IN the Sonnets Shakespeare gave expression to his
own thoughts and feeling, shaping the stuff of his
experience by the laws of poetic art, to the ends of
poetic beauty. In the drama the same experience of
life supplied him with his material, but the conditions
that beset him were more complex. When he came
to London he had his way to make. "Lowliness is
young ambition's ladder," and the only way to success
was by conforming to the prevalent fashions and
usages. Later, when he had won success, he was
free to try new experiments anti to modify custom.
But he began as an apprentice to the London stage;
his early efforts as a playwright cannot be truly
judged except in relation to that stage; and even his
greatest plays show a careful regard for the strength
and weakness of the instruments that lay ready to his
hand. The world that he lived in, the stage that he
wrote for, these have left their mark broad on his plays,
so that those critics who study him in a philosophi-
cal vacuum are always liable to err by treating the
fashions of his theatre as if they were a part of his
creative genius. He was not a lordly poet who
stooped to the stage and dramatised his song; he
was bred in the tiring-room and on the boards; he
was an actor before he was a dramatist.

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