tinguished for ease and rapidity; at another they move along with mighty energy. All Shakspeare's productions bear the stamp of his original genius; but no writer was ever farther removed from a manner acquired from habit and personal peculiarities.”

Forty-three dramatic pieces are ascribed to Shakspeare: eight of them, however, are considered by English commentators to be spurious, but German critics regard them as genuine. The thirty-five uncontested pieces, which were written in twenty-three years, from 1 1591 to 1614, Malone has attempted to reduce to the following chronological order: Love's Labor lost, King Henry VI (3 parts), the Two Gentlemen of Verona, the Winter's Tale, Midsummer Night's Dream, Romeo and Juliet, the Comedy of Errors, Hamlet, King John, King Richard II, Richard III, Henry IV (1st part), Merchant of Venice, All's well that ends well, Henry IV (2d part), Henry V, Much Ado about Nothing, As you like it, the Merry Wives of Windsor, Henry VIII, Troilus and Cressida, Measure for Measure, Cymbeline, King Lear, Macbeth, the Taming of the Shrew, Julius Cæsar, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, Timon of Athens, Othello, the Tempest, What you will. There are many objections, however, both internal and external, to this arrangement.

"The subjects of the comedies," to re: turn to Schlegel, "are generally taken from novels: they are romantic love stories: none of them are confined exclusively to common or domestic relations: all possess poetical ornament, and some pass into the wonderful or the pathetic." The Two Gentlemen of Verona (compare Montemayor's Diara, book 2) paints the fickleness of love, and its infidelity towards friendship.-The Comedy of Errors (compare the Menæchmi of Plautus, and A Comedy of Plautus called Monechme, German, by Hans Sachs), the only play of Shakspeare of which the idea is borrowed from the ancients, is a piece which ought not to be played without masks. The Taming of the Shrew (compare Goulart, Thrésor d'Histoire admirable de nostre Temps, translated into English by Edw. Grimestone, 1607; Percy's Reliques of ancent Poetry, vol. i; George Gascoigne's Supposes, a translation from Ariosto's Suppositi; also, The Art of Arts, or how to make a bad Woman a good one, formerly practised by an Italian Cavalier, &c., German, Rappersdorf, 12mo.) is derived, mediately or immediately, from a piece of Ariosto.

The prelude of the drunken tinker is probably from a popular tale, and the same subject has been dramatized by Holberg. These pieces are considered as productions of his youth. Love's Labor lost is referred to the same period.—All's well that ends well-the Griselda of Shakspeare (compare Boccaccio's Decamerone, giorn. iii, novell. 9; Painter's Palace of Pleasure; Giletta of Narbon; also the old book, Schertz mit der Wahrheyt presents in Parolles a character of rich comic humor, which would be more celebrated if it had not been thrown into the shade by Falstaff.-Much Ado about Nothing (compare Belleforest's Timbrée de Cardonne, &c.; Bandello's Novelle, Venice, 1566, vol. i; Phænicia, an interesting and memorable History, &c., Magdeburg, John Franken, 1601; Ariosto, translated into English by Harrington, 1591; and particularly George Tuberville's account of this story) is the same, in its main plot, with the Ariodante and Ginevra of Ariosto.-Measure for Measure (compare G. Whetstone's Promus and Cassandra, 1578; Giraldo Cinthio's Hecatomithi overo cento Novelle, Venice, 1593, decade viii, novello 5, translated in Painter's Palace of Pleasure) is the triumph of mercy over strict justice. It contains the splendid character of Isabella.-The Merchant of Venice (compare Percy's Reliques, i; Giovanni Fiorentino's Il Pecorone, nel quale si contengono 48 Novelle antiche belle d'Invenzione e di Stilo, written in 1378, printed at Milan_in 1554, and at Treviso in 1601; Gesta Romanorum cum Applicationibus moralisatis ac mysticis, Augsburg, 1489, and Strasburg, 1538; Decamerone, giorn. x, nov. 1; The Jew, an old English play; also The Carnival in Venice, an old German play) is a wonderful picture of character. It is one of Shakspeare's most perfect works. The fifth act of this play may be regarded as an afterpiece, serving to excite pleasant feelings, after the harrowing scenes exhibited in the preceding portions of the drama.-As you like it (compare Chaucer's Coke's Tale of Gamelyn; Thomas Lodge's Rosalynd, or Euphues' golden Legacy, 1590, 4to., an old pastoral romance) is a charming play, which, with its gayety, liveliness and freedom, seems to have been intended to show that nothing is wanted to call forth the poetry which has its dwelling in nature and the human mind, but to throw off all artificial constraint.-The Twelfth Night, or What you will (Bandello, t. ii, nov. 20), unites the entertainment of an intrigue contriv

