Chapter XII…

Chapter XII

OBSERVATIONS ON JULIUS CÆSAR; ON ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA; ON CORIOLANUS; ON THE WINTER'S TALE; ON THE TEMPEST; DISSERTATION ON THE GENERAL BELIEF OF THE TIMES IN THE ART OF MAGIC, AND ON SHAKSPEARE's MANAGEMENT OF THIS SUPERSTITION, AS EXHIBITED IN THE TEMPEST—OBSERVATIONS ON OTHELLO; ON TWELFTH NIGHT, AND ON THE PLAYS ASCRIBED TO SHAKSPEARE—SUMMARY OF SHAKSPEARE'S DRAMATIC CHARACTER.

The Roman tragedy of Shakspeare, including the three pieces of Julius Cæsar, Antony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus, exhibit the poet under a new aspect. We have seen him dramatise the annals of his own country with matchless skill and effect; we have beheld him touching with a discriminative pencil the heroes of ancient Greece, and he now brings before us, clothed in the majesty of republican greatness, or surrounded with the splendour of illimitable power, the most illustrious patriots and warriors of the Roman world.

The task of combining a faithful adhesion to the records of history with that grandeur and freedom of conception which characterise the unfettered poet, could alone have been achieved by the genius of Shakspeare. He has, accordingly, not only fixed his scene at Rome, during the days of Coriolanus or of Cæsar, but he has resuscitated the manners and the modes of thinking of their respective ages. We enter with enthusiasm into the characters and fortunes of these masters of the civilised globe, and the patriotism and martial glory, the very feelings and public life of the eternal city again start into existence.

The chronology of these three plays having been ascertained with as much probability, as the subject will admit, it is only necessary to observe, as a preliminary remark, that the dates of the first and second are adopted from Mr. Malone, and that of the third from Mr. Chalmers; and to these critics the reader is referred for facts and inferences which, not being susceptible as we conceive of further extension or improvement, it would be useless here to repeat.

29. JULIUS CÆSAR: 1607. Of this tragedy Brutus is the principal and most interesting character, and to the developement of his motives, and to the result of his actions, is the greater part of the play appropriated; for it is not the fall of Cæsar, but that of Brutus, which constitutes the catastrophe. Cæsar is introduced indeed expressing that characteristic confidence in himself, which has been ascribed to him by history; and his influence over those who surround him, the effect of high mental powers and unrivalled military success, is represented as very great; but he takes little part in the business of the scene, and his assassination occurs at the commencement of the third act.

While the conqueror of the world is thus in some degree thrown into the shade, Brutus, the favourite of the poet, is brought forward, not only adorned with all the virtues attributed to him by Plutarch, but, in order to excite a deeper interest in his favour, and to prove, that not jealousy, ambition, or revenge, but unalloyed patriotism was the sole director of his conduct, our author has drawn him as possessing the utmost sweetness and gentleness of disposition, sympathising with all that suffer, and unwilling to inflict pain but from motives of the strongest moral necessity. He has most feelingly and beautifully painted him in the relations of a master, a friend, and a husband; his kindness to his domestics, his attachment to his friends, and his love for Portia, to whom he declares, that she is

"As dear to him, as are the ruddy drops That visit his sad heart,"

demonstrating, that nothing but a high sense of public duty could have induced him to lift his hand against the life of Cæsar.

It is this struggle between the humanity of his temper and his ardent and hereditary love of liberty, now threatened with extinction by the despotism of Cæsar, that gives to Brutus that grandeur of character and that predominancy over his associates in purity of intention, which secured to him the admiration of his contemporaries, and to which posterity has done ample justice through the medium of Shakspeare, who has placed the virtues of Brutus, and the contest in his bosom between private regard and patriotic duty, in the noblest light; wringing even from the lips of his bitterest enemy, the fullest eulogium on the rectitude of his principles, and the goodness of his heart:—

"Ant. This was the noblest Roman of them all. All the conspirators, save only he, Did that they did in envy of great Cæsar; He, only, in a general honest thought, And common good to all, made one of them. His life was gentle; and the elements So mix'd in him, that Nature might stand up, And say to all the world, This was a man!"[492:A]

In the conduct and action of this drama, though closely pursuing the occurrences and characters as detailed by Plutarch in his life of Brutus, there is a great display of ingenuity, and much mechanism in the concentration of the events, producing that integrity and unity, which, without any modification of the truth of history, moulds a small portion of an immense chain of incidents into a perfect and satisfactory whole. The formation of the conspiracy, the death of the dictator, the harangue of Antony and its effects, the flight of Brutus and Cassius, their quarrel and reconcilement, and finally their noble stand for liberty against the sanguinary and atrocious triumvirate, are concatenated with the most happy art; and though, after the fall of Cæsar, nothing but the patriotic heroism of Brutus and Cassius is left to occupy the stage, the apprehensions and the interest which have been awakened for their fate, are sustained, and even augmented to the last scene of the tragedy.

30. ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA: 1608. Shakspeare has here spread a wider canvas; he has admitted a vast variety of groups, some of which are crowded, and some too isolated, whilst in the back ground are dimly seen personages and events that, for the sake of perspicuity, ought to have been brought forward with some share of boldness and relief. The subject, in fact, is too complex and extended, to admit of a due degree of simplicity and wholeness, and the mind is consequently hurried by a multiplicity of incidents, for whose introduction and succession we are not sufficiently prepared.

Yet, notwithstanding these defects, this is a piece which gratifies us by its copiousness and animation; such, indeed, is the variety of its transactions, and the rapidity of its transitions, that the attention is never suffered, even for a moment, to grow languid; and, though occasionally surprised by abruptness, or want of connection, pursues the footsteps of the poet with eager and unabated delight.

Neither is the merit of this play exclusively founded on the vivacity and entertainment of its fable; it presents us with three characters which start from their respective groups with a prominency, with a depth of light and shade, that gives the freshness of existing energy to the records of far distant ages.

The martial but voluptuous Antony, whose bosom is the seat of great qualities and great vices; now magnanimous, enterprising, and heroic; now weak, irresolute, and slothful; alternately the slave of ambition and of effeminacy, yet generous, open-hearted, and unsuspicious, is strikingly opposed to the cold-blooded and selfish Octavius. The keeping of these characters is sustained to the last, whilst Cleopatra, the mistress of every seductive and meretricious art, a compound of vanity, sensuality, and pride, adored by the former, and despised by the latter, an instrument of ruin to the one, and of greatness to the other, is decorated, as to personal charms and exterior splendour, with all that the most lavish imagination can bestow.

31. CORIOLANUS: 1609. This play, which refers us to the third century of the Republic, is of a very peculiar character, involving in its course a large intermixture of humorous and political matter. It affords us a picture of what may be termed a Roman electioneering mob; and the insolence of newly-acquired authority on the part of the tribunes, and the ungovernable licence and malignant ribaldry of the plebeians, are forcibly, but naturally expressed. The popular anarchy, indeed, is rendered highly diverting through the intervention of Menenius Agrippa, whose sarcastic wit, and shrewd good sense, have lent to these turbulent proceedings a very extraordinary degree of interest and effect. His "pretty tale," as he calls it, of the belly and the members, which he recites to the people, during their mutiny occasioned by the dearth of corn, is a delightful and improved expansion of the old apologue, originally attributed to Menenius by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, but taken immediately by Shakspeare from Plutarch's Life of Coriolanus, and from Camden's Remains.

The serious and elevated persons of the drama are delineated in colours of equal, if not superior strength. The unrivalled military prowess of Coriolanus, in whose nervous arm, "Death, that dark spirit," dwelt; the severe sublimity of his character, his stern and unbending hauteur, and his undisguised contempt of all that is vulgar, pusillanimous, and base, are brought before us with a raciness and power of impression, and, notwithstanding a very liberal use both of the sentiments and language of his Plutarch, with a freedom of outline which, even in Shakspeare, may be allowed to excite our astonishment.[494:A]

Among the female characters, a very important part is necessarily attached to the person of Volumnia; the fate of Rome itself depending upon her parental influence and authority. The poet has accordingly done full justice to the great qualities which the Cheronean sage has ascribed to this energetic woman; the daring loftiness of her spirit, her bold and masculine eloquence, and, above all, her patriotic devotion, being marked by the most spirited and vigorous touches of his pencil.

The numerous vicissitudes in the story; its rapidity of action; its contrast of character; the splendid vigour of its serious, and the satirical sharpness and relish of its more familiar scenes, together with the animation which prevails throughout all its parts, have conferred on this play, both in the closet, and on the stage, a remarkable degree of attraction.

32. THE WINTER'S TALE: 1610. That this play was written after the accession of King James, appears probable from the following lines:—

——— "If I could find example Of thousands, that had struck anointed kings And flourished after, I'd not do't; but since Nor brass, nor stone, nor parchment, bears not one, Let villany itself forswear it."[495:A]

"If, as Mr. Blackstone supposes," observes Mr. Douce, "this be an allusion to the death of the Queen of Scots, it exhibits Shakspeare in the character of a cringing flatterer, accommodating himself to existing circumstances, and is moreover an extremely severe one. But the perpetrator of that atrocious murder did flourish many years afterwards. May it not rather be designed as a compliment to King James, on his escape from the Gowrie conspiracy, an event often brought to the people's recollection during his reign, from the day on which it happened being made a day of thanksgiving?"[495:B]

Thus Osborne tells us, that "amongst a number of other Novelties, he (King James) brought a new Holyday into the Church of England, wherein God had publick thanks given him for his Majesties deliverance out of the hands of E. Goury. And this fell out upon Aug. 5[495:C];" and from Wilson we learn, the title which this day bore in the almanacks of the time:—"The fifth of August this year (1603) had a new title given to it. The Kings Deliveries in the North must resound here."[496:A]

