CHAPTER XVI. THE DRAMATIC ROMANCES. The ABOUT 1609 the temper of Shakspere's work underwent an abrupt change. For seven years the dramatist had gazed into that seething whirlpool of passion, which sucks into its vortex the mighty ones of the world, who have slipped from their moral foothold, and who but too often drag down with them the innocents thrown by cruel destiny within their grasp. last state of Timon is symbolical of the doom of all the tragic heroes. They lie buried 'wretched corses' under the 'turbulent surge' of their own fierce and restless desires. From this terrible spectacle Shakspere at length averts his eyes, and mounts into a serene region, over which broods the spirit of atoning love, and which is luminous with the tender glow of a tranquil evening sky. We see him (to apply the words in which Milton sang of his own more immeasurable ascent), 'Escap't the Stygian pool, though long detain'd In that obscure sojourn Taught by the heavenly Muse to venture down It can scarcely be an accident that the change in Shakspere's mood coincides with his retirement to Stratford. Amidst the fields and glades of Warwickshire, the darker problems of life must have thrust themselves less imperiously within his ken than in the crowded society of the capital, and the adventurer restored to the home of his youth found his natural theme in tales of reunion between long-parted kindred, of penitence and forgiveness for wrongs done in distant years. Thus this final period of Shakspere's dramatic work brings entirely new groups of actors on the scene. There pass before us, as in the tragedies, figures ripe in years, and cast by nature and fortune in majestic mould, but instead of being consumed by the fires of their own volcanic passions, they suffer the extremity of wrong at the hands of others, and attain through trial and endurance to godlike charity and calm. Such are Hermione and Prospero, Pericles and Queen Katharine; such, though lacking the stately composure of these mellower natures, but with a more complex charm of her own, is Imogen. In delightful contrast to these world-worn sufferers, statuesque in their self-control, is a band of youths and maidens blithe with that infinite gaiety of heart, which is the portion of the innocents round whom the shades of life's prison-house have not yet begun to close. This group, to which belong Miranda and Perdita, Florizel, Ferdinand, and the boys of Cymbeline, is unique among the dramatist's creations. These gracious beings are equally distinct from the precocious, thoughtful children of the earlier plays, like Arthur or Richard III's princely nephews, and from the brilliant, full-blooded figures, in the hey-day of life, who sparkle through the comedies. They breathe the air of poetic wonderlands, a wave-washed Bohemia or an enchanted isle, and they bear about them a more than earthly charm. Their fortunes are such as befall the natives of a world which goes a less jog-trot pace than our own. They are torn in infancy from home and (except Miranda) from parents; they are exposed to the perils of the ocean or of mountain solitudes; they grow up ignorant of their true birth and rank, and only after years of parting are they restored to their kindred and to their rightful station. Such material is suited to the romantic novel or the romantic epic rather than to the drama, and Shakspere's instinct as a playwright had gone partly astray when it led him to handle themes more fitted to the methods of Spenser and Sidney than to his own. The looseness of structure, which has been noted as the principal defect in the English history-plays, reappears in this last group of dramas in intensified degree. The Winter's Tale and Pericles, in particular, which cover a period of about sixteen years, during which infant princesses grow to marriageable age, would have earned, and not without justice, the adverse criticism of Sidney and Gosson, had they still been alive. Moreover incidents occur, like the repentance of Iachimo, which are inadequately motived, while among the subordinate figures, as in The Tempest, there are found shadowy types, lacking the distinctive vitality of the minor characters in earlier plays. We find too, Shakspere, after a prolonged spell of independent achievement, once more, as in the first days of authorship, collaborating at times with other men. Thus the general impression left upon us by the work of the final period is that the dramatist, exhausted by the gigantic creative effort of the preceding years, was writing in leisurely fashion, not swept along, as before, by the irresistible might of his own imagination, but content to glide by gentle stages down the slow-moving stream of romance. It is a return in part to the method of Greene, the method of the story-teller rather than the playwright, and we shall be truer to the spirit of these last products of the Shaksperean muse, if we call them dramatic romances rather than dramas. Setting aside for the moment the works of which Shakspere was not sole author', we have three of these dramatic romances, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest, illustrating the final phase of his art and outlook on life. CYMBELINE may be taken first, as, in spite of the complete alteration in tone, it has numerous links of detail with the tragedies and the Roman plays. Forman