kind among the works of Shakespeare. But the Poet has elsewhere frequently employed epical elements, and to say that Cymbeline is the most loosely connected and the most varied of all his plays is a hazardous statement. If the preceding analysis has been successful, it has shown. that the drama before us has the same unity, the same fundamental thought, and the same essential structure as the other mediated dramas of the ideal class. Let the reader make the comparison, and he will find fundamentally the same general movement in all of them, and will have revealed to himself one of the deepest principles of Shakespearian Art.

VII. GROUP.-PURE IDEAL WORLD.

This group of plays still has the underlying form of the whole class of mediated dramas to which it belongs. There is a breach in the Real World; then comes the transition out of it into an Ideal Realm of Mediation; last is the return to the Real World. But the religious and idyllic phases of the two previous groups had still a tinge of actual life; now, however, this last tinge is swept away, and there remains a purely Ideal or Romantic World of Mediation, with its own inhabitants of a peculiar nature. These are not shepherds, not monks, not even human beings; but they belong to a supernatural realm, and flit amid an ideal scenery. That is, they are types which the Imagination no longer takes from real life, but creates purely out of itself, and for its own purposes of reconciling the conflicts which have to find here a solution.

But there is something more now than a return to institutional relations there is also a return of the mind upon itself in order to view and portray its own operations. The Ideal Realm becomes the pure realm of poetry, and, therefore, reflects itself in its own crystal fountain. The Imagination still unfolds a dramatic action, but at the same time unfolds itself in that process. Thus both the artist and his work are shown in one movement; both sides are united, and there is reached a totality of representation. Two plays belong here.

Midsummer Night's Dream has, as its ideal realm, the lighter Fairy World, which mediates merely a conflict of love,

and pertains, therefore, only to the Family. Tempest has, as its ideal realm, the far profounder Spirit World, which mediates conflicts, both of Family and State, as well as the most universal spiritual struggle of man - that between sensuality and rationality. The former play is purely comic in its treatment; the latter is serious in tone for the most part, and from this point of view would have to be ranked as a tragi-comedy. Also, in Midsummer Night's Dream the self-reflection of the Poet's process is a burlesque, and, too, a thread distinct from the other threads; in Tempest it is serious and interwoven with every thread, which thus mirrors itself in its very creation. In the former the transitions from and to the Real World would occur within the play; in the latter they occur outside of the action- before and after the play. Tempest alone, therefore, lies wholly in the Ideal World, and, hence, is the supreme work in the ideal class of mediated dramas.

Midsummer Night's Dream is, perhaps, the most popu

lar of Shakespeare's comedies. Its weird, ethereal scenery()

captivates the purely poetical nature; its striking sensu-
ous effects impress the most ordinary mind; while its faint
rainbow-like outlines of the profoundest truths entice the
thinker with an irresistible charm to explore the hidden
meaning of the Poet. There is no work of our author
that is
is so universal —that appeals so strongly to high and
low, to old and young, to man and woman. Its shadowy
forms appear, disappear, and reappear in the wildest sport,
and the critic may sometimes doubt his ability to track
them through all their mazy hues. Nor can it be denied
that there is a capricious play of fancy over and around
the underlying elements of the drama. Still, like all of
Shakespeare's pieces, it is based on thought, and must look
to the same for its justification. Our attempt, therefore,
will be to seize and fix these fleeting, iridescent shapes in the
abstract forms of thought. To be sure, the poetry of the
play is thus destroyed but criticism is not poetry, but
prose. For, if criticism were poetry, it had better keep
silent in the presence of this piece, and not vainly attempt
to imitate that which is inimitable, or say over again that
which the Poet has already so adequately said. The only
justification of the critic, therefore, is that he expresses
the content of this drama in a new form- the form of
thought for his reader, instead of the imaginative

form, which the dramatist has chosen, and, in fact, must choose.

We are well aware that not a few people will regard any attempt to make out a consistent unity in this play as wanton and absurd refinement. Moreover, the great interpreters of Shakespeare will be pointed to, who call it a caprice- a dream without necessary connection in thought of its various parts. That is, the work is a chaos. But every person who reads this play with admiration must grant that there is a profound harmony pervading it throughout; that he feels all its essential parts to be in perfect unison with one another; that the effect of the whole is not that of a discordant and ill-assorted poem. Thus, however, the notion of caprice, or of a dream, must be abandoned as the fundamental idea of the work. [Both these elements undoubtedly are present; there is a capricious ingredient in certain parts, and also the Fairy World is likened to the dream-world; but they are only subordinate members in the organization of the whole. If, then, it must be granted that there is a deep, underlying harmony throughout the entire piece, it must further be granted that the attempt to ascertain and state the law of such harmony is not only reasonable, but necessary.

The procedure of this essay will be twofold. First, it will attempt to state the phases or movements of the entire action, and their transition into one another; second, it will seek to trace the various threads which run through each movement of the play. The former divides the total action of the drama into a certain number of parts; the latter unites the characters together into groups. This will give a complete view of the structure of the work, which must be the foundation for all future conclusions.