," "As I Sat on Sunny Bank," "Bingo."

Leave a clear space about each flag. Keep off all walks.

Automobiles banked along Guadalupe between 21st and 23rd Streets will be excellently located.

Tlie Pageant looks its prettiest at a distance of from 100 to 600 feet. "

program

Att Eltxabrtljan %?tt*l

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PART THE FIRST

THE DANCES

Shakespeare has reached the age of about fifty. He is now ready to retire from the stage. Before him appear a crowd of the folk to show in folk-dances their appreciation of his plays. They retire, and are succeeded by the Muses and Goddesses, who 2ome to receive back from the great author the gifts they had endowed him with at his birth. In symbolical dances they in- dicate what those gifts are, their satisfaction with his use of ';hem, and their acceptance of them, now that he is near the end )f his life.

THE FOLK DANCES

BY

THE FIRST-YEAR ATHLETIC STUDENTS

I. Morris Dance, "Laudnum Bunches."

II. Sailor's Hornpipe.

Representing the round of a sailor's duties — hauling in

anchor, hoisting sail, swinging anchor, etc. [II. Ribbon Dance, a Contra Dance.

[214]

Memorial Volume to Shakespeare and Harvey 215 THE AESTHETIC, SYMBOLICAL DANCES •

BY

THE ADVANCED DANCING CLASS

I. The Nine Muses. Chopin's "Grande Valse Brillante."

First in a solo, then in a group.

Misses Estelle Goldstein, Josephine Taylor, Frances Clark, Wortley Harris, Josephine Betchel, Helen Mobley, Mary Ked, Ruth Rose, Louisa Keasbey.

The costumes of the group as a whole represent the rain- bow, and each Muse carries the symbol of her own art. Their gift was all knowledge to be his province.

II. Iris. Grieg's "Humoresque in Valse Time."

Miss Agnes Doran.

The costume is again rainbow hued, for Iris means the rainbow. Iris is the messenger of the Goddesses. Her gift was hope.

III. Juno, Queen of Heaven. Chopin's "Military polonaise."

Miss Katherine Peers.

Royal purple with white staff. Attendants, in purple with staves. Juno gave the master dominion over the hearts and minds of men.

IV. Minerva, Goddess of Wisdom.

Weber's "Invitation to the Dance." Miss Florence Bell.

Gray and rose; a shield with Medusa's heart on it. At- tendants, in blue and rose with shields. Minerva gave power to understand life aright.

V. Ceres, Deity of Plentiful Harvest.

Chopin's "Nocturne in E Flat Major." Miss Ginevra Harris.

Gold and yellow, with her symbol of abundant crops. Attendants, with baskets of fruit. The gift of Ceres was ripeness and fullness of powers.

216 University of Texas Bulletin

VI. Diana, Huntress of Heaven and Goddess of Chastity.

Schubert's "Hunting Song." Miss Pearl Zilker.

Hunter's green with bow and quiver. Attendants, in green with bows, dance to Reinhardt's "The Chase." Diana endowed the poet with modesty.

VII. (a) Venus, Goddess of Love.

Mozkowski's "Love's Awakening." Miss Annie Louise Stayton. Rose and pink with flowers.

(b) Cupid, Son of Venus.

Little Miss Frances Tarlton.

(c) Fairies.

A group of children, in white and spangles. Attendants of Venus, with garlands of roses.

VIII. Ensemble Finale.

All the dancers gather before Shakespeare. The God- desses and Muses approach and receive back the gifts they had given. All kneel. Shakespeare breaks his wand. The pageant of his life is past.

PART THE SECOND

BARTHOLOMEW FAIRE

Management of the Guild of Phi Alpha Tau Mr. Floyd Smith, Master of the Revels to her Majesty I. Old English Ballad Songs.

The Glee Club.

II. "From Bartholomew Faire to Shoreditch:" A Playlet

Being the rough course travelled over by the corpulent Knight.

Memorial Volume to Shakespeare and Harvey 217

CAST OF CHARACTERS:

f

Sir John Falstaff • Ben Marable

Dame Quickly R. L. Sidles

Justice Alva Carlton

Clerk of the Court - Floyd Smith

Big Bailiff Robert McClelland

Little Bailiff Leslie Etter

Pistol . . .' Lewy Dunn

Bardolph (in pillory) . . . Carl Galloway

Yeomen, witnesses, court crier, and much people.

RESUME. Scene opens with Falstaff abusing Dame Quickly before the platform on which Pie Powder Court is in session. Arrested, he uses his wiles to conciliate the Hostess, who prays that the charge against her lover be expunged. The Justice complies. But no sooner is Dame Quickly off to get withdrawn a suit previously entered at Westminster than the Justice re- verses his opinion and condemns the "woman queller" to ax humiliating punishment.

