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centuries and by the love and interest of the descendants of the men for whom they were written. Did Raphael paint merely a woman and a mother, or did he expect those who viewed his picture to regard it as a portrait of a veritable Queen of Heaven? The question is of the same nature as the subject of Mr. Stoll's paper. Shakespeare's ghosts conform to Elizabethan superstition in externals; but it is far more important that they conform in essentials to moral differences. Banquo's ghost is quite as true if interpreted symbolically to be a picture projected so vividly by a guilty conscience as to seem real to the guilty man, as if it be considered a veritable spirit, no 'unreal mockery,' but the actual presentment of the bloody corpse of the murdered man. It is a property of great poetry to use the conventions of the day in order to express lasting truths, and to mean more and more as time goes on. Shakespeare's ghosts have an artistic function not confined to the seventeenth century. In fact, they are as impressive as they were then, perhaps more so, though they do not appeal to the same popular mind. Otherwise Shakespeare would be of the age, not for all time.

CHAPTER XII

CRITICISM OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

DR. A. C. BRADLEY

DR. BRADLEY'S Shakespearean Tragedy is the most notable piece of literary criticism that has appeared since the day of Coleridge, Lamb, and Hazlitt. It combines the enthusiasm and vision of the romanticists with the common sense and exactness of the scientific method. Though confined to the four great tragedies, it is packed so full of meaning that no brief review can give an idea of its value. In the introduction the author restricts the ground by declaring, 'Nothing will be said of Shakespeare's place in the history of English literature or of the drama in general; questions concerning his life and character I shall leave untouched. Even the poetry in the restricted sense, the beauties of style, diction, versification will be merely glanced at.' 'The object is to learn to apprehend the action and some of the personages with a somewhat greater truth and intensity.' But Dr. Bradley's mastery of the parts of the general subject he does not discuss, is so full and adequate as to give his treatment a justice and weight not often reached by the specialist. It is felt as a substratum of his thought, and colors much of what he says, and prevents his view from ever becoming extreme or one-sided. His familiarity with the fundamentals of human nature makes his analysis of the complicated natures of the Shakespearean characters convincing to the common sense of the modern reader.

The first lecture (the matter of the book was first made public in lectures at Glasgow, Liverpool, and Oxford, the writer is Professor of Poetry at Oxford, and consequently retains a tone of personal address and the formal divisions of the university lecture) is on the 'substance of Shakespeare's Tragedy.' This is a philosophical examination of the question, What is a tragic action? or, rather, What is the nature of the tragic aspect of life as represented by Shakespeare?' In answering this the writer, naturally, builds upon Aristotle's analysis, but the superstructure is worth at least as much as the foundation. He defines a tragedy to be a story of exceptional calamity tending to the death of a man in high estate.' The actions proceed from character, and, in the Shakespeare tragedy, the effect of chance or accident is minimized. It enters the action much as it enters human life, capriciously modifying the effect of free will, but not as the prominent, controlling influence. Thus it is due to chance that the gracious Duncan enters Macbeth's castle just as 'the thought whose murder yet is but fantastical' was ready to take possession of the minds of his hosts; that Hamlet is brought back to Denmark by the pirates, that Desdemona drops the handkerchief at the fatal moment, that the letter of Edmund is too late to save the life of Cordelia; but these accidents modify only slightly the course of events, the controlling influence is the will and characters of men and women. The interest of the play never depends upon the unraveling of a complicated plot any more than it does on the happening of lucky or unlucky events. The story is a conflict, not only between two groups representing good and evil, in which the hero is representative of one side, but there is also the conflict in the mind of the hero. To make this striking, the hero

need not be good, but he must be great, and capable of profound feeling. Such an emotional nature as that of a Shakespearean hero when thoroughly aroused can express itself, and its struggles and suffering can be represented, only by poetry of the highest order. This poetry overflows and becomes the atmosphere of the play, and affects the utterance of the lesser characters, so that the Queen, Horatio, Ophelia, Banquo, Kent, Ludovico, even the 'first' and 'second gentleman,' may express themselves properly in figurative and rhythmical language. No other form can impress upon us the agony or the joy of great souls. But the tragic conflict as conceived by Shakespeare is not the good man striving against fate, which, as in the Greek tragedies, has a spite against him or his family and insists that he expiate the sins of his grandfather. The ultimate power outside of man, which, 'represented in terms of the understanding, is our imaginative and emotional experience in reading the plays,' is not to be interpreted in religious language as God or Providence, nor as either malicious or beneficent. It is something piteous, fearful, and mysterious; but the tragic representation of it does not leave us crushed, rebellious, or desperate.' It is the moral order,' a world beyond our experience, in which evil (using the word in its broadest sense) sometimes seems predominant and victorious. It is not a blind fate or a blank necessity, still less is it a world in which justice ultimately triumphs, but one in which evil works out in time its own destruction and that of its agents, involving, however, also the good who are swept up into its maleficent march in the same destruction. The feeling evoked in us by the Shakespearean tragic spectacle is sorrow, awe, even terror, but not a pessimistic despair. This chapter not only brings out the remarkable reach and justness of

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Shakespeare's fundamental thought, but it furnishes a reasonable philosophy of life to those who are 'perplexed in the extreme' by the superficial aspects of the world. We cannot say that Shakespeare had consciously formulated the profound conclusions it presents, but that they are rightly deducible from his tragedies there can be no doubt. It establishes his title as supreme poet on a far higher plane than qualities of versification or technical construction. The sensibility of the poet to beauty passes over, in its highest development, to insight into the reality of things. It is then that he becomes 'supreme.'

This profound and serious view of the world, as far from optimism as from despair, is to be gathered from the tragedies. It is, of course, not the only aspect in which the poet regards life. In the romances the question why the innocent and the good should suffer undeservedly is subordinate to the idea of beauty; the suffering of Imogen is temporary, the injury done to Prospero is righted in the Comedies and Midsummer Night's Dream there is no suffering at all, but the happy hours of youth are viewed with indulgence and sympathy. In the historical plays life is looked at from the point of view of usefulness to society. The practical executive man like Henry V is the hero, - the man who undertakes the duty before him in a straightforward, sensible manner, who intrusts his relations to the unknown to the Church, and whose conscience can be satisfied by building chantries for Richard's soul or by a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Mr. Dowden even thinks that the practical, able man, 'whose large hands mould the world,' who has no doubts, because he is in the hands of God, whose aim is justice, and whose affections are but a subordinate part of his being, is more admirable to Shakespeare than is Hamlet. But every one feels that