sophic view of men and things. Sometimes they represent the consequences of moral excess in different forms, as of pride in Coriolanus, sensual love in Antony, prodigal benevolence in Timon. Elsewhere we find studies of excess in the characters of women, as in Cressida and Cleopatra. The vice of ingratitude, which is the cause of madness in Lear, is the cause of misanthropy in Timon. While in Julius Cæsar and Coriolanus we see the changing disposition of the crowd towards the individual, Timon and Troilus and Cressida are studies of the varying behaviour of individuals in their dealings with the world. Full of profound thought and close observation, these tragedies are evidently the fruits of personal experience, and it is observable that, from King Lear onwards, Shakespeare's modes of expression become far more obscure and metaphysical than is usual in the earlier plays.

Such changes of style point to an inward revolution in the mind of the poet, and though I do not wish to press the evidence beyond what is reasonable, I cannot help thinking that the key-note for interpreting all Shakespeare's tragedies is to be found in the Sonnets. For assuming, as I think we ought to assume, that these poems are the offspring of real emotion, it is plain that we there find, treated in a lyric form, many of the ideas, opinions, and sentiments, which are dramatically expressed in the tragedies. The picture presented to us in the Sonnets is that of a soul divided against itself by the perpetual conflict between its higher and lower parts, and although the poet turns his gaze inwards, he is always reflecting the universal struggle of human nature spoken of in Scripture: "The flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh and these are contrary the one to the other; so that ye cannot do the things that ye would." In Shakespeare's tragedies the moral war between Good and Evil, between the Passions and the Enlightened Will, is represented sometimes by the struggles of conscience in the souls of hesitating men like Hamlet, Macbeth, Angelo, and sometimes by the spectacle

of a strong will, such as that of Iago, Edmund, or Lady Macbeth, acting upon an irresolute or credulous fellowcreature. In the Sonnets the inward strife is allegorised by the dramatic contest between the good and bad angels of the old Moralities; but beyond this internal sphere of conflict lies the world at large, into contact with which man's soul is brought by all the desires and faculties which impel him to action. So long as he can satisfy his desires with an object of ideal love, he can afford to disregard his outward fortunes (Sonnet xxix.):

When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,

I all alone beweep my outcast state

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least ;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;

For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings,
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

It is easy from this to conceive of the mood of mind in which he would have written the lines (Sonnet cxxi.):

'Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed,
When not to be receives reproach of being,
And the just pleasure lost which is so deemed
Not by our feeling but by others' seeing.

Nor is it more difficult to divine what depths of spiritual experience a spirit so observant of its own life and motion must have sounded during the period of intense mental suffering. On the assumption that the Sonnets were composed at different times, between the date at which the earliest specimens were published in 1598, and the appearance of the entire collection in 1609, it will at once appear probable that the emotions thus vividly and lyrically expressed in the poet's own person are also the inspiring source of the sentiments which he puts into the mouths of a great variety of ideal characters. And as in

King Lear we may see, mitigated and modified by reason and reflection, a dramatic image of that personal despondency which is so marked in the Sonnets, so we may perhaps assume that, in the series of tragedies founded on tales or histories of the old world, the poet selected those subjects which seemed to him the most fitting vehicles for the expression of his own spiritual experiences.

This dominant contemplative tendency in tragedy first appears in Julius Cæsar, a play which seems to have been in existence in 1601.1 It is plain that the inspiring motive of this drama is not the idea of representing the external action of the death of Cæsar, for not only does Cæsar himself play a secondary part in it, but (though the first portion is written with admirable dramatic skill) it is protracted for two whole acts beyond his assassination. The design of the poet seems to have been first to exhibit the conflict of motives in a virtuous mind impelled to a questionable action; secondly, to show the motives prevailing with less noble characters; and finally, the manner in which the crowd is persuaded to judge of the nature of such actions. Shakespeare had evidently much sympathy with the character of Brutus, as he is represented in the play, not, I think, as Mr. Swinburne supposes, on political grounds, but because Brutus is, like Hamlet, one of those divided natures in the observation of which the poet took so much delight :

But let not therefore my good friends be grieved—
Among which number, Cassius, be you one-
Nor construe any further my neglect,

Than that poor Brutus, with himself at war,
Forgets the shows of love to other men.2

Honour, the principle so powerful with Hotspur and Henry V., is the main-spring of Brutus' actions :

If it be aught towards the general good,

Set honour in one eye and death i' the other,

And I will look on both indifferently,

For let the gods so speed me as I love

The name of honour more than I fear death.3

1 Mark Antony's oration is referred to in Weever's Triumph of Martyrs,

published in that year.

