He has a liking for knocks. Courage tempered by stupidity (as in the persons of Fluellen, etc.) is what he loves in a man. He, himself, has plenty of his favourite quality. His love of plainness and bluntness makes him condemn sentiment in his one profound speech--

"All other devils that suggest by treasons Do botch and bungle up d.a.m.nation With patches, colours, and with forms being fetch'd From glistering semblances of piety."

The scenes between Nym and Pistol, and the account of Falstaff's death, are the last of the great English scenes. This (or the next) was Shakespeare's last English play, for Lear and Cymbeline are British, not English. When he laid down his pen after writing the epilogue to this play he had done more than any English writer to make England sacred in the imaginations of her sons.

_The Merry Wives of Windsor._

_Written._ 1599 (?)

_Published_, in a mutilated form, 1602; in a complete form, 1623.

_Source of the Plot._ A tale in Straparola's _Notti_ (iv. 4).

Tarleton's _News out of Purgatorie_. Giovanni Florentino's _Il Pecorone_. Kinde Kit of Kingston's _Westward for Smelts_.

_The Fable._ Falstaff makes love to Mistress Ford, the wife of a Windsor man. Mistress Ford, despising Falstaff, plots with her friend, Mrs. Page, to make him a mock. News of Falstaff's pa.s.sion is brought to Ford, who, needlessly jealous, resolves to search the house for him.

Falstaff woos Mrs. Ford. She holds him in play till she hears that her husband is coming. Falstaff, alarmed at his approach, bundles into a clothes basket, is carried past the unsuspecting husband, and soused in the river.

He is gulled into the belief that Mrs. Ford expects him again. He goes, is nearly caught by Ford, but escapes, disguised as an old woman, at the cost of a cudgelling.

Still believing in Mrs. Ford's love for him, he keeps a third a.s.signation, this time in Windsor Forest, in the disguise of Herne the hunter. On this occasion he is pinched and scorched by little children disguised as fairies. He learns that Mrs. Ford has tricked him, is mocked by all, and then forgiven.

The play is eked out by other actions. Chief of these is the wooing of Anne Page, Mrs. Page's daughter, by three men--a foreigner, Dr.

Caius; an idiot, Master Slender; and the man of her heart, Fenton.

There are also scenes between Falstaff, Nym, Bardolph and Pistol, and between Dr. Caius, Sir Hugh Evans, Shallow, Slender, the Host and Mrs. Quickly.

An old tradition says that this play was written in a fortnight by command of Queen Elizabeth. There can be no doubt (_a_) that it was written hurriedly, (_b_) that it nicely suited the Tudor sense of humour. It is the least interesting of the genuine plays. It is almost wholly the work of the abundant instinctive self working in the high spirits that so often come with the excitement of hurry. None of the characters has time for thought. The play is full of external energy.

The people bustle and hurry with all their animal natures.

It is the only Shakespearean play which treats exclusively of English country society. As a picture of that society it is true and telling.

Country society alters very little. It is the enduring stem on which the cities graft fashions. It is given to few to see English country society so much excited as it is in this play, but drama deals with excessive life. Shakespeare's people are always intensely excited or interested or pa.s.sionate. Each play tells of the great moments in half-a-dozen lives.

The method of this play is the same, though the lives chosen are lower and the interests stupider. Falstaff is interested in cuckoldry, Mrs.

Ford in mockery, Ford, Evans and Caius in jealousy and rivalry, Bardolph is going to be a tapster, the others are plying their suits. Even in this his most trivial play, Shakespeare's idea that punishment follows oath-breaking is expressed (whimsically enough) by Falstaff--

"I never prospered since I forswore myself at primero."

His other idea, that obsession is a danger to life, is expressed later in the words--

"See now, how wit may be made a Jack-a-Lent, when 'tis upon ill employment."

There is little poetry in the play. The most poetical pa.s.sage is the account of Herne the hunter--

"There is an old tale goes, that Herne the Hunter, Some time a keeper here in Windsor Forest, Doth all the winter-time, at still midnight, Walk round about an oak, with great ragg'd horns; And there he blasts the tree, and takes the cattle; And makes milch-kine yield blood, and shakes a chain In a most hideous and dreadful manner."

Modern poets would describe Herne's dress and appearance. The creative poet describes his actions.

It is possible that when this play was written Shakespeare had thoughts of consecrating himself to the writing of purely English plays. There are signs that he had reached a point of achievement that is always a critical point to imaginative men. He had reached the point at which the personality is exhausted. He had worked out his natural instincts, the life known to him, his predilections, his reading. He had found a channel in which his thoughts could express themselves. Writing was no longer so pleasant to him as it had been. He had done an incredible amount of work in a few years. The personality was worn to a husk. It may be that a very little would have kept him on this side of the line, writing imitations of what he had already done. He was at the critical moment which separates the contemplative from the visionary, the good from the excellent, the great from the supreme. All writers, according to their power, come to this point. Very few have the fortune to get beyond it. Shakespeare's mind stood still for a moment, in this play and in the play that followed, before it went on triumphant to the supreme plays.