After the trial the Court adjourns to

III. The Mermaid Tavern : Song and Cyder- Master Shakespeare Rex Shaw- Ben Jonson Arthur Uhl'

Master Skylark, cousin to Shakespeare Lewy Dunni

The SPECTATORS will be pleased to leave their seats and accompany the Court to the tavern for refreshments. Be sure to see each one of the marvels of the Faire : —

Puppet Show. Archery : ' * Target in the Water. ' ' Bowling, on the Green. Wrestling Match. The Most Wonderful Cata- most. The Cock Pit. Bout at Quarterstaff. Medicine Vendor. The Great Shadow Fight. Fortune Tellers. And all other whatsoever.

218 University of Texas Bulletin

'fi program

April 24, 1916

MONDAY MORNING, APRIL 24

12:00 O'CLOCK, UNIVERSITY AUDITORIUM

General Introduction ................. President W. J. Battle

Ancient Songs : ....................... The University Chorus

"Who Is Sylvia?" ....... Ravenscroft, 1614; Morley, 1595

"Blow, Blow, Thou Winter Wind" ............ Dr. Arne

"Since First I saw your Face" .............. Thos. Ford.

Introduction of the Speaker ............... Prof. J. F. Royster

Shakespeare Himself " .................... Address by John

Matthews Manly, Ph. D., Head of the Department of English, University of Chicago.

MONDAY AFTERNOON

4:00 O'CLOCK, UNIVERSITY AUDITORIUM

4. i

i (

Shakespeare in Texas" Prof. R. A. Law

Ancient Songs Mrs. Charles H. Sander

"Green Sleeves" Ancient Melody from W. Bal- let's Lute Book, Composed in the Reign of Henry VIII.

"Heigh ho! for a Husband" From John

Gamble's MS. Common-Place Book.

Introduction of the Speaker .Dean H. Y. Benedict

"Shakespeare, Purveyor to the Public" . .Address by R. L. Batts United States Attorney, Austin and New York.

MONDAY EVENING

7 :00 o 'CLOCK, CAMPUS Outdoor Concert The University Band

Memorial Volume to Shakespeare and Harvey 219

MONDAY NIGHT 8:30 O'CLOCK

Outdoor Play The Devereux Players

TWELFTH NIGHT

BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

CAST OF CHARACTERS

A Sea Captain Edgar Ware

Viola Ethel Huyler Gray

Sir Toby Belch, Uncle to Olivia Clifford Devereux

Maria, Niece to Olivia Millicent McLaughlin

Sir Andrew Aguecheck, His Friend Henry Buckler

Orsino, Duke of Illyria Dennis Cleugh

Curio, Gentleman attending Orsino John Jarrett

Valentine, A Gentleman attending Orisino. .... .John Gilchrist

First Lord Henry Thomas

Second Lord Maurice Ingram

Feste, A Clown William Podmore

Olivia Adele Klaer

Malvolio, Steward to Olivia Charles Fleming

Musician Edmund J. Fitzpatrick

Sebastian, Brother to Viola Peter Golden

Antonio, a Sea Captain, Friend to Sebastian . . Madef rey Odhner

Fabian, Servant to Olivia John Jarrett

An Officer Harold Heath

A Priest Burr Chapman

Musicians Felix Rappo, Salvotore De Salvo, John De Salvo

Characters in the order in which they 'speak. In case of rain, plays will be staged in University Auditorium.

220 University of Texas Bulletin

's program

Aprti 25, 1916

TUESDAY MORNING, APRIL 25

12:00 O'CLOCK, UNIVERSITY AUDITORIUM

Ancient Song The Women 's Chorus:

"Under the Greenwood Tree" Richards

Elizabethan Madrigal The University Chorus

"Love in Prayers" C. V. Stanford (1852)

Ancient words, modern music.

Introduction of the Speaker Prof. Morgan Callaway, Jr.

"The Growth of Shakespeare" Address by Barrett

Wendell, Professor of English, Harvard University.

TUESDAY AFTERNOON

3:30 O'CLOCK

Outdoor Play The Devereux Players;

THE CRITIC

BY RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN

CAST OF CHARACTERS

CHARACTERS IN ACT I

Mr. Dangle Charles Fleming

Mrs. Dangle Millicent McLaughlin

A Servant Arthur Barney

Mr. Sneed John Gilchrist

Sir Fretful Plagiary Henry Buckler

Mr. Puff . . .William Podmore

Memorial Volume to Shakespeare and Harvey 221

CAST OF MB. PUFF'S TRAGEDY

Prompter Harold Heath

Leader of Orchestra John De Salvo

First Sentinel Edmund J. Fitzpatrick

Second Sentinel Burr Chapman

Sir Shristopher Hatton Madefrey Odhner

Sir Walter Raleigh John Jarrett

Earl of Leicester Peter Golden

Governor of Tilbury Fort Dennis Golden

Master of the Horse S. De Salvo

Tilburina Ethel Huyler Gray

Confidant Adele Klaer

Whiskerandos Clifford Devereux

Beef-Eater Henry Buckler

First Niece Yvonne Jarrette

Second Niece Helen Lyon Merriam

Musicians. . . .Felix Rappo, Salvotore De Salvo, John De Salvo

ACT I— Breakfast at Mr. Dangle 's

ACT II— Scene I— Before the Curtain of the Theatre.

