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frontery of his wickedness, he resembles some of Marlowe's creations, especially Barabas. But he further displays, though in rudimentary form, two leading characteristics of Shakspere's criminals: he has an acid humor, and he has the faculty of adroitly turning to his own purposes the vicious desires of his fellow-men. A redeeming touch, that keeps him within the pale of humanity, is his affection for his bastard child; but otherwise he is an incarnation of motiveless malignity, thus prefiguring, strangely enough, Iago, who ruins a very different type of the Moorish race. -BOAS, Shakspere and his Predecessors.

EVIDENCES OF SHAKESPEAREAN STYLE

The bloody drama of Titus Andronicus, replete with horrors of every kind (which reach a climax when Titus, as a preliminary to stabbing Queen Tamora, serves her in the garb of a cook with her two sons baked in a pie), was probably written by an amateur or "private gentleman" (teste Ed. Ravenscroft, 1687), at a time when Shakespeare was still in his experimental stage (1590-3). It may well have been written in emulation of Kyd or Marlowe: but the conception is a good deal lower than that of Marlowe, whose aspiration was rather after the impossible than the merely horrible. As a composition it is more suggestive of Kyd, but the versification is too complex to admit of its being attributed to him; while the complete absence of humor and the rarity of pathos preclude us from accepting it as undiluted Shakespeare. Nevertheless the internal evidence agrees perfectly with such slight external indication as we possess to the effect that Shakespeare revised the play, introducing graceful passages here and fine poetry there, remodeling the character of Titus, and recasting the closing scene, in which (in characteristic Shakespearean style) the reign of sane government and good sense is reestablished after a harvest of horrors. It seems to have been a stage success as played by Shakespeare's company. Shakespeare was, in fact, probably set to work upon it be

cause the "shambles" play was then in vogue, just as, later, we have the reigns of Farce, Chronicle, High Comedy, Tragedy, Romance, and Burlesque succeeding each other in the popular taste.-SECCOMBE AND ALLEN, The Age of Shakespeare.

The three great contrivers of the harms, Titus, Tamora, and Aaron, are shaped with a rude and somewhat uncertain hand; but a trait here and there suggests the future author of Richard III, of Lear, and Othello in this resolute emulator of Marlowe and Kyd. Titus and Tamora bear the stamp of the Kydian tragedy of Revenge. Their tragic career is provoked by a deadly, unpardonable wrong. Aaron, on the other hand, is related rather to the Marlowesque tragedy of dæmonic energy,—virtù—which dooms its victims out of pure malignancy. But Titus has touches of a Shakespearean magnanimity which remove him far from the blind pursuer of vengeance. His generous disclaimer of the imperial crown in the opening scene fitly preludes the nobly-imagined scene in which he hews off his hand to save his sons. The scene (III, ii) where the two brothers so passionately moralize the death of a fly, already heralds those apparently trivial moments of pause which the mature Shakespeare is wont to make pregnant of tragic suggestion. And the tenderness for his child which so suddenly and strangely intrudes upon the fiendish malignity of Aaron, is a trait which might well escape from the pen of the future delineator of Shylock and his daughter. Most critics have recognized Shakespearean touches in the style. Certainly, the bookish allusions which are so abundantly woven into its texture are tempered with many touches caught from the open-air life of nature such as nowhere fail in the young Shakespeare. A woodland brake-a "pleasant chase"-is the scene of the most tragic deed in the whole play, and we are not allowed to forget over the sufferings of Lavinia the morningdew upon the leaves or their chequered shadow upon the ground as they

quiver in the breeze.-HERFORD, The Eversley Shakespeare.

