The poet, though following an old story exhibits his power of invention in this play. He introduces two characters of prominence not elsewhere connected with the narrative. Juliet's nurse contributes much to the diversion of the audience, and Mercutio is almost as much an original as Falstaff. A gay and careless young aristocrat, he can talk without stopping to think, and plays with the same equanimity with airy nothings and the fatal wound stealthily inflicted on him by an enemy.

We shall find in the end that the wearied Shakespeare of fifty was the buoyant Shakespeare of thirty. We follow farther, and to the end, his life and work in another lecture.

LECTURE SECOND

IN

II

Memoir.

LATER LIFE AND WORK

N following Shakespeare to his maturity, we have not reached the highest development of his manhood. At thirty years of age one is expected to be already engaged in the serious work of life. What account can we give of his succeeding years? Twenty-two years are still before him, how is he to fill them? Unfortunately but few items have come down to us which have reference to his business and social occupations. Such as we have are connected with his closing years and may be noticed later. There is, however, a vast amount of literary labor spread out before us which discloses the subject of his thoughts and to some extent the drift of his mental development. His work is definitely known. In mature life he was a dramatist and he was nothing else. The theatre, however, opens to observation the entire range of human experience. His work of the period now under review consists of

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thirty-seven dramas. Some of them were written before the year to which Romeo and Juliet is assigned, 1594, but they were retouched and may all be considered as belonging to this second period, after his advance from the position of poet to that of poet and dramatist. These plays fall into groups, and belong with some definiteness to different periods of his life. Of those that centre about the year 1594 the most noted are the plays already mentioned as belonging to the period of experimentation, to which may be added MidSummer Night's Dream. These exhibit the playful young man. Their author is trying to see what he can do. He was not sure that he should succeed in taking a place by the side of Marlowe and Nash. He was like the young author who sends an article to the newspaper under a pseudonym, to see if he shall have a reader. Shakespeare was indeed already an author of repute, but he was attempting the playwright. These plays are not fantastic, the author had a solid basis to work upon, but in two of them the playful accessories give them their character, and they all excite interest by their incidents and extravagances rather than as works