But, most of all, it is to be remembered that it is, practically, only our own century that has compre{019}hended the masterliness and matchlessness of the "Hamlet" and "Macbeth," and the rest of those transcripts of nature, the prophetic insight of whose author "spanned the ages that were to roll up after him, mastered the highest wave of modern learning and discovery, and touched the heart of all time, not through the breathing of living characters, but by lifting mankind up ont of the loud kingdom of earth into the silent realm of infinity; who so wrote that to his all-seeing vision schools and libraries, sciences and philosophies, were unnecessary, because his own marvelous intuition had grasped all the past and seen through all his present and all his future, and because, before his superhuman power, time and space had vanished and disappeared." * The age for which the dramas were written had not come, in that Elizabethan era. * Jean Paul Frederich Richter. {020}deed, why our question did not arise sooner. Nobody asked, "Who wrote Shakespeare?" because nobody seemed to consider "Shakespeare" as any thing worth speculating about. Let us pause right here to demonstrate this. The tongues of the actors were tied, the ears of the audience were deaf to syllables whose burden was for the centuries that were to come after. The time for the question, "Who wrote them?" was not yet. For two hundred years more--from the day of William Shakespeare's death down to years within the memory of those now living--down to at least the date of Lord Byron (who admits that it is the perfectly correct thing to call Shakespeare "god-like," "mighty," and the like, but very unfashionable to read him),--we may ransack the records of scholarship and criticism, and unearth scarcely a hint of what is now their every-where conceded superiority, to say nothing of their immortality. In short, we can not rise from such a search without understanding, very clearly in Fuller, in 1622, chronicles that William Shakespeare's "genius was jocular," his comedies merry, and his tragedies wonderful; his wit quick, but that his learning was very little. Evelyn notes that, in 1661, he saw "Hamlet, Prince of Denmark," played: "but now the old plays begin to disgust this refined age, since His Majesty has been so long abroad." * Pepys, his contemporary, says that the "'Midsummer-Night's Dream' was the most insipid, ridiculous play he had ever seen.... and, but having lately read the 'Adventures of Five Hours,' 'Othello' seemed a mean thing," though he liked Davenant's opera of "Macbeth," with its music and dancing. ** When spending some money in books he looks over Shakespeare, but chooses "'Hudibras,' the book now in the greatest fashion for drollery," instead. It is doubtful if Milton ever read the Shakespearean plays, in spite of the eloquent verses, "What needs my Shakespeare," etc.; since, in "L'Allegro," he speaks of his (Shakespeare's) "native