Othello talks of baptism as "the seal and symbol of redeemed love;" and Henry V. of regeneration; Hamlet's ghost mentions extreme unction; and in the Midsummer Night's Dream the poet speaks of nuns as thrice blessed, but less earthly happy than "the rose distilled;" a bold thing to say in a play to be acted before the Queen, and which, indeed, contains one of the most poetical eulogies ever pronounced upon her.

As might be expected, the discovery of the New World made much impression on the poet's mind, for it gave a spur to the imagination of the whole century. The Tempest is founded on an old voyage to the Bermudas: the scene is in the West Indies, and Caliban is an Indian savage. In Love's Labour Lost he sketches the Carib worshipping the sun, and in other places he speaks of islands far away, undreamed shores and regions all of gold.

Shakspere was a lover of flowers: every play is rich with allusions to them. He knows of the spots in the cup of the cowslip, the early daffodil, the sweet March violet, the bold oxlip, and all sorts of lilies.

The scenery of Shakspere, where it is individualised, as in Venus and Adonis, is Warwickshire scenery; his mountains and seas are abstractions, not drawn from observation; he describes the English lark, but not the northern eagle; his forest scenes are recollections of the Stratford Park.

His allusions to his native country are frequent: Sly is a Warwickshire man, and several scenes in Henry VI. are laid at Coventry or Warwick; the neighbouring spots too, as the Cotswold and Daventry, are also mentioned ; Windsor he drew from life; and with London he was familiar enough.

The allusions to his father's trade are scarce; though he does in one place speak of the insurrection of the clothiers in Henry VIII.'s reign. We dare not trace his characters minutely into nature, but do we not feel assured that mad Lear is the giant shadow of some Warwickshire idiot; Ophelia's death, a village suicide; and Falstaff, a London landlord and personal acquaintance? Pistol was a bully, to be seen any day at a tavern, and Francis had many types.

The few remaining facts of this poet's family may be put in a small compass: his birth was of that great middle class, that has produced the greatest and the best of England; not so rich as to be mere loungers, not so poor as to be degraded by poverty. The poet's father, whose name was John, was of good but reduced family, and married Mary, the daughter of Robert Arden, a gentleman of fortune of Wylnecote in the same county, whose sire was Governor of the Chamber to Henry VII., and had received a grant of renewal of Arms for services done in a certain Leices

tershire field called Bosworth: Shakspere's grandfather was himself also an adherent of the Earl of Richmond.

In 1574 John Shakspere purchased some houses in Henley Street, Stratford. In 1578, perhaps from embarrassment, he mortgaged his wife's estate. In 1564, a few months before the poet's birth, the plague broke out, and committed great ravages at Stratford. Of the poet's boyhood we have no tradition, but a rambling one by that old foolish twaddler Aubrey, who says, "Shakspere was the son of a butcher, and he was wont when a boy and killed a calf to do it in a high style, and make a speech there was at that time another butcher's son in the town, that was held not at all inferior for a natural wit, his acquaintance and neighbour, but he died young.'

Of Shakspere's models we have no great knowledge. He imitated Marlow's rhythm and his subjects: he reshaped old dead plays, leaving some thousand lines untouched; he used Bible phrases; and his names are found in plays of the day; while from Spencer he drew several thoughts, and the plot of Lear.

From the 2nd book, 6th canto, of the Fairy Queen, Don John's plot to defame Hero seems drawn. In book 1. canto 10., despair prompting the Red Cross Knight to suicide, reminds us of Macbeth and his air-drawn dagger : a sea of sorrow" in Spencer, becomes “ a sea of troubles"

SOURCES OF PLAYS.

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in Hamlet.

From book 1. canto 10., and not from Geoffrey of Monmouth, he took the story of Lear: the names of Imogen and Oberon are from Spencer, and his names of fiends from Reginald Scott. Spencer's Venus and Anchises became his Venus and Adonis.

phrase of "heart-strings" is in Spencer.

Othello's

The witches" fair and foul" is in the same poet: the conflicting passions of Spencer's miser Malbecco for his wife and his money, seem to have suggested Shylock's frenzy for his ducats and his daughter.

Of Shakspere's plays, — rejecting as false Titus Andronicus, a bad imitation of Marlow, and Pericles as a poor pale Oxford scholar's Masque, - we have still existing eleven tragedies, containing 160,890 lines, each play having on an average 3050 lines: his earliest works, as might be expected, are the most diffuse; and scattered over the whole are about thirty songs, two of which are claimed by other writers.

Queen Elizabeth suggested the Merry Wives of Windsor; and his friend, Ben Jonson, is said to have encouraged him in the composition of his classical plays. His dramas were founded chiefly on chap books, chronicles, and translations from the Italian,

The Tempest is from the voyage of Sir George

Somers.

The Two Gentlemen of Verona from Montemayor's Diana, translated from the Spanish.

The Merry Wives of Windsor from Tarleton's News

from Purgatory.

Twelfth Night, Hamlet, and Much Ado about Nothing, from Biondello's tales (translated from Italian).

Measure for Measure from Whetstone's comedy of Promos and Cassandra.

Comedy of Errors, from Plautus.

Troilus and Cressida, from Chaucer and Lydgate.
The Roman plays, from North's Plutarch.

All's Well that Ends Well, and hints for Timon and Romeo and Juliet, from Painter's Palace of Pleasure.

As You Like It, from Lodge's novel of Rosalind. Winter's Tale, from his friend Green's novel of Pandosto.

Othello, from Cinthio's novel of the Moor of Venice. Lear and Cymbeline, from Geoffrey of Monmouth. Henry IV., Richard II., Henry VI. and VII., and Richard III., are old plays remodelled; and so it is sup posed are Taming of the Shrew, Merchant of Venice, and Troilus and Cressida.

Was it haste or policy led to such a mind borrowing half when it might have created all ?

It would scarcely come within our scope to review in