Complete Plays, The (78 page)

Source
.—The principal source of the plot was probably
Apolonius and Silla
, a story by Barnabe Riche, apparently an adaptation of Belleforest's translation of the twenty-eighth novel of Bandello. There was also an Italian play,
Gl' Ingannati
, acted in Latin translation at Cambridge in 1590 and 1598, which has a similar plot. A German play on the same subject, apparently closely connected with Riche, has given rise to the hypothesis that a lost English play preceded
Twelfth Night
; but this is only conjectural, and there is some evidence that Shakespeare was familiar with Riche's story. If this be the original, Shakespeare improved on it as much as he did on
Rosalynde
, condensing the beginning, knitting together the loose strands at the end, and introducing the whole of the underplot with its rich variety of characters. The only hint for this known is a slight suggestion for Malvolio's madness found in another story of Riche's volume.

CHAPTER XII

THE PLAYS OF THE THIRD PERIOD—TRAGEDY

The Second and Third periods slightly overlap; for
Julius Caesar
, the first play of the later group, was probably written before
Twelfth Night
and
As You Like It
. But the change in the character of the plays in these two periods is sharp and decisive, like the change from day to night. Shakespeare has studied the sunlight of human cheerfulness and found it a most interesting problem; now in the mysterious starlight and shadow of human suffering he finds a problem more interesting still.

The three comedies of this period, partly on account of their bitter and sarcastic tone, are not widely read nor usually very much admired; but the great tragedies are the poet's finest work and scarcely equaled in the history of the world.

Troilus and Cressida
.—Here the story centers around the siege of ancient Troy by the Greeks. Its hero, Troilus, is a young son of Priam, high-spirited and enthusiastic, who is in love with Cressida, daughter of a Trojan priest. Pandarus, Cressida's uncle, acts as go-between for the lovers. Just as the suit of Troilus is crowned with success, Cressida, from motives of policy, is forced to join her father Calchas, who is in the camp of the besieging Greeks. Here her fickle and sensuous nature reveals itself rapidly. She yields to  the love of the Greek commander Diomed and promises to become his mistress. Troilus learns of this, consigns her to oblivion, and attempts, but unsuccessfully, to take revenge on Diomed.

While this love story is progressing, meetings are going on between the Greek and Trojan warriors; a vivid picture is given of conditions in the Greek camp during the truce, and particularly of the insolent pride of Achilles. The story ends with the resumption of hostilities, the slaying of Hector by Achilles, and the resolution of Troilus to revenge his brother's death.

It is very difficult to understand what Shakespeare meant by this play. If it is a tragedy, why do the hero and heroine meet with no special disaster at the end, and why do we feel so little sympathy for the misfortunes of any one in the play? If it is a comedy, why is its sarcastic mirth made more bitter than tears, and why does it end with the death of its noblest minor character and with the violation of all poetic justice? From beginning to end it is the story of disillusion, for it sorts all humanity into two great classes, fools who are cheated and knaves who cheat. Some people think that Shakespeare wrote it in a gloomy, pessimistic mood, with the sardonic laughter of a disappointed, world-wearied man. Others, on rather doubtful grounds, believe it a covert satire on some of Shakespeare's fellow dramatists.

Authorship
.—It is generally agreed that a small part of this play is by another author. The Prologue and most of the Fifth Act are usually considered non-Shakespearean. They differ from the rest of the play in many details of vocabulary, meter, and style.

 
Date
.—
Troilus and Cressida
must have been written before 1603, for in the spring of that year an entry in regard to it was made in the Stationers' Register. It must have been written after 1601, for it alludes (Prologue, ll. 23-25) to the Prologue of Jonson's
Poetaster
, a play published in that year. Hence the date of composition would fall during or slightly before 1602. The First Quarto was not published until 1609.

