mistress, and never afraid to speak her mind even to the king, expostulates with him : Sir, my liege, Your eye hath too much youth in't: not a month 'Fore your queen died, she was more worth such gazes Than what you look on now. Leontes, who cannot understand why he should feel such tender yearning to a maiden he has never seen before, replies: I thought of her, Even in these looks I made. At this time the sixteen years have done their work in bringing Leontes to repentance, while the outcast babe has been found and brought as a splendid maiden to her home; and now we have only to wait for the resurrection of Hermione. The story of Othello set in darkness and death, but in The Winter's Tale a divine oracle has spoken the prophecy of light and life. And may we not say that the divine oracle had spoken in Shakspere's own heart between the closing of Othello and the commencement of The Winter's Tale? Had there not come to him some deeper experience of life's meaning? Had he not gained some beatific vision of a life eternal? Had not some still small voice whispered, Death is not the end. There is a resurrection into an ampler life, where misunderstandings shall be cleared, the lost found, sorrows healed, and joy made perfect?' In this play I am always reminded of those touching words of Jesus to his disciples, where he tells them that he will have to leave them before they can understand him; how it is expedient for him to go away, for if he go not away the Spirit (the meaning of his life and influence of his character) will never come to them. It was expedient for Hermione to go away during those long years of separation, that she might come again in her own radiant beauty, unshadowed by one dark suspicion or evil thought. When she was visibly present, not even years of wedded love were able to reveal to Leontes the sacred womanhood in whose presence he lived. He thought her capable of shameful vice, and in his blindness he condemned her to disgrace. It is expedient for her to go away that he may become worthy of such a gift. He passes through the sixteen years of awful grief and constant selfreproach, haunted by the thought of her whom he so terribly misunderstood; and now, after such a time of penitence, his soul is purified, his sin is burnt away, and he is made worthy to have his wife restored. When it is discovered that Perdita is the king's lost child, their joy is dashed by the needful confession of the fate of Hermione, hearing which the gentle daughter seems to those present to 'bleed tears' of grief for the mother she has never seen. But in the midst of their woe Paulina calls them to follow her into a shrine, where 'that rare Italian master, Julio Romano,' has raised a life-like coloured statue of the queen. They enter. After long gazing on the masterpiece, the statue breathes, moves, lives, descends. In solemn silence the arms of Hermione are thrown around Leontes' neck, and across that gulf of years wife and husband claim each other in a love purified by fire! The feelings of Hermione are too deep for utterance. With consummate insight Shakspere does not allow a single word to pass between the two. Their joy is ineffable, not lawful to be expressed in speech. It is only when Perdita silently kneels at her mother's feet that Hermione bursts into that cry to Heaven for a blessing on her child : You gods, look down, And from your sacred vials pour your graces Where hast thou been preserved? where lived? how found Knowing by Paulina that the oracle Gave hope thou wast in being, have preserved To Leontes those sixteen years seem like an ugly dream, from which we wake in agony to find the beloved one warm and breathing at our side. And what if death be only an ugly dream?the last superstition,' as Heine calls it; 'the last enemy which shall be destroyed,' as Paul describes it! The climax of this play is surely a wondrous prophecy of the redemption of human nature, after the probation of earth and the parting of death, in the eternal life of heaven. Death is not the end; it is only separation, to be followed by an everlasting reunion of souls in divine blessedness. What is heaven? Is it golden streets, rivers of glass, gates of pearl, sounding harps and waving palms? Let us learn what heaven really is. It is a perfect home, where the lost are found, where broken bonds are reknit, where love is made perfect, and shadows melt into the light of God. Macbeth said that life was a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing.' No! Life is a 'Winter's Tale ;' the story begins amidst the shocks and storms of time; it seems to end in darkness and the grave; but beyond there is the resurrection of the spring-time, the glorious summer of that heavenly land, where there shall be no winter of death, neither sorrow nor pain; for God, the great pitiful, patient God, shall heal every broken heart, and wipe away tears from all eyes. [In connection with the story of Hermione it is instructive to read the account of the death and resurrection of Alcestis in Robert Browning's Balaustion's Adventure.] V. HAMLET. It is not merely what we have done, not merely the posthumous fruit of our activity that entitles us to honourable recognition after death; but also our striving itself, and especially our unsuccessful striving,—the shipwrecked, fruitless, but great-souled WILL to do.'-HEINE. [This play belongs to Shakspere's Third Period; its first draft was printed in 1603, and in 1604 it was published in a second quarto, 'newly imprinted, and enlarged to almost as much again as it was.' Swinburne regards with great interest the contrast of these two quartos, as giving us evidence of the care with which Shakspere elaborated his plays, and the value he attached to his work. He says: Scene by scene, line for line, stroke upon stroke and touch after touch, he went over all the old laboured ground again; and not to ensure success in his own day and fill his pockets with contemporary pence, but merely and wholly with a purpose to make it worthy of himself and his future students. Pence and praise enough it had evidently brought him in from the first. Not one single alteration in the whole play can have been made with a view to stage effect or to present popularity and profit; or we must suppose that Shakspere, however great as a man, was naturally even greater as a fool. Every change in the text of Hamlet has impaired its fitness for the stage and increased its value for the closet in exact and perfect proportion.' The original story of Hamlet belongs to the Historia Danica of Saxo Grammaticus; but it is supposed that Shakspere had the plot suggested to him by a translation of Belleforest's Histoires Tragiques. The story is, however, completely transformed in the drama; for in the Histoires Hamlet is made to avenge his wrongs, marry two wives, and ascend the Danish throne.] IN I. THE PROBLEM OF THE WORLD. N this play we learn how the problem of life was presented to the mind of Shakspere. Hamlet was written midway in Shakspere's dramatic career, when he was about thirty-eight years of age. The heyday of youth was past, and life lay before him as a serious concern and a mysterious problem. From the little we know of the events of Shakspere's life, we may be sure that he had thought deeply and suffered severely; he had made great mistakes, fallen before temptation, felt the force of eager passions and strong desires; he knew what life could give; scarcely any form of human experience was hidden from him; he had tried and tested the value of the world, and now he gives his verdict, and in Hamlet tells us how he found life to be a dark tragedy. And, though that is a sad conclusion, it is not nearly so gloomy as that other in which we are told, 'Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.' Our poet does not think life a vain thing, but he does confess its solemn mystery; of that he is sure. Life may, indeed, be more than this: it may be a sacred gift, a divine discipline, a prologue to immortality; but at present, as far as this world is concerned, as an honest teacher who is not afraid to face the facts and utter all he knows, he tells us that life is a deep, dark tragedy. The most popular plays and romances are those which are steeped in tragic gloom, which describe the soul struggling against opposing forces, triumphing in moral greatness over its foes, and showing its majesty most of all when overwhelmed in the conflict with the powers of the world. No ancient myth ever touched the human heart like the story of the Titan Prometheus, who, as the reward of his benefits to mankind, was condemned by Zeus to be chained to Mount Caucasus, while a vulture continually tore his quivering flesh. The glorious thing about Prometheus was not |