INTRODUCTION ΤΟ THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA. VAST labour and research have been spent in endeavours to ascertain the times when Shakespeare's several plays were writ. ten, and the sources whence his plots and materials were drawn. The subject is certainly very curious and interesting, not only in reference to the Poet's external history, but as illustrating the growth and progress of the greatest individual mind that hath reported itself in human speech. And, though the desired results have seldom been reached, enough has been done to pay the labour even where the end has not been gained such approximations have been often made as amply vindicate the undertaking; and in overhauling the musty records of antiquity, along with much that is valuable only or chiefly as bearing upon something else, much has also been brought to light, that is of rare value in itself. Thus Shakespeare, ever fresh and ever young himself, keeps alive many things which it is for our interest not to let die; he being, as it were, the master of ceremonies to bring us acquainted with the great spirits that cluster and revolve around him. We are apt to think of Shakespeare too much as an abstraction of intellectual power, with whom the ordinary laws and processes of mental life and action had little or nothing to do. He must indeed have been a prodigious infant, yet an infant he unquestionably was; and had to proceed by the usual paths from infancy to manhood, how unusual soever may have been the ease and speed of his passage. Dowered perhaps with such a portion of genius as hath fallen to no other mortal, still his powers had to strugg e through the common infirmities and encumbrances of our nature For, assuredly, his mind was not born full-grown and ready-furnished for the course and service of Truth, but had to creep, totter, and prattle; much study, observation, experience, in short, a long, severe tentative process being required to insinew, and discipline, and regulate his genius into power. Had he been naturally free from inward insufficiencies, still he was beset with clogs and drawbacks from without: to act upon the age as he did, he must needs have been more or less acted upon by it; and even had he been able to start from the point where he ended, it was impracticable for him to do so, since in that case he would have been too far ahead of those for whom he wrote to take them along with him. And such, no doubt, were the very trials and chastenings whereby he came to be "of a rectified spirit, By many revolutions of discourse refin'd From all the tartarous moods of common men : In fashion and collection of himself; And then as clear, and confident as Jove." Dryden rather oddly represents the Poet's ghost as saying, "Untaught, unpractis'd, in a barbarous age but this is far from true, the ghost being made to utter Dryden's thoughts, not Shakespeare's. For, though the least that he did may be worth more than all that was done before him, and his poorest performances surpass the best of his models; it is nevertheless certain that his task was but to continue and perfect what others had begun. Not only were the three forms of comedy, history, and tragedy in use on the English stage, but the clements of these were to some extent blended in the freedom and variety of the Romantic Drama; though of course in nothing like the purity and harmony wherein he presented them. The usage, also, of dramatic blank-verse stood up inviting his adoption; there being scarce any variety of measure, or pause, or cadence, of which Marlowe had not set the example: though no one before or since has come near Shakespeare in the mastery of its capabilities, in the ever-varying, never-tiring fluctuation of his verse; genius being an inexhaustible spring of both mental and verbal modulation. Nor can this be rightly regarded as any alleviation of his task, or any abatement of his fame. For to work thus with materials and upon models already prepared, without being drawn down to their level and subdued to their quality, asks a higher order and exercise of power, than to strike out in a way and with a stock entirely new. And herein it is that the absorbing, and purifying, and quickening virtue of Shakespeare's genius is best seen: he had not a drama to create in any of its forms or elements, but a drama to regenerate and rectify, -to inform its shapes with life and grace, to temper and mould its elements in the happy symmetry and proportion of living art. Thus his work naturally linked in with the whole past: in his hands the collective his thought and wisdom of ages were smelted out of the earth and dross wherein they lay imbedded, and wrought into figures of undecaying beauty; and the extraction and efficacy of centuries were treasured up in his pages. It can hardly be questioned that THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA was among the earliest-written of our author's plays. This is apparent from the internal evidence: the frequency of rhymes, the comparative want of variety, and the general smoothness of the versification showing that he had not yet grown to a just reliance on his own strength, and to the free working of his powers; that he was rather looking at his models than overseeing them, rather mastered by them than mastering them and rising upon them. Compared to the plays of what is termed his third or even his second period, the poetry, rich as it is, has more of a lyrical than dramatic cast; particular parts and passages, though often full of beauty, are less subordinated to the whole, and seem more as if used for their own sake; the general style and structure