fying it by placing it between the Histories and the Tragedies. In temper, spirit, and probably in time, it belongs with the Tragedies, where it is now generally printed. It is the only play in which Shakespeare drew upon the greatest stream of ancient story and the materials for which he found in many forms in the literature of his time. Chief among these was Chaucer's noble rendering of the ancient romance in the "Canterbury Tales," to which may be added Chapman's "Homer," Lydgate's "Troy Book," and probably Robert Greene's version of the story which appeared in 1587.

In this play Shakespeare was dealing with material which had generally been regarded as heroic and which was rich in heroic qualities; his treatment is, however, essentially satirical, with touches of unmistakable cynicism. This attitude was not, however, entirely new to Shakespeare's auditors; the great Homeric story had already been handled with a freedom which bordered on levity. Shakespeare shows little regard for the proprieties of classical tradition; this satirical attitude did not, however, blur his insight into the nature of the men whom he portrayed.

The drama brings into clear light the irony of human fate; but it is not a blind fate which the dramatist invokes as the shaping power in the drama; it is a fate set in motion by the fundamental qualities or defects of the chief actors. The special aspect of irony which the play presents is the confusion brought into private and public affairs by lawless or fatuous love. Thersites goes to the heart of the matter when, with brutal

directness, he characterizes the struggle as a "war för a placket." Helen,

A pearl,

Whose price hath launch'd above a thousand ships,

involves Greece and Troy in measureless disaster, while Cressida's cheap duplicity makes Troilus the fool of fortune.

This play, it will be remembered, has been regarded by some critics as a contribution to the " war of the theatres," and as containing direct references, not only to the matters at issue, but to the characteristics and works of the chief combatants. Mr. Fleay has made a thorough study of the play from this point of view, and has presented his case with great acumen and skilful arrangement of facts and inferences. It is difficult to find in the play, in its present form, adequate basis for the supposition that it was written as an attack on Jonson, or that one of Shakespeare's contemporaries is portrayed in Thersites. Shakespeare may have touched humorously on some of the extravagances of that bloodless but vociferous combat; but the drama must have had a deeper root. Unsatisfactory and repellent as it is in some aspects, "Troilus and Cressida " has very great interest as a document in Shakespeare's history as a thinker and an artist. It is remarkable for its range of style, reproducing as it does his earlier manner side by side with his later manner. It is notable also for its knowledge of life, expressed in a great number of sententious and condensed phrases; for its setting aside of the dramatic mask and direct

statement of the truth which the dramatist means to convey. And it is supremely interesting because in the person of Ulysses, the real hero of the drama, Shakespeare seems to present his own view of life. The ripest wisdom of the dramatist speaks through the lips of this typical man of experience, whose insight has been corrected by the widest contact with affairs, whose long familiarity with the world has made him a master of its diseases, and whose speech has the touch of universality in its dispassionateness, breadth, and clarity of vision. This tragedy of disillusion has at least the saving quality of a rich and many-sided knowledge of life.

Queen Elizabeth died in March, 1603, while Shakespeare was absorbed in the problems presented in the Tragedies. His silence when the chorus of elegies filled the air has already been noted; his friendship for Southampton and Essex had probably estranged him from the Queen. Shortly after his accession to the throne, James I. showed his favour to a group of nine actors, among whom were Shakespeare and Burbage, by granting them a special license of a very liberal character, and giving them the right to call themselves the King's Servants. The plays of Shakespeare were repeatedly presented before the King at various places; among them, Wilton House, the residence of the Earl of Pembroke, which stands in a charming country about three miles from Salisbury, and in which Sidney wrote the "Arcadia." The whole region is touched with literary associations of the most diverse kinds. The course of travel taken

by Shakespeare's company makes it probable that he saw the noble Cathedral in its beautiful close as Dickens saw it when he laid the scene of "Martin Chuzzlewit" in that neighbourhood, and that he passed the little church where holy George Herbert lived five years of his beautiful life a quarter of a century later. In the following year, wearing the scarlet robe presented for the occasion, Shakespeare, in company with other actors, walked in the procession which formally welcomed the King to London. Mr. Lee agrees with Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps in the belief that Shakespeare and his fellow-actors of the King's Company were present at Somerset House by royal order, and took part in the magnificent ceremonies with which the Spanish ambassador, who came to England to ratify the treaty of peace between the two countries, was entertained at midsummer in the same year. And during the succeeding autumn and winter the records show that Shakespeare's company appeared before the King at Whitehall on at least eleven occasions. Much as the King loved the society of prelates and the amenities of theological discussion, it is clear that he was not indifferent to the charms of the stage.

One of the plays which the King saw was "Othello." In "Hamlet" Shakespeare spoke for and to the Germanic consciousness; in "Romeo and Juliet," and still more directly in "Othello," he spoke for and to the Latin consciousness. "Othello" is one of the simplest, most direct, conventional, and objective of the plays. In its main lines it is an old-fashioned

drama of blood-shedding, saved by the penetrating insight with which the motives of the chief characters are revealed, and by the vitalizing skill with which the situations are related to the plot and the plot rooted in the moral necessities of the human nature within the circle of movement. The thread of the story was clearly traced by Cinthio in the series of novels from which "Measure for Measure ” was also derived. The Italian romancer furnished nearly all the incidents, but Shakespeare breathed the breath of dramatic life into them, made Othello and Desdemona the central figures, and developed the subtle deviltry of Iago.

It is Othello's open and generous nature which, like the idealism of Brutus, makes him the victim of men smaller than himself. Desdemona loves him for the dangers he has passed, and, like Helena, surrenders herself without question or hesitation to her passion. The audacity of her surrender is heightened by the difference of race between her and Othelloa difference so wide and deep that to cross it almost inevitably created a tragic situation. From the very beginning the play is touched with a certain violence of emotion and action which bears in itself the elements of disaster. Iago, keeping himself in the background and striking blow after blow, is one of the most significant and original of Shakespeare's creations — a malicious servant of a fate compounded of his devilish keenness of insight into the weaknesses of noble natures and of their unsuspicious trustfulness. The basis of tragedy in Othello was his ready belief in Iago