Sources
.—The main source of this drama was the narrative poem
Troilus and Criseyde
by Chaucer. Contrary to his custom, Shakespeare has degraded the characters of his original, instead of ennobling them. The camp scenes are adapted from Caxton's
Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye
; and the challenge of Hector was taken from some translation of Homer, probably that by Chapman. An earlier lost play on this subject by Dekker and Chettle is mentioned in contemporary reference. We do not know whether Shakespeare drew anything from it or not. Scattered hints were probably taken from other sources, as the story of Troy was very popular in the Middle Ages.

All's Well That Ends Well
.—When a beautiful and noble-minded young woman falls in love with a contemptible scoundrel, forgives his rebuffs, compromises her own dignity to win his affection, and finally persuades him to let her throw herself away on him,—is the result a romance or a tragedy? This is a nice question; and by the answer to it we must determine whether
All's Well That Ends Well
is a romantic comedy like
Twelfth Night
or a satirical comedy bitter as tragedy, like
Troilus and Cressida
.

Helena, a poor orphan girl, has been brought up by the kindly old Countess of Rousillon, and cherishes a deep affection for the Countess's son Bertram, though he neither suspects it nor returns it. She saves the life of the French king, and he in gratitude allows her  to choose her husband from among the noblest young lords of France. Her choice falls on Bertram. Being too politic to offend the king, he reluctantly marries her, but forsakes her on their wedding day to go to the wars. At parting he tells her that he will never accept her as a wife until she can show him his ring on her finger and has a child by him. By disguising herself as a young woman whom Bertram is attempting to seduce, Helena subsequently fulfills the terms of his hard condition. Later, before the king of France she reminds him of his promise, shows his ring in her possession, and states that she is with child by him. The count, outwitted, and in fear of the king's wrath, repentantly accepts her as his wife; and at the end Helena is expected to live happily forever after.

Disagreeable as the plot is when told in outline, it is redeemed in the actual play by the beautiful character given to the heroine. But this, while it vastly tones down the disgusting side of the story, only increases the bitter pathos which is latent there. The more lovely and admirable Helena is, the more she is unfitted for the unworthy part which she is forced to act and the man with whom she is doomed to end her days. A modern thinker could easily read into this "comedy" the world-old bitterness of pearls before swine.

Date
.—No quarto of this comedy exists, nor is there any mention of such a play as
All's Well That Ends Well
before the publication of the First Folio in 1623. A play of Shakespeare's called
Love's Labour's Won
is mentioned by Francis Meres in 1598; and many think that this was the present comedy under another name. However, the meter, style, and mood of most of the play seem to indicate a later date. The  most common theory is that a first version was written before 1598, and that this was rewritten in the early part of the author's third period. This would put the date of the play in its present form somewhere around 1602.

Sources
.—The story is taken from Boccaccio's
Decameron
(ninth novel of the third day). It was translated into English by Painter in his
Palace of Pleasure
, where our author probably read it. Shakespeare has added the Countess, Parolles, and one or two minor characters. The conception of the heroine has been greatly ennobled. It is a question whether the bitter tone of the play is due to the dramatist's intention or is the unforeseen result of reducing Boccaccio's improbable story to a living possibility.

Measure for Measure
.—When Hamlet told his guilty mother that he would set her up a glass where she might see the inmost part of her, he was doing for his mother what Shakespeare in
Measure for Measure
is doing for the lust-spotted world. The play is a trenchant satire on the evils of society. Such realistic pictures of the things that are, but should not be, have always jarred on our aesthetic sense from Aristophanes to Zola, and
Measure for Measure
is one of the most disagreeable of Shakespeare's plays. But no one can deny its power.

Here, as in
All's Well That Ends Well
, we have one beautiful character, that of Isabella, like a light shining in corruption. Here, too, the wronged Mariana, in order to win back the faithless Angelo, is forced to resort to the same device to which Helena had to stoop. But this play is darker and more savage than its predecessor. Angelo, as a governor, sentencing men to death for the very sin which he as a private man is trying to commit, is contemptible on a huger  and more devilish scale than Bertram. Lucio, if not more base than Parolles, is at least more malignant. And Claudio, attempting to save his life by his sister's shame, is an incarnation of the healthy animal joy of life almost wholly divested of the ideals of manhood. In a way, the play ends happily; but it is about as cheerful as the red gleam of sunset which shoots athwart a retreating thunderstorm.

