Lady Macbeth. Consider it not so deeply.

Macbeth. But wherefore could not I pronounce "Amen"?

I had most need of blessing, and “Amen”

Stuck in my throat.

After reproaches from Lady Macbeth, and her departure, he hears a knocking, and thus:

Macbeth. Whence is that knocking?

How is't with me, when every noise appals me?

What hands are here? Ha! They pluck out mine eyes.
Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood

Clean from my hand? No; this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,

Making the green one red.*

After this Macbeth becomes distrustful, treacherous, cruel. He sweeps away all those whose talents, virtues, sufferings, pretentions, endanger his life. He hourly becomes more and more desperate and wretched.

In no other of Shakespeare's characters do we see so clearly the debilitating effect of a fear-creating conscience.

In "Timon of Athens" we have a most admirable satire on the folly and ingratitude of mankind. Timon, in thoughtless profusion, scatters his gifts on poets, painters, warriors, statesmen, only to find that men may buy flattery but not friendship. In the hour of trial his flatterers desert him, and he becomes misanthropic. Apemantus taunts him, and he replies:

I am sick of this false world; and will love nought
But even the mere necessities upon it.
Then, Timon, presently prepare thy grave;
Lie where the light foam of the sea may beat
Thy grave-stone daily make thine epitaph,
That death in me at other's lives may laugh.

The historical plays commence with "King John," and end with "Henry the Eighth." These plays give evidence of an almost inspired insight into human character. We have in them a subtle analysis of the motives which control men in every possible position. Taking the dramatic incidents of any reign, Shakespeare crowds them together, and, regardless of the unities, he makes us to see and understand the political and social state of the people.t

* "Macbeth," Act ii, Scene 11.

Drake, Hudson, Rolfe. All the critics, in fine.

The fourteen comedies are, and ever will be, the best known of all the poet has ever written. No man could have uttered them who had not a marvelous familiarity with nature, or who did not tenderly, sweetly, appreciate it in all its varied phases. They display, also, a power to paint the weaknesses and follies of men-such as all other men have aspired to in vain.

The necessity for quotation is here so great, that this paper can be kept within reasonable bounds only by exercising a heroic self-denial. It is in this division of his plays that Shakespeare gives us Falstaff, Mercutio, Touchstone, Jaques, Bassanio, Puck, Caliban, the Gobbos, and a hundred others all akin. For wit, imagination, and vividness of description, these are the most wonderful creations of which human genius can boast. If space would allow, we would quote the feats of the fairy Oberon, Mercutio's description of Queen Mab; Clarence's dream; the gossip babble of the nurse in "Romeo and Juliet;" Biondella's description of Petruchio's horse; Falstaff's personification of Prince Hal's father; the same worthy's interview with his page on the occasion of his visit to the doctor and the haberdasher Dombledon; his wonderful description of Bardolph's nose; his still more wonderful description of himself and his soldiers when about to march through Coventry; nor would we omit, but for the reason named, Dogberry's oration on the failure of the sexton to "write him down an ass." These plays bring into view and describe with inimitable fidelity over nine hundred characters, all wonderful, some of them not only unsurpassed, but unequaled, in literature.

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No question is so often put to those who are supposed to have studied Shakespeare, as a specialty, than the one which usually is formulated on this wise-" Which of the plays do you regard as Shakespeare's greatest, and which is the most striking passage in that play?" Some say that "Macbeth," "IIamlet," "Richard the Third," "Romeo and Juliet," and "Julius Caesar" are all equally great. Taine says that the most powerful passage in all Shakespeare's works is the scene between the three queens in "Richard the Third." If we would go with the multitude we must make our choice out of the well-known passages commencing: "The quality of mercy is not strained; "All the world's a stage;" "To be or not to be," etc. We choose to elect to the highest honor the beautiful paraphrase

of our Lord's words, given in the first act of "Measure for Measure." Read the words of the blessed Saviour on the impolicy of hiding the talent, and then read the duke's address to Angelo:

Duke. Angelo,

There is a kind of character in thy life,
That to th' observer, doth thy history
Fully unfold. Thyself and thy belongings
Are not thine own so proper, as to waste
Thyself upon thy virtues, they on thee.
Heaven doth with us as we with torches do;
Not light them for themselves for if our virtues

Did not go forth of us, 'twere all alike

As if we had them not. Spirits are not finely touch'd
But to fine issues: nor Nature never lends

The smallest scruple of her excellence,

But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines
Herself the glory of a creditor,