From an allusion to this play and to The Tempest, in Ben Jonson's Induction to Bartholomew Fair, 1614, there is some reason to conclude, that these dramas were written within a short period of each other, and that The Winter's Tale was the elder of the two. "He is loth," he says, "to make nature afraid in his plays, like those that beget Tales, Tempests, and such like drolleries."[496:B] Now, it will be found in the next article, that we have no trifling data for attributing the composition of The Tempest to the year 1611; and, could it be rendered highly probable, that the production of The Winter's Tale did not occur before 1610, an almost incontrovertible support would be given to our chronology of both plays. It happens, therefore, very fortunately, that in a note by Mr. Malone, annexed to his chronological notice of The Winter's Tale, in the edition of our author's plays of 1803, a piece of information occurs, that seems absolutely to prove the very fact of which we are in search. It appears, says this Critic, from the entry which has been quoted in a preceding page, that The Winter's Tale "had been originally licensed by Sir George Buck;" and he concludes by remarking, that "though Sir George Buck obtained a reversionary grant of the office of Master of the Revels, in 1603, which title Camden has given him in the edition of his Britannia printed in 1607, it appears from various documents in the Pells-office, that he did not get complete possession of his place till August, 1610."[496:C] In fact, Edmond Tilney, the predecessor of Sir George Buck, died at the very commencement of October, 1610, and was buried at Leatherhead, in Surrey, on the sixth of the same month; and it is very likely that, during his illness, probably commencing in August, Sir George, as his destined successor, might officiate for him.

We learn from Mr. Vertue's manuscripts, that The Winter's Tale was acted at court in 1613, a circumstance which, though it may lead us to infer that its popularity on the public stage had been considerable, by no means necessarily warrants the supposition which Mr. Malone is inclined to make, that it had passed through all its stages of composition, public performance, and court exhibition, during the same year.

Instead, therefore, of conjecturing with Mr. Malone that this play was written in 1594, or 1602, or 1604, or 1613, for such has been the vacillation of this gentleman in his chronology of the piece, or, with Mr. Chalmers, in 1601, we believe it to have been written, for the reasons which we have already assigned, and which will receive additional corroboration from the arguments to be adduced under the next head, towards the close of 1610, and to have been licensed and performed during the succeeding year.[497:A]

"The observation by Dr. Warburton," remarks Mr. Douce, "that The Winter's Tale, with all its absurdities, is very entertaining, though stated by Dr. Johnson to be just, must be allowed at the same time to be extremely frigid." Certainly had Warburton said this, or nothing but this, he had merited the epithet; but Mr. Douce has been misled by Dr. Johnson, for most assuredly Warburton has not said this, but, on the contrary, has spoken of the play not only with taste and feeling, but in a tone of enthusiasm. "This play, throughout," says he, "is written in the very spirit of its author. And in telling this homely and simple, though agreeable country-tale,

"Our sweetest Shakspeare, fancy's child, Warbles his native wood-notes wild."

"This was necessary to observe in mere justice to the play: as the meanness of the fable, and the extravagant conduct of it, had misled some of great name into a wrong judgment of its merit; which, as far as it regards sentiment and character, is scarce inferior to any in the whole collection."[498:A] This, indeed, is all that Warburton has said on the general character of The Winter's Tale, but it is high praise, and coincides in almost every respect with what Mr. Douce has himself very justly declared on the same subject, when, in the passage immediately following that which we have already quoted from his Illustrations, he adds,—"In point of fine writing it may be ranked among Shakspeare's best efforts. The absurdities pointed at by Warburton, together with the whimsical anachronisms of Whitson pastorals, Christian burial, an emperor of Russia, and an Italian painter of the fifteenth century, are no real drawbacks on the superlative merits of this charming drama. The character of Perdita will remain for ages unrivalled; for where shall such language be found as she is made to utter?"[498:B]

As Shakspeare was indebted for the story of The Winter's Tale to the Dorastus and Fawnia of Robert Greene, which was published in 1588, so it is probable that he was under a similar obligation for its name to "A booke entitled A Wynter Nyght's Pastime," which was entered at Stationers' Hall on May the 22d, 1594. It is, also, not unlikely that the adoption of the title might influence the nature of the composition; for, as Schlegel has remarked, "The Winter's Tale is as appropriately named as The Midsummer-Night's Dream. It is one of those tales which are peculiarly calculated to beguile the dreary leisure of a long winter evening, which are even attractive and intelligible to childhood, and which, animated by fervent truth in the delineation of character and passion, invested with the decoration of a poetry lowering itself, as it were, to the simplicity of the subject, transport even manhood back to the golden age of imagination."[498:C]

Such indeed is the character of the latter and more interesting part of this drama, which, separated by a chasm of sixteen years from the business of the three preceding acts, may be said, in some measure, to constitute a distinct play. The fourth act, especially, is a pastoral of the most fascinating description, in which Perdita, pure as

——————————— "the fann'd snow That's bolted by the northern blasts twice o'er,"[499:A]

ignorant of her splendid origin, yet, under the appearance of a shepherd's daughter, acting with such an intuitive nobleness of mind, that—