Characters in the order in which they appear. In case of rain, plays will be staged in University Auditorium..

TUESDAY NIGHT

8:30 O'CLOCK

Outdoor Play The Devereux Players

COMEDY OF ERRORS

BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Solinus, Duke of Ephesus Harold Heath

Aegeon, A Merchant of Syracuse Peter Golden'

A Gaoler Edmund J. Fitzpatrick

222 University of Texas Bulletin

Balthazar of Syracuse, Twin Brother, Son to Aegeon and

Amelia but unknown to each other Dennis Cleugh

Dromio of Syracuse. . . . . . : . . .William Podmore

Dromio of Ephesus Henry Buckler

Twin Brothers attendants on the two Antipholus Adriana, Wife to Antipholus Ephesus. . . .Millicent McLaughlin

Luciana, Her Sister Ethel H?uyler Gray

Antipholus of Ephesus, Twin brother, Son to Aegeon and

Amelia but unknown to each other Charles Fleming

Luce, Servant to Adriana Yvonne Jarrette

Angelo, A Goldsmith . Madef rey Odhner

Officer John Gilchrist

A Courtesan Adele Klaer

Dr. Pinch, A Conjurer Clifford Devereux

Headsman Edgar Ware

Amelia, Wife to Aegeon Helen Lyon Merriam

Musicians .... Felix Rappo, Salvotore De Salvo, John De Salvo

Characters in the order in which they appear. In case of rain, plays will be staged in University Auditorium

Memorial Volume to Shakespeare and Harvey 223

program

April 26,

WEDNESDAY MORNING, APRIL 26 12:00 O'CLOCK

"A Teacher of Shakespeare: A Eulogy". . . .Prof. E. W. Fay An Ancient Song .......................... Mrs. J. W. Morris

"Willow Song" ............................ Traditional

"Willow Song" (from Othello) ............. ' ...... Verdi

Introduction of the Speaker .......... Prof. J. T. Patterson

" 'Know Thyself — Interpreted by Socrates, Shakespeare, Har-

vey, and Men of Today" ........ Address by Wm. E. Ritter.

Director of the Scripps Institution for Biological Research of

the University of California.

WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON 2:30 O'CLOCK

First Session, Annual Meeting .... The Texas Folk-Lore Society Prof. Barrett Wendell will address the Society

WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON 5:00 O'CLOCK

A SHAKESPEARE FETE

ON THE UNIVERSITY CAMPUS

By the Pupils of Baker, Winn, and Wooldridge Public Schools

PART THE FIRST THE QUEEN'S ENTERTAINMENT

1. Procession to the Green

2. Entrance of Her Majesty and Court

3. Puck's Invitation of Shakespeare's Fairies and Fools to

Frolic among the Flowers.

4. Will's Players before the Queen

224 University of Texas Bulletin

PART THE SECOND

1. Sellinger's Round

2. The Maypole

3. Ruffty Tuffty

4. Bean Setting

5. Sally Luker

6. Sellinger's Round

WEDNESDAY NIGHT

8:30 O'CLOCK

Outdoor Play The Devereux Players

SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER

BY OLIVER GOLDSMITH

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Mr. Hardcastle, A Country Gentleman * . . Charles Fleming

Mrs. Hardcastle, His Wife .Millicent McLaughlin

Tony Lumpkins, Son to Mrs. Hardcastle Clifford Devereux

Kate Hardcastle, Daughter to Mr. Hardcastle

Ether Huyler Gray

Constance Neville, Cousin to Tony Adele Klaer

Tom Twist, A Bear Dancer Madefrey Odhner

•Jack Slang, A Horse Doctor Arthur Barney

Dick Ginger, A feeder John Jarrett

Muggins, An Exciseman . Harold Heath

Aminadab, A Fiddler Burr Chapman

Stingo, the Landlord of "The Three Pigeons" William Podmore

Maid, At ' * The Three Pigeons " Helen Lyon Merriam

Young Marlow, Son to Sir Charles Dennis Cleugh

Hastings, His Friend Peter Golden

Diggory Henry Buckler

Roger Harold Heath

Thomas John Gilchrist

Dick John Jarrett

Servants to Hardcastle

Memorial Volume to Shakespeare and Harvey 225

Dolly, Maid at Hardcastles Yvonne Jarrette

Jeremy, Servant to Young Marlow Edgar Ware

Sir Charles Marlow, Hardcastle 's Friend Henry Buckler

Musicians. . . .Felix Rappo, Salvotore De Salvo, John De Salvo

Characters in the order in which they appear.

ACT I. Scene I. — Room in Hardcastle 's House. ACT II. Room in Hardcastle 's House.

Scene II. — A Country Inn. ACT III. The Same. ACT IY. Scene I.— Hardcastle 's Garden.

Scene II. — Room in Hardcastle 's House.

In case of rain, plays will be staged in University Auditorium.

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