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and the rest of the bad ones, as we can the Kings and Queens, upon History-upon Monstrellet or Holingshed, or upon Shakespeare's classical authorities, according to the general commentator. For the low-caste characters were Shakespeare's own. The smuttiest work that Shakespeare ever did, however, was in the Pericles, and it does not surprise us, after reading Stubbes and Gosson, to find that play the oftenest printed in Quarto, as far as we know, of any of the Shakespearian plays. And yet it must be admitted that Shakespeare did not love smut: he Bowlderized some of his own plays between their Quarto and their Folio dates. Instead of the three caskets, he might have adopted another version of the tests with which a lady's hand was won, which would have relegated the Merchant of Venice to our libraries forever. He was the first English dramatist to demonstrate that that which is comic need not necessarily be obscene, or that one could be witty or humorous without referring to the relations between the sexes. put his putrescence on the outside of his plays, as Gothic architects put their dragons and demons on the outside of their cathedrals, while carving only saints and angels within. But yet it will not add one leaf to Shakespeare's crown for his admirers to be dishonest in his praise, and make him what he was not and never pretended to be, "his grandsire cut in alabaster." It is only for such gentlemen as Fleay and Furnivall and Rees and Bishop Wordsworth to conceive that the greatest delineator of human passion did not, for himself, share in the passions of his kind. So that, for example, the Romeo and Juliet, with its masterly and magical delineation of the power, pathos, and imperious sweep of the mightiest of human passions, is merely among the very earliest works of a lad who liked the jingle of rhyme! So terrible is the human temptation to find what we look for, from which even a Shakespearian commentator cannot rid himself! I certainly cannot believe myself free from this same temptation, but I am unable to separate myself from the conviction that the increase in stage finish marks Shakespeare's successive steps in playwriting quite as well as a touchstone which will assign the creation of Juliet -the finished humor of Juliet's nurse, the sang-froid of

Mercutio, and the garrulities of old Capulet-to a tyro, simply because the dignity of "unstopped endings" and "run on lines" may be wanting to their speeches. Shakespeare improved his art with experience. Even nature betters her own handiwork. Her gigantic saurians were very clumsy creatures; her first effort at making a bird was simply ridiculous: why should not a Shakespeare, to whom, we are told, "the mighty mother did unveil her awful face," have advanced in something else besides scansion? Is it not possible that-between the lad who chopped out an Aaron and the consummate artist who drew an Iago-may possibly have been a workman sensible of improvement in the material exigencies of his craft? I think, therefore, that all the questions asked in our title must be answered in the affirmative: that the Titus Andronicus was Shakespeare's earliest play, that the Elizabethan stage was quite equal to mounting it, and that it was popular with the audiences of its date. Perhaps its success was the foundation of Shakespeare's fortune. That he left his fortune to his heirs and did not, like Alleyn, found a college with it, was, no doubt, because well, because he was not Edward Alleyn, but William Shakespeare.* William Shakespeare, a man who, from amidst the trivialities and distractions and pitiful makeshifts-the Nick Bottoms and pasteboard horses and brown-paper dragons and the petty economies into which the straitened home of his youth had moulded him— the man who could leave behind him that before which eulogium despairs and language falters and apotheosis pants for breath. APPLETON MORGAN.

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* Since concluding this paper I have read with great pleasure Mr. L. M. Griffiths' Vindication of Titus Andronicus," in volume i. of this. magazine (page 200). It is a noble paper, in every way worthy of so reverent, competent, and discriminating a Shakespearian critic as Mr. Griffiths has everywhere shown himself to be. In view of the wide divergence: of opinion and point of view with which individuals must always write and speak upon Shakespearian themes, I doubt if, from such differing assumptions, two writers ever came nearer a concordance of opinion upon a mooted objective than Mr. Griffiths and myself over Titus Andronicus. That the play is Shakespeare's we both agree, and where we disagree the question is, and always will be, a widely open one.

It would be difficult to mention five more prominent names in Shakespearian Scholarship than the last four years have added to its Necrology: Henry Norman Hudson, Richard Grant White, Clement Mansfield Ingleby, James Orchard HalliwellPhillipps (to name them in the order of their departures), and now, the name of Dr. Karl Elze is added suddenly to the list. Certainly a remarkable mortality in so limited a branch of letters.