——————— "nothing she does, or seems, But smacks of something greater than herself,"[499:B]

exhibits a portrait fresh from nature's loveliest pencil, where simplicity, artless affection, and the most generous resignation are sweetly blended with a fortitude at once spirited and tender. Thus, when Polixenes, discovering himself at the sheep-shearing, interdicts the contract between Perdita and his son, and threatens the former with a cruel death, if she persist in encouraging the attachment, the reply which she gives is a most beautiful developement of the qualities of mind and heart which we have just enumerated:—

"Per. Even here undone? I was not much afeard: for once, or twice, I was about to speak; and tell him plainly, The selfsame sun, that shines upon his court, Hides not his visage from our cottage, but Looks on alike.—Will't please you, sir, be gone? (to Florizel. I told you, what would come of this: 'Beseech you, Of your own state take care: this dream of mine,— Being now awake, I'll queen it no inch further, But milk my ewes, and weep."[500:A]

The comic characters of this play, which are nearly confined to the last two acts, form a striking contrast and relief to the native delicacy and elegance of manners which distinguish every sentiment and action of the modest and unaffected Perdita; her reputed father and brother and the witty rogue Autolycus being drawn with those strong but natural strokes of broad humour which Shakspeare delighted to display in his characterisation of the lower orders of society. That "snapper up of unconsidered trifles," his frolic pedlar, is one of the most entertaining specimens of wicked ingenuity that want and opportunity ever generated.

33. THE TEMPEST: 1611. The dates assigned by the two chronologers, for the composition of this drama, seem to be inferred from premises highly inconclusive and improbable. Mr. Malone conceives it to have been written in 1612, because its title appears to him to have been derived from the circumstance of a dreadful tempest occurring in the October, November, and December of the year 1612; and Mr. Chalmers has exchanged this epoch for 1613, because there happened "a great tempest of thunder and lightning, on Christmas day, 1612."[500:B] "This intimation," he subjoins, "necessarily carries the writing of The Tempest into the subsequent year, since there is little probability, that our poet would write this enchanting drama, in the midst of the tempest, which overthrew so many mansions, and wrecked so many ships."[500:C]

It is very extraordinary that, when all the circumstances which could lead to the suggestion of the title of The Tempest, are to be found in books, to which, from his allusions, we know our author must have had recourse, and in events which took place, during the two years immediately preceding the period that we have fixed upon, and at the very spot referred to in the play, these critics should have imagined that a series of stormy weather occurring at home, or a single storm on Christmas day, could have operated with the poet in his choice of a name.

It is scarcely possible to avoid smiling at the objection which Mr. Chalmers so seriously brings forward against the conjecture of his predecessor, founded on the improbability of the poet's writing his Tempest in the midst of a tempest; a mode of refutation which could only have been adopted one would think under the supposition, that Shakspeare, during these three stormy months, had wanted the protection of a roof. The inference, however, which he draws from his own storm, on Christmas day, namely, that The Tempest must necessarily have been written in 1613, is still less tenable than the position of Mr. Malone; for we are told, on the authority of Mr. Vertue's Manuscripts, "that the Tempest was acted by John Heminge and the rest of the King's company, before Prince Charles, the Lady Elizabeth, and the Prince Palatine elector, in the beginning of the year 1613."[501:A] Now we learn from Wilson the historian, that the Prince Palatine was married to the Lady Elizabeth in February, 1613, her brother Prince Charles leading her to church; and on this occasion, no doubt, it was, that The Tempest, having been received the preceding season with great favour and popularity, was re-performed; for Wilson tells us, that in consequence of these nuptials, "the feastings, maskings, and other Royall formalities, were as troublesome ('tis presum'd) to the Lovers, as the relation of them here may be to the reader;" and he adds, in the next page, that they were "tired with feasting and jollity."[502:A]

But how can this relation be reconciled with the chronology of Mr. Chalmers? for, if The Tempest, as he supposes, was written in 1613, it must have been commenced and finished in the course of one month! a rapidity of composition which, considering the unrivalled excellence of this drama, is scarcely within the bounds of probability. Beside, were The Tempest the production of January, 1613, it must have been written on the spur of the occasion, and for the nuptials in question; and is it to be supposed that no reference to such an event would be found throughout a play composed expressly to adorn, if not to compliment, the ceremony?

If we can, therefore, ascertain, that all the circumstances necessary for the suggestion, not only of the title of The Tempest, but of a considerable part of its fable, may have occurred to Shakspeare's mind anterior to the close of 1611, and would particularly press upon it, during the two years preceding this date, it may, without vanity, be expected, that the epoch which we have chosen, will be preferred to those which we have just had reason to pronounce either trivial or improbable.