ed with great ingenuity, to the richest fund of comic characters and situations, and the beauty of an ethereal poetry. If this was in fact Shakspeare's last work, he enjoyed to the end of his days the same youthfulness of mind, and carried all the luxuriance of his talents with him to the grave.--The Merry Wives of Windsor (compare The Lovers of Pisa, in Tarleton's Newes out of Purgatorie; Il Pecorone, giorn. i, nov. 2; The Fortunate, the Deceived, and the Unfortunate Lovers; Piacevoli Notti di Straparola, Venice, 1567, l. i, notte 4, favola 4) is said to have been written at the request of queen Elizabeth, because she wanted to see Falstaff in love. It is certain that it was acted in her presence (probably at Windsor, at a festival of the order of the garter). Molière's School for Women resembles it in the particular that a jealous man is made the constant confidant of the progress of his rival. Of all the pieces of Shakspeare, this approaches the nearest to pure comedy. The conclusion is made romantic by a fanciful delusion, founded on a popular superstition.-A Midsummer Night's Dream (compare Bettie's Titania and Theseus; Plutarch's Theseus; Michael Drayton's Nymphidia, the Court of Fayrie; Chaucer's Knight's Tale; Boccaccio's Teseide; Legend of Thisbe of Babylon); the Tempest, source unknown (compare Twenty of the Plays of Shakspeare, being the whole Number printed in Quarto, by George Steevens, Esq., London, 1666, 4 vols.). These plays resemble each other in this particular, that, in both, the influence of a world of spiritual beings is interwoven with the turmoil of human passions, and the farcical adventures of folly. The former piece was written certainly earlier, and is, perhaps, the most luxuriant and fanciful of Shakspeare's productions. It unites, in Titania's amour, the extremes of the fanciful and the vulgar. The second, apparently the fruit of Shakspeare's latter years, is superior in its delineation of character. In the wise, all-directing Prospero, in the tender flame of Ferdinand and Miranda, in the masterly picture of the terrestrial monster Caliban, and the heavenly Ariel, there is a most harmonious connexion of opposite conceptions.-The Winter's Tale (compare A Pleasant History of Dorastus and Fawnia, by Robert Greene; Spenser's Fairy Queen, book v, canto 9, 15) is one of those tales which are peculiarly fitted to beguile the dreary leisure of a long winter evening, which are attractive and intelligible even to childhood, and transport even

manhood back to the golden age, when it yielded to the sway of the imagination.Cymbeline (compare Boccaccio, giorn. ii, nov. 9; Hans Sachs, The Innocent Lady Genura; Schertz mit der Wahrheyt; Holin shed's Chronicles; Dion. Cass. Hist. Rom 1, lx, c. 20; Suetonius's Caligula, c. 44; Henry's History of Great Britain, London, 1771, quarto, vol. i, page 17) is a remarkable composition, connecting a novel of Boccaccio with ancient British traditions, from the times of the first Roman emperors. By easy transitions, the poet blends into a harmonious whole the social manners of the latest times, with the deeds of heroes, and even with appearances of the gods.-Romeo and Juliet (compare Girolamo dalla Corte's Istoria di Verona 1594, vol. i; Istoria novellamente ritrovata di due nobili Amanti, con la pietosa Morte intervenuta gia nella Citta di Verona, nel Tempo del Signor Bartolomeo della Scala: Bandello, l. ii, nov. 1; Boisteau's Dirhuit Histoires tragiques, mises en Langue Françoise,1560, 12mo.; The Tragical Historie of Romeus and Juliet, London,1562; Painter's Palace of Pleasure, t. ii, nov. 25; see also Lope de Vega Carpio's Castelvines y Monteses, Comedia famosa).-Othello (compare Giraldi Cinthio, decade iii, nov. 7-trans lated into French by Gabriel Chapuys, 1584-Englished by Painter) is a picture of love, and its pitiable fate, in a world whose atmosphere is too rough for this tenderest blossom of human life. The sweetest and the bitterest, love and hatred, gayety and dark forebodings, tender embraces and sepulchres, the fulness of life, and self-destruction, are blended into a unity of impression in this harmonious and wonderful work. In Othello, we recognize the wild nature of the African, tarned only in appearance by the desire of fame, by foreign laws of honor, and by nobler and milder manners. His jealousy is of that sensual kind which, in burning climes, has given birth to the disgraceful confine ment of women, and to a thousand unnatural usages. The Moor is frank, confiding. grateful; but the force of passion puts to flight all his acquired and accustomed virtues. A more artful villain than lago was never portrayed; cool, discontented, and morose, arrogant where he dares to be so, but humble and insinuating when it suits his purposes, he is a complete mas ter in the art of dissimulation; accessible only to selfish emotions, he is thoroughly skilled in rousing the passions of others, and in availing himself of every opening which they give him; he is as excellent an observer of men as any one can be who

