plans a terrible revenge whereby he wishes to destroy the Moor, Desdemona, and several others. During a festival he induces Cassio, who happened to be officer of the guard, to partake of wine. A quarrel is thus cunningly contrived, Cassio giving great offence, and even using his drawn sword. The alarm-bell is sounded, which brings the general to the scene, and Cassio loses his lieutenancy. The unfortunate officer, brought to despair by the loss of his position, his unhappiness still further enhanced by the displeasure of his general, applies to Desdemona, who, through her womanly sympathy, becomes his warm defender and intercessor, the more because he during her courtship had acted as the bearer of the missives between herself and Othello. Cassio, while beseeching his high-spirited patroness to intercede for his reinstatement, at the approach of the Moor quickly withdraws from her presence; Iago cunningly uses the fatal movement by ingeniously devised hints, which awaken the jealous feelings of Othello; and in further explanation of this conduct beguiles Othello, by telling him that a woman who had deceived her old father in such a clever way, could also be easily induced to betray her husband. Desdemona having received from Othello a handkerchief, the gift of the Moor's mother to her son, is asked for it by Othello. This handkerchief had been stolen from her for the purpose of exciting her husband's jealousy. Innocent how she had lost it, Desdemona apologizes, but Othello, believing this to be but a confirmation of Iago's charges against his wife's chastity, becomes enraged, and quits her with fierce injunctions to seek the handkerchief immediately and bring it to him. Wild with jealous frenzy, and resolved on her death for her supposed infidelity, Othello enters his wife's chamber at midnight, awakens her, charges her with having loved Cassio, and, notwithstanding Desdemona's protestations of innocence, smothers her while entreating for mercy. Immediately upon this tragedy Desdemona's innocence is brought to light, by the explanations of Iago's wife Emilia, for which her husband fatally stabs her. Othello's anguish on realizing that he was the murderer of his innocent and trusting wife, who had ever been tenderly faithful to him, was so great that he fell upon his sword, and died pressing a last parting kiss on the lips of his dead wife. The magnificent third act of this play is thought by many commentators to be Shakespeare's masterpiece. Othello has a free and noble nature, naturally trustful, with a kind of grand innocence, retaining some of his simpleness of soul amid the subtle and astute Venetian politicians. All that he tells of himself wins our hearts, like Desdemona's, to him. Of regal descent, no boaster, but a doer, he has no self-distrust when dealing with men. He commands like a full soldier. Although he tells a "round unvarnished tale," yet we see in it proof of that imaginative power which, imposed on by the satanic lago, was the cause of all his sorrow. There is no character in Shakespeare's plays so full of serpentine power and serpentine poison as Iago"honest Iago." Othello has every manly virtue, and his love is so devoted that he can give up war for it. The first note of coming discord is struck by Iago's "I like not that," and the first real suspicion is in Othello's "By heaven, he 'echoes me." But when, owing to Iago's insinuations, jealousy has once taken hold of Othello's mind - he only knowing till then woman's nature through the followers of the camp imagination works with terrible rapidity. The light of love which lit his face when he before met Desdemona, when he yielded to her first_entreaties for Cassio, leaves him never to return. Des demona's ill-starred answers, coupled with Iago's cunning promptings, hurry on poor Desdemona's death. Then comes the disclosure of the dupe he has been : and the kiss with which he dies, shows where his love still was, and pleads for him. A noble nature “perplext in the extreme." Cassio, notwithstanding his moral weaknesses, has a chivalrous nature, and has an enthusiastic admiration for his great general and the beautiful lady, his wife. Emilia may be compared to Paulina, in the Winter's Tale. ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA. See Page 748. PLUTARCH'S life of Antony was the source from which Shakespeare gleaned the historical data for this tragedy, which was entered in the Stationers' book May 2, 1606, and was, according to the conjecture of Malone, composed in the same year. It was not, however, printed till the folio of 1623. SCENE.