and Adonis and Lucrece the dramatist causes embarrassment to the narrative poet. Shakesp endeavour in the earlier of the two is first to in the manner of an artist of the Renaissa glowing picture of the enamoured Queen of and secondly, to invent elaborate speeches f two chief personages in that style of high-wr fantasy which was the fashion of the time. succeeded in his endeavour, and the poem deli a generation of young readers. But the Venu Adonis has all the errors of a poet's early wor all the vices of the Elizabethan style. It is florid beauties; it is infinitely sweet in its ver tion; but ingenuity too often replaces passion the narrative is perpetually checked by elal exercises of fancy. The companion poem Lu reverses the motive of the Venus; in the feminine passion strives against boyish cold in Lucrece it is a man who makes his assa womanly chastity. Deep notes are sounded b poet, radiant heights are touched; but he can these poems transcend the manner of his age follows rather than leads. Having made thes liant essays in a province not properly his Shakespeare, notwithstanding the populari both poems, seems to have recognized the fac here his genius could not find its true spher he never again attempted the miniature epic.

ecessor Marlowe. The authorship of of Henry VI. is not ascertained; it ived additions from Shakespeare's

III., co closely Richard

may say of this play, as we have Andronicus, that it is essentially pre. In the Second and Third Parts of work of Shakespeare is found side at of Marlowe, and the pupil proved that it is a matter of extreme diffiguish his contributions from those of The younger poet had much to learn nty wielder of blank verse who has he English drama the life-blood of n unquenchable ardour of imaginacragedy of King Richard III. Shakeeted the tetralogy of the house of sustained and even developed the style of the earlier dramas. “This hakespeare's plays", says Mr. Swings absolutely to the school of Marfluence of the elder master, and that e, is perceptible from end to end. . . . I passion, as single in purpose, as rheough never so inflated in expression, e itself." The protagonist, as in the Iarlowe, is thrust forward and domile play. Its opening is in the manner in exordium in the form of a soliloquy. gy of the House of Lancaster opens

Richard II., it seems to me, while historica first of the series of plays which is contin King Henry IV. and King Henry V., in p style, and perhaps also in the date of its tion, lies close to King John. In both plays speare has almost entirely delivered himsel the influence of Marlowe, though some sc King Richard II. were not written without recollection of passages in Marlowe's Engli torical drama. In both plays Shakespeare to be feeling after a way of his own-that which was perfected in King Henry IV.; i plays rhyme is freely used, much more freel ever, in King Richard II., which is certainly in the chronological order than King John both plays prose is absent. The subjects historically connected; King John stands from both the Lancastrian and the Yorkist But there is this in common between King and King Richard II., that in each the dra studies the ruin of his country as caused by incompetent rule, and in each he sounds s those trumpet-notes of patriotic enthusiasm must have echoed gloriously in the hearts who had witnessed the recent overthrow of mada. The poet does not often deal in mer gyric of his native land, and he can smile

Lucrece. Here, in Romeo and Juliet, each ai other, and the result is a work harmoniou triumphant, in which song and speech becom or something rarer than either is born of th The play has no secondary action; our i from first to last is centered upon the star-c lovers. Varying from his original, Shakespea accelerated the action of the story, so tha movement of the piece acquires a lyric sw and its passion a lyric intensity. Here for th time on the English stage the terror of tr became beautiful. The spectator in the prese untimely death and all the apparatus of the is not overwhelmed by gross horror, but sus by the presence of beauty and the very chiva young love. There are tokens of immature manship in some portions of the play; inopp conceits, overstrained ingenuities, over-florid d but we note such errors of style only to ma feel more vividly that in Romeo and Juliet w still to do with the greatest of poets in his when his adult art has not yet lost all traces adolescence. The mastery of his material a as much in the humorous scenes as in the When we reflect that Mercutio and the Nur but subordinate figures we obtain some meas the writer's affluence of creative power.