Date
.—The play was first published in the Folio of 1623. It is generally believed, however, that it was written about 1603. In the first place, the verse tests and general character of the play seem to fit that date; secondly, there are two passages, I, i, 68-73 and II, iv, 27-30, which are usually interpreted as allusions to the attitude of James I toward the people after he came to the throne in 1603; and, thirdly, there are many turns of phrase which remind one of
Hamlet
and which seem to indicate that the two plays were written near together. Barksted's
Myrrha
(1607) contains a passage apparently borrowed from this comedy, which helps in determining the latest possible date of composition.

Sources
.—Shakespeare borrowed his material from a writer named George Whetstone, who in 1578 printed a play,
Promos and Cassandra
, containing most of the story of
Measure for Measure
. In 1582 the same author published a prose version of the story in his
Heptameron of Civil Discourses
. Whetstone in turn borrowed his material, which came originally from the
Hecatommithi
of Giraldi Cinthio. Shakespeare ennobled the underlying thought as far as he could, and added the character of Mariana.

Julius Caesar
.—The interest in
Julius Caesar
does not focus on any one person as completely as in the other great tragedies. Like the chronicle plays which had preceded it, it gives rather a grand panorama of history than the fate of any particular hero. This  explains its title. It is not the story of Julius Caesar the man, but of that great political upheaval of which Caesar was cause and center. That upheaval begins with his attempt at despotism and the crown; it reaches its climax in his death, which disturbs the political equilibrium of the whole nation; and at last subsides with the decline and downfall of Caesar's enemies. Shakespeare has departed from history in drawing the character of the great conqueror, making it more weak, vain, and pompous than that of the real man. Yet even in the play "the mightiest Julius" is an impressive figure. Alive, he

"doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus";

and his influence, like an unseen force, shapes the fates of the living after he himself is dead.

In so far as the tragedy has any individual hero, that hero is Brutus rather than Caesar himself. Brutus is a man of noble character, but deficient in practical judgment and knowledge of men. With the best of motives he allows Cassius to hoodwink him and draw him into the conspiracy against Caesar. Through the same short-sighted generosity he allows his enemy Antony to address the crowd after Caesar's death, with the result that Antony rouses the people against him and drives him and his fellow conspirators out of Rome. Then when he and Cassius gather an army in Asia to fight with Antony, we find him too impractically scrupulous to raise money by the usual means; and for that reason short of cash and drawn into a quarrel with his brother general. His subsequent  death at Philippi is the logical outcome of his own nature, too good for so evil an age, too short-sighted for so critical a position.

Most of the old Roman heroes inspire respect rather than love; and something of their stern impressiveness lingers in the atmosphere of this Roman play. Here and there it has very touching scenes, such as that between Brutus and his page (IV, iii); but in the main it is great, not through its power to elicit sympathetic tears, but through its dignity and grandeur. It is one of the stateliest of tragedies, lofty in language, majestic in movement, logical and cogent in thought. We can never mourn for Brutus and Portia as we do for Romeo and Juliet, or for Lear and Cordelia; but we feel that we have breathed in their company an air which is keen and bracing, and have caught a glimpse of

"The grandeur that was Rome."

Date
.—We have no printed copy of Julius Caesar earlier than that of the First Folio. Since it was not mentioned by Meres in 1598 and was alluded to in 1601 in John Weever's
Mirrour of Martyrs
, it probably appeared between those two dates. Weever says in his dedication that his work "some two years ago was made fit for the print." This apparently means that he wrote the allusion to
Julius Caesar
in 1599 and that consequently the play had been produced by then. There is a possible reference to it in Ben Jonson's
Every Man Out of His Humour
, which came out in 1599. Metrical tests and the general character of the play agree with these conclusions. Hence we can put the date between 1599-1601, with a preference for the former year.