ROMANTIC DRAMAS.-"Pericles;" "Cymbeline;" "As You Like It;" "Winter's Tale;" "The Tempest."

TRAGEDIES.- "Titus Andronicus;" "Romeo and Juliet;" "Hamlet;" "Othello;" "Lear;" "Macbeth;" and the Roman Tragedies,-" Coriolanus;" "Julius Cæsar;" "Antony and Cleopatra."

The precise order in which these thirty-seven plays appeared is not, after all, of much consequence, and no two writers have exactly agreed regarding it. A collected edition of his works was not issued during his lifetime, but a good many of his plays were published separately. It has been ascertained that these came out in the following order; which, however, is no certain indication of the order in which they were written, since the title-page frequently bears that the piece had been acted for some time before it was printed:-1st. "Titus Andronicus," 1594; 2d. "Taming of the Shrew," 1594; 3d. "Richard the Third,” 1594; 4th. Third Part of "King Henry the Sixth," 1595; 5th. "Romeo and Juliet," 1597; 6th. "Love's Labour's Lost," 1598; 7th. "Henry the Fifth,” 1599; 8th. First Part of "King Henry the Fourth," 1599; 9th. Second Part of "King Henry the Fourth," 1600; 10th. "The Merchant of Venice," 1600; 11th. "Midsummer's Night's Dream," 1600; 12th. "Much Ado about Nothing," 1600; 13th. "Merry Wives of Windsor," 1602; 14th. "Hamlet," 1603; 15th. "King Lear," 1603; 16th. "Pericles," 1609; and 17th. "Troilus and Cres

sida," 1609. It is not known that any of the remaining twenty plays appeared in print till seven years after his death. But such was the prestige which already attached to his name, that numerous attempts were made to impose upon the public spurious plays as his. The deception partially succeeded for a time; but almost all critics, with the single exception of Schlegel, have latterly given their verdict against the genuineness of any of these productions. The names of the most prominent were "Arden of Feversham;" "Edward the Third;" "Locrine;" "Lord Cromwell;" "The Merry Devil of Edmonton;" "Sir John Oldcastle;" and "The Yorkshire Tragedy." Shakespeare may have had some slight hand in several of these,—he may have sketched in a scene or a character; but that he was, in the proper sense, the author of any of them, is no longer credited. There is better reason for believing that he took a less inconsiderable part in the composition of the "Two Noble Kinsmen," though that play is commonly attributed to Fletcher, and was probably written mainly by him.

There are two ways in which the Shakespearian student may read his historical plays. He may take them either in the order in which they were written, with the view of tracing the development of the poet's style and manner; or he may peruse them in chronological sequence as illustrative of the successive periods with which they deal. In the first case they would be read in the following order :—

The Third Part of "King Henry the Sixth;" The First and, Second Parts; "King John;" "King Richard the Second;" "King Richard the Third ;” The First and Second Parts of "King Henry the Fourth;" "King Henry the Fifth ;" and "King Henry the Eighth." In the order of history, on the other hand, "King John" comes first, his period being from 1199 to 1216; then "Richard the Second," 1377 to 1398; "Henry the Fourth," 1399 to 1413; "Henry the Fifth," 1413 to 1422; "Henry the Sixth," 1422 to 1461; "Richard the Third," 1483 to 1485; and "Henry the Eighth," 1509 to 1547.

Shakespeare wrote on an average a play every six months for nearly twenty years. The variety is infinite; the multiplication of human portraiture is unparalleled. The gayest fancy, the broadest humour, the most piercing wit, alternate with the deepest pathos, the strongest passion, the truest philosophy. It was human life, not a stilted conventionality, not an academical rule, that Shakespeare cared for. He refused to be bound by the dogmas of a school; he felt that no other unity was essential if there was unity of impression, -harmony of general conception. The Attic severity of the Greek drama repelled him; he may have acknowledged the art that pervaded it, but he missed the free movement of actual existence. He saw that comedy and tragedy are blended indissolubly in man's life; that tears and laughter have one common source, and flow in the same

channel. He recognized the truth that in our mundane condition the greatest moral lessons are taught in the midst of those conflicting emotions which shed upon surrounding objects alternate gloom and sunshine. The heart and the head alike confess that he was right. He has made it apparent to the whole world that Eschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, Corneille, Racine, and Voltaire, great as they were, took a narrower and feebler view of the true scope and aim of the drama, "whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold as 'twere the mirror up to nature, to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time her form and purpose." Hence it was that he fearlessly mingled the tragic with the comic element, that he gave its silver lining to the cloud, that he brought "sceptre and crown face to face with the "poor crooked scythe and spade," that he made nature predominant over accident.

He had no models; he had nothing to guide him but his own perspicacity. Chaucer was the greatest of his predecessors, but he has drawn little from Chaucer. Neither can it be said that his writings were a reflex of his own age. High literature and high art rarely or never reflect their own age. Just because Shakespeare's are the finest plays the world has ever seen, the special characteristics of the Elizabethan era are not to be found in them. They suit all ages; they are universal, not national. It is the boast of sculpture that in pro

ducing the perfection of ideal form it links itself with no particular time or place. So it is with Shakespeare; he grasps the essential, and cares little for the adventitious. His men and women are human beings; it matters not whether they wear the Greek peplon or the Roman toga,-the ruff and stomacher of Elizabeth, or the jerkin and collar of James. Yet he ever takes care not to generalize too much, or to forget in the typical the special features of character. His portraits are not shadowy abstractions; they are intensely individual; but they present to us what is inherent and permanent, not what is superficial and transitory.

No poet ever more entirely sunk himself in his own conceptions. He comes before us as Hamlet or Falstaff, Macbeth or Malvolio, Othello or Launcelot Gobbo,-never as Shakespeare. He is whatever he chooses to be, from Coriolanus to Caliban. He finds a heap of dry bones, and infuses vitality into them. He rarely or never takes the trouble of inventing a plot; but when he lights upon an insipid tale by Cinthio, or a ballad by some unknown chapman, he touches it, as with Ithuriel's spear, and it starts up into a shining comedy or a heartconsuming tragedy. Building, as he often did, on the foundation of some ancient chronicle or half-forgotten legend, it was he alone who supplied the scene with thought and action, filled it with breath, and peopled it with living beings, whom once to know is to remember for ever. A halfpenny