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THE ERA OF SHAKSPEARE.

THE period of the appearance of a great genius should be well considered, to explain certain affinities of that genius, to show what it received from the past, gathered from the present, or left to the future. The extravagant imagination of the present age, which elevates every great name to the clouds, that morbid imagination which, disdains reality, begot a Shakspeare after its own fashion. The son of the Stratford butcher is a giant who has fallen from some Pelion upon Ossa in the midst of his barbarous countrymen and by his seven-league strides left his cotemporaries far behind him. Nay, Shakspeare, we are told, is like Dante, a solitary comet which, having traversed the constellations of the ancient firmament, returns to the feet of the Deity, and says to him, like the thunder, "Here I am."

The extravagant and the romantic are not to be admitted into the domain of fact. Dante ap

peared in what may justly be called an age of darkness. The compass had then scarcely enabled the mariner to steer through the well known waters of the Mediterranean. America and the passage to India by the Cape of Good Hope were yet undiscovered. The inventor of gunpowder had not changed the whole system of war, nor had the introduction of printing operated a complete metamorphosis in society, and the feudal system pressed with all the weight of its darkness upon enslaved Europe.

But when the mother of Shakspeare gave birth to her obscure son, there had already elapsed in the year 1564 two thirds of the famous age of human regeneration and reformation, of that age in which the principal discoveries of modern times were accomplished, the true system of the universe ascertained, the heavens and the earth explored, the sciences cultivated, and the fine arts carried to a pitch of perfection which they have never since attained. Great deeds and great men appeared in all parts. Families repaired to the woods of New England, to sow the seeds of a fertile independence; provinces broke the yoke of their oppressors, and raised themselves to the rank of nations.

On the thrones of Europe, after Charles V. Francis I and Leo X, there were seated Sixtus V,

Elizabeth, Henry IV, Don Sebastian, and that Philip, who, though surnamed the Cruel, was certainly not a vulgar tyrant.

In the list of illustrious warriors were Don John of Austria, the Duke of Alva, Admirals Vincero and John Andrew Doria, the Prince of Orange, the two Guises, Coligny, Biron, Lesdiguières, Montluc, and La Noue.

Among the magistrates, legislators, ministers of state, there were l'Hôpital, Harlay, Du Moulins, Cujas, Sully, Olivarez, Cecil, and d'Ossat.

Among the prelates and sectarians, scholars, and authors, we find the names of Carlo Borromeo, St. Francis de Sales, Calvin, Theodore de Beza, Buchanan, Tycho-Brahe, Galileo, Bacon, Cardan, Kepler, Ramus, Scaliger, Stephanus, Manutius, Justus Lipsius, Vida, Baronius, Mariana, Amyot, Du Haillan, Montaigne, Bignon, Thomas d'Aubigny, Brantôme, Marot, Ronsard, and hundreds besides.

Among the names eminent in art were those of Titian, Paulo Veronese, Annibale Carrachi, Sansovino, Julio Romano, Domenichino, Palladio, Vignole, Jean Goujon, Guido, Poussin, Rubens, Vandyke, and Velasquez. It was Michael Angelo's fate to live till the year which gave birth to Shakspeare.

So far from Shakspeare being a leader in the

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march of civilization, then emerging from the bosom of barbarism, he was the last-born child of the middle age, a barbarian falling into the ranks of advancing civilization, and as it were, drawing it back to the past. He was not a solitary star; he moved in concert with luminaries worthy of his firmament-Camoens, Tasso, Ercilla, Lopez de Vega, and Calderon, three epic and two tragic poets of the first rank. But we must examine all these topics in detail, and shall first direct our attention to the material condition of society at the period here referred

to.

In the time of Shakspeare, if the cultivation of the mind was pushed farther on certain points than even at the present day, the physical condition of society was equally improved. Without adverting to Italy, where the palaces, themselves master-pieces of art, were internally adorned with other master works-Italy, enriched with the commerce of Florence, Genoa, and Venice, and clothed by her manufactures in silks, gold, and velvet-without going beyond the Alps in search of perfect civilization, we will confine ourselves to the country of the poet. We shall there find the great ameliorations which were due to the government of Elizabeth.

Erasmus informs us that under Henry VII and

Henry VIII it was difficult to breathe in the houses. Air and light were admitted to the rooms through extremely close lattices, glazing being reserved for the windows of castles and churches. Each story projected beyond the story below it, and thus the fronts of the houses inclining forward, the roofs nearly touched each other from the opposite sides, and the dark streets seemed as if covered by roofs. greater part of the dwelling houses were without fire-places; the floors of the rooms consisted of clay strewed with rushes or covered with a stratum of sand destined to absorb the excrements of the cats and dogs. Erasmus attributes the plagues, then frequent in England, to the want of cleanliness among the people.

The

In the houses of the rich, the furniture consisted of arras tapestry, long planks laid across trestles for dining tables, a cupboard, a chair, some benches, and a number of stools. The poorer sort of people slept upon hurdles, or bundles of straw, with a piece of sacking for a counterpane, and a log of wood for a bolster. and he who was lucky enough to possess a wool mattress and a pillow stuffed with bran was an object of envy to his neighbours. Harrison, repeating what he heard from the old people of his time, declares that in the reign of Elizabeth the

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