traitor's heart. But, though tears escape Henry, he can

not relent:

"Touching our person seek we no revenge;

But we our kingdom's safety must so tender,
Whose ruin you have sought, that to her laws
We do deliver you. Get you therefore hence,
Poor miserable wretches, to your death,
The taste whereof God of his mercy give
You patience to endure, and true repentance
Of all your dear offences !"

And, having vindicated the justice of God and purged his country of treason, Henry sets his face to France with the light of splendid achievement in his eyes.

On the night before the great battle, Henry moves among his soldiers, and passes disguised from sentinel to sentinel. He is not, like his father, exhausted and outworn by the careful construction of a life. If an hour of depression comes upon him, he yet is strong, because he can look through his depression to a strength and virtue outside of and beyond himself. Joy may ebb with him, or rise, as it will; the current of his inmost being is fed by a source that springs from the hard rock of life, and is no tidal flow. He accepts his weakness and his weariness as part of the surrender of ease and strength and self which he makes on behalf of England. With a touch of his old love of frolic, he enters on the quarrel with Williams, and exchanges gages with the soldier. When morning dawns, he looks freshly, and "overbears attaint" with cheerful semblance and sweet majesty:

"A largess universal like the sun

His liberal eye doth give to every one,
Thawing cold fear."

With a prayer to God he sets to rights the heavenward side of his nature, and there leaves it. In the battle Henry does not, in the manner of his politic father, send into the field a number of counterfeit kings to attract

away from himself the centre of the war.

There is no stratagem at Agincourt. It is "plain shock and even play of battle." If Henry for a moment ceases to be the skilful wielder of resolute strength, it is only when he rises into the genius of the rage of battle:

"I was not angry since I came to France
Until this instant. Take a trumpet, herald;
Ride thou unto the horsemen on yon hill:
If they will fight with us, bid them come down,
Or void the field; they do offend our sight:
If they do neither, we will come to them,
And make them skirr away as swift as stones
Enforced from the old Assyrian slings;
Besides, we'll cut the throats of those we have,
And not a man of them that we shall take
Shall taste our mercy."

It is in harmony with the spirit of the play and with the character of Henry that it should close with no ostentatious heroics, but with the half-jocular, whole-earnest wooing of the French princess by the English king. With a touch of irony, to which one of the critics of the play has called attention,* we are furnished with a hint as to the events which must follow Henry's glorious reign. "Shall not thou and I," exclaims the King, in his unconventional manner of winning a bride-"Shall not thou and I, between Saint Denis and Saint George, compound a boy, half French, half English, that shall go to Constantinople and take the Turk by the beard?" This boy, destined to go to Constantinople and confront the Turk, was the helpless Henry VI.

The historical plays are documents written all over with facts about Shakspere. Some of these facts are now discernible. We have learned something about Shakspere's convictions as to how the noblest practical

* H. N. Hudson.

success in life may be achieved. We know what Shakspere would have tried to become himself if there had not been a side of his character which acknowledged closer affinity with Hamlet than with Henry. We can in some measure infer how Shakspere would endeavor to control, and in what directions he would endeavor to reinforce, his own nature while in pursuit of a practical mastery over events and things.

CHAPTER V.

OTHELLO; MACBETH; LEAR.

Ir Shakspere had died at the age of forty, it might have been said, "The world has lost much, but the world's chief poet could hardly have created anything more wonderful than Hamlet." But after Hamlet came King Lear. Hamlet was, in fact, only the point of departure in Shakspere's immense and final sweep of mind-that in which he endeavored to include and comprehend life for the first time adequately. Through Hamlet-perhaps, also, through events in the poet's personal history, which tested his will as Hamlet's will was tested-Shakspere had been reached and touched by the shadow of some of the deep mysteries of human existence. Somehow, a relation between his soul and the dark and terrible forces of the world was established, and to escape from a thorough investigation and sounding of the depths of life was no longer possible. Shakspere had by this time mastered the world from a practical point of view. He was a prosperous and wealthy man. He had completed his English historical plays, which are concerned with this practical mastery of the world. But all the more because he had resolved his material difficulties was his mind open to the profounder spiritual problems of life. Having completed Henry V., for a short period he yielded his imagination and his heart to the brightest and most exuberant enjoyment. Around the year 1600 are grouped some of the most mirthful comedies that Shakspere ever wrote. Then, a little later, as soon as

Hamlet is completed, all changes. From 1604 to 1610 a show of tragic figures, like the kings who passed before Macbeth, filled the vision of Shakspere, until at last the desperate image of Timon rose before him; when, as though unable to endure or to conceive a more lamentable ruin of man, he turned for relief to the pastoral loves of Prince Florizel and Perdita; and, as soon as the tone of his mind was restored, gave expression to its ultimate mood of grave serenity in The Tempest, and so ended.

During these years the imaginative fervor of Shakspere was at its highest, and sustained itself without abatement. There was no feverish excitement in his energy, and there was no pause. In some of his earlier years of authorship (if the generally received chronology be accepted), two or even three plays were produced within a twelvemonth, of which this or that was afterwards acknowledged by its author to be a hasty piece of work, yet of sufficient substance and merit to deserve rehandling. During a certain brief season, it may have been that Shakspere altogether ceased to write for the stage. But now, in unbroken series, year by year, one great tragedy succeeds another. Having created Othello, surely the eye of a poet's mind would demand quietude, passive acceptance of some calm beauty, a period of restoration. But Othello is pursued by Lear, Lear by Macbeth, Macbeth by Antony and Cleopatra, Antony and Cleopatra by Coriolanus. It is evident that the artist was now completely roused. The impetus of his advance continued, and carried him without effort on from subject to subject. He could not put aside his stupendous task; neither would he accomplish any part of it imperfectly. In these years the utmost imaginative susceptibility is united with the utmost self-control. Every portion of his being is at length engaged in the magnifi