-In different parts of the Roman Empire. After the pitched battle of Philippi, where the last remaining force of the republic under Brutus and Cassius met with utter defeat, upon the division of the Roman territories ensuing, Asia fell to the possession of Mark Antony, who ruled that country as an autocrat with unlimited power, and became a slave to his love for pomp and display. In this condition he is mastered by an irresistible love for Cleopatra, the widowed Queen of Egypt. At Tarsus he met her for the first time, and, spellbound by the power of her charms, was induced by her to follow her to Alexandria, where he idled away his time amid pleasures and festivities. Bad news from Rome awakens him from the intoxication of his amorous pleasures, and he, with heavy heart, tears himself away from Cleopatra, and hastens back to Italy. Here a reconciliation takes place, not only between himself and Octavius, but also between the triumvirs and Sextus Pompeius (Pompey). To strengthen this renewed friendship, Antony married Octavia, the beautiful sister of Octavius Cæsar, who accompanied her husband to the seat of his government in the eastern provinces of Rome. Meantime, Pompeius had, despite all agreement, again renewed hostilities, and as Lepidus (who had supported Octavius in this engagement) now demanded an increase of power, he deprives him also, without raising a sword, of his army and dignity. These successes of Octavius alarmed Mark Antony, who sends his wife from Athens to Rome as a mediator, while he himself goes to Egypt, and at Alexandria commences the former life of luxurious pleasure in company with Cleopatra. A breach between Mark Antony and Octavius Cæsar now becomes unavoidable, and the fortunes of war must decide between them. Antony, with Diomed, his general, takes a last farewell of Cleopatra preparatory to a battle with Cæsar, who is now encamped before the walls of Alexandria. Antony recommends Diomed to the queen's special favor, who promises to reward him. An attendant brings Antony's helmet, and a slave puts on his sandals, while the Queen of Egypt, presaging his fate, is loth to part. Antony for the last time tries the fortunes of war, at first with some show of success, but is soon deserted by the fleet, which consists chiefly of Egyptian vessels, and, being also defeated on land, flies in despair to Alexandria, under the delusion that Cleopatra had betrayed him. The latter, to escape his ill-humor, goes herself to a temple, and is announced as having died. Antony, on hearing the sad news, falls on his sword, but not being killed, and learning that Cleopatra was still alive, causes himself to be carried to her, so that he may die in her arms. Octavius extends to Cleopatra his protection and sympathy, but sends his friend, Proculeius, to keep strict guard over her, hoping to take the young queen to Rome to grace his triumph; but Cleopatra, acquainted with the defeat and death of Antony, and anticipating her own treatment from the conqueror, applies asps to her bosom and dies. Charmian, her faithful maid, follows her mistress's example, but before dying has time to relate to Caesar's guards, who are breaking in, the tragic death of Egypt's queen. gen, and yet, despite this hatred, desired her to marry Cloten, a son of her own by a former husband; since by this means she hoped, at the death of her husband, to place the crown of Britain upon the head of Cloten, her own offspring. She was aware that if the lost children were not found, the princess Imogen would be the sole heir of the king. But this design was spoiled by Imogen herself, who married, without the consent or even knowledge of her father or the queen, an accomplished gentleman named Posthumus, whose father had died a soldier's death in the wars for Cymbeline, and his mother, soon after his birth, died also for grief at the loss of her husband. Imogen and Posthumus grew up at court, and were playfellows from their infancy. When Cymbeline heard of this marriage, he banished Posthumus from his native land forever. The queen, who pretended to pity Imogen for the grief she suffered at losing her husband, offered to procure them a private meeting before Posthumus set out on his journey to Rome, whence he intended to go. The young couple took a most affectionate leave of each other. Imogen gave her husband a diamond ring, which had been her mother's, and Posthumus promised never to part with this ring; he also fastened a bracelet on the arm of his wife, which he prayed she would preserve carefully as a token of his love, and both vowed eternal love and fidelity. Nowhere else does Shakespeare appear a greater master of a great dramatic theme. In Julius Cæsar we are prepared for any outbreak on the part of Mark Antony by the wildness of his blood and want of a noble purpose in his ordinary pursuits, by his selfishness and unscrupulousness, too; by his proposal to sacrifice Lepidus. And though the redeeming quali- | ties of his nature might be thought to be shown in his love for Cæsar, his appeal to the people for revenge, and his skill in managing them; yet in his development lust and self-indulgence prevail, and under their influence he loses judgment, soldiership, and even Imogen remained a solitary and sad lady in her the qualities of a man. His seeming impulse towards father's palace, and Posthumus reached Rome, where good in his marriage with Octavia lasts but for a time he fell into company with some gay young men of dif-all her nobleness and virtue cannot save him. He ferent nations, each one of them praising the ladies of turns from this gem among women to the luxurious his own country, and his own love. Posthumus, who Egyptian, and abides by his infatuation even when he praised his own dear Imogen as the most virtuous and knows he is deceived. How powerful is the story constant woman in the