The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1899-10-26

| furnish forth a dozen or so of differing
/ poeticules with abundance of purple
patches to be sewn on at intervals to
| the common texture of their style.
This characteristic of the play, the
obscurity and artificalfty of the diction.
together with the lack of movement,
have prevented it from ever regaining
the vogue upon the stage which 1t en-
joyed within the first decade of its ex-
istence. In our own century it was
invested with great splendor and placed
upon the boards of Covent Garden in
1898, but only to fall lifeless; and an
other attempt at Sadler's Wells in 1857
was no mere successful. AS an acting
play it is dead. AS a closet drama it
still appeals to our interest in several
ways.
In the first place, it is probably the
earliest play that Shakespeare wrote.
Critics dispute whether it was pro-
duced in 1889, 1881, or a little earlier or
later than these dates. If 1883 be cor
rect. Shakespeare was 25 years of age.
How fascinating is the spectacle of the
dramatist trying his prentice hand at
the form of literature in which he was
to surpasS any writer who ever livedi
He had married seven years before
and had now been in London three
years. There had not been time for
him to forget the Latin which he had
conned at the Stratford grammar
school, nor the master under whom
he had learned it,. The rustics of the
countryside appear as Jaquenetta,
Costard and Dull, while the curate and
pedagogue who had amused his boyish
years are condemned to an Immortality
of ridiculea as Sir Nathaniel and Hobo
fernes. Shakespeare had not been SO
long away that he could not remember
every rural somehow it was when
daisies pied and violets blue
do paint the meadows with delight"
and merry larks are piowmen's
clocks" or. on the other hand,
When icicles hang by the wall,
And Dick, the shepherd, blows his nail
And Tom bears logs into the hall,
And milk comes frozen home in pail.
To him the life in Warwickshire may
we'll have been among the solidest of
realities He had left it behind him for
the time being, and could afford TO
make fun of it; but he knew it init
mately, and was in after times to long
for it and make it once more in very
deed his own.
He had come into a new world, the
world of which London was the center
and epitome, a. world in which Mary
Queen of Scots had but recently been
executed and the Armada scattered TO
the winds, in which Hakluyt was pub
fishing his voyages, Greene and Mar
lowe writing their dramas and Spenser
his Fairy Queen Henry of Navarro,
better known as Henry ". of France,
was making good his title to the thro-e
which he assembled in 1889 Sidney was
dying at Zutphen. Charles, duke of
Biron, two years older than Shakes
peare. a soldier who had been made
marshal of France at 16, was now at
81, like Henry his king at sc, storming
cities and capturing fair ladies' hearts,
Unsuitable in arms as in love. Tongue
VILE another doughty general, was a
vigorous supporter of Henry, and
Mayenne was his most dreaded oppon-
ent in the field. 1t was a time of adj
venture and of profuson. Men We're
prodigal of others blood, of their own
lives, of sentiment, of lovers oaths. of
of poetry. 1t was a world of
generous illusions, of romance, of the
incredibly marvellous come true or on
the point of being realized Into this
world Loves Labors Lost" was born,
and this world. too, like the petty world
of a Warwickshire village. figures on
it's pages Here, under transparent /
DISCUSSES. though such as were only
penetrated III our generation by Mr.. \
Sidney Lee, are Henry of Navarro and 4
his two redoubtahle subordinates; and
here his formidable foe, Mayennes
TRANSMITTED into another supporter
Dumain. AS Henry and his followers
in 1856 had met at Saint Brice thel
silken cohorts of Catherine de Medici, /
and held courteous parley with them,
so do the imaginary king and his COM
panionS encounter a French princess
and her maids of honor. AS the am
bassadors of Russia, on mission toll
WOO a bride for the car. had in 1883
been entertained with elaborate cere- +
monial at York House. While Lady \
Mary Hastings, candidate for i'm
perial favor, held state in a pavilion
erected on the lawn, so in the play we
have a deputation disguised as Rus
slams. and a pavilion pitched in the
open field. The Spaniard, Armada,
suggests the armada, The play
of the fanciful and fantastic,