r and guilt.

If we turn now from the substance of the tragedies to their style and
versification, we find on the whole a corresponding difference between
the earlier and the later. The usual assignment of _Julius Caesar_, and
even of _Hamlet_, to the end of Shakespeare's Second Period--the period
of _Henry V._--is based mainly, we saw, on considerations of form. The
general style of the serious parts of the last plays from English
history is one of full, noble and comparatively equable eloquence. The
'honey-tongued' sweetness and beauty of Shakespeare's early writing, as
seen in _Romeo and Juliet_ or the _Midsummer-Night's Dream_, remain; the
ease and lucidity remain; but there is an accession of force and weight.
We find no great change from this style when we come to _Julius
Caesar_,[28] which may be taken to mark its culmination. At this point
in Shakespeare's literary development he reaches, if the phrase may be
pardoned, a limited perfection. Neither thought on the one side, nor
expression on the other, seems to have any tendency to outrun or contend
with its fellow. We receive an impression of easy mastery and complete
harmony, but not so strong an impression of inner power bursting into
outer life. Shakespeare's style is perhaps nowhere else so free from
defects, and yet almost every one of his subsequent plays contains
writing which is greater. To speak familiarly, we feel in _Julius
Caesar_ that, although not even Shakespeare could better the style he
has chosen, he has not let himself go.

In reading _Hamlet_ we have no such feeling, and in many parts (for
there is in the writing of _Hamlet_ an unusual variety[29]) we are
conscious of a decided change. The style in these parts is more rapid
and vehement, less equable and less simple; and there is a change of the
same kind in the versification. But on the whole the _type_ is the same
as in _Julius Caesar_, and the resemblance of the two plays is decidedly
more marked than the difference. If Hamlet's soliloquies, considered
simply as compositions, show a great change from Jaques's speech, 'All
the world's a stage,' and even from the soliloquies of Brutus, yet
_Hamlet_ (for instance in the hero's interview with his mother) is like
_Julius Caesar_, and unlike the later tragedies, in the fulness of its
eloquence, and passages like the following belong quite definitely to
the style of the Second Period:

_Mar._ It faded on the crowing of the cock.
Some