William Shakespeare. John 1878-1967 Masefield

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СКАЧАТЬ and heavy; And so she died: had she been light, like you, Of such a merry, nimble, stirring spirit, She might have been a granddam ere she died.

      The power of giving life in a line is seen in the remark of Dumaine (Act IV, sc. iii)—

      "To look like her, are chimney-sweepers black."

      The play is full of experiments. Some of it is written in a loose, swinging couplet, some in quatrains, some in blank verse, some in the choice, picked prose made the fashion by Lyly. It contains more lyrics than any other Shakespearean play. One of the lyrics, a sonnet in Alexandrines, is the fruit of a real human passion. The lyric at the end of the play is the loveliest thing ever said about England. If this play and most of the other plays were modern works, the Censor would not allow them to be performed publicly. The men and women converse with a frankness and suggestiveness not now usual, except among the young. Shakespeare is blamed for not conforming to standards unknown to his generation.

      He is blamed for not being delicate-minded like the great Greek tragic poets. The Greek tragic poets wrote about the heroic life of legend. Shakespeare wrote about life. A man who writes about life must accept life for what it is, as largely an animal thing. Those who pretend that life is only lived in boudoirs, are in peril, and the world is in peril through them.

      The Two Gentlemen of Verona.

      Written. Before 1592.

      Published, in the first folio, 1623.

      Source of the Plot. The story of a woman who follows her lover in the disguise of a page-boy, hears him serenade another woman, and acts as a go-between in his suit to this other woman, is to be found in the second book of La Diana Enamorada, a pastoral romance, in prose, freely sprinkled with lyrics, by Jorge de Montemayor, a Portuguese who wrote in Spanish about the middle of the sixteenth century. De Montemayor's story is not complicated by a Valentine. He calls the girl Felismena, her lover Felix, and the second woman Celia. His tale ends with Celia dying for love of the supposed page-boy.

      A play based on this story was acted in England in 1584. It is now lost. The gist of the story was published in lame English verses, by Barnabe Googe, in 1563.

      The Fable. Valentine and Proteus, the two gentlemen, are friends. Valentine is about to travel. Proteus, in love with Julia, will not go with him. Antonio, Proteus' father, sends Proteus after Valentine. Julia resolves to follow him in boy's clothes. Valentine at Milan falls in love with the Duke's daughter, Silvia, whom the Duke plans to marry to one Thurio. Proteus, arriving at Milan, also falls in love with Silvia. He becomes jealous of Valentine.

      Valentine tells him that he has planned to escape with Silvia that night. Proteus betrays this plot to the Duke. The Duke banishes Valentine and sends Proteus to Silvia to press the suit of Thurio.

       Valentine joins a gang of outlaws.

      Proteus woos Silvia for himself, and is rejected by her.

      Julia, who has come in boy's dress from Verona to look for Proteus, finds him still unsuccessfully courting Silvia. She enters his service as a page. He sends her on a message to Silvia.

      On her way to deliver the message, Julia meets Silvia flying from home in search of Valentine.

      In her search for Valentine, Silvia is caught by the gang of outlaws.

      Proteus rescues her, and threatens to resume his suit with violence.

      Valentine, entering, stops this.

      Proteus sues for pardon to Valentine and Julia. He is received to mercy. The Duke after dismissing Thurio, pardons Valentine, and grants him Silvia's hand in marriage.

      Love's Labour's Lost is fantasy. The Two Gentlemen of Verona deals with real human relationships. It is a better play than the fantasy, though the fantasy has moments of better poetry. It carries on one of the problems raised in Love's Labour's Lost. It is the work of a troubled mind. It comes from the mood in which the sonnets were written.

      Twice in Love's Labour's Lost the act of oath-breaking, of being forsworn, is important to the play's structure. Though the vows broken in that play are fantastic, the characters feel real dishonour at the breaking of them. The play shows that though the idea of vow-breaking was in Shakespeare's mind, he had not then the power, or the human experience, or the mental peace, to grapple with it fairly, or see it truly. The idea, that the person for whom the vows are broken brings with her the punishment of the sin of vow-breaking, haunts the mind of Biron (in Act IV, sc. iii)—

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