to Shakespeare was the clown. The clown was a favorite with the audience, and he took the license of a favorite. "Let your clowns speak no more than is set down for them," says Hamlet, but the Elizabethan clowns notoriously did speak more than was set down for them. Here and there they took matters into their own hands, and amused the audience with horseplay and low comedy. A scene in Romeo and Juliet (end of Act IV.) seems to show what they often did. But Shakespeare could use the clowns as he could all the rest of stage circumstance. Sometimes he gave them a chance, as in the Porter's scene in Macbeth, or the Gravediggers' in Hamlet; sometimes he gave them a character, as with Touchstone or Trinculo. By giving the clowns better words than they could think of themselves, he did much toward making them harmless. At any rate, he dealt with the problem in his usual large way. He made the thing fine in itself and harmonious with the poetry either by character or by contrast, and however it was with the Elizabethan audiences, we are surely the richer by an immense store of the finest and most various humor.

Such are the chief points about the Elizabethan stage which make it different from ours, and which made Shakespeare's plays different in various directions from the plays that we commonly see. There were many smaller things of less importance. On the stage was a trap-door that was sometimes useful: it served for Ophelia's grave, perhaps also Banquo's, but Shakespeare does not use it in The Tempest. Besides the actors there were musicians and a trumpeter. In most of Shakespeare's plays the trumpeter is a man of importance, for he sounds a sennet or flourish before kings and people of importance. In The Tempest there is little trumpeting; the musicians have more to do, for they must play the music that accompanies Ariel as he draws Ferdinand on, the solemn and strange music which surprises Alonso and Gonzalo, the music for the reapers' dance. Among the dramatic conventions of the day was the custom of having a prologue or little introduc

tory verse addressed to the audience, an epilogue or similar speech at the end, and sometimes a chorus or comment between the acts. These things occur in Shakespeare's plays, we have an epilogue in The Tempest, - although there may be some doubt in a given case whether they are written by Shakespeare or not. It is rather more like Shakespeare's way to use some other means for the same end, as in Gloucester's speech at the beginning of Richard III., which serves as a prologue, but is much better; or the scenes which end Acts II. and III. in Macbeth, which serve as choruses between the acts.

In writing of The Tempest, however, it is proper to make something of a qualification. Besides the drama of the public stage, the plays that were given at the playhouses, in Shakespeare's day there was another kind of play more elaborate and more spectacular. This was the masque, an entertainment private rather than public, and full of an elaborate splendor which the public stage had not. The masque had something of story and character, more of poetry and declamation, and, most generally, of dance, song, costume, and scenery. The masque most familiar to us to-day is Comus, later than the time of Shakespeare, but not different in kind from those common in his day.

There is a masque in Act IV. of The Tempest. It is short and slight, but it has all the characteristics of a true masque. The action is trifling and refers chiefly to the occasion, the characters are conventional, and the language is poetic. There is opportunity for music and dance; there is even the contrast between the beautiful and the homely (masque and anti-masque) in the nymphs and the reapers.

The occurrence of this masque has led some scholars to believe that The Tempest was written for presentation at some private occasion, a royal wedding is named, not for the public stage. This may or may not be, so far as historic fact is concerned; there is no evidence for it outside of the play itself. What is here important is to note that The Tempest has none of the specific characteristics

of a private entertainment and almost all those of a play written for public presentation. It is quite different from the masques that we have, and very like the plays. We need not, therefore, imagine that in The Tempest, as we have it, there is anything not in keeping with the traditions of the Elizabethan stage.

Without going into further details, then, we may put together what we already know, and see what influence it should have upon our idea of Shakespeare's plays. Certainly the Elizabethan stage could not offer us the presentations of real life to which we are accustomed. The actors walked in amongst the audience, delivered their speeches, and went out. They did not, as a rule, pretend to resemble the persons they represented, but instead resembled the audience. The women were all boys, and there was always at hand a clown or a comic actor who would interrupt proceedings, if he got a chance, for the sake of jests or stage business of his own. The little approach to scenery was of the most conventional kind, and rarely bore any resemblance to the thing it was supposed to represent. These would be great disadvantages to-day. That they were not felt to be disadvantages in Shakespeare's day was because his conception of a play, the way that he aimed to express his idea in language, was quite different from ours. He had no desire to be spectacular: he wished to be poetical. He had no desire to be realistic: he wished to be suggestive. He aimed to stimulate the imagination rather than satiate it. It is probable that the actor's art was, to his mind, the art rather of declamation than of personification, and that the dramatist's duty was to give a chance for the presentation of poetic emotion and language, rather than any such dramatic whole as a modern playwright has in mind.

Shakespeare must have had a pretty clear idea of the place and value of his art in the world that interested him so much. Not only are his plays themselves general evidence that he knew entirely what he was about, but they offer particular evidence that the stage was often in his

24 CONDITIONS OF ELIZABETHAN STAGE.

mind, that he considered its possibilities and its place. In A Midsummer Night's Dream, an early play, he puts down naturally and definitely the fundamental point as he saw it.

"The best in this kind are but shadows; and the worst are no worse, if imagination amend them."

So spoke Theseus the practical man, as he looked at the clown in rough cast and lime who presented the Wall, nor need we think that Shakespeare wholly disagreed with him. But this does not say everything: we need the addition of Hippolyta. "It must be your imagination, then, and not theirs."

To your imagination Shakespeare appeals first, last, and always, as much in The Tempest at the end of his career, as in A Midsummer Night's Dream at the beginning. But in The Tempest there is a word more. The best in this kind are but shadows, or unsubstantial and unreal things. Yet they have the only reality worth having, for

"like the baseless fabric of this vision,

The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind."

Life itself, like the stage, is transitory and unimportant so far as its costume and its scenery are concerned. The idea, the spirit, the poetry of it is the only thing to life as to the stage. Shakespeare was not too great to use whatever costume and scenery he could get, but he could not work save beyond and through them. And hence it is because there is so much idea and spirit and poetry that his plays can be acted to-day in elaborate ways that he never imagined, and can also be read with a simplicity not unlike that in which they were first conceived.

NOTE.

THIS edition of "The Tempest" presents the text and notes of the Riverside edition. In two or three cases Mr. White's notes have been omitted, but as a rule they will be found verbatim, marked W. Of the additional notes, some give meanings that have changed since Shakespeare's day, in order to carry out Mr. White's plan of giving the meaning of obsolete words. Such a help is quite necessary to the student who does not wish to distract his attention from the poetry every moment to gain linguistic information. But besides these, it has seemed well to add notes on the dramatic purpose of scene, action, and character, on the poetic significance of phrase or speech, on the true rhythm or emphasis. These matters are also touched on in the Introduction, but the notes give especial applications. There is added a short essay upon the conditions of the Elizabethan stage, which it is hoped, beside being useful to the pupil, will have an interest for the general Shakespearean student.

E. E. H., JR.