Lear's knights and Goneril's household, which, gradually extending, at last caused the final rupture between father and daughter, could not well have been scenically represented, but must be gathered from the words of the offended parties. Again, dramatic material for at least a whole act is compressed into an explanatory scene at the beginning of the third act, in Kent's conversation with a gentleman. In this we are informed of Lear's first attack of madness; of the division between his two sons-in-law, Albany and Cornwall; of the French preparations for an attack on England. With the same object the poet has introduced a second explanatory scene into the fourth act, another conversation between Kent and the same gentleman. In this the story of the latter does away with the necessity for several scenes which would else have been requisite for the plot, viz. a scene to account for the King of France's sudden return to his own land, and his disappearance from the further course of the drama; a scene in which Cordelia should learn the heartrending news of her beloved father's sorrows, and the crimes of her unnatural sisters; a scene to show us Lear in a new phase of his madness.

The epic element is quite different in Edgar's masterly description of the cliff at Dover, with which he deceives his blind father. For Shakspere's public, this and similar detailed word-pictures, which we moderns could easily spare from our own drama, had another and deeper significance. They brought before their hearers' minds-eye and fancy those images which the deficient stage scenery of the time could not offer to their bodily eyes. So also, to give a few examples from Shakspere's historial dramas: in King Richard II., Bolingbroke's solemn entry into London; in King Henry V., the English camp the evening before the decisive battle in France, described in all their characteristic details, only not acted. So in Coriolanus, the Triumph of Marcius through the streets of Rome; in Antony and Cleopatra, the first meeting between the Egyptian Queen and the Roman Triumvir on the river Cydnus, described in the most glowing colours, but not represented-all scenes in the visible representation of which modern decorative art and scenic arrangements would put forth all their power, and spare the poet the trouble of making a minute description.

But, to return to King Lear after this digression, we have to

observe finally one more epic element. The poet spares us the sight of Gloster dying of a broken heart, and we learn it only from Edgar's touching narration. So also the poet gives us a short account of Cordelia's hanging herself in prison, but does not represent it on the stage. The attention of the public is throughout concentrated on old Lear himself, and is not disturbed and diverted by the sight of the troubles of others.

In Hamlet the previous history is not, as in many others, narrated in one explanatory scene. Rather, it extends, artistically worked-in, through the whole first act of the tragedy, according to the part played by each person in each event of this complication of deeds. Hamlet's father figures in Horatio's speech as a victorious hero and conqueror of Norway and Poland, at the first appearance of the ghost. He figures as a victim to his brother's murderous plots towards the conclusion of the first act, in the ghost's own account to his son at his second appearance. Then in the court assembly are mentioned the hostilities caused by the young Fortinbras of Norway, which are to be diplomatically allayed by the embassage sent to the new King of Denmark. It was in the poet's interest to bring the fiery and ambitious young Fortinbras, whom he had at first intended to introduce personally later on before the public, at once in powerful contrast to the irresolute, scrupulous Hamlet. Hamlet's love for Ophelia is not represented before us; we learn of it only in the warnings of Polonius and Laertes; and even Hamlet's first meeting with the beloved one in his assumed madness, which perhaps another dramatist would have worked up into an effective scene, our poet only describes in the nerveless account of the terrified Ophelia. As Shakspere found occasion enough later on to show his hero in many phases of his madness, he only intended in this first instance to prepare his public for the coming change. For the progress of his dramatic action he lays the greatest weight, not on the re-encounter of the two lovers under such different circumstances, but on the different interpretations which Polonius, on the one hand, and the royal pair, on the other, give to Hamlet's strangest behaviour. If we pursue the epic element further through the course of our tragedy, it strikes us that this epic element is occasionally not in accordance with the corresponding dramatic element. At the conclusion of the

first act, for example, we see Hamlet firmly resolved to impart to no one, not even to his friend Horatio, what the ghost had confided to him alone. In the third act, however, on the occasion of the play performed by the strolling players, we learn from Hamlet's mouth that meanwhile he had acquainted Horatio with all the circumstances of his father's murder. We miss a scene in which Hamlet would have been obliged to explain and account for his change of mind on this point. Further, in the fourth act, King Claudius tells Laertes of the visit of the Norman-French Lamound to the Danish Court, how he had praised Laertes' skill in fence, and thereby had aroused Hamlet's jealousy, and made him desirous of measuring himself against Laertes. If we look back now on the previous course of the drama, from Laertes' departure from France to his sudden return thence, and if we observe Hamlet's behaviour during all this time, we find no moment at which this praise of Laertes' skill could possibly make the slightest impression on Hamlet's mind. The two last epic elements of the tragedy are the queen's account of the death of Ophelia, and Hamlet's own narration of his voyage, to Horatio. In both cases the then condition of the stage rendered any scenical representation impossible. What in the modern French opera, supported by all imaginable art of theatrical machinery and painting, might be an attractive and gratifying task for the manager, was impossible on Shakspere's stage. But perhaps the poet's vivid description of Ophelia going to her watery death singing, and crowned with flowers, fearless and careless, made a deeper and more touching impression on his public than all modern operatic art could make on us at present.

Shakspere's historical plays, however, are richer in narrative or epic elements than any other of his dramas, the English as well as the Roman. In both, the poet took such copious material from his authorities, Holinshed's Chronicle and Plutarch's Lives, that it would have been impossible to dramatize it all without having frequent recourse to epic narration.

But to pursue this branch of our subject would be to over-pass the limits of the hour, during which I have already trespassed too far upon your kind attention.

X.

ON THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE SECOND AND THIRD PARTS OF HENRY VI, AND THEIR ORIGINALS.

BY MISS JANE LEE.

Read at the 27th Meeting of the New Shakspere Society, Friday, Oct. 13, 1876.

MANY questions are summed up in the one question: "Who rote the Henry VI plays?" We have to decide not only whether hakspere was their author, but also whether he worked single

handed, or with fellow-workers?-when the plays were written ?— whether they are original, or founded on certain older plays—and, if this be so, who was the author, or who were the authors of those older plays, as well as at what time were they written?

The earliest known copies of Henry VI, Parts 2 and 3, appear in the first Folio (1623) of Shakspere's works; but we have Quartos of two plays the Contention and the True Tragedy-which are either imperfect transcripts of Henry VI, Parts 2 and 3, or else plays of an earlier date out of which these latter were constructed.

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The first part of the Henry VI plays does not stand on the same footing as the two latter parts. We possess no early sketch, or imperfect transcript of it (if such ever existed); and whilst it is abundantly evident that Parts 2 and 3 were written by the same men, it is by no means so evident that they were written by the same men as composed Part 1. The first Part of Henry VI, therefore, cannot be considered in connection with the second and third Parts. I. In entering on the question of the authorship of Parts 2 and 3 I think our first point should be to decide whether they are copies enlarged and improved of the Contention and True Tragedy; or whether they are themselves original works of which the Contention and True Tragedy are imperfect transcripts. The last of the writers who have maintained this view is Mr Fleay, in an interesting paper in Macmillan's Magazine for Nov. 1875. His reasons for holding this opinion are as follows: 1st, he finds, in the Contention and True Tragedy words omitted which are needful to the sense; 2nd, words misplaced; 3rd, wrong metrical arrangement; 4th, gaps filled up with inferior matter. The first three reasons do not, I think, prove much either way. Every editor of our early plays tells the same tale: he finds only too often words omitted, words misplaced, and the metre wrongly arranged. It is because of these very omissions, displacements, and misarrangements that we are still perplexed as to the sense of many passages in our old dramatists. The 4th reason presents the divergence of opinion in the clearest light. Mr Fleay argues: 'Here we have gaps filled up with inferior matter, and this is to me a proof that the Contention and True Tragedy are imperfect copies of Henry VI, Parts 2 and 3.'