records in his MS. Booke of Plaies (1610-11) that he saw it performed. Though he does not give the exact date, 1609 or 1610 cannot be far wrong, as is proved by the metrical characteristics. The percentage of light and weak endings is 4.83, and of double endings is 32. In Holinshed's Chronicle Shakspere found mention of Cymbeline and his two sons, and of the demand for tribute from Britain by the Roman emperor Augustus. But the idyllic episode of the theft of the boys in infancy, by Bellarius, and their upbringing among the mountains, is of Shakspere's own invention. The main plot of Posthumus and Imogen is taken from a story in Boccaccio's Decameron, and it is connected with the historical background by Imogen (the Lineora of the novel) being made Cymbeline's daughter, and 1 On Pericles, Henry VIII, and The Two Noble Kinsmen, see Appendix B. her husband his adopted son. It would seem as if Shakspere, even while setting his fancy free for its most adventurous flights, cast a lingering glance back at the solid historical material upon which he had been working so long. men. Cymbeline, like Lear, carries us back to Celtic Britain, but it is a milder era than that which confronted us in the earlier play. As in Lear, the country has to face the ordeal of foreign invasion, though now the enemy is not France but imperial Rome. Thus Cymbeline, by virtue of its enveloping political plot, puts the finishing touch to the Plutarch series of plays. We have glimpses of Julius Caesar in his rôle of conqueror of Britain, and, as in the drama named after him, we see him even after death a mighty force among The empire whose bounds he had stretched to the limits of the world is now organized by Augustus Caesar, and we appreciate the results of that astute politician's triumph over 'Cleopatra and her Roman' (a picture of whose meeting at Cydnus adorns Imogen's chamber-walls) when we witness the legionaries enforcing the imperial claims from Britain to Pannonia. But this segment of historical fact stands out awkwardly amidst the fine-spun tissues of the principal action, and it was a sense of this incongruity that led Johnson into his trenchant condemnation of the drama, when he declared 'the fiction foolish, the events impossible, the conduct absurd, the faults of the drama too evident for detection, and too gross for aggravation.' Gervinus has set himself to demonstrate the injustice of such a verdict on a work which is to be compared, in his opinion, with the most excellent of all that Shakspere has produced.' He assigns to it an epic character, and asserts that not alone in its whole inward' bearing, but even in its outward construction, it appears as a companion piece to Lear, as the Odyssey to the Iliad. Gervinus, however, in his anxiety to vindicate the claims of a play which had been unduly depreciated, has overshot the mark. Lear does combine epic and dramatic features: its two kindred plots deal with actions and passions of colossal proportions, and the workmanship never slackens for a moment in its Titanic energy. But the fortunes of Imogen belong to the sphere of romance, and the pastoral 6 idyll claims Guiderius and Arviragus for its own. Ingenious criticism may discover a relation between the plots, but it certainly is not visible on the surface, and neither can, without an abuse of terms, be brought within epic scope. Nor is all the diversified material equally caught up into the poetic heaven of Shakspere's invention. The perspective is at times confused by the bewilderingly rapid succession of incidents, and speeches are introduced more to enlighten the spectators than to satisfy a stringent dramatic demand. But Cymbeline, when extravagant claims have been set aside, is a work of singular interest and charm. The idyllic scenes are bathed in the dewy freshness of the mountain side; the dénouement unravelling the tangled skein of the various intrigues is a masterpiece of dramatic skill; and in Imogen, the heroine of the main plot, Shakspere has drawn so exquisite a picture of womanhood, that her presence goes far to blind us to the repulsive features of Boccaccio's tale. The opening dialogue between two gentlemen of the British court (which is, in effect, an extra-dramatic prologue) informs us of the state of Imogen's fortunes, and of the peculiar domestic situation within the palace walls. Cymbeline, the king, whose weak dependence is a complete contrast to the imperious self-will of Lear, has lately taken as his second wife a beautiful and clever, but absolutely unscrupulous widow, to whom he is enslaved by an excess of uxorious infatuation. To please her he has pressed on a match between her son Cloten, a high-placed boor, a swaggering, dissolute blockhead, ‘a thing too bad for bad report,' and Imogen, his only daughter, who has been left heir to the throne by the mysterious abduction of her two brothers twenty years ago. Imogen has, however, foiled this scheme by a marriage with Leonatus Posthumus, a poor but well-descended gentleman, who had been left an orphan in infancy and had been reared by the king. In her own phrase, she ‘chose an eagle and did avoid a puttock.' The courtiers, though for politic reasons they curve their faces into frowns, are secretly rejoiced at the event, for Posthumus has 'Liv'd in court (Which rare it is to do) most prais'd, most lov'd; |