So far back as to 1577, have Mr. Steevens and Dr. Farmer referred for some particulars to which Shakspeare was indebted for his conception of the "foul witch Sycorax," and her god Setebos[502:B]; but the circumstances which led to the name of the play, to the storm with which it opens, and to some of the wondrous incidents on the enchanted island, commence with the publication of Raleigh's "Discoverie of the Large, Rich, and Beautiful Empire of Guiana," a book that was printed at London in 1596, and in which this great man, after mentioning the Channel of Bahama, adds,—"The rest of the Indies for calms, and diseases, are very troublesome; and the Bermudas, a hellish sea, for thunder, lightning, and storms."[503:A]

From this publication, therefore, our author acquired his first intimation of the "still vexed Bermoothes," which was repeated by the appearance of Hackluyt's Voyages, in 1600, in which, as Dr. Farmer observes, "he might have seen a description of Bermuda, by Henry May, who was shipwrecked there in 1593."[503:B] But the event which immediately gave rise to the composition of The Tempest, was the Voyage of Sir George Sommers, who was shipwrecked on Bermudas in 1609, and whose adventures were given to the public by Silvester Jourdan, one of his crew, with the following title:—A Discovery of the Bermudas, otherwise called the ISLE OF DIVELS: By Sir Thomas Gates, Sir Geo. Sommers, and Captayne Newport, and divers others. In this publication, Jourdan informs us, that "the Islands of the Bermudas, as every man knoweth, that hath heard, or read of them, were never inhabited by any Christian, or heathen, people, but ever esteemed, and reputed, a most prodigious, and inchanted, place, affording nothing but gusts, stormes and foul weather; which made every navigator and mariner to avoid them, as Scylla and Charybdis, or as they would shun the Devil himselfe."

Now these particulars in Jourdan's book, taken in conjunction with preceding intimations, appear to us to have been fully adequate to the purpose of suggesting to the creative mind of Shakspeare, without any reference to succeeding pamphlets on the subject, or to storms at home, the name, the opening incidents, and the magical portion of his drama; for, when Mr. Chalmers refers us to A Plaine Description of the Bermudas now called Sommer islands, it should be recollected, that, even on his own chronology, this work, which was printed in 1613, must, unless it had appeared on the first days of the new year, have come too late to have furnished the poet with any additional information.[504:A]

That The Tempest had been produced anterior to the stormy autumn of 1612 seems to have been the opinion of Mr. Douce; for, alluding to the use which the commentators have made of the mere date of Sommers's voyage, he adds,—"but the important particulars of his shipwreck, from which it is exceedingly probable that the outline of a considerable part of this play was borrowed, has been unaccountably overlooked;" and then, after quoting the title, and noticing some of the particulars of Jourdan's book, and introducing a passage from Stowe's Annals descriptive of Sommers's shipwreck on the "dreadful coast of the Bermodes, which island were of all nations said and supposed to bee inchanted and inhabited with witches and devills," he proceeds thus:—"Now if some of these circumstances in the shipwreck of Sir George Sommers be considered, it may possibly turn out that they are 'the particular and recent event which determined Shakspeare to call his play The Tempest,' instead of 'the great tempest of 1612,' which has already been supposed to have suggested its name, and which might have happened after its composition."[504:B]

From these circumstances, and this chain of reasoning, we are induced to conclude, that The Tempest was written towards the close of 1611, and that it was brought on the stage early in the succeeding year.

The Tempest is, next to Macbeth, the noblest product of our author's genius. Never were the wild and the wonderful, the pathetic and the sublime, more artfully and gracefully combined with the sportive sallies of a playful imagination, than in this enchantingly attractive drama. Nor is it less remarkable, that all these excellencies of the highest order are connected with a plot which, in its mechanism, and in the preservation of the unities, is perfectly classical and correct.

The action, which turns upon the restoration of Prospero to his former dignities, involving in its successful issue, the union of Ferdinand and Miranda, the temporary punishment of the guilty, and the reconciliation of all parties, is simple, integral, and complete. The place is confined to a small island, and, for the most part, to the cave of Prospero, or its immediate vicinity, and the poet has taken care to inform us twice in the last act, that the time occupied in the representation, has not exceeded three hours.[505:A]

Yet within this short space are brought together, and without any violation of dramatic probability or consistency, the most extraordinary incidents and the most singular assemblage of characters, that fancy, in her wildest mood, has ever generated. A magician possessed of the most awful and stupendous powers; a spirit of the air beautiful and benign; a goblin hideous and malignant, a compound of the savage, the demon, and the brute; and a young and lovely female who has never seen a human being, save her father, are the inhabitants of an island, no otherwise frequented than by the fantastic creations of Prospero's necromantic art.

A solemn and mysterious grandeur envelopes the character of Prospero, from his first entrance to his final exit, the vulgar magic of the day being in him blended with such a portion of moral dignity and philosophic wisdom, as to receive thence an elevation, and an impression of sublimity, of which it could not previously have been thought susceptible.

The exquisite simplicity, ingenuous affection, and unsuspicious confidence of Miranda, united as they are with the utmost sweetness and tenderness of disposition, render the scenes which pass between her and Ferdinand beyond measure delightful and refreshing; they are, indeed, as far as relates to her share of the dialogue, perfectly paradisaical. Nor is the conception of this singularly situated character less striking, than the consistency with which, to the very last, it is supported, throughout all its parts.

