ed brings widespread desolation, but to this he is
indifferent, for it means the destruction of the prison against which
his desires have always beaten their wings, the destruction of a
material and social universe from which he has always longed to be free.

"O, here
Will I set up my everlasting rest,
And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars
From this world-wearied flesh."

How much of all this psychology may we suppose was rendered apparent to
the motley collection of excitable people who flocked to see the
play--which appears to have been a popular one--in the years 1591-97?
Probably as much as may be gathered by an audience to-day from a
tolerable representation of the piece. The subtler truths of Shakespeare
have always been lost upon the stage. In turning over the first quarto
of Romeo and Juliet, we may see that many such matters were pruned
ruggedly off by the actors. The early audiences, like the popular
audiences of to-day, doubtless regarded action as the first merit of a
play, and the stage managers must have understood this. It is noticeable
that, in the authentic text, the street fight with which this play opens
is a carefully-worked-up scene, which comes to a climax in the entry of
the prince. The reporter gives a few words only to a description of the
scene. No doubt, in Shakespeare's time, the characters spoke very
rapidly or all at once. It is impossible that the longer plays, like
King Lear, should have been finished in an evening, unless the scenes
moved with a hurry of life very different from the declamatory leisure
with which our actors move from scene to scene. To make plain the course
of the story was evidently the chief aim of the stage managers. The
choruses are finger-posts. It is true that the choruses in Shakespeare
are generally so overloaded with curious ornament as to be
incomprehensible except as explanations of things already understood.
The prologue to Romeo and Juliet is a riddle to which the play is the
answer. One might at first suppose that the need of such finger-posts
betrayed a dull audience, but no dull person was ever enlightened by
Shakespeare's choruses. They play variations on the theme. They instruct
only the instructed.

If interest in the course of the story be the first excitement to the
theatre-goer, interest in seeing a picture of contemporary manners is
probably the second. Our chief loss in reading Shakespeare is the loss
of the society he depic