William Shakespeare; poet, dramatist, and man (1901) (14783677565)

Identifier: williamshakespe00mabi (find matches)
Title: William Shakespeare; poet, dramatist, and man
Year: 1901 (1900s)
Authors: Mabie, Hamilton Wright, 1846-1916
Subjects: Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616
Publisher: New York : The Macmillan company London, Macmillan & co., ltd.
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN



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mind and the secret of the realityand rans^e of his art find in Loves Labours Lost their earliest illustration. And in this play are tobe found also the earliest examples of his free andexpressive character-drawing; for Biron and Rosa-line are preliminary studies for Benedict and Bea-trice ; the play of wit throughout the drama predicts Much Ado About Nothing ; the love-making ofArmado and Jaquenetta is the earliest example ofa by-play of comedy which reaches perfection in As You Like It. As a piece of apprentice workLoves Labours Lost is quite invaluable; soclearly does it reveal the early processes of thepoets mind and his first selection of themes,motives, human interests, and artistic methods. The Comedy of Errors belongs to this periodof tentative work, and is interesting as showingShakespeares familiarity with the traditional formof comedy and as marking the point of his depar-ture from it. It was first published in the Folio of1623, but it was presented as early as the Christ-
Text Appearing After Image:
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.The statue on the Gower Memorial at Stratford-on-Avon. 172 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE mas season of 1594, in the hall of Grays Inn; andits production was accompanied by considerabledisorder in the audience, which must have beencomposed chiefly of benchers and their guests.This disturbance is mentioned by a chronicler inthe same year in these words: After much sport,a Comedy of Errors was played by the players; sothat night began and continued to the end, in noth-ing but confusion and errors ; whereupon it wasever afterwards called the Night of Errors. Themain, although not the only, source of the plot wasthe Menoechmi of Plautus, in which the Latin come-dian develops the almost unlimited possibility ofblunders which lies in mistakes of identity — thenas now a popular device with playwrights and story-tellers. Shakespeare may have read the comedy inthe original, or in a translation by William Warner,which was not published until the year following thepresentation of the