we are now able to say, with a fair approach to certainty, in what order the plays were written. Differences of opinion exist, it is true, regarding the place of individual works; but four fairly welldefined periods are universally recognized.

Early Plays. In the first period, extending to about 1595 and called by Dowden "In the Workshop," were produced probably four comedies, three histories, and one or two tragedies, which are plainly experimental, imitative. For example, Love's Labour's Lost and Two Gentlemen of Verona show clearly the influence of Lyly, the most successful writer of romantic comedy (see page 50). Richard III and Richard II are modeled upon plays of Marlowe. Romeo and Juliet is certainly indebted for its drainatic

The tablet and bust on the wall are a memorial to Shakspere and the large tablet in the floor shows where he is buried.

manner to an earlier play on the subject (not extant);

1 These figurative titles are given in Dowden's Shakspere Primer, now somewhat out of date, but still an admirable book for the be

as for

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Interesting from every viewpoint, from none are they more so than in their additions to Shakspere's collection of heroines Imogen, Perdita, Miranda.

Shakspere's Merits of Minor Interest. Scattered through the plays, from "When daisies pied and violets blue" of Love's Labour's Lost to "Where the bee sucks, there suck I" of The Tempest, are found a number of songs which place Shakspere as high among lyric poets as among dramatic. His blank verse and his prose, aside from their perfect adaptation to use in drama, are not surpassed in the English language. Although there are many improbabilities in the

plays, and some apparent inconsistencies, Shakspere shows a mastery in construction of his plots unequaled by contemporaries or successors.

His Great Achievements: (1) Range of his Characters. Not in any of these aspects, however, is to be found the reason for Shakspere's preeminence in our literature: it is in his portrayal of human nature. Over two hundred definite personalities figure in the plays; and it is hardly too much to say that he has left untouched no type of character or situation. From the foolish servant Launcelot Gobbo to the superlatively subtle villain Iago; from the bold, impulsive Hotspur "He that kills me some six or seven dozen of Scots at a breakfast, washes his hands, and says to his wife:

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strength in pathetic scenes, and one of his tragedies, The Broken Heart, is still readable. Thomas Dekker wrote one realistic comedy, The Shoemakers' Holiday, which is still effective on the stage. George Chapman, memorable as translator of Homer, wrote several rather bombastic dramas based on contemporary French history, of which Bussy d'Ambois is the best. John Webster excelled in portraying the terrible, and his Duchess of Malfi, though melodramatic, is a powerful play.

More important than any of these are Francis Beaumont (1584-1616) and John Fletcher (1579–1625), each of whom wrote plays, but who are best known for plays they wrote in collaboration. Nearly all of the joint plays were written before Shakspere's retirement from London; but they belong chiefly to the years following Shakspere's greatest period, that is, after the drama had passed its zenith. Of the fifty-two plays attributed to Beaumont and Fletcher the best are The Maid's Tragedy, Philaster, and A King and No King. Virtually none are acceptable to the modern stage or to modern readers because of their low moral tone and the authors' too frequent use of "common-place extravagances and theatrical tricks" (Hazlitt).

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BEN JONSON, 1573?-1637

The greatest of all Shakspere's successors in the drama. was Ben Jonson, already named as Shakspere's friend. He it was who said that the author of Julius Cæsar and Troilus and Cressida had "small Latin and less Greek;" and the phrase has by many been taken to mean that Shakspere was uneducated. That the words should not be so interpreted becomes clear when we learn that the expression is found in a poem by Ben Jonson; for Ben Jonson was the most scholarly poet and dramatist of the age, and the advocate of the classic drama as model for the English.