On the wildly-graceful picture of Ariel, that "delicate spirit," whose occupation it was,

——— —— —— "To tread the ooze Of the salt deep; To run upon the sharp wind of the north: To do business in the veins o' the earth, When it is bak'd with frost; —— to dive into the fire; to ride On the curl'd clouds; ———————— to fetch dew From the still vex'd Bermoothes;"

what language can express an adequate encomium! All his thoughts and actions, his pastimes and employments, are such as could only belong to a being of a higher sphere, of a more sublimated and ætherial existence than the race of man. Even the very words which he chants, seem to refer to "no mortal business," and to form "no sound that the earth owes."

Of a nature directly opposed to this elegant and sylph-like essence, is the hag-born monster Caliban, one of the most astonishing productions of a mind exhaustless in the creation of all that is novel, original, and great. Generated by a devil and a witch, deformed, prodigious, and obscene, and breathing nothing but malice, sensuality, and revenge, this fearful compound is yet, from the poetical vigour of his language and ideas, highly interesting to the imagination. Imagery, derived from whatever is darkly horrible and mysteriously repulsive, clothe the expression of his passions or the denunciation of his curses; whilst, even in his moments of hilarity, the barbarous, the grotesque, and the romantic, alternately, or conjointly, sustain, with admirable harmony, the keeping of his character.

That the system of Magic or Enchantment, which has given so much attraction to this play, was at the period of its production an article in the popular creed of general estimation, and, even among the learned, received with but little hesitation, may be clearly ascertained from the writers of Shakspeare's times. Thus, Howard, Earl of Northampton, in his "Defensative against the poyson of supposed Prophecies," 1583; Scot, in his "Discoverie of Witchcraft" and "Discours of Divels and Spirits," 1584; James, in his "Demonologie," 1603; Mason, in his "Anatomie of Sorceerie," 1612; and finally, Burton, in his "Anatomie of Melancholy," 1617, all bear witness, in such a manner to the fact, as proves, that, of the existence of The Art of Sorcery, however unlawful it might be deemed by many, few presumed to doubt. The very title of Howard's book informs us, that "invocations of damned spirits" and "judicials of astrology" were "causes of great disorder in the commonwealth;" and in the work, speaking of the same arts, he adds,—"We need not rifle in the monuments of former times, so long as the present age wherein we live may furnish us with store of most strange examples." Scot declares, in his "Epistle to the Reader," that "conjurors and enchanters make us fooles still, to the shame of us all;" and in the 42d chapter of his 15th book, he has inserted a copy of a letter written to him by a professor of the necromantic art, who had been condemned to die for his supposed diabolical practices, but who, through his own repentance, and the mediation of Lord Leicester with the Queen, had been reprieved. An extract or two from this curious epistle, will place in a striking light the great prevalence of the credulity on which we are commenting. "Maister R. Scot, according to your request, I have drawne out certaine abuses worth the noting, touching the worke you have in hand; things which I my selfe have seene within these xxvi yeares, among those which were counted famous and skilfull in those sciences. And bicause the whole discourse cannot be set downe, without nominating certaine persons, of whom some are dead, and some living, whose freends remaine yet of great credit: in respect thereof, I knowing that mine enimies doo alreadie in number exceed my freends; I have considered with my selfe, that it is better for me to staie my hand, than to commit that to the world, which may increase my miserie more than releeve the same. Notwithstanding, bicause I am noted above a great many others to have had some dealings in those vaine arts and wicked practises; I am therefore to signifie unto you, and I speake it in the presence of God, that among all those famous and noted practisers, that I have been conversant with all these xxvi years, I could never see anie matter of truth, &c." He then, after exposing the futility of these studies, and lamenting his addiction to them, adds,—"For mine owne part, I have repented me five yeares past: at which time I sawe a booke, written in the old Saxon toong, by one Sir John Malborne, a divine of Oxenford, three hundred yeares past; wherein he openeth all the illusions and inventions of those arts and sciences: a thing most worthie the noting. I left the booke with the parson of Slangham, in Sussex, where if you send for it in my name, you may have it."

At the conclusion of this letter, which is dated the 8th of March, 1582, Scot says, as a further proof of the folly of the times,—"I sent for this booke of purpose, to the parson of Slangham, and procured his best friends, men of great worship and credit, to deale with him, that I might borrowe it for a time. But such is his follie and superstition, that although he confessed he had it; yet he would not lend it; albeit a friend of mine, being knight of the shire, would have given his word for the restitution of the same safe and sound."[509:A]

The reception of James's work on Demonology, which is as copious on the arts of enchantment as on those of witchcraft, is itself a most striking instance of the gross credulity of his subjects; for, while the learned, the sensible, and humane treatise of Scot, was either reprobated or neglected, the labours of this monarch in behalf of superstition, were received with applause, and referred to with a deference which admitted not of question.

Mason followed the footsteps of Scot, though not with equal ability, when in 1612 he endeavoured to throw ridicule upon "Inchanters and Charmers—they, which by using of certaine conceited words, characters, circles, amulets, and such like vaine and wicked trumpery (by God's permission) doe work great marvailes: as namely in causing of sicknesse, as also in curing diseases in men's bodies. And likewise binding some, that they cannot use their naturall powers and faculties; as we see in Night-spells. Insomuch as some of them doe take in hand to bind the Divell himselfe by their inchantments."

