their betters; that in Julius Cæsar' all is relative to the conception that the nobles see unwillingly the supremacy assumed by one, while they fondly dream that they can still act in common; and that'Antony and Cleopatra,' trumpet-tongued, proclaims the incompatibility of business and pleasure." (Ibid.) But if such be really the fundamental ideas of the above poems, then may we assert, with equal justice, Goethe himself sought to illustrate, in his Tasso, the proverb "Pride must have a fall;" in Egmont, that other adage, "Who will not hear must feel;" and in Faust, the philosophical common-place, "Man is a finite limited being, and ought to be conscious of such his nature." But the end of art and on this consideration the whole question hangsis far higher than to exhibit such so-called truths, which indeed in their one-sidedness and exaggeration are nothing less than errors. For such a purpose there was no need of so vast an expenditure of means, such unutterable labour and pains: such trite morals a child might learn from any hornbook, or from experience in his own case or that of others. Every genuine work of art will in its details, no doubt, instruct and quicken the mind, enrich it with truths of experience, with knowledge and ideas of every kind; but the special is not the end, and cannot therefore be the subject-matter-the ground idea of a work of art. On the contrary, art must exhibit the whole of life-universal history, in short, in its essence and truth; the whole view of the world of things, and consequently the law and end of the development of life and mind, must throughout be exhibited in its adequate form. But the universal view of the world, with the entire fulness of its subjectmatter, cannot be included in any single piece of art; in its totality it can only be exhibited in universal history, which is the grandest of all works of art. In order to admit of artistic representation the collective subject-matter must allow of being separately considered in its organic members. Accordingly, as it presents two grand aspects-the comic and tragic-it is in these that it must first of all be exhibited. But the very idea of an organic part implies that the whole is contained and perceptibly present in it. The whole of the tragic or comic view of things must, therefore, be distinctly present in every tragedy or comedy;

but as a single drama cannot mirror the whole history of the world, but only some particular episode of it, some unity-some intellectual and not serious unity of time, place, and action, the general view forms at most the intellectual stage on which the represented action is to move-the soul which is to hold together and animate the body of the drama. As it is common to all pieces of the same kind, it cannot be the source from which the several pieces derive their distinctive characters. When, therefore, we speak of the fundamental ideas of Shakspeare's plays respectively, nothing more is meant than that each expresses a special aspect of the organic totality of mind, each of them exhibits a particular modification of the general comic or tragic view of things dependent upon the special conditions of space and time, the posture of affairs, and accidental circumstances and relations in which the dramatic persons are placed. It is this alone that makes the ground idea of each of Shakspeare's dramas such as we have described it; that enables it, according to Goethe's observation, to furnish a central point to which the world and universe admit of being referred; it is only because it contains within itself the universality of all relations that every one admits of being carried back to it.

The attempt to give a proximate determination of the ground idea of Shakspeare's dramatic pieces severally, will prove at best but an imperfect essay. Each succeeding age will discover a greater store of references to the middle point of the whole, even because every genuine work of art bears, in itself, all the riches of life. To give them all, therefore, cannot be my design, otherwise I must give to each piece a volume. And on this consideration I must dispense with a critical analysis of the single dramas. All that I can do is to give the results of my own studies; that is, to point out the leading idea, and to shew generally how far it has determined the tone and colouring, the keeping and composition of the whole, and in what degree the choice and co-ordination of the several characters appear to be dependent on it. To trace all this through minute details, and scene by scene, must be left to the reader's own discernment.

For the reasons already given, I shall, in my examination of the

several Plays, take them in their ideal succession, the principle of which the reader will readily discover, and not in the order in which I believe them to have followed each other in point of time. I begin with

ROMEO AND JULIET.

"The ideal picture," says Schlegel, "which is exhibited in 'Romeo and Juliet,' is a glorious song of praise on that inexpressible feeling which ennobles the soul, and gives to it its highest sublimity, and which elevates even sense into soul; while at the same time it is a melancholy elegy on its frailty, by reason of its own nature and the force of circumstance;-at once the deification and burial of love." That the leading interest of this drama is centred in the loves of Romeo and Juliet, is clear even to a child. Still I cannot persuade myself that the meaning of the whole piece is exhausted in the deification and entombment of love, and that this idea constitutes the groundwork of the play. On the contrary, Shakspeare can scarcely have designed to deify love merely as an inexpressible feeling-an intoxicating passion. That were, indeed, an idolatry of which art could never be guilty, even though, like the African with his Fetish, it should at last destroy its idol with its own hand. In this piece love is undoubtedly regarded as the basis, centre, and leading principle of human life; that is, the special point from which, subordinately to the grand tragic view of the world, human life is here contemplated and portrayed. On love, primarily as wedded love, is marriage, and therefore the family, and ultimately the state, and consequently the improvement and development of human life, founded: nay, the love of God for man, and of man for God, is the grandest and sublimest object in existence. In love, human life is seized in its inmost core; it is the noblest and most exalted privilege that man enjoys, and a deification of love, consequently, were no idolatry, so long as it should be apprehended in its true divinity; for God himself is even love. But even because it is in its nature thus