2 Julius Cæsar, Act i. Sc. 2.

3 Ibid. Act i. Sc. 2.

He concludes that Honour bids him kill Cæsar :

It must be by his death: and for my part,

I know no personal cause to spurn at him,
But for the general.1

Hence his suffering:

:

Since Cassius first did whet me against Cæsar
I have not slept.

Between the acting of a dreadful thing
And the first motion, all the interim is
Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream :
The Genius and the mortal instruments
Are then in council; and the state of man,
Like to a little kingdom, suffers then
The nature of an insurrection.2

171

But Brutus does not hesitate, after Hamlet's fashion, in his resolution; and the purity of his motives is apparent in his appeal to the people: "Believe me for mine honour, and have respect to mine honour that you may believe; as well as in his reproaches to Cassius for not sending him money:—

By heaven I had rather coin my heart,

And drop my blood for drachmas, than to wring
From the hard hands of peasants their vile trash
By any indirection. 4

"3

He rose against Cæsar, not, as he says, "that I loved Cæsar less, but that I loved Rome more ";" and in this general honest thought" he learns to suppress all personal feeling, such as his friendship for Cæsar and even his affection for his wife Portia

Cassius, on the other hand, spired to action by the selfish passion of Envy. He canas he frankly avows, is innot bear the supremacyone whom he feels to be only his equal, and in some res his inferior. Yet this man understands the working the more elevated sentiments, and the main interest character lies in the influence he exercises upon perso different as Brutus and Casca.

1 Juliu

1.

2 Ibid. Act ii. Sc.
4 Ibid. Act iv. Sc. 3.

Act ii. Sc. I.

3 Ibid. Act iii. Sc. 2.
5 Ibid. Act iii. Sc. 2.

He undertakes to reveal Brutus to himself, and, with as much skill, though in a more elevated spirit than Iago, he moulds the other to his purposes by making "honour the subject of his story." 1 Like Cassius, the other conspirators, as Antony says at the close of the play, "did what they did in envy of great Cæsar;" 2 but the quality of their envy is finely discriminated from his who is the soul of the plot; the characters of the blunt Casca and the dissembling Decius Brutus are imagined with extraordinary vivacity from stray hints in Plutarch, while the figure of Caius Ligarius, rising from his sick-bed and prepared, in his enthusiastic loyalty, to do anything that Brutus bids him, is the lively offspring of Shakespeare's own brain.

Most interesting, however, of all the features of the play is the representation the poet gives of the people. He who had already portrayed the insurrection of Cade, who had conceived and executed the individual characters of Dogberry, Verges, Bottom, Nym, and Pistol, now exhibits the crowd in its capacity of judge. There is nothing in Plutarch beyond the most casual expressions to suggest that conception of the multitude which Shakespeare here presents to us-its enormous mobility, its naive perceptions, and its utter incapacity to resist the force of any argument clearly put before it. In the opening scene the people appear in their elementary mood of pleasure-seeking; immediately Flavius and Marullus appeal to their consciences by reminding them of Pompey, they steal away to their homes; after hearing Brutus, they propose to carry him to his house "with shouts and clamours"; after hearing Antony, they are ready to tear Brutus to pieces. They cannot understand abstract principles; when Brutus is addressing them, they are not really moved by his appeals to Rome, patriotism, and honour, but by their profound respect for his character; Antony, on the other hand, after skilfully flattering their hostile prejudices, begins to arrest their attention by plain arguments which every man can understand, then shows how 1 Julius Cæsar, Act i. Sc. 2. 2 Ibid. Act v. Sc. 5.