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faithfulness of Kent in King Lear, and the Roman constancy of Horatio in Hamlet, inspire us with admiration of manly virtue. "Shakespeare," says Coleridge, "is an author, of all others, calculated to make his readers better as well as wiser." He shows us there is nothing so loathsome as sin, nothing so beautiful as goodness. He shows us that high endeavor, greatness, and innocence cannot really fail so long as they remain true to themselves, because they are their own exceeding great reward. Shakespeare does not explain the dark riddle of life; he does say with unequaled earnestness, "Woe unto them that call darkness light, and light darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter."

Yet with all his stern condemnation of sin, Shakespeare pours out over the faults and frailties of the erring creatures he has made the fullness of a marvelous tenderness and pity. Through all of his work, this compassion for human weakness, this large-hearted sympathy with human failures and mistakes, sheds a gracious and kindly light; but in two plays, Measure for Measure and The Merchant of Venice, the need of mercy is given an especial prominence. In the first, Isabella, imploring mercy for her condemned brother, exclaims:

"Alas! Alas!

Why, all the souls that were, were forfeit once;
And He that might the vantage best have took
Found out the remedy. How would you be,
If He, which is the top of judgment, should
But judge you as you are?"

And in the same spirit, Portia declares:

"That in the course of justice none of us
Should see salvation; we do pray for mercy,
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy."

The Romances. From this period of stress and storm and doubt, tempered by the gentle light of charity and mercy, Shakespeare, toward the close of his life, passed to a calmer and serener station " on the heights." His tragic period was closed, and he turned to write some of the loveliest of his comedies with undiminished freshness and creative vigor. These latest plays are sometimes called romances, because though they end happily and are therefore in one sense comedies, they are more grave and tender, and of a more tranquil beauty, than are the earlier comedies. They are the result of a deeper experience of life. The imagination which at the beginning of Shakespeare's work budded forth in A Midsummer Night's Dream, the fairyland of Oberon and Titania, gives being in The Tempest to the dainty spirit Ariel, speeding at the command of Prospero, or cradled in the bell of a cowslip; while in The Winter's Tale we can fancy ourselves back again in Warwickshire with Shakespeare, breathing its country odors and gazing on the

"daffodils,

That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty."

Last Years. As Shakespeare's fortune and engagements permitted him, he seems to have spent more and more time in his native place. In his active and hardworking years in London, he had grown in fortune as well as in reputation; he had shown himself a practical and capable man of business as well as a transcendent genius, and by his character he had won the love and respect of his fellows. By 1597 he was able to buy a home for himself in his beloved Stratford. In 1599 he was one of the proprietors of "The Globe Theatre."

In 1609, a further purchase of one hundred and seven acres of land at Stratford is made by William Shakespeare, Gentleman. And in 1610 or 1612 he appears to have returned there permanently. He had said his last to the world; for a few silent years he lived in the midst of the scenes and associations of his boyhood, and then, on the twenty-third of April, 1616, the fifty

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second anniversary, it is supposed, of his birth, he closed his eyes on the world.

Summary.

Shakespeare's great distinction as a man. of letters is that in him are combined, to a greater extent than in any other modern writer, a profound knowledge of the human heart, an exalted imagination, and an unequaled command of language. Perhaps the noblest single characteristic of Shakespeare is his union of righteousness and charity. Great in his dramatic and

poetic art, he is yet greater as one who saw life broadly and in the main truly. He knew the dark passions of man and the hidden sources of crime in men's hearts, but he knew also goodness and beauty, and showed a wise tolerance of human weakness. These things we find in his dramas. But his plays, we believe, are but the partial expression of a wise, rich, and kindly nature. We feel sure that Shakespeare was not only a great genius, but a great man, and when Ben Jonson, moved to unwonted tenderness, declares: "I loved the man, and do honour his memory, on this side idolatry, as much as any," we know that his tribute is just.

ELIZABETHAN PROSE

The greatest names in Elizabethan literature are those of the dramatists and the poets, yet the intellectual advance of the time showed itself also in a rapid development of prose. Many pamphlets were written on the questions of the day, books of history and travel, and countless short stories from the rapid pens of such writers as Peele and Greene. But among the prose writers of the time three stand out prominently: SIR PHILIP SIDNEY (1554-1586), RICHARD HOOKER (15531600), and FRANCIS, LORD BACON (1561-1626).

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Sir Philip Sidney. In an age of many great men Sidney is one of the most romantic as well as most noble figures. The story of his life of his education at Oxford, of his travels abroad, where he formed friendships with statesmen, artists, and scholars, of his service as ambassador of Queen Elizabeth at the age of twentytwo, of his passionate love for "Stella," recorded in his sonnets Astrophel and Stella, of his devotion to the new learning, of his friendship with Spenser, and finally of his early and heroic death at the battle of Zutphen

is one which, to use words of his own, "holdeth children from play and old men from the chimney-corner." He was the last of the courtly knights of old England, and was taken by Spenser as a pattern of knighthood in the Faërie Queen.

Sidney's two important works are The Defense of Poesie (about 1581), and the Arcadia (1590). The latter is an elaborate romance which has furnished many stories and incidents to later writers, while the former is a review of the beauties and virtues of poetry written in answer to the attacks of the Puritans. It is one of the earliest of English essays, and the best critical essay of Elizabeth's reign. In it we find an exquisite breadth of mind, a fine enthusiasm for poetry, and a style that shows a poet's sense of the music and fitness of words.

Richard Hooker (1553-1600), in his life and work, presents a marked contrast to Sidney. He was a man of humble origin and of a gentle, religious nature, who spent most of his life in quiet study, far from the gay and busy court of Elizabeth. Although he might have gained a great place in the church, he preferred a quiet country parish, where he could "see God's blessings spring out of the earth and be far from noise." No worldly ambitions broke the quiet of his simple scholar's life. He was one of the few churchmen of his day who avoided the painful wrangles and controversies on matters of church doctrine in which the different sects were involved. He wrote at one time, "God and Nature did not intend me for contentions, but for study and quietness."

Hooker's great work is the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (1594), a book which seeks to explain and defend the laws of the Church, and which rises above mere controversy. It shows the broad vision and calm, dis

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