is unacquainted with higher motives of action than his own experience. Desdemona is a high ideal representation of enthusiastic passion. No eloquence is capable of painting the overwhelming force of the catastrophe in Othello. Hamlet (compare Saronis Grammatici Historia Danica Libri rvi, ed. Stephanii, Soræ, 1644, lib. 3; Belleforest, Avec quelle Ruse Amleth qui depuis fut Roi de Danemarc, vengea la Mort de son Père Huruondille, occis par Fengon, son Frère, et autre Occurrence de son Histoire; English, The Historie of Hamblet, quarto, 1608) is unique in its kind; a tragedy of thought, inspired by continual and never satisfied meditation on human destiny, and the dark perplexity of events in this world. Hamlet is a mind of high cultivation, a prince of royal manners, endowed with the finest sense of propriety, susceptible of noble ambition, and open, in the highest degree, to enthusiasm for the excellence in which he is deficient. He acts the part of madness with inimitable superiority; but in the resolutions which he so often embraces, and always leaves unexecuted, the weakness of his volition is evident; he is a hypocrite towards himself; his far-fetched scruples are often mere pretexts to cover his want of determination-thoughts, as he says on a different occasion, which have

-but one part wisdom, And ever three parts coward. Hamlet has no firm belief either in himself or in any thing else; from expressions of religious confidence, he passes over to sceptical doubts. He even goes so far as to say that "there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." The poet loses himself with him in the labyrinths of thought, in which we neither find end nor beginning.-Macbeth (compare Holinshed's and Harrison's Chronicles of Great Britain, Scotland, and Ireland, London, 1577, continued by Hooker and others, 1587, 3 vols., fol.-the chief source of Shakspeare's pieces relating to English history; George Buchanan's Opera Omn., Edinburgh, 1715, vol. i). This is the greatest and most terrific tragedy that has appeared since the Eumenides of Æschylus. Shakspeare exhibits an ambitious, but noble hero, who yields to a deep-laid, hellish temptation. The weird sisters surprise Macbeth in the moment of intoxication after victory, when his love of glory has been gratified; they cheat his eyes by exhibiting to him as the work of fate, what can in fact be accomplished only by his own act, and gain credence for their words by the immediate fulfilment of the first

prediction. The opportunity for murdering the king immediately offers itself; the wife of Macbeth conjures him not to let it slip; she urges him on with a fiery eloquence, which has all those sophisms at command that serve to throw a false lustre over the crime. Little more than the mere execution falls to the lot of Macbeth; he is driven to it, as it were, in a state of commotion in which his mind is bewildered. Repentance immediately follows, nay, even precedes the deed, and the stings of his conscience leave him no rest either night or day. Nothing can equal the power of this picture in the excitation of horror. We need only allude to the circumstances attending the murder of Duncan, the dagger that hovers before the eyes of Macbeth at the feast, and the madness of lady Macbeth.-In King Lear (compare Shakspeare Illustrated, or the Novels and Histories on which the Plays of Shakspeare are founded, by Miss Lenox, London, 1754,3 vols.; Holinshed; Tyrrel's General History of England, London, 1700, vol. i ; Percy's Reliques, i; the Latin Chronicle of Geoffrey of Monmouth; Sidney's Arcadia, Edinburgh, 1590, quarto; Spenser's Fairy Queen, b. ii, canto x, stanzas 27-33; and the old play The True Chronicle History of King Leir, London, 1605, quarto) compassion is exhausted. The principal characters in this piece are not those who act, but those who suffer. We have not in this, as in most tragedies, the picture of a calamity, in which the sudden blows of fate still seem to honor the head which they strike, in which the loss is always accompanied by some flattering consolation in the memory of the former possession; but a fall from the highest elevation into the deepest abyss of misery, where humanity is stripped of all external and internal advantages, and given up a prey to naked helplessness.-In the three Roman pieces, Coriolanus, Julius Cæsar, and Antony and Cleopatra, the moderation with which Shakspeare excludes foreign appendages and arbitrary suppositions, and yet fully satisfies the wants of the stage, is particularly deserving of admiration. Under the apparent artlessness of adhering closely to history as he found it, an uncommon degree of art is concealed.—Timon of Athens (compare Plutarch; Lucian; Palace of Pleasure), and Troilus and Cressida (compare Dictys Cretensis, and Dares Phrygius; Guido dalle Colonne of Messina, Historia de Bello Trojano, translated into Italian by Ceffi, Venice, 1481, and into German in 1489, in the parts de sexto et septimo bello; Lydgate,

