contemporaries.

Again: in the short time allowed for the presentation of a play, before a
restless audience, as soon as the plot was fairly shadowed, the hearers
were anxious for the _denouement_. And so Shakspeare, careless of future
fame, frequently displays a singular disparity between the parts. He has
so much of detail in the first two acts, that in order to preserve the
symmetry, five or six more would be necessary. Thus conclusions are
hurried, when, as works of art, they should be the most elaborated.

He has sometimes been accused of obscurity in expression, which renders
some of his passages difficult to be understood by commentators; but this,
in most cases, is the fault of his editors. The cases are exceptional and
unimportant. His anachronisms and historical inaccuracies have already
been referred to. His greatest admirers will allow that his wit and humor
are very often forced and frequently out of place; but here, too, he
should be leniently judged. These sallies of wit were meant rather to
"tickle the ears of the groundlings" than as just subjects for criticism
by later scholars. We know that old jokes, bad puns, and innuendoes are
needed on the stage at the present day. Shakspeare used them for the same
ephemeral purpose then; and had he sent down corrected versions to
posterity, they would have been purged of these.

INFLUENCE OF ELIZABETH.--Enough has been said to show in what manner
Shakspeare represents his age, and indeed many former periods of English
history. There are numerous passages which display the influence of
Elizabeth. It was at her request that he wrote the _Merry Wives of
Windsor_, in which Falstaff is depicted as a lover: the play of Henry
VIII., criticizing the queen's father, was not produced until after her
death. His pure women, like those of Spenser, are drawn after a queenly
model. It is known that Elizabeth was very susceptible to admiration, but
did not wish to be considered so; and Shakspeare paid the most delicate
and courtly tribute to her vanity, in those exquisite lines from the
_Midsummer Night's Dream_, showing how powerless Cupid was to touch her
heart:

A certain aim he took
At a fair vestal, throned by the west;
And loos'd his love-shaft smartly from his bow,
As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts:
But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft
Quench'd in the chaste beams of the wat'ry moon;
And _the imperial votaress p