contemporary accounts. The play was presented with unprecedented elaboration in scenery and dress — a first attempt, apparently, in the direction of the splendour of appointments which characterizes the modern stage. "Now King Henry making a Masque at the Cardinal Woolsey's House," writes Wotton," and certain Canons being shot off at his entry, some of the paper or other stuff wherewith one of them was stopped, did light on the Thatch, where being thought at first but an idle smoak, and their eyes more attentive to the show, it kindled inwardly, and ran round like a train, consuming within less than an hour the whole House to the very grounds. This was the fatal period of that virtuous fabrique; wherein yet nothing did perish, but wood and straw and a few forsaken cloaks." And the old chronicler of this first of many similar catastrophes adds with naive humour: "Only one man had his breeches set on fire, that would perhaps have broyled him, if he had not by the benefit of a provident wit put out with bottle ale." Attention was directed in the last century to certain peculiarities of versification in "Henry VIII.," but it was not until the middle of the present century that Mr. Spedding set forth at length the theory that the play was Shakespeare's in part only, and that many passages were in the manner of Fletcher. It is interesting that these differences in style were recognized clearly, not by scholars, but by two men of sensitive literary feeling, Tennyson and Emerson. The English poet first made the suggestion to Mr. Spedding. Emerson's comments on the matter are full of insight: "In Henry VIII. I think I see plainly the cropping out of the original work on which his own finer stratum was laid. The first play was written by a superior, thoughtful man, with a vicious ear. I can mark his lines, and know well their cadence. See Wolsey's soliloquy, and the following scene with Cromwell, where, instead of the metre of Shakespeare, whose secret is that the thought constructs the tune, so that reading for the sense will bring out the rhythm here the lines are constructed on a given tune, and the verse has even a trace of pulpit eloquence. But the play contains through all its length unmistakable traits of Shakespeare's hand, and some passages, as the account of the coronation, are like autographs." The view, presented with great skill by Mr. Spedding, that Shakespeare intended to make a "great historical drama on the subject of Henry VIII., which would have included the divorce of Katharine, the fall of Wolsey, the rise of Cranmer, the coronation of Anne Bullen, and the final separation of the English from the Roman Church;" that he worked out the first two acts, and that, for some unknown reason the manuscript was passed on to Fletcher, who expanded it into the play as we now have it, has been accepted by many students of the play. The three chief figures - the King, Queen Katharine, and the Cardinal- are unmistakably Shakespeare's in conception; and the trial scene is certainly his. There are distinct traces of Shakespeare's hand in the "Two Noble Kinsmen," which the title-page declares was written by "Mr. John Fletcher and Mr. William Shakespeare, Gentlemen," and the play appears in some editions of the poet's works. It is impossible, however, to decide with any certainty the extent of Shakespeare's contribution to a drama which in many parts is clearly the production of another hand. It is not improbable, as has been suggested by some authorities, that when Shakespeare withdrew from active work in his profession he may have left some preliminary sketches for half-finished dramas behind him, and that it fell to the lot of Fletcher or some other contemporary dramatist to work over and complete what the poet had begun. With the writing of "Cymbeline" and "The Tempest" Shakespeare's work ended. CHAPTER XVII THE LAST YEARS AT STRATFORD It is impossible to overlook the recurrence of certain incidents and the reappearance of certain figures in the Romances. "Pericles," "Cymbeline," "The Winter's Tale," and "The Tempest" are all dramas of reconciliation; tragic events occur in each of these plays and tragic forces are set in motion, but the tragic movement is arrested by confession and repentance and the tragic forces are dissipated or turned to peaceful ends by meditation and reconciliation. Coming close upon the long-sustained absorption in tragic motives, the singular unity of the Romances in organizing conception, in serenity of mood, and in faith in purity and goodness and love as solvents of the problems of life, make it impossible to escape the conclusion that the later plays record and express the final attitude of the poet towards the ultimate questions of life. - The chief figures in the Romances are men and women who have borne heavy sorrows Prospero, Hermione, Imogen, Pericles, and the fair young creatures whose purity and sweetness typify the immortal qualities of youth - Marina, Miranda, Perdita, Florizel, Ferdinand, and the brothers of Imogen. Behind these suffering or radiant figures there is, in each play, a pastoral background of exquisite loveliness; a landscape so noble and serene that it throws the corruption of courts and of society into striking relief. In each play there is a trace of the old fairy story—the story of the lost prince or princess, condemned to exile, disguise, or servitude; and in the end the lost are found, disguises are thrown off, evil plots are exposed and evil plotters brought to repentance; suffering is recognized and finds its sweet reward in the rebuilding of its shattered world on a sure foundation, and youth finds eager expectation merged in present happiness. Prospero does not break his magic staff or drown his book until he has reknit the order of life shattered in the Tragedies, and reunited the wisdom of long observation and mature knowledge with the fresh heart and the noble idealism of youth. In such a mood Shakespeare returned to Stratford about 1611. He was forty-seven years of age, and therefore at the full maturity of his great powers. From the standpoint of to-day he was still a young man; but men grew old much earlier three centuries ago. The poet had been in London twenty-five years, and had written thirty-six or thirty-seven plays, and a group of lyric poems. He was still in his prime, but he had lived through the whole range of experience, he was a man of considerable fortune, and he had a wholesome ambition to become a country gentleman, with the independence, ease, and respect with which landed proprietorship has always been regarded in England. His sources of income had been his plays, which were paid for, in his earlier years, at rates varying from |