De Bake of Traye. Londra. 1.51.3 i sem. nodemizet ʼn 24 Ranul te From Renuni to Truyennes fatores, Engishert w Caman. 171 mut 153; Chancer. The Bone of Tonies out Crsoute: Boorarrue Fiostrate, 184 NL: Aezander Barang's "nia y' Fries, frm the German sť Sen. Bernett. 17); Chanunn'+ vansinnon :CHimer 15r1 und 134), T'eme sure we pescerly foeau.ng: and we cannot cail then enter "Tragedy or mmet. Turn. sí u te vra of Bhadarat, has not the character of vatre, aULALI MOZE, n he sirmure of fatterers andt saristes, and Juvern.an wrire, in de tienee and meprerators of Tizzon vondst the in antitude of a fuse word. Truus and Cres suta is the only play when Scaaspears allowed to be printed without having been previamely actrit It w, througcet, a party on the Tryan war, not a severibed in Homer, but in the romances of chivalry derived from Dares Phrynia.

The dramas taken from the Engish history are ten. The poet evidently imteraled them as parts of a great whole. The principal features of the events are exhibited with such fide.rty, their causes and even their secret springs, are placed in wo clear a light, that we may obrail from them a knowledge of history in auits truth, while the living picture makes an impresson on the imagination which can never be effared. Eight of these plays, from Richard II to Richard III, are linked together in uninterrupted succession. According to all appearance, the four last were first written. The two other historical plays taken from the Engish history, are chronologically separated from this senes. In King John, all the political and national motives, which play so great a part in the following pieces, are already indicated—wars and treaties with France, a usurpation, and the tyrannical actions which it draws after it, the influence of the clergy, and the factions of the nobles Henry VIH again shows us the transition to another age—the policy of modern Europe, a refined court life under a voluptuons monarch, the dangerous situation of favorites, who are themselves precipitated, after having effected the fail of others; in a word, despotism under milder forms, but not less unjust and eruel. In Richard H, Shakspeare exhibits to us a noble, kingly nature, at first obscured by levity, and the errors of an unbridled youth, and afterwards purified by misfortune, and rendered more highly and splendidly illustrious. The first part of Henry IV is particularly

Renard lif encruces the later hat the reum of Edwind IV, a the w a period of eight years Shudram :tended that termor, rather than a CTES. About preval in dis needy. Rebe is the SCCL or rather the demon of ur whole. He f. fs the precise which t had bedre made of ratings the murde Mariavei 50 snovi. Besides the unit e aversing which he insters, be dresțin us in the greatest variety of ways— profivad sell in deun laton, has wi, pradeore, his presence of mind, his quira activity, and his valer.—In regard to t. pieres peter.3 Mjected by the Eng's edoors, Seringei oleteab that Titas Ardrogens is gengine, but supposes II 1 have been a producten of Shakspeare « youth. Pencies, Przer of Tyre, he as considers as undoubtedly genuine. Thomas Lord Cromwell, Sir John Oldras the, and A Yorkshire Tragedy, be

These three pieces are not only und tionably Shakspeare's, but, in my otESE, they deserve to be classed among his best and maturest works." Respecting Loerce he does not express a decided optiJOB.

Besides his dramatic works, Shakspear wrote one hundred and fifty-four sotizens, and two narrative poems-Venus Adonis printed in 1528), and the Rape o Lucretia. The former is called by Suspeare, in the dedication to the "earl · Southampton, "the first heir of his men. tion." In these productions, the fire power of Shakspeare are not to be TELA taken. Their luxuriant imagery, pay of wit, prolixity, and inequality, are to be at tributed to his youth. Shakspeare Las not strictly confined himself to the ante mythology; for instance, he makes Ver „to be rejected by Adonis. The one hundred and fifty-four sonnets do not resemble, r matter or form, the productions of P trarch. They are condensed, intellectua and often witty. Schlegel touches up-t the important aid which they may a5 int to some future biographer of Shaks,carin regard to the circumstances of his pe vate life.-For further informaty e, would refer the reader to the various exte

