the real state of affairs, but the hints are thrown away, for the clue has not been provided; and a theatrical audience cannot, like the readers of a detective novel, turn back to see what points it has missed. Imagine the sayings of Rosalind or of Viola without their explanation present in the minds of the hearers! Similarly, in the Maid's Tragedy, Aspatia, the promised wife of Amintor, suddenly and without warning turns up "in man's apparel, and with artificial scars on her face"; but we learn this from the list of dramatis personae, and not from the play itself. An audience would need a sign-board to tell them who she is and where she comes from. The same, more or less, is the case with Urania in Cupid's Revenge1.

As for Jonson's Silent Woman, it is a play depending on surprise, and working therefore by different laws from those which Shakspere usually followed2. Nevertheless it illustrates our contention in its own way. The curious anecdote told about its production in 1776 is

In the Pilgrim, the hint as to the coming change of Alinda into a boy is perhaps plainer than usual. This play, which was produced in 1621, shows, we think, more marks of the influence of Shakspere than any other of Fletcher's; and, if Fletcher collaborated with Shakspere in Henry VIII and the Two Noble Kinsmen, it may well owe some of its merits to the teachings of the master. As is well known, it enjoyed great popularity in the seventeenth century. It was revised by Vanbrugh in 1700, additions were made by Dryden, and Dryden's last prologue and epilogue were those written for this performance. Alinda was subsequently acted with great success by Mrs Oldfield. The Pilgrim, in fact, is one of the few plays of the "Amazon" class, apart from those of Shakspere, that would not suffer in the hands of actresses. But its appeals to the gross taste of the vulgar mark all too clearly the real source of its interest and popularity. It is said by some to be derived from Lope de Vega; but its actual debt to him, even in respect to incident, is trifling, and, in respect to construction, nil. We have to seek elsewhere than in Spain for the origin of its unusual power.

It is far from our intention to depreciate the surprise-drama: it has its great and distinctive merits; and in the hands of a master can be made very effective. But we think it will be agreed that it belongs to a lower class than the expectation-drama; and it is certain that Shakspere, like the great Greeks, preferred to write on the principles of the latter.

very much to the point. "The managers," says Gifford, "most injudiciously gave the part of Epicene to a woman; so that when she threw off her female attire in the last act, and appeared as a boy, the whole cunning of the scene was lost, and the audience felt themselves rather trifled with than surprised." It may have been for a similar reason that Pepys thought Philaster a "mighty poor play"; for it too demands, fully as much as Epicene, a male actor. Nothing, in any case, could show more clearly the importance of keeping steadily in mind the fact that the Elizabethan dramatists did not write their female parts for women; and nothing could show more clearly the superiority of Shakspere to his nearest rivals, not only in all the higher poetic and dramatic gifts, but also in the tiniest details of the playwright's art.

II

Some Medievalisms in Shakspere

HAKSPERE is often so astonishingly modern that we are apt to forget how much of his mental

equipment was medieval. When he was born, the Renaissance had well begun, and modern science had started on its way; but neither of them had yet forgotten the rock whence it was hewn and the hole of the pit whence it was digged. For example, the same Kepler, who, just while Shakspere was writing the Tempest, discovered the immortal Laws, believed in the Music of the Spheres; and, the same Napier who, two years before Shakspere's death, published the Canon of Logarithms, was far more keenly interested in the Number of the Beast than in exponentials. The Elizabethan age, indeed, was like the Bay of Melita-" a place where two seas met"-and to understand it we have to know the main currents of both. It is necessary often, in reading the most trivial passages of Shakspere, to bear in mind his double outlook; for more than most men he was born "with large discourse, looking before and after," forward into our age but also backward into those that had preceded him.

We propose here to take three quite trifling, but none the less interesting, examples of this medievalism. And

first, let us consider the well-known passage in the Merchant of Venice (III. 5. 78)1:

It is very meet
The Lord Bassanio live an upright life;
For having such a blessing in his lady,
He finds the joys of heaven here on earth:
And if on earth he do not mean it, then

In reason he should never come to heaven.

Many emendations have been proposed, that of Pope, "And if on earth he do not merit it," being perhaps the favourite. Aldis Wright, admitting the plausibility of this change, yet declares that "we rather require a word with the sense of 'appreciate'.'

But in all such cases it is necessary to discover the general meaning of the passage before we begin to emend; and, on investigating this particular passage, we see that no idea of merit, or of appreciation, or of earning, underlies it. What it really rests upon is the idea of compensation-a very different thing. This idea has probably existed from the beginning of the world: it appears as Nemesis in Greece, and dominates the conception of Kismet or of Fortune elsewhere. If Polycrates is exceedingly lucky now, he will pay for it hereafter. Those whom the gods love are happy in their youth and die before Nemesis has had time to punish them for their happiness. In the Middle Ages

The following section was written quite independently of the article by Professor Skeat in Notes on English Etymology, p. 183. It will be seen that I agree with Skeat in finding an allusion to the well-worn medieval joke as to a married man's special chances of heaven; but I differ from him as to the sense of mean, which he takes to be the M.E. menen, with open e, to lament or moan. It is true that this word occurs in M.N.D. v. I. 330, but I do not think that this sense, in the passage under consideration, is an appropriate one.

this idea was blended with that of the next world, in which, so it was thought, were to be found not only rewards and punishments for the virtues and vices of this life1, but compensations and readjustments for differences of pleasure and pain among men below. It may perhaps have been a somewhat crude interpretation of the parable of Dives and Lazarus that gave either actual birth or wide acceptance to this doctrine; or the command "Lay not up treasures upon earth" may have been thus treated by some John Ball of very early times wishing to console his poorer hearers for their misery; but that the view existed and was strongly held is undeniable. Lazarus, having been poor on earth, is comforted in Abraham's bosom; Dives, luxurious on earth, is tormented in Hades at least until his totality of pleasures and pains approximately balances that of the beggar. It is plain to the most casual glance that the Gospel of St Luke lends itself very easily to an exegesis of this comforting kind; and the Epistle of St James even more so: "Hath not God chosen the poor of this world rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which he hath promised?"2

If Nemesis is to be propitiated, the lucky man must try to make himself less lucky while "fortune is merry."

1 Such rewards and punishments were often most naïvely proportioned to the good and evil deeds. "3e senezeden," says God to the guilty in an Old English Homily (ed. Morris, pp. 230-41), "an 3eur écenesse, and 3e scule birne an mire écenesse. je sene3den alse länge alse 3é lefede, and 3e scule birne alse longe as ic lefie": ye sinned for your eternity, and ye shall burn for mine; ye sinned while ye lived, and ye shall burn while I live. This is the full doctrine of a medieval "Mikado."

2 In the Ancren Riwle (ed. Morton, p. 216) this same doctrine is drawn from Revelation xviii. 6, 7: "Contra unum poculum quod miscuit, miscete ei duo: quantum glorificavit se et in deliciis fuit, tantum date ei luctum et tormentum." (The original Scripture is not quite exactly reproduced, but the interpretation is not affected.)

KS