The third Richard has all the elements of popularity. He is as hideous as the second Richard was effeminately beautiful, as resolute as his predecessor was weak. It is well that a dramatist should make himself plainly understood, but Shakespeare seems to play with his own art when the splendid rhetoric of Richard III reveals (he soliloquizes more than Hamlet) the cause why he is "determined to prove a villain"—his spite against the world for his own deformity,—and why he is determined to be a hypocrite,
With odd old ends stolen forth of Holy Writ.
The scene of the wooing of the Lady Anne, and the dream of Clarence, are among the most familiar passages in English poetry, and the second is rich in the magic of Shakespeare's blank verse. The wavering character of Richard II, ever in extremes of confident arrogance and of sudden dread, like that of Agamemnon, would not have seemed to Aristotle fit for a hero of tragedy. But in memorable passages of poetry, single lines that, once read, can never be forgotten, the play is rich, and such lines are the mark and sign manual of Shakespeare's genius. "The real Shakespeare cannot help showing himself here and there; and then we are in the presence of something new—of a kind of English poetry that no one has hit upon before...."[6]
It is in "Romeo and Juliet," and the "Midsummer Night's Dream," both relatively early pieces, even more than in the chronicle plays, that this ever-present magic of genius, the unequalled command of beautiful fresh phrases, the hurrying rush of exquisite ideas, first shines out most conspicuously: the youth of passion in the Romeo, and the soul of romance, are accompanied by the gay wit of glorious Mercutio and the lax humours of the Nurse and the servants. Shakespeare was compelled to kill Mercutio by Tybalt's sword, otherwise a character so congenial to him would have run away with the play, and turned the tragedy into comedy. Shakespeare, says Ben Jonson, "had an excellent phantasy" (fancy), "brave notions and gentle expressions, wherein he flowed with such facility that sometimes it was necessary he should be stopped." Mercutio could only be stopped by a sword thrust! The "Midsummer Night's Dream" is the enchanted consummation of the world-wide fairy belief, relieved against the rustic comedy of Bottom and Snug.
"The Two Gentlemen of Verona," like "Love's Labour's Lost," is a bud full of promise. Launce is as delightfully humorous as Silvia is gay and charming, and Julia is the first of the ladies in page's guise and deep in love; but "Romeo and Juliet," and "A Midsummer Night's Dream" are already nonpareils, full-blown roses that time cannot wither.
The "Comedy of Errors," based on Plautus, with the farcical errors of indistinguishable identities in the masters, reduplicated in the servants, would add by its broad farce to Shakespeare's popularity, though not to his fame. But in "The Merchant of Venice" the blending of moral tragedy in the sombre character of the outraged Jew, Shylock, combined with the delightful and tender romance of the lovers, proved the multifarious versatility of the poet, his power in the delineation of the most various moods and passions, and also the unequalled magic of his verse.
On such a night
Stood Dido with a willow in her hand
Upon the wild sea-banks, and waft her love
To come again to Carthage.
Here Virgil is equalled or surpassed in the province where Virgil was greatest; in the use of words that by some inexplicable art suggest more than they seem to say, filling the mind with vague and potent emotion, and a longing not to be appeased, as does the beauty of twilight and moonlight.
Look how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold;
There's not the smallest orb which thou beholdest
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubims;
Such harmony is in immortal souls;
But, whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.