THE PLAYS OF SHAKESPEARE EDITED BY HENRY MORLEY, LL.D. WITH INTRODUCTIONS BY THE EDITOR AND MANY ILLUSTRATIVE PIECES CON- THE DRAMATIST'S TIME NEW YORK: PREFACE. SHAKESPEARE, through all his images of life in action, shows a spirit that has caused his works to be called rightly a Lay Bible. Three principles lie at the heart of all his teaching:-LOVE GOD, LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOUR, DO YOUR WORK. The highest Literature is expression of the highest Life. Stories of human action are, of course, the images of joys and sorrows common to us all, and to be interesting they must show how the thread of one man's life runs with the threads other men spin, here or there, into knots that have to be untied or cut. When Aristotle in his Poetics writes of Plays, he begins by pointing out that of the six parts of which a Play consists, the Action is the chief. "For Tragedy," he says-and what The says of Tragedy applies to all true Drama" is not an imitation of particular persons, but of Actions in general, of human Life, of good and ill Fortune, for Fortune depends upon Action, and though the Manners of men are derived from their Qualities, their Happiness and Misery depend on their Actions. Actions, then, are not represented for the purpose of imitating Manners, but Manners are comprehended at the same time by means of the Action. . . . If a set of moral sentences should be put together with the Language and Sentiment well executed, it would by no means produce the CD. TRANSFER JAN 2 effect of tragedy, which would be much rather obtained by a tragedy that, possessing these in an inferior degree, had a Fable and combination of incidents. It must be added that the sudden Revolution of Fortune, and the Discovery, which are the principal causes of a tragedy being interesting, are parts of the Fable." All this is illustrated by the Plays of Shakespeare. Deeply religious in their view of life, they show life as it is, through scenes that never stay the action for a preachment, but continuously tell their story, or pause only to show the springs of action, in the most spiritual utterances of the poet's thought. If they delayed presentment of the Action, which has only to show deeds and motives of the doer, with the way they affect other persons in the story, then the finest passages of poetry, the noblest utterances of the highest truth, would be excrescences; they would be something other than the play. It is a main purpose of this Edition of Shakespeare to show how in plays of his-as Aristotle put it" Manners are comprehended by means of the Action." A study of Shakespeare's method in dealing with the main part of a play, especially his way of bringing Unity into the Action, ought not to be profitless. What fuller source is there of our delight in tales, novels, and plays, than our own part in life t Each of us lives a story. Our own lives have their complications, and it interests us much to know how other adventurers untie their knots, and conquer or are conquered by the troubles of the world. In Shakespeare's world there is a genial and full presentment to us of the life we live. The men and women speak and act from motives of an infinite variety, and indicate their characters just as they do upon the larger stage. Shakespeare's dramatic genius enabled him, as if by miracle, to enter into every character that he created; so that his people are not drawn as men are usually seen, from without; but, stirred as from within, they act and react on one another, and show subtle disturbances of mood and thought. We draw inferences from chance words of selfbetrayal, from comparison such as we make when. we desire to understand acquaintance, friend, or enemy, who lives and moves about us. Different minds may form different opinions of a character in Shakespeare. We discuss it as we might discuss the sayings or the doings of a living person. Other dramatists, who paint men as they see them from without, give us no opportunity for question as to what they see and what they wish to represent. From this point of view alone, the Plays of Shakespeare would repay a life of study. But even if the noble plays of the Greek dramatists from which Aristotle drew his principles of dramatic poetry had given him a conception of such character-painting as Shakespeare was the first and last to show, his Poetics would nevertheless have placed the Action first, the Characterpainting or the Manners second in importance, among the six parts of a play. Next to these he placed the Sentiments expressed, and then the Language that expressed them; after that the |