ngenuity of commentators, it is difficult
and even impossible to derive any knowledge of Shakspere's inner history
from the Sonnets; "the strange imagery of passion which passes over the
magic mirror," it has been finely said, "has no tangible evidence before
or behind it." But its mere passing is itself an evidence of the
restlessness and agony within. The change in the character of his dramas
gives a surer indication of his change of mood. The fresh joyousness,
the keen delight in life and in man, which breathes through Shakspere's
early work disappears in comedies such as "Troilus" and "Measure for
Measure." Disappointment, disillusion, a new sense of the evil and
foulness that underlie so much of human life, a loss of the old frank
trust in its beauty and goodness, threw their gloom over these
comedies. Failure seems everywhere. In "Julius Caesar" the virtue of
Brutus is foiled by its ignorance of and isolation from mankind; in
Hamlet even penetrating intellect proves helpless for want of the
capacity of action; the poison of Iago taints the love of Desdemona and
the grandeur of Othello; Lear's mighty passion battles helplessly
against the wind and the rain; a woman's weakness of frame dashes the
cup of her triumph from the hand of Lady Macbeth; lust and
self-indulgence blast the heroism of Antony; pride ruins the nobleness
of Coriolanus.

[Sidenote: His passion plays.]

But the very struggle and self-introspection that these dramas betray
were to give a depth and grandeur to Shakspere's work such as it had
never known before. The age was one in which man's temper and powers
took a new range and energy. Sidney or Raleigh lived not one but a dozen
lives at once; the daring of the adventurer, the philosophy of the
scholar, the passion of the lover, the fanaticism of the saint, towered
into almost superhuman grandeur. Man became conscious of the immense
resources that lay within him, conscious of boundless powers that seemed
to mock the narrow world in which they moved. All through the age of the
Renascence one feels this impress of the gigantic, this giant-like
activity, this immense ambition and desire. The very bombast and
extravagance of the times reveal cravings and impulses before which
common speech broke down. It is this grandeur of humanity that finds
its poetic expression in the later work of Shakspere. As the poet
penetrated deeper and deeper into the recesses of the soul, he saw how
great and wondrous a t