world, offended by this speech wrought out of the great soldier sinking to his ruin a gentleman named Iachimo, who felt aggrieved that under the gorgeous colorings of the Eastern skies and a lady of Britain should be so praised above the rethe varying splendors of the lustful queen! "She fined Roman ladies, his countrywomen. makes hungry, where most she satisfies." To Cleopatra it is hardly possible to do justice here. The wonderful way in which Shakespeare has brought out the characteristics of this sumptuous, queenly harlot, goes far beyond all his previous studies of women. The contrast between her and the noble Roman lady Octavia, to whom her wavering husband bears such favorable witness, is most marked and most interesting. Enobarbus, who sees through every wile and guile of the queen, is, as it were, the chorus of the play. CYMBELINE. See Page 775. Posthumus, having wagered with Iachimo his ring against a sum of gold, that the chastity of his wife Imogen was invulnerable, the artful Italian, who had journeyed to Cymbeline's palace in Britain, contrives to hide himself in her bed-chamber, and thus furnishes himself with particulars in describing her person and her apartment, and, as a further evidence, by stealing her bracelet, in order to induce Posthumus to give him the ring. Returning from Britain with the tokens he has stolen, Iachimo claims from Posthumus the forfeit of his wife's infidelity. Posthumus at first doubts, as does his friend Philario, but Iachimo's proofs are so strong, that he at length yields to their force, gives him indignantly the ring, and vows vengeance on Imogen. Posthumus, now convinced of his wife's inconstancy, employs his servant Pisanio to repair to Britain for the purpose of murdering her; but Pisanio, in the full belief of Imogen's innocence, advises her to disguise and absent herself for a time from her father's court, and wait till her truth can be made apparent. Wandering in pursuit of this advice, she became very tired, and a kind Providence strangely directed her steps to the dwelling of her long-lost brothers, stolen in infancy by Belarius, a former lord in the court of Cymbeline. Belarius, banished for alleged treason, had brought the princes up in a forest, SCENE.-In Britain and in Italy. where he lived concealed in a cave. At this cave it Cymbeline's first wife died when his three children was Imogen's fortune to arrive, and she entered at (two sons and a daughter) were very young. Imogen, once. On looking about, she discovered some meat, the eldest of these children, was brought up in her which she began to eat. Her two brothers, who had father's court, but the two sons were stolen out of been hunting with their reputed father, Belarius, by their nursery during their infancy, and no trace of this time had returned home, and discovering the fair what had become of them, nor by whom they had wanderer, imagined there was an angel in the cave, so been abducted, could be discovered. Cymbeline was beautiful did Imogen look in her boy's apparel. Imoagain married. His second spouse was a wicked, plot-gen now addressed them, and begged pardon for her inting woman, and extremely cruel to her stepchild Imo-trusion, offering money for what she had eaten, which YMBELINE, the king from whom the play takes its title, began his reign, according to Holinshed, in the nineteenth year of the reign of Augustus Cæsar, and the scene of the tragedy commences about the twenty-fourth year of Cymbeline's reign in Britain, i.e., in the sixteenth year of the Christian era. This play was written, according to Malone, in 1605, and, according to Chalmers, in 1606. they refused to accept. They invited her (or rather him, as she is introduced by the name Fidele,) to remain until rested sufficiently to pursue the journey. When the brothers again were going out to hunt, Fidele could not accompany them, because she felt indisposed. No sooner was Imogen left alone than she recollected the cordial which Pisanio had given her, drank it, and instantly fell into a death-like sleep. The phial containing this drug had been given to Pisanio by the queen, who hated him, she having ordered her physician to give her some poison, but knowing her malicious disposition, the physician gave her a drug which would cause a person to sleep with every appearance of death. When Belarius and Imogen's two brothers returned to the cave, they discovered that Fidele could not be awakened by any noise; deeming her dead, they carried her to a shady covert, and departed very sorrowful. Imogen had not been long left alone, when she awoke. Shaking off the leaves and flowers thrown on her, she arose, and began to resume her weary pilgrimage, still in her masculine attire, to seek her husband. Meantime a war had broken out between the Roman emperor and Cymbeline; and a Roman army, having landed to invade Britain, had advanced into the forest where Imogen was journeying. She was captured, and made page to Lucius, the Roman general. Posthumus came with this army, not to fight on their side, but in the cause of the king who had banished him. A great battle ensued, which, owing to the extraordinary valor of Posthumus and the two long-lost sons of Cymbeline, proved a great victory