o this convenient
definition.--GERVINUS.

* * * * *

As to the time when Shakespeare passed from the apprentice into the
master, I place this in the year 1597, or thereabouts, when he was
thirty-two or thirty-three years old; and I take _The Merchant of
Venice_ and _King Henry the Fourth_ as marking the clear and complete
advent of the master's hand. And what I have been saying holds
_altogether_ true only of the plays written during his mastership. In
all his earlier plays, even in _A Midsummer Night's Dream, King
Richard the Second_, and _King Richard the Third_, probably neither
the composition nor the characterization can fairly stand the test of
any of the principles of Art, as I have noted them. But especially in
the workmanship of that period, along with much that is rightly
original, we have not a little, also, of palpable imitation. The
unoriginality, however, is rather in the style than in the matter, and
so will be more fitly remarked under the head of Style. Still worse,
because it goes deeper, we have in those plays a want of clear
artistic disinterestedness. The arts and motives of authorship are but
too apparent in them; thus showing that the Poet did not thoroughly
lose himself in the enthusiasm and truth of his work. In some cases,
he betrays not a little sense of his own skill; at least there are
plain marks of a conscious and self-observing exercise of skill. And
perhaps his greatest weakness, if that word may be used of him at all,
lies in a certain vanity and artifice of stage-effect, or in a sort of
theatrical and dialogical intemperance, as if he were trying to shine,
and pleased with the reflection of his own brilliancy. But as this too
was the result of imitation, not of character, so in the earnestness
of his work he soon outgrew it, working purely in the interest and
from the inspiration of Nature and Truth.

Before passing on from this branch of the subject, perhaps I ought to
add that Shakespeare drew largely from the current popular literature
of his time. The sources from which he gathered his plots and
materials will be noted pretty fully when I come to speak of
particular plays. It may suffice to remark here, that there seems the
more cause for dwelling on what the Poet took from other writers, in
that it exhibits him, where a right-minded study should specially
delight to contemplate him, as holding his unrivalled inventive powers
subordinate to th