tions of Shakspeare, by Rowe, Pope, Warburton, Johnson, Steevens, Malone, &c.; to Douce's Illustrations of Shakspeare (London, 1807, 2 vols., 8vo.); Drake's Shakspeare and his Times (London, 1817, 2 vols., 8vo.); Seymour's Remarks on the Plays of Shakspeare (London, 1805, 2 vols., 8vo.); Hazlitt's Characters of Shakspeare's Plays (London, 1817, &c., &c. Bowdler's Family Shakspeare (London, 1818, 10 vols., 8vo.) is an expurgated edition. Lives of Shakspeare have been written by Rowe, Malone, and Skottowe: the last appeared in London, 1824, 2 vols., accompanied by illustrations of the poet. Numerous alterations and rifacimentos of the plays have been made, for the purpose of representation, by sir William D'Avenant, Dryden, Shadwell, Dennis, Colley Cibber, Garrick, Kemble, &c.-In Germany, commentaries have been written on the great dramatist by such men as A. W. Schlegel, who has translated the greater part of the plays; by Tieck, who has undertaken to complete the translation; by the poet Göthe, &c. In France, many of the plays have been adapted for the French stage by Ducis. Retzsch (q. v.), a distinguished German artist, has lately published designs illustrative of scenes from the plays of Shakspeare, which are highly commended. The first number relates to Hamlet, and was published at Leipsic in 1828.

SHAMANS; in Great Tartary and Mongolia, a part of China, Siberia, and Kamtschatka, priests, who are at the same time physicians, sorcerers, and conjurers. Shamanism, which contains the lowest repreentations of the Deity and of divine things, was probably supplanted in the Southern parts of Asia by the more elevated doctrines of Confucius and Zoroaster. In its present state, in Tangut, a part of China, and in Mongolia, it is a mixture of the old heathen Shamanism with Nestorianism (see Nestorius), and is called Lamaism, or Shigemoonism. (See Lama.) It has been diffused in China, where it is the religion of the court, by the Mantchoos (q. v.), and prevails in Thibet, a part of India, in Tartary, Mongolia, and among the Calmucks. The doctrine of the metempsychosis, and the worship of the god Fo, form a part of modern Shamanism. (See Fo.) The principal doctrine of the primitive Shamanism was the existence of many gods, some created, some increate, existing in the form of heavenly bodies, or of animals, or of inanimate things, or arbitrarily formed by human hands. It also taught

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the existence of good and bad spirits. After death, men continue to exist, in a melancholy condition, influenced neither by good nor bad works. The religious service of the Shamanites consists of sacrifices, prayers, &c., by which the worshippers hope to gain the favor of the good gods, and avert the wrath of the bad.

SHAMO, DESERT OF. (See Cobi.) SHAMPOOING. The process, as practised in the East Indies, is described under Bath, vol. i, p. 611.

SHAMROCK (in the Gaelic, seamrag); probably, in the Irish and Gaelic languages, a generic term for trefoils. The name is commonly given to the heraldic emblem of Ireland. It is sometimes applied to the medicago lupulina, or hop-trefoil, a plant very much resembling, and often confounded with, the yellow clover, from which, however, it is readily distinguished by the spiral form of the pods. It is naturalized, and, with the yellow clover,common in some parts of the U. States; but they are little relished by cattle.

SHARK (Squalus of Linnæus); a family of cartilaginous fishes, allied to the rays, and celebrated for the size and voracity of many of the species. The form of the body is elongated, and the tail thick and fleshy. The mouth is large, generally situated beneath the snout, and is armed with several rows of compressed, sharpedged, and sometimes serrated, teeth. The water penetrates to the gills by means of several transverse openings situated on each side of the neck. The skeleton is cartilaginous. The skin is usually very rough, covered with a multitude of little osseous tubercles; and that of some species forms the substance called shagreen." The eggs of the sharks are few and large, in comparison with those of bony fishes; they are enveloped in a hard, horny, semitransparent shell, terminated at the four angles with long filaments; in short, they resemble those of the rays, and are likewise frequently cast up by the waves upon the shores of the sea. The flesh of sharks is, in general, hard, coriaceous, and ill-tasted, but some are good for food. They are the most formidable and voracious of all fishes, pursue all other marine animals, and seem to care little whether their prey be living or dead. They often follow vessels for the sake of picking up any offal which may be thrown overboard; and man himself often becomes a victim

ed by the Shamrock, read to the Lond. Lin. Soc.; See I. E. Bicheno's paper On the Plant intendreprinted in the Nat. Gaz. (Philad.) of July 7, 1831.