Dr. Elze died suddenly at Stuttgart on the 25th day of January. He was the best known of German Shakespearians not only, but being an accomplished English scholar-was the only one who, like Halliwell-Phillipps, spent his time, not only over authorities, but in English muniment rooms and old libraries, getting as nearly as possible to the material sources of the data with which he worked. Dr. Elze was a constant contributor to the Jahrbuch, the Athenæum, and the standard German periodicals. His best known works are his "Essays on Shakespeare," which contain some of the most original labor ever bestowed upon Shakespeare, and his "William Shakespeare, a Biography," which he had but very recently completed. Dr. Elze was member of many learned societies, and co-honorary member of the New York Shakespeare Society with the late Halliwell-Phillipps, whom he survived by so brief an interval.

IN view of the constantly increasing use of the Shakespeare Works as a Manual for instruction and training in English in colleges, schools, social and private classes-SHAKESPEARIANA will commence, at an early day, the publication of "A TEACHER'S SUPPLEMENT" to serve as an interchange of opinion, questions, notes, hints, suggestions, and experiences between Teachers, Lecturers, Club and Class Leaders, and others engaged in the teaching of Shakespearian and Elizabethan language, literature, and manners; which Department, it is hoped, will not be without value to those for whose convenience it is intended.

EDITOR SHAKESPEARIANA:

ON page 310 of your Volume V. Mr. Jonathan Trumbull thinks we must allow Donnelly to put "bottle-ale" into the Menu which Shakespeare is alleged to have spread before Percy at New Place, because Doll Tearsheet calls Pistol a "bottle-ale rascal." Indeed, I am still afraid we cannot, and must agree with Mr. Morgan, and I will cite no authority but Mr. Donnelly himself in the matter.

Donnelly tells us that Shakespeare was a famous brewer, and produced home-brewed ale at New Place in such quantities, over and above what he consumed at his own table, that he sold it to his neighbors and made a considerable profit that way (this is one of the counts in Donnelly's terrible indictment, by the way, against the bard of Avon). Now if he brewed ale, why should it not come to his table in tankards as was the universal custom-why should he BOTTLE it? Donnelly does not forget to dwell upon Shakespeare's reputation for wine guzzling, and tells us over and over again about the beer bouts and the "Piping Pebworth" story.

The only ale in bottles that came into England (an aledrinking country, whose people drank ale for breakfast, dinner, and supper, and between meals) was that brought by sailors from foreign ports-and mighty little of that-for the sailors stocked themselves for a voyage only, and not for the round trip, expecting to replenish in British ports for the home voyage. Hence the little ale that remained was in the bottom of half-emptied bottles and in a vile and stale condition (what the modern Englishman calls "swipes "), and so "bottle ale " became the Elizabethan slang synonym for anything stale, nasty, and disagreeable. So when Doll called Pistol a "bottleale rascal" it was as if she had called him a "stale-beer" rascal, a "remainder biscuit after a voyage" rascal, etc.

I am afraid Donnelly's "bottle-ale" must ride the ways

with the "bitter beer" he thought better of and rejected, unless the would-be apostle of the probable and the realistic I will have it that the high-living and well-to-do Shakespeare-a judge of ale and a brewer of so first-class a brand that his neighbors flocked to purchase of his over-product for cash-sent out to the London docks to collect heel-taps of stale ale in bottles to furnish forth his own private table.

DENNETT LAWRENCE.

WHAT does Prince Hal mean (I. Henry IV., 70) when he compares Jack Falstaff to "the Melancholy of Moorditch"? Rolfe, and the other editors I have access to, do not explain the line, or even allude to it as needing explanation. G. P. K.

"The Melancholy of Moorditch" was a fever (as we would say now, a malarial fever) arising from the stagnant and undrained pool or morass made by the ditch at Moorfields overflowing, and which affected the dwellers in the vicinity.

HAMLET'S SEA OF TROUBLES.

EDITOR SHAKESPEARIANA:

E. L. P.

ON page 412 of Vol. V., Mr. Clifford Lanier suggests, SEGE for SEA. He says it was a good and expressive English word, previous to Shakespeare's time, and must have survived until his time, and perhaps later. The word means a herd, a flock, a collection, and Mr. Lanier's suggestion is an effort to relieve, if possible, that terrible mixed metaphor which has so bothered our dainty commentators.

A suggestion of my own to relieve the metaphor is as follows: Let the idea in Shakespeare's mind have been that of a swimmer, who spreads out his arms to buffet and ride the waves. Let "take" be the misprint: and let us read for it "toss" (which, printed "tofs," as was the old way, might well have helped the compositor's hand into the wrong box). Then we would have

"And toss up arms against a sea of troubles." How would that relieve the mixed metaphor ?

HORACE P. HARMAN.

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