to the Britons. When the battle was over, Posthumus surrendered himself to the officers of Cymbeline. Belarius, Imogen, and her master, Lucius, being taken prisoners, were brought before the king. Belarius, with Polydore and Cadwal, were also brought before Cymbeline, to receive the rewards for the great services they had rendered. Belarius chose the occasion to make his confession, and is forgiven. Cymbeline, overjoyed in having recovered his two sons, is reconciled with Posthumus and Imogen, and grants the life of the Roman general Lucius at his daughter's request. Even the treacherous Iachimo, who was among the captives, was dismissed without punishment, after acknowledging his villany, and confessing how he had obtained the diamond ring found glittering on his finger. Imogen is a character it is almost impertinence to praise. She has all Juliet's impetuous affection; but she is wiser far, and stands far above Posthumus. Compare her receiving Iachimo's assertions of Posthumus's infidelity with Posthumus receiving those against her. Note her noble indignation against Iachimo's base proposals to her, in which the princess, as well as the wife, speaks; and then how cleverly the villain pacifies her by praising her husband. Great is the pathos of her words over the lost bracelet. Then comes the meeting with her unknown brothers after she has heard her husband's slander; and then her seeming death. But she rises again, unlike the unhappy Juliet, to relive her life more truly than before-the queen, the life, the wife, of the husband she has lifted to herself, the sister of those gallant brothers, the daughter of the father, of whose comfort she was a great part. Posthumus's faith in Imogen is of the half-romantic kind; he does not understand the value of the woman he has won, and hence the sudden overthrow of that faith. Cloten is the aristocratic fool, thick-witted and violent, and with all the coarse conceit of a high-born boor. THE PERICLES, PRINCE OF TYRE. See Page 803. HE story on which this play is formed is of great antiquity. Shakespeare probably gleaned it from Lawrence Twine's novel, entitled "The Pattern of Painfull Adventures," published in 1567. That he also knew the treatise based on the same matter, viz., "Confessio Amantus," by Gower, appears already from the role of the chorus, which Shakespeare conveys to this ancient English poet for the elucidation of the plot and the connection of the various scenes. The English poet Dryden, in the prologue to his tragedy, "Circe" (1677), calls "Pericles the first work born to Shakespeare's muse." This tragedy was entered at Stationers' Hall, May 2, 1608, by Edward Blount, one of the printers of the first folio edition of Shakespeare's works; but it did not appear in print until the following year, and then it was published not by Blount, but by Henry Gosson. SCENE.-In various countries. Antiochus, king of Antioch, desirous of having his daughter remain unmarried, and thus in his own keeping at the palace of his court, causes her suitors to be slain if they are unable to solve a riddle which he submits to them. In this way the great beauty of the young princess, who is presumed to be a virgin, becomes a fatal snare to the lives of numerous wooers, who, while burning with ardent love for her, rashly undertake the great task of trying to untangle the puzzle. At last the enigma is solved by Pericles, Prince of Tyre, who at once resigns all his claims on the fair girl, since he has learned with horror, from the solution of the riddle, that king and princessfather and daughter - lived together in incest. Notwithstanding this refusal to marry the princess, Pericles is invited by Antioch to remain as a visitor at his court for some time. But the Prince of Tyre concluded not to stay, since it had been intimated to him that this invitation was merely extended to consummate his murder, Antiochus fearing the circulation of the report of his nefarious conduct and that of his unchaste daughter. Pericles hastened away to Tyre, but even in that city he does not feel secure against the persecution of Antioch, and, fearing that his presence at home might embroil the people of his country in war, resolves to go abroad for pleasure, meantime intrusting his government to the care of Helicanus, a lord of his court and one of his most faithful advisers. Pericles goes to Tarsus, where he soon becomes beloved, and moreover ingratiates himself with the people by rendering them aid in a terrible famine, by supplying them with stores of provisions for their relief. Cleon, the governor of Tarsus, prevails on Pericles to settle in his country, but Pericles declines, and on resuming his travels he is driven by a storm at sea to the coast of Pentapolis, where he, as victor in a tournament, wins the hand of the fair Princess Thaisa, daughter of King Simonides. After staying a year at the court of his father-in-law, Pericles starts on his return home, having previously heard the news of Antiochus's demise. The sea, never a friend to Pericles, treated him badly, for scarcely had the vessel set sail when another gale nearly wrecked the ship. The young wife of Pericles, who accompanied him, was terribly frightened by the fierceness