_As You Like It._

_Written._ (?)

_Published._ 1600 (?)

_Source of the Plot._ Thomas Lodge's novel of _Rosalynde_, Euphues'

_Golden Legacie_ (published in 1590) supply the fable. The tale is that tale of Gamelyn, wrongly attributed to Chaucer. The _Practise_ (Saviolo's "Practise") of Vincentio Saviolo, an Italian master of arms, gave hints for Touchstone's account of the lie. The rest of the play seems to have been the fruit of Shakespeare's invention.

_The Fable._ Orlando, basely used by his elder brother Oliver, leaves home, annoys the usurping Duke Frederick, and is advised to leave the country.

Rosalind, child of the rightful Duke, and Celia, the child of Duke Frederick, fly from home together in search of the rightful Duke, who has taken to the wild wood. Rosalind, dressed as a man, gives out that Celia is her sister. They set up as shepherds in Arden.

Orlando joins the rightful Duke in Arden. He is in love with Rosalind. He meets her in the forest, but does not recognise her in her disguise. Oliver, cast out by Frederick, comes to Arden, is reconciled to Orlando, and falls in love with Celia. There are a few pa.s.sages of the comedy of mistake, due to Rosalind's disguise.

In the end, the rightful Duke and Oliver are restored to their possessions. Orlando marries Rosalind; the minor characters are married as their hearts desire, and all ends happily.

The play treats of the gifts of Nature and the ways of Fortune. Orlando, given little, is brought to much. Rosalind and Celia, born to much, are brought to little. The Duke, born to all things, is brought to nothing.

The usurping Duke, born to nothing, climbs to much, desires all, and at last renounces all. Oliver, born to much, aims at a little more, loses all, and at last regains all. Touchstone, the worldly wise, marries a fool. Audrey, born a clown, marries a courtier. Phebe, scorning a man, falls in love with a woman.

Jaques, the only wise one, is the only one not moved by Fortune. Life does not interest him; his interest is in his thoughts about life. His vision of life feasts him whatever life does. Pa.s.sages in the second act, in the subtle seventh scene, corrupt in a most important line, show that in the character of Jaques Shakespeare was expounding a philosophy of art. The philosophy may not have been that by which he, himself, wrought; but it is one set down by him with an extreme subtlety of care, and opposed, as all opinions advanced in drama must be, by an extreme earnestness of opposition.

The wisest of Shakespeare's characters are often detached from the action of the play in which they appear. Jaques holds aloof from the action of this play, though he is perhaps the best-known character in the cast. His thought is the thought of all wise men, that wisdom, being always a little beyond the world, has no worldly machinery by which it can express itself. In this world the place of chorus, interpreter or commentator is not given to the wise man, but to the fool who has degraded the office to a profession. Jaques, the wise man, finds the place occupied by one whose comment is plat.i.tude. Wisdom has no place in the social scheme. The fool, he finds, has both office and uniform.

Seeing this, Jaques wishes, as all wise men wish, not to be counted wise but to have as great liberty as the fool to express his thought--

"weed your better judgments Of all opinion that grows rank in them That I am wise. I must have liberty Withal, as large a charter as the wind, To blow on whom I please; for so fools have.

... give me leave To speak my mind, and I will through and through Cleanse the foul body of the infected world, If they will patiently receive my medicine."

He is answered that, having learned of the world's evil by libidinous living, he can only do evil by exposing his knowledge. He replies, finely expressing Shakespeare's invariable artistic practice, that his aim will be at sin, not at particular sinners.

In the middle of his speech Orlando enters, raging for food. It is interesting to see how closely Shakespeare follows Jaques' mind in the presence of the fierce animal want of hunger. He is too much interested to be of help. The Duke ministers to Orlando. Jaques wants to know "of what kind this c.o.c.k should come of." He speaks banteringly, the Duke speaks kindly. The impression given is that Jaques is heartless. The Duke's thought is "here is one even more wretched than ourselves."

Jaques' thought, always more for humanity than for the individual, is a profound vision of the world.

The play is a little picture of the world. The contemplative man who is not of the world, is yet a part of the picture. We are shown a company of delightful people, just escaped from disaster, smilingly taking the biggest of hazards. The wise man, dismissing them to their fates with all the authority of wisdom, gives up his share in the game to listen to a man who has given up his share of the world. Renunciation of the world is attractive to all upon whom the world presses very heavily, or very lightly.

Rosalind and Phebe are of the two kinds of woman who come much into Shakespeare's early and middle plays. Rosalind, like Portia, is a golden woman, a daughter of the sun, smiling-natured, but limited.

Phebe, like Rosalind, is black-haired, black-eyed, black-eyebrowed, with the dead-white face that so often goes with cruelty. Shortly after this play was written he began to create types less external and less limited.

_Much Ado about Nothing._

_Written._ (?)

_Published._ 1600.

_Source of the Plot._ The greater part of the fable seems to have been invented by Shakespeare. The Hero and Claudio story is found in the twenty-second novel of Bandello, and in at least three other books (one of them Spenser's _Faerie Queene_). It was also known to the Elizabethans in a play now lost.