is paramount, and is strengthened by contrast with the serious thread. Its force lies in deception, in the reduction of the individnal and society to a huge delusion, in making institutions the sport of a mere appearance.

Thus both the Tragic and Comic are present, side by side, though not interpenetrating and transfused, as in the Tragi-Comedies. Another point must not be overlooked the entire comic effect rests upon the fact that the audience fully understands the source of the mistakes and complications; the characters, too, for the most part, are in deep earnest, and do not sport with themselves; thus there is felt to be a chasm between the laughing spectator and the sober-faced actor. Such is, however, the nature of all Comedy of Situation: the audience must be placed above the deception of the characters. These are shown. in submission to external Accident, following blindly their senses, without correcting the latter by their judgment, though the means of such correction is certainly suggested. Especially is this the case with the Syracusan Antipholus. He is searching for a brother, yet never thinks that all this trouble may be caused by a brother who resembles him; he is called by name in a hostile city, where to name him means death, yet he can solve the problem, not by intelligence, but only by ascribing the world to magic. Again and again Accident throws him back upon thought,

but he will not think; in fact, the world of Accident must be inhabited by just such people, the two are counterparts. Chance can rule only when. men are all senses, but have no sense.

Still even such people are to be saved and restored after passing through a rough comic discipline. If there had been no disturbance, there would have been no restoration; the trouble heightens till the knot be untied. All this comedy, then, is simply to mediate a diffculty, to restore union and harmony. Thus we see the double movement of the play: a world based on Accident is comic, annuls itself, and vanishes into a rational order; the individuals dwelling in such a world are comic, and must be disciplined out of it into a rational life. Thus Accident even is endowed with a mediatorial function; it has its place in the universal system. So we follow our light-hearted Poet in his divine loyalty, though there be at times a little too much scolding, and even trouncing among the victims of his comic Purgatory.

Thus these people of the play have been separated by Accident, and also restored by Accident, which undoes in this manner its own work. In many ways the legends of peoples have embodied the same thought. There is hardly a doubt that Shakespeare modeled his drama after the Menæchmi of the Latin poet Plautus, who derived it from Greek sources. The dramatic

plot goes back to classic antiquity for its fountain head, coming down through Greek, Latin and Italian channels into the English drama, in which it was naturalized already before the time of the Poet, who, as usual, seized the materials prepared for his hand. But Shakespeare transforms the story handed down to him by making it complete in meaning. For instance, he adds the two Dromios, the second set of resembling twins; thus he heaps Accident upon Accident, that it may show fully its world. In Plautus there is no Duke, hence no State playing into the confusion and getting confused; no father and mother, Egeon and Emilia, with their final recognition and restoration of the Family; no men of business, like Angelo and the merchants, who are also drawn into the comic whirl of delusions; above all, no adequate solution of the realm of Accident. Shakespeare transfigures the Latin poet in this light comedy even, which is probably his earliest work, and shows the germs of his entire dramatic development.

TAMING OF THE SIIREW.

A

The sole comic instrumentality of Comedy of Errors was said to be Natural Resemblance. step in advance is now to be taken; the essential principle of Taming of the Shrew is Disguise. Comedy of Situation will thus have shown its two fundamental forms in these two dramas, and there will have been manifested the progress from the less concrete form, in which human. freedom is not yet developed, to the more concrete form, in which one individual, at least, is free. For an external resemblance is unknown

to the persons who happen to be alike, whereas a disguise must be known to one of the characters at all events. Still, in the play before us, Disguise is not the sole element; there is also the rude, yet bold, advance to characterization. This principle is seen in Katharine and Petruchio, whose peculiar traits, and not the external situation, constitute the emphatic point of the action. Hence Comedy of Character begins to make its appearance, in its definite shape, in Taming of the Shrew, although Comedy of Situation, in the form of Disguise, is still the paramount element. The interest of the play lies chiefly in tracing

this inner development, and in unfolding the relation to the other works of the Poet, who can now be seen rising from the simplest and most jejune to the richest and most varied manifestations of his Art.

If we grasp together the entire action of Taming of the Shrew, its scheme will be found to be a play within a play. Thus its nature is double; but this duplicity falls asunder into two wholly separate parts, and the work quite loses its unity at least, the connecting thread is very slender. The twofold element is not worked into symmetry; it is not fused together into an harmonious unity. In later dramas the Poet will employ this form of a play within a play with supreme effect, and mould its contradictory sides into a consistent and beautiful totality. Here, however, he drops the one part with the so-called Induction, except in a few short passages. It would seem as if he could not fully master his plan, and was compelled to throw it aside; indeed, his procedure, judged by his riper method, will be seen to be inadequate.

The significance of a play within a play is that the audience is taken into the action, which is thus doubled and rendered more difficult of development. The spectator beholds, not only a representation of some occurrence, but also a representation of himself as a spectator of that occurrence. The play plays itself for itself; the