of the tempest, and during its prevalence was confined and delivered of a daughter, who, being born at sea, received the name Marina that is, "the sea-born." Thaisa while in childbed is afflicted with spasms and convulsions, and in this state, taken for dead, is placed in a well-sealed casket and thrown in the sea, because the storm, which was still raging with unabated violence, worked on the superstitious sailors, who did not think the sea would become calm again so long as a dead body was on SHAKESPEARE'S POEMS. See Page 822. ESIDES the thirty-seven plays contained in this edi board. The waves drifted the casket towards the Bon, Shakespeare wrote the following poems, which shores of Ephesus, where Cerimon, a noble physician of great renown, soon succeeded, by means of his science and art, in reviving the apparently dead Thaisa, and restoring her again to life and vigor. Thaisa now enters the temple of Diana as a priestess to serve that goddess. Meantime, her husband, Pericles, filled with a consuming melancholy, had intrusted his daughter to the care of Cleon and his wife Dionyza, and left Tarsus for his home in Tyre. Marina grew up at the palace of her foster-parents, and when she had reached her fourteenth year, by her matchless beauty and unequalled mental gifts, provokes the jealousy and envy of her foster-mother, whose daughter, Philoten, was entirely obscured by the brilliant charms of Marina. Dionyza, determined to rid herself of such a rival, hires an assassin, who is just in the act of murdering the fair Marina when he is deprived of his victim by the sudden interference of some pirates, who wrest Marina from his clutches and escape with their fair prize to Mitylene, where they sell her to the keeper of a brothel. But the virtuous Marina knows not only how to keep herself pure and undefiled in the house of lust and sin, but also how to so impress her vicious tempters that they desist from their immoral practices. Through the intercession of the governor of Mitylene, Marina obtains her liberty, and by virtue of her many talents is enabled to maintain herself until she is found by her father, who, driven by melancholy and despair, had again set out on his travels, and by a strange chance reached Mitylene, whence father and daughter embark for Ephesus. Here, visiting the temple of Diana, father and daughter have the inexpressible joy of finding in the high-priestess the longlost wife and mother. The drama concludes with Pericles and Thaisa blessing the nuptials of their daughter and Lysimachus, the governor of Mitylene, and giving the crown of Tyrus as a wedding-gift to the happy couple. Cleon and Dionyza, the wicked foster-mother of Thaisa, met with a sad but deserved fate at the hands of their own outraged people, who, enraged at their ingratitude towards Pericles--the friend of the citizens in their great extremity-set fire to the palace, which was burned with all its occupants in one general funeral pyre. were at first published separately. In Venus and Adonis, entered in the Stationers' register, and printed in 1593, we have the same luxuriance of fancy, the same intensity of passion as in Romeo and Juliet, unlawful as the indulgence in that passion is. From whatever source came the impulse to take from Ovid the heated story of the fierce lust of the heathen goddess, we cannot forbear noticing how, through this stifling atmosphere, the great poet has blown the fresh breezes of English meadows and woodlands. No play has fuller evidence of Shakespeare's intimate knowledge and intense delight in country scenes and sights. This poem was printed six times during Shakespeare's life, and was dedicated by Shakespeare, when twenty-nine years of age, to the young Earl of Southampton. The Rape of Lucrece followed, 1594, and was also dedicated to Southampton, as "the first heir of my invention," who, according to Sir William d'Avenant's statement, presented the poet with the sum of £1000, so he might make some purchase. If the incident is accepted as a fact, it is honorable to the liberality as well as the cultivated taste of the Earl of Southampton, and shows that the "poor Warwickshire lad" met with a munificent patron at an early stage of his literary career. The Passionate Pilgrim was printed in 1599; A Lover's Complaint, not dated; and a collection of Sonnets appeared in 1609. That some of these sonnets existed in 1598 we now know. They are so evidently intensely autobiographic and self-revealing, so one with the spirit and inner meaning of Shakespeare's growth and life, that we cannot take them in any other way than as the records of his loves and fears. Shakespeare admirers are so anxious to remove any seeming stain from the character of their ideal, that they deny that these sonnets are life pictures, forgetting how great is the difference between our times and those of Queen Elizabeth, and that an intimacy now thought criminal was then, in certain circles, nearly as common as hand-shaking is with us. "There are some men who love for 'love's sake,' and loving once love always; and of these was Shakespeare," says a distinguished author. "They do not lightly give their love, but once given, their faith is incorporate with their being." lxix |