Poetry, and especially dramatic poetry, is not to be regarded as a bit of joiner's work, or, if you please, as an affair of jeweling and enameling. The lines which we have quoted may not be among Shakspere's highest things; but they could not have been produced except under the excitement of the full swing of his dramatic power— bright touches dashed in at the very hour when the whole design was growing into shape upon the canvas, and the form of Tamora was becoming alive with color and expression. To imagine that the great passages of a drama are produced like "a copy of verses," under any other influence than the large and general inspiration which creates the whole drama, is, we believe, utterly to mistake the essential nature of dramatic poetry. It would be equally just to say that the nice but well-defined traits of character, which stand out from the physical horrors of this play, when it is carefully studied, were superadded by Shakspere to the coarser delineations of some other man. Aaron, the Moor, in his general conception is an unmitigated villain-something alien from humanity-a fiend, and therefore only to be detested. But Shakspere, by that insight which, however imperfectly developed, must have distinguished his earliest efforts, brings Aaron into the circle of humanity; and then he is a thing which moves us, and his punishment is poetical justice. One touch does this -his affection for his child:

"Come on, you thick-lipp'd slave, I'll bear you hence;

For it is you that puts us to our shifts:

I'll make you feed on berries, and on roots,

And feed on curds and whey, and suck the goat,

And cabin in a cave; and bring you up

To be a warrior, and command a camp."

Did Shakspere put in these lines, and the previous ones which evolve the same feeling, under the system of a cool

editorial mending of a second man's work? The system may do for an article; but a play is another thing. Did Shakspere put these lines into the mouth of Lucius, when he calls to his son to weep over the body of Titus?—

"Come hither, boy; come, come, and learn of us

To melt in showers: Thy grandsire lov'd thee well:
Many a time he danc'd thee on his knee,

Sung thee asleep, his loving breast thy pillow;
Many a matter hath he told to thee,

Meet and agreeing with thine infancy;

In that respect then, like a loving child,

Shed yet some small drops from thy tender spring,
Because kind nature doth require it so."

Malone has not marked these; they are too simple to be included in his poetical gems. But are they not full to overflowing of those deep thoughts of human love which the great poet of the affections has sent into so many welcoming hearts?-KNIGHT, Pictorial Shakspere.

UN-SHAKESPEAREAN

This is the period of Shakspere's tentative dramatic efforts. Among these, notwithstanding strong external evidence, the testimony of Meres, and the fact that Heminge and Condell included the play in the first folio,—it is difficult to admit Titus Andronicus. That tragedy belongs to the pre-Shaksperian school of bloody dramas. If any portions of it be from Shakspere's hand, it has at least this interest-it shows that there was a period of Shakspere's authorship when the poet had not yet discovered himself, a period when he yielded to the popular influences of the day and hour; this much interest and no more. That Shakspere himself entered with passion or energy into the literary movement which the Spanish Tragedy of Kyd may be taken to represent, his other early writings forbid us to believe. The supposed Sturm und Drang period of Shakspere's artistic career exists only in the imagination of his German critics. The early years of Shakspere's authorship

were years of bright and tender play of fancy and of feeling. If an epoch of storm and stress at any time arrived, it was when Shakspere's genius had reached its full maturity, and Lear was the product of that epoch. But then, if the storm and stress were prolonged and urgent, Shakspere possessed sufficient power of endurance, and had obtained sufficient grasp of the strong sure roots of life to save him from being borne away into the chaos or in any direction across the borders of the ordered realm of art. Upon the whole, Titus Andronicus may be disregarded. Even if it were a work of Shakspere we should still call it un-Shaksperean.-DOWDEN, Shakspere-His Mind and

Art.

But that which, in our opinion, decides against its Shakespeare authorship is the coarseness of the characterization, the lack of the most ordinary probability in the actions, and the unnatural motives assigned to them. The style of a young writer may be perverted, and his taste almost necessarily at first goes astray; but that which lies deeper than all this exterior and ornament of art—namely, the estimate of man, the deduction of motives of action, and the general contemplation of human nature this is the power of an innate talent, which, under the guidance of sound instinct, is usually developed at an early stage of life. Whatever piece of Shakespeare's we regard as his first, everywhere, even in his narratives, the characters are delineated with a firm hand: the lines may be weak and faint, but nowhere are they drawn, as here, with a harsh and distorted touch. And besides, Shakespeare ever knew how to devise the most natural motives for the strangest actions in the traditions which he undertook to dramatize, and this even in his earliest plays; but nowhere has he grounded, as in this piece, the story of his play upon the most apparent improbability. We need only recall to mind the leading features of the piece and its hero. Titus, by military glory placed in a position to dispose of the imperial throne of Rome, in generous loyalty creates Saturninus emperor;

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