Both thanks and use.*

It is specially worthy of notice that Shakespeare mades constant reference in all his works to a life to come. The poet seems to be constantly making an effort to unite men to two states of existence. This is especially true in "Henry the Sixth," "Hamlet," "Measure for Measure," and "Macbeth." Too much, in our opinion, has been made of Shakespeare's indebtedness to the Bible. That he was familiar with the Scriptures, and that the revelations made therein lay at the foundation of his belief in a future life, is, without doubt, true, very true; but his philosophy embraces science and the loftiest thoughts of uninspired men. It is worthy of remark that Shakespeare uses the word "conversion" in the old-fashioned Methodist sense. But there is no such use of the Bible as is implied in the statement that the Scriptures suggested his religious thoughts. Bishop Wilberforce has said: "If we take the entire range of English literature, and put together what our best authors have written upon subjects not professedly religious or theological, we shall not find in all united so much evidence of the Bible having been read as we find in Shakespeare." This is the proper way of putting the matter. Shakespeare was a reader, it may be a lover, of the Bible. But the man is narrow, if not fanatical, who bases upon these admitted facts an * "Measure for Measure," Act i, Scene 1.

argument to prove that Shakespeare was a pious man or a religionist in any sense. He was, doubtless, endued with religious sentiment, and had penetration enough to see in the word of God a wonderful corroboration and illustration of those truths to which he was most anxious to give universal currency. There are in Shakespeare some most remarkable adaptations of inspired thought. In addition to the passage already quoted from "Measure for Measure," who does not call to mind the speech of Ulysses in "Troilus and Cressida"?

Ulysses. But when the planets

In evil mixture, to disorder wander,

What plagues, and what portents? what mutiny?
What raging of the sea? shaking of earth?
Commotion in the winds? frights, changes, horrors,
Divert and crack, rend and deracinate

The unity and married calm of states

Quite from their fixure?

This is almost a paraphrase of Luke xxi, 25-26. In fact, Shakespeare is always reminding us of the Bible. No wonder that careless readers confound their quotations, and seek to extenuate their inexcusable ignorance by the plea, "I was sure it was either in Shakespeare or the Bible." Shakespeare reminds us of the Bible, not by his direct quotations, but by a similar simplicity of diction.

Of all the poets who have enriched our vocabulary, we owe the most to Shakespeare.

Our great poet, Milton, has remarkable opulence of expression, but we are told that his vocabulary is limited to eight thousand words; Dante has only five thousand eight hundred; whereas Shakespeare has fifteen thousand! Look into Mrs. Cowden Clarke's "Concordance," and stand amazed. Forty per cent. of his words are from the Latin, and some of those he has incorporated into our mother tongue are, very choice. The greater part, however, are Saxon and monosyllabic. A late writer in "Lippincott's Magazine" says that of these fifteen thousand, six thousand only appear once. every average page of Shakespeare," he says, "you are greeted and gladdened by at least five new words that you never saw before in his writings, and that you will never see again— speaking once and then for ever holding their peace. Each

"On

not only rare, but a nonsuch. Five gems just shown and then snatched away."

Shakespeare unlocks to us a vast store-house of epithets, and it is only by a careful study of this greatest master of the language that we can know the richness and copiousness of the mother tongue. The marvelous suggestiveness of these epithets is what will strike every thoughtful reader.

In one short passage of four lines, we have epithets that do the work of a painter:

Duke S. Come, shall we go and kill us venison?
And yet it irks me the poor dappled fools,-
Being native burghers of this desert city,
Should, in their own confines, with forked heads
Have their round haunches gor'd.

Let the student take a few of the abstract nouns, and see what he makes of them. Sighs are blood-consuming; disdain is sour-eyed; gentleness is milky; despair is black; rage is tiger-footed; pomp, painted; fear, shuddering; jealousy, green-eye'd; scorn, salt; sorrow, gnarled; envy, lean-faced; discontent has murmuring lips; virtue, steely bones; emulation, pale and bloodless; a flatterer is glass-faced; a powerless man has corky, pithless arms; hypocrites are onion eye'd; pestilence is red; the winds scold; winter is sap-consuming; fortune has an ivory hand; ambition vaults; slow men have leaden legs; homely men are tripe-visaged; reputation is a bubble; hills are heaven-kissing; death is dusty. The writer has made a list of thousands of these epithets, and they are a continual marvel to him. They would have been published, but the fate of Holofernes, the learned school-master, and the still sadder fate of Sir Nathaniel, the wise curate, have, in an admonitory way, stayed the compiler's hand. These worthies, it will be remembered, charge each other with having been to “a great feast of languages," and as having "stolen the scraps of Nathaniel, thus:

Hol. He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument. I abhor such fanatical fantasms, such insociable and point-devise companions; such ruckers of orthography, as to speak, dout, fine, when he should say, doubt; det, when he should pronounce debt d, e, b, t; not d, e, t; he clepeth a calf, cauf; half, hauf. . . . This is abhominable (which he would call abominable): it insinuateth me of insanie."