eminently noble and sublime, does love become, so soon as it attaches itself to the finiteness of passion and desire, and so long as it remains unpurified from earthly dregs, a fatally destructive. force, whose triumphs are celebrated amid ruin and death. It is even because it is in its true essence of a celestial origin, that it hurries along, with demoniacal and irresistible energy, all who misuse its godlike gifts, and who, plunged in the abyss of selfforgetfulness, lavish all the riches of a heavenly endowment on the lowly sphere of their earthly existence. It is in such a light that Romeo is presented to us at the very opening of the piece. The faculty of loving, which pervades his whole being, and which is assigned to him in so eminent a degree, instead of being refined and spiritualised by its sexual object and passion, becomes merged in passionate yearning and desire. He thus becomes the slave of the very power whose master he ought to be. Accordingly, at the very opening of the piece, he appears carried away by it, as it were, by some malignant and irresistible influence, and hurried along at its caprice. In order to throw out this caprice in a still stronger light, Shakspeare introduces him to us in a dreamy passion for Rosaline. Involuntarily, and, as it were, mechanically, is he precipitated, out of his fancy for Rosaline, into the deeper and mightier passion for Juliet. Two hearts, made for each other, combine at first sight into indissoluble unity; the force of nature, being allowed free course, overcomes at once all the barriers of custom and circumstance. As the lightning has already struck before a man can say it lightens, so in their hearts a blazing flame has been quickly and irresistibly kindled, whose destroying might both feel and suspect without the power or even the wish to oppose it. In both there is the same excess of inflammable matter; even Juliet possesses the same rich abundance of love-the divine gift in its largest measure; and with her, too, the mighty waters all hurry to the same point, and thus, instead of diffusing fertility and blessing, they do but rise above their bed to scatter death and desolation around. Both are high-born, richly gifted, and noble of nature; both have earth and heaven within their bosoms; but they pervert their loveliest and noblest gifts. into sin, corruption, and evil; they mar their rare excellence by

making idols of each other, and fanatically sacrificing all things to their idolatry.*

This passionateness-this fatal vehemence of love-is associated by an intrinsic necessity with a hate as vehement, as passionate, and as fatal. Rightly, therefore, does Shakspeare abstain from giving even the slightest hint as to the cause and occasion of the fearful feud between the Montagues and Capulets; he who, when occasion requires, shews such fine tact and judgment in giving the motive of every important movement in the dramatic action, leaves this leading spring of the whole tragical development in complete enigmatical obscurity. Yet it is out of the very midst of the deadly enmity of their parents that the fatal love of the children springs up: that which there is hatred in its utmost degree, is here transformed into its direct opposite. The extremes meet not by accident, but by internal necessity. The faults and transgressions of the parents are punished in the persons of their children, and through them the parents themselves.† For the destroying energy which characterised their hatred, and out of which love had sprung up, in spite of the paradox, continues still with the love;-nay, in the vehemence of passion, the two merge into one. Throughout there reigns a strong internal necessity, of which the seed lies in human nature itself, and to which man becomes a slave the very moment he abandons his self-control.

* Rom. Thou chid'st me oft for loving Rosaline.
Fri. For doting, not for loving, pupil mine.

+

ACT II. Scene 3.

Why rail'st thou on thy birth, the heaven and earth,
Since birth and heaven and earth all three do meet
In thee at once; which thou at once would'st lose.
Fye! fye! thou sham'st thy shape, thy love, thy wit;

Which, like an usurer, abound'st in all,

And usest none in that true sense indeed

Which should bedeck thy shape, thy love, thy wit.

Capulet! Montague!

See what a scourge is laid upon your hate,

ACT III. Scene 3.

That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love!

And I, for winking at your discords, too

Have lost a brace of kinsmen.-All are punished.

N

ACT V. Scene 3.