Five years afterwards, Burton, who seems to have been a believer on the influence which the Devil was supposed to exert in cherishing the growth of Sorcery, records that Magic is "practised by some still, maintained and excused;" and he adds, that "Nero and Heliogabalus, Maxentius, and Julianus Apostata, were never so much addicted to Magick of old, as some of our modern Princes and Popes themselves are now adayes."[509:B]

The Art of Magic had, during the reign of Elizabeth, assumed a more scientific appearance, from its union with the mystic reveries of the Cabalists and Rosicrusians, and, under this modification, has it been adopted by Shakspeare for the purposes of dramatic impression. Astrology, Alchemistry, and what was termed Theurgy, or an intercourse with Divine Spirits, were combined with the more peculiar doctrines of Necromancy or the Black Art, and, under this form, was a system of mere delusions frequently mistaken for a branch of Natural Philosophy. Thus Fuller, speaking of Dr. John Dee, the Prince of Magicians in Shakspeare's days, says,—"He was a most excellent Mathematician and Astrologer, well skilled in Magick, as the Antients did, the Lord Bacon doth, and all may accept the sence thereof, viz., in the lawfull knowledg of Naturall Philosophie.

"This exposed him, anno 1583, amongst his Ignorant Neighbours, where he then liv'd, at Mortclack in Surrey, to the suspicion of a Conjurer: the cause I conceive, that his Library was then seized on, wherein were four thousand Books, and seven hundred of them Manuscripts."[510:A]

This singular character, who was born in 1527, and did not die until after the accession of James, was certainly possessed of much mathematical knowledge, having delivered lectures at Paris on the Elements of Euclid, with unprecedented applause; but he was at the same time grossly superstitious and enthusiastic, not only dealing in nativities, talismans, and charms, but pretending to a familiar intercourse with the world of spirits, of which Dr. Meric Casaubon has published a most extraordinary account, in a large folio volume, entitled, "A true and faithful relation of what passed for many years between Dr. John Dee and some spirits," 1659: and what is still more extraordinary, this learned editor tells us in his preface, that he "never gave more credit to any humane history of former times."

Dee, who had been educated at Cambridge, and was an excellent classical scholar, had, as might be supposed, in an age of almost boundless credulity, many patrons, and among these were the Lords Pembroke and Leicester, and even the Queen herself; but, notwithstanding this splendid encouragement, and much private munificence, particularly from the female world, our astrologer, like most of his tribe, died miserably poor. His love of books has given him a niche in Mr. Dibdin's Bibliographical Romance, where, under the title of the renowned Dr. John Dee, he is introduced in the following animated manner:—"Let us fancy we see him in his conjuring cap and robes—surrounded with astrological, mathematical, and geographical instruments—with a profusion of Chaldee characters inscribed upon vellum rolls—and with his celebrated Glass suspended by magical wires.—Let us then follow him into his study at midnight, and view him rummaging his books; contemplating the heavens; making calculations; holding converse with invisible spirits; writing down their responses: anon, looking into his correspondence with Count a Lasco, and the emperors Adolphus and Maximilian; and pronouncing himself, with the most heart-felt complacency, the greatest genius of his age! In the midst of these self-complacent reveries, let us imagine we see his wife and little ones intruding: beseeching him to burn his books and instruments; and reminding him that there was neither a silver spoon, nor a loaf of bread in the cupboard. Alas, poor Dee!"[511:A]

We have some reason to conclude, from the history of his life, of which Hearne has given us a very copious account[512:A], that Dee was more of an enthusiast than a knave; but this cannot be predicated of his associate Kelly, who was assuredly a most impudent impostor. "He was born," says Fuller, whose account of him is singularly curious, "at Worcester, (as I have it from the Scheame of his Nativity, graved from the original calculation of Doctor Dee), Anno Domini 1555, August the first, at four o clock in the afternoon, the Pole being there elevated, qr. 52 10—He was well studied in the mysteries of nature, being intimate with Doctor Dee, who was beneath him in Chemistry, but above him in Mathematicks. These two are said to have found a very large quantity of Elixer in the ruins of Glassenbury Abby.

"Afterwards (being here in some trouble) he (Kelly) went over beyond the seas, with Albertus Alasco, a Polonian Baron, who——it seems, sought to repair his fortunes by associating himself with these two Arch-chemists of England.

