as remarkable, namely, the general superiority as regards moral qualities of his female over his male personages.

Wonderful, indeed, is the company of noble and charming women, displaying the greatest variety of character and temperament, bequeathed to the world by our immortal bard; Imogen and Hermione; the Portia of the "Merchant of Venice," and the Portia of "Julius Cæsar; Isabella, Queen Constance, and Queen Katherine; Desdemona and Cordelia; Rosalind and Beatrice; Juliet, Perdita, Miranda, and others, forming a galaxy of immortal creations, who for all time will be taken to the heart of humanity, as noble and gracious types of womanhood.

Of a different order, with few exceptions, are the principal male personages of the Shakespearian drama :Hamlet, Othello and Iago, King Lear, Macbeth, King Richard III., and many others who, while marvellous as dramatic creations, must be regarded as warnings rather than as examples, and as exhibiting the utter ruin resulting, not alone from the tremendous force of evil passions, impelling their victims to the commission of crime, but also from lack of moral insight and from feebleness of will.

In Henry V., indeed, we have his ideal of a patriotic and an heroic king, the object of enthusiastic admiration to the English people, and of devoted loyalty to his fellow-soldiers, whose hardships he had shared, and whose well-being he had identified with his own; while in Prospero, the presiding genius of the "Tempest," the concluding effort of the poet's genius, he has created a character truly admirable, distinguished alike for largeness of intellect and goodness of heart. Among Shakespeare's secondary male characters, several noteworthy individualities are to be found, such as Horatio in "Hamlet," Kent in "King Lear," Antonio in the "Merchant of Venice," the Bastard in "King John," and others; they are, however, few in number compared with his company of good women.'

1 See "Shakespeare, his Mind and Art." Prof. Dowden.

It is remarkable that Shakespeare, whose dramas, among other features of the Elizabethan era, reflect that devotion to monarchy which formed one of its most striking characteristics, and which manifested itself in the passionate loyalty of all classes of the community, should have embodied his highest ideal of political virtue in Brutus, the stern Roman Republican, to whom the welfare of the Commonwealth was the one object of supreme interest to which he sacrificed every other tie. Intimately associated with this type of heroic manbood is that of heroic womanhood, each rendering more conspicuous the nobleness of the other; Brutus, the Roman patriot, is dear to our hearts as the husband, loving and beloved, of Portia, Cato's daughter, his true and honourable wife, who, "being so fathered and so husbanded," "claimed by the right and virtue of her place," to be his trusted friend and confidant.

The nobility of character in Brutus is attested by the high esteem in which he was universally held, as revealed in the words of Casca:

"O, he sits high in all the people's hearts;
And that which would appear offence in us,

His countenance, like richest alchemy,

Will change to virtue and to worthiness." (Act. i. Sc. 3.)

What, however, invests the character of Brutus with peculiar charm is the remarkable combination which it exhibits of magnanimity and unswerving allegiance to what he believes to be right, with great sensitiveness and exquisite tenderness, as displayed, not only in his relations with Portia, but also in his demeanour towards Lucius, his young attendant, in the touching scene on the eve of the battle of Philippi.'

Very noble is the eulogy pronounced by Mark Antony after the battle over the body of Brutus :

"This was the noblest Roman of them all;
All the conspirators, save only he,

See "Shakespeare and Classical Antiquity," Paul Stapfer. Translated by Emily J. Carey.

Did what they did in envy of great Cæsar;
He only, in a general honest thought,
And common good of all, made one of them.
His life was gentle; and the elements
So mix'd in him, that Nature might stand
And say to all the world, This was a man!" (Act v. Sc. 5.)

up,

When we consider the tremendous struggle which was, ere long, to divide his countrymen into two hostile camps, we may well feel grateful to Shakespeare for bequeathing to them this grand example of public and of private virtue, of fidelity and womanly tenderness in the relations of domestic life, combined with self-denying devotion to the common weal.

From Brutus, the republican patriot of Rome, as portrayed by Shakespeare, to John Milton, the republican patriot of England, the transition would be natural. It will, however, be necessary, before considering the great English poet of the seventeenth century, to take a hasty survey of the dramatic literature of Spain, as represented by Shakespeare's contemporary, Lope de Vega, and by his immediate successor, Pedro Calderon de la Barca.

SPAIN.

1562-1635.

LOPE DE VEGA.

PEDRO CALDERON DE LA BARCA.

1600-1681.

GENUINE poetry, though the highest expression of its author's individuality, nevertheless, like the fauna and flora of the natural world, is at the same time redolent of its native soil, and bears the impress of the region which gave it birth.

This is preeminently true of the dramatic literature of Spain, a poetic growth which, towards the close of the sixteenth, and through the greater part of the seventeenth century, flourished with marvellous luxuriance, and faithfully reproduced upon the stage the national character and life of the period.

In order to understand the affluence of the Spanish drama during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, we must consider under some of its more salient features this memorable epoch in the history of Spain, when she had attained to a height of dignity and power which placed her at the head of Christendom. It was in the last decade of the previous century that the deadly conflict, which for seven hundred years the Spaniards had without intermission waged against the Moors, had been brought to a close. The cross had triumphed over the crescent, and the country had been redeemed from the intolerable degradation of infidel supremacy. This protracted struggle had left its mark upon the national character. Every Spaniard was a born crusader, devoted

with passionate fervour to the Roman Catholic faith the triumph of which had been the object of so costly a sacrifice. "War with the infidel in one shape or another had become almost a necessity of the national mind."

"The field for the exercise of this Christian chivalry at home was no sooner closed to the Spanish cavalier, than other and wider fields were opened. Granada was

taken in 1492; in the very same year Columbus discovered a New World, to the conquering of which the Spaniard advanced quite as much in the spirit of a crusader as of a gold-seeker."1

Nor were Spanish valour and Spanish fanaticism to find scope for their exercise only in the transatlantic world. "The years during which Cortez was slowly winning his way to the final conquest of the Mexican Empire were exactly the earliest years of the Reformation in Europe (1518-1521). This Reformation, adopted by the north of Europe, repelled by the south, was by none so energetically repelled as by the Spaniard, who henceforward found a sphere wide as the whole civilized world in which to make proof that they were the most Christian of all Christian nations, the most Catholic of all Catholics."

"Enriched by the boundless wealth of the western world, having passed in Philip II.'s time from freedom into despotism, and bringing the energies nursed in freedom to be wielded with the unity which despotism possesses, she rose during the sixteenth century ever higher in power and consideration." It was towards the close of that century, that the great epoch of the Spanish drama was inaugurated by Lope de Vega, who, born in 1562, after a life of adventure and vicissitude, in 1588, joined the Invinciblę Armada, "eager to punish the murderers of Mary Stuart." Subsequently, overwhelmed with grief for the loss of a beloved wife and child, he, like so many of his poetical compeers, entered into holy