,
especially of men, that Shakespeare is great.... The thing he looks at
reveals not this or that face, but its inmost heart, its generic secret;
it dissolves itself as in light before him, so that he discerns the
perfect structure of it.... It is a perfectly _level_ mirror we have
here; no _twisted_, poor convex-concave mirror reflecting all objects
with its own convexities and concavities, that is to say, withal a man
justly related to all things and men, a good man.... And his intellect is
an unconscious intellect; there is more virtue in it than he himself is
aware of.... His art is not artifice; the noblest worth of it is not
there by plan or pre-contrivance. It grows up from the deeps of Nature,
through this noble sincere soul, who is a voice of Nature.... It is
Nature's highest reward to a true, simple, great soul that he got thus to
be _part of herself_." Of his works nothing can or need be said here;
enough to add, as Carlyle further says, "His works are so many windows
through which we see a glimpse of the world that was in him.... Alas!
Shakespeare had to write for the Globe Playhouse; his great soul had to
crush itself, as it could, into that and no other mould. It was with him,
then, as it is with us all. No man works save under conditions. The
sculptor cannot set his own free thought before us, but his thought as he
could translate into the stone that was given, with the tools that were
given. _Disjecta membra_ are all that we find of any poet, or of any
man." Shakespeare's plays, with the order of their publication, are as
follows: "Love's Labour's Lost," 1590; "Comedy of Errors," 1591; 1, 2, 3
"Henry VI.," 1590-1592; "Two Gentlemen of Verona," 1592-1593;
"Midsummer-Night's Dream," 1593-1594; "Richard III.," 1593; "Romeo and
Juliet," 1591-1596 (?); "Richard II.," 1594; "King John," 1595; "Merchant
of Venice," 1596; 1 and 2 "Henry IV.," 1597-1598; "Henry V.," 1599;
"Taming of the Shrew," 1597 (?); "Merry Wives of Windsor," 1598; "Much Ado
about Nothing," 1598; "As You Like It," 1599; "Twelfth Night," 1600-1601;
"Julius Caesar," 1601; "All's Well," 1601-1602 (?); "Hamlet," 1602,
"Measure for Measure," 1603; "Troilus and Cressida," 1603-1607 (?);
"Othello," 1604; "Lear," 1605; "Macbeth," 1606; "Antony and Cleopatra,"
1607; "Coriolanus," 1608; "Timon," 1608; "Pericles," 1608; "Cymbeline,"
1609; "Tempest," 1610; "Winter's Tale," 1610-1611; "Henry VIII.,"
1612-1613 (1564-1616).

SHAKESPEARE OF DIVINES, an epi