"How long they continued together, is to me unknown. Sir Edward (though I know not how he came by his knight-hood) with the Doctor, fixed at Trebona in Bohemia, where he is said to have transmuted a brass[513:A] warming-pan, (without touching or melting, onely warming it by the fire, and putting the Elixir thereon) into pure silver, a piece whereof was sent to Queen Elizabeth.—

"They kept constant intelligence with a Messenger or Spirit, giving them advice how to proceed in their mysticall discoveries, and injoining them, that, by way of preparatory qualification for the same, they should enjoy their wives in common.—

"This probably might be the cause, why Doctor Dee left Kelley, and return'd into England. Kelley continuing still in Germany, ranted it in his expences (say the Brethren of his own art) above the sobriety befitting so mysterious a Philosopher. He gave away in gold-wyer rings, at the marriage of one of his Maid-servants, to the value of four thousand pounds.—

"Come we now to his sad catastrophe. Indeed, the curious had observed, that in the Scheme of his Nativity, not onely the Dragons-tail was ready to promote abusive aspersions against him (to which living and dead he hath been subject) but also something malignant appears posited in Aquarius, which hath influence on the leggs, which accordingly came to pass. For being twice imprisoned (for what misdemeanor I know not) by Radulphus the Emperor, he endeavoured to escape out of an high window, and tying his sheets together to let him down fell (being a weighty man) and brake his legg, whereof he died, 1595."[513:B]

It appears, however, from other sources, that the trouble to which Kelly was put, consisted in losing his ears on the pillory in Lancashire; that the credulity of the age had allotted him the post of descryer, or seer of visions to Dee, whom he accompanied to Germany, and that one of his offices, under this appointment, was to watch and report the gesticulations of the spirits whom his superior had fixed and compelled to appear in a talisman or stone, which very stone, we are informed, is now in the Strawberry-hill collection, and is nothing more than a finely polished mass of canal coal! His knighthood was the reward of a promise to assist the Emperor Rodolphus the Second, in his search after the philosopher's stone; and the discovery of his deceptive practices led him to a prison, from which it is said Elizabeth, to whom a piece of the transmuted warming-pan had been sent, had tempted him to make that escape which terminated in his death.[514:A]

Such were the leaders of the cabalistic and alchemical Magi in the days of our Virgin Queen; men, in the estimation of the great bulk of the people, possessed of super-human power, and who, notwithstanding their ignorance and presumption, and the exposure of their art by some choice spirits of their own, and the immediately subsequent period, among whom Ben Jonson, as the author of the Alchemist, stands pre-eminent, continued for near a century to excite the curiosity, and delude the expectations of the public.[514:B]

The delineation of Prospero, the noblest conception of the Magic character which ever entered the mind of a poet, is founded upon a distinction which was supposed to exist between the several professors of this mysterious science. They were separated, in fact, into two great orders; into those who commanded the service of superior intelligences, and into those who, by voluntary compact, entered into a league with, or submitted to be the instruments of these powers. Under the first were ranked Magicians, who were again classed into higher or inferior, according to the extent of the control which they exerted over the invisible world; the former possessing an authority over celestial, as well as infernal spirits. Under the second were included Necromancers and Wizards, who, for the enjoyment of temporary power, subjected themselves, like the Witch, to final perdition.

Of the highest class of the first order was Prospero, one of those Magicians or Conjurors who, as Reginald Scot observes, "professed an art which some fond divines affirme to be more honest and lawfull than necromancie, which is called Theurgie; wherein they worke by good angels."[515:A] Accordingly, we find Prospero operating upon inferior agents, upon elves, demons, and goblins, through the medium of Ariel, a spirit too delicate and good to "act abhorr'd commands," but who "answered his best pleasure," and was subservient to his "strong bidding."

Shakspeare has very properly given to the exterior of Prospero, several of the adjuncts and costume of the popular magician. Much virtue was inherent in his very garments; and Scot has, in many instances, particularised their fashion. A pyramidal cap, a robe furred with fox-skins, a girdle three inches in breadth, and inscribed with cabalistic characters, shoes of russet leather, and unscabbarded swords, formed the usual dress; but, on peculiar occasions, certain deviations were necessary; thus, in one instance, we are told the Magician must be habited in "clean white cloathes;" that his girdle must be made of "a drie thong of a lion's or of a hart's skin;" that he must have a "brest-plate of virgine parchment, sowed upon a piece of new linnen," and inscribed with certain figures; and likewise, "a bright knife that was never occupied," covered with characters on both sides, and with which he is to "make the circle, called Salomon's circle."[516:A]

Our poet has, therefore, laid much stress on these seeming minutiæ, and we find him, in the second scene of The Tempest, absolutely asserting, that the essence of the art existed in the robe of Prospero, who, addressing his daughter, says,—

———————— "Lend thy hand, And pluck my magick garment from me.—So; (Lays dawn his mantle. LIE THERE MY ART."

A similar importance is assigned to his staff or wand; for he tells Ferdinand,—

—— "I can here disarm thee with this stick, And make thy weapon drop:"[516:B]

and, when he abjures the practice of magic, one of the requisites is, to "break his staff," and to

"Bury it certain fathoms in the earth."[516:C]

But the more immediate instruments of power were Books, through whose assistance spells and adjurations were usually performed. Reginald Scot, speaking of the traffickers in Magic of his time, says,—"These conjurors carrie about at this daie, books intituled under the names of Adam, Abel, Tobie, and Enoch; which Enoch they repute the most divine fellow in such matters. They have also among them bookes that they saie Abraham, Aaron, and Salomon made. They have bookes of Zacharie, Paule, Honorius, Cyprian, Jerome, Jeremie, Albert, and Thomas: also of the angels