is loose, unvital, inorganic; and we miss the close-knitting of thought and image, the subtle and sinewy discourse, and the "working words," that give such matchless energy and operation to his later and riper performances. Hence, no doubt, the persuasion of certain men, that Shakespeare had little share in the making of this play. Concerning whom Mr. Collier says, "The notion of some critics, that The Two Gentlemen of Verona contains few or no marks of Shakespeare's hand, is strong proof of their incompetence to form a judgment." Wherein we agree with him; for Shakespeare's marks are set all over the play: but they are the marks of his "prentice hand," though such as no prentice hand but his could have put into it; the play, especially in the more comic parts, poor as these are beside others from the same source, as much outstripping any thing done before him as it fails short of what he afterwards did. The internal evidence is corroborated by whatsoever of exter nal evidence hath come down to us. Of the plays mentioned by Francis Meres in his Wit's Treasury, published in 1598, The Two Gentlemen of Verona stands first in the list. He says: "As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for comedy and tragedy among the Latins; so Shakespeare among the English is the most excellent in both kinds for the stage. For comedy, witness his Gentlemen of Verona, his Errors, his Love's Labour's Lost, his Love's Labour Won, his Midsummer-Night's Dream, and his Merchant of Venice; for tragedy, his Richard II., Richard III., Henry IV., King John, Titus Andronicus, and his Romeo and Juliet." Supposing Meres to include both parts of Henry IV., and adding the three parts of Henry VI., which were written before this date, The original title of All's Well That Ends Well. we have sixteen plays out of thirty-seven, when the author was in his thirty-fourth year. Which, unless we attribute to him such a facility and fluency of pen as neither the reason of the thing nor the facts of the case will warrant, will force us to set his first efforts at play-making back to an earlier period in his life than is generally supposed. Nor, considering his aptitudes for the work. is it at all unlikely that he made some attempts that way even before he left Stratford: at all events, that some of the plays which we now have were written before the end of his twenty-fourth year, seems hardly questionable. And if it seem extraordinary that so young a man should have produced The Two Gentlemen of Verona, how much more extraordinary is it that a man of what soever age should have written Lear! In 1589 Shakespeare, at the age of twenty-five, was a joint proprietor of the Blackfriars theatre; a place which he could hardly have won but by ability and usefulness in the offices pertaining to such an establishment. And where was he so likely to be able and useful as in the field where he has so far surpassed all other men? In 1592 appeared « A Groatsworth of Wit," by Robert Greene, which contains an unmistakeable allusion to Shakespeare. It was written amidst the anguishes of a death-bed repentance, the author's purpose being to dissuade "those gentlemen, his quondam acquaintance," from " spending their wits in making plays;" to which end he uses this argument: "For there is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his tigre's heart wrapp'd in a player's hide supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blankverse as the best of you; and, being an absolute Johannes Factotum, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country." The words in Italic are a parody of a verse in Henry VI., “O, tigre's heart wrapp'd in a woman's hide; which goes still further to ascertain the writer's aim. And the fair inference is, that Shakespeare was known as a sort of Do-all, a Fac-totum, who could turn his hand to any thing, and beat Greene and his associates in the very walks where they severally excelled; and that he was successful not only as a writer, but as an adapter and improver of plays in which latter quality he had perhaps overhauled some of their writings, and thrown the authors into the shade by adding more to them than they were originally worth ; thus getting beautified with their feathers because he had feather still more beautiful of his own. As the three parts of Henry VI, and perhaps Titus Andronicus, were in fact adapted from preëxisting stock copies, into which Shakespeare distilled something of the life and spirit of his genius, it is quite probable that Greene and those whom he addresses had, jointly or severally, a hand in writing them. Soon after "A Groatsworth of Wit" was written and before it was published Greene died; and a few months later Henry 111 Chettle, his fellow-dramatist, and his publisher, put forth a book All which amply warrants the conclusion, that Shakespeare was "our pleasant Willy," whom Spenser, in his Tears of The Muses, published in 1591, speaks of as "the man whom Nature's selfe had made, To mock herselfe, and Truth to imitate." And again, after complaining that "Each idle wit at will presumes to make, "But that same gentle Spirit, from whose pen Large streames of homie and sweete nectar flowe, Which dare their follies forth so rashlie throwe, Than so himselfe to mockerie to sell." The Two Gentlemen of Verona was probably one of the "streames" that drew forth this no less appropriate than beautiful tribute from the great sweet poet of Faery Land. For even in the plays, which we suppose to have been written before this 46 my gentle period, there are frequent touches of that inexpressible sweetness and delicacy of spirit which won him the name, |