n important point to remember is that while Shakespeare was growing in
metrical skill, he was not growing alone. A crowd of other authors
around him were developing in a similar way; and he was learning from
them and they from him. The use of blank verse in English when
Shakespeare began to write was a comparatively new practice, and, like
all new inventions, for a time it was only imperfectly understood. Men
{89} had to learn by experiments and by each other's successes and
failures, just as men in recent years have learned to fly. Shakespeare
surpassed all the others, as the Wright brothers in their first years
surpassed all their fellow-aeronauts; but like the Wright brothers he
was only part of a general movement. No other man changed as much as
he in one lifetime, but the whole system of dramatic versification was
changing.

+Taste+.--But wholly aside from questions of meter, Shakespeare
improved greatly in taste and judgment between the beginning and middle
of his career. This is shown especially in his humor. To the young
man humor means nothing but the cause for a temporary laugh; to a more
developed mind it becomes a pleasant sunshine that lingers in the
memory long after reading, and interprets all life in a manner more
cheerful, sympathetic, and sane. The early comedies give us nothing
but the temporary laugh; and even this is produced chiefly by fantastic
situations or plays on words, clever but far-fetched, puns and conceits
so overworked that their very cleverness jars at times. On the other
hand, in the great humorous characters of his middle period, like
Falstaff and Beatrice, the poet is opening up to us new vistas of
quiet, lasting amusement and indulgent knowledge of our imperfect but
lovable fellow-men.

The same growth of taste is shown in the dramatist's increasing
tendency to tone down all revolting details and avoid flowery,
overwrought rhetoric. Nobody knows whether Shakespeare wrote all of
_Titus Andronicus_ entire or simply revised it; but we feel sure that
the older Shakespeare would have been unwilling, even as {90} a
reviser, to squander so much that is beautiful on such an orgy of blood
and violence. _Romeo and Juliet_ is full of beautiful poetry; but even
here occasional lapses show the undeveloped taste of the young writer.
Notice the flowery and fantastic imagery in the following passage,
where Lady Capulet is praising Paris, her daughter's intended husband:--

"Read o'e