derful power, not unmixed with reverence. The supernatural visitation to Hamlet is conducted with a solemn grandeur and air of reality throughout that has never been equalled in poetry. It is impossible to read the scene in which the ghost of the dead king appears, without feeling convinced that it all happened as described. If ever a ghost was permitted to walk the earth, and to hold communion with human beings, we cannot conceive of more perfectly appropriate action and language than Shakespeare has used. Nor in any after-scene of the play can it be forgot that Hamlet has gone through the ordeal of receiving that terrible revelation from another world. He thenceforth looks at Ophelia, his mother, his stepfather, with the eyes of one who has seen the dead. He has heard the "eternal blazon," and all other "motives and cues for action" affect his mind subserviently.-Scarcely less awful, though less elaborately conducted, are the spectral appearances in "Julius Cæsar," in "Macbeth,” and in "Richard the Third." Most touching and thrilling is the scene in which the ghost of Cæsar so suddenly appears to Brutus. There is a sort of retributive justice in it, which gives it a naturalness and a probability. Brutus is alone in his tent on the night before the decisive battle. He has had a quarrel with his best friend, Cassius, and he has unexpectedly received the mournful intelligence of the death of Portia. A sadness has gathered upon him, against which he contends proudly, but it overmatches his stoicism. His page, Lucius, from whom he had asked for some music, has fallen asleep over his lute. Brutus resumes a book he had been reading, having found the place where he had turned down the leaf. It is midnight, and he is seated beside a solitary taper. He has just remarked how ill it burns, when the sudden ghost of the man he had stabbed stands before him : "Ha! who comes here? I think it is the weakness of mine eyes That mak'st my blood cold and my hair to stare? Ghost. Thy evil spirit, Brutus. Bru. Why com'st thou? Ghost. To tell thee thou shalt see me at Philippi. Bru. Well; Then I shall see thee again. Ghost. Ay, at Philippi. [Exit Ghost. Whether we take this as a reality, or as a spectral illusion visible only to a diseased and overwrought brain, no pale Nemesis ever made a ghastlier annunciation of approaching disaster and death. Dramatic literature in England before Shakespeare was in its infancy, and it was not an Herculean infancy. The first play regularly divided into acts and scenes, and making pretension to a consistent action and a poetical delineation of character, was the tragedy of "Gorboduc," or "Ferrex and Porrex," by Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, produced in 1561, just three years before Shakespeare was born. Prior to that period there were no plays properly so called. There were itinerant jesters, who amused the common people with the recitation of vulgar dialogue, and there were a few rude farces, such as "Ralph Roister Doister," hardly any of which have come down to us. "Gammer Gurton's Needle," which made a slight advance towards comedy, did not appear till 1566, five years after the "Ferrex and Porrex." There had existed, it is true, from an earlier time, religious masques or rhymed dramas, which the Church, prior to the Reformation, did not discourage, and which were known by the names of "Mysteries," "Moralities," and "Miracle" plays. The Mysteries and Miracle plays dealt almost exclusively with scriptural narratives and personages, in a manner which now-adays would be considered not a little profane: the Moralities did not present real, but allegorical persons, and their meaning was often extremely enigmatical. When the ice, however, was at length broken, and a play, bearing some remote resemblance to the ancient models of Greece and Rome, was successfully produced, others speedily followed, and something like a national drama arose. Richard Edwardes brought out his "Damon and Pythias" and "Palamon and Arcite;" Robert Wilmot, the "Tragedie of Tancred and Gismond;" Thomas Gaster, the "Commedy of the Most Virtuous and Godly Susanna ;" George Peele, who was educated at Oxford, "Edward the First," "The Old Wife's Tale," and other plays; John Lilly, "Sapho and Phaon," and many other pieces; Thomas Kyd, "Jeronimo" and "The Spanish Tragedy;" and Robert Greene, "Friar Bacon" and "James the Fourth slain at Flodden." These writers were all dii minorum gentium; and though some of them were not without vigour and poetical spirit, they have achieved little reputation beyond that of being our earliest dramatists, which of itself attaches an amount of interest to their works. Christopher Marlowe took a higher flight, and was beyond doubt the most eminent dramatic poet anterior to Shakespeare. His life, however, was vicious; and no poet with a corrupted mind can ever produce the highest poetry. His plays, containing, as they do, some vivid though imperfect delineations of character, and frequent passages of considerable power, which, nevertheless, hardly justify Ben Jonson's phrase of "Marlowe's mighty line," are much disfigured with bombast, and are full of forced and unnatural incident. His principal pieces are "Tamburlane the Great," in two parts, "the Jew of Malta," "Edward the Second," "Doctor Faustus," and "Lust's Dominion." Of these "Doctor Faustus" is the most remarkable for originality and boldness. It contains a good deal of the fire at which Goethe afterwards lighted his lamp. As a whole, however, Marlowe's writings have taken no hold of the general mind, and cannot be said to enjoy any popularity in the present day.. Shakespeare's immediate contemporaries and fol lowers, catching apparently fresh inspiration from him, and soaring far above the writers who had preceded them, formed a school of dramatic literature which has never been equalled since, and which constitutes the chief glory of the Elizabethan era. Around Shakespeare, the great centre luminary, we find collected the shining names of Ben Jonson, Massinger, Fletcher, Beaumont, Ford, Webster, Middleton, Decker, and Chapman. A wonderful richness of power and matter is prominent in the works of all these poets. We owe them much for many a noble thought and many a finely conceived character. Their chief fault lay in a want of control over their own strength; their freedom and power were often misused; the sense of moderation is wanting; exuberance of fancy is counted better than a high moral aim; bombast is sometimes mistaken for sublimity. Like certain portrait painters, they endeavour to intensify the likeness by exaggerating the characteristic features, and they thus "overstep the modesty of nature." The recent and learned German critic, Gervinus, speaks truly of them when he says,-"Everything in the minds engaged testifies of sap and vigour, of life and motion, of luxuriant creative genius, of ready ability to satisfy a glaring taste with glaring effects; but the plastic hand of that master is absent who created his works according to the demands of the highest ideal of art." Shakespeare, as Dryden long ago remarked, stands as high above them,— "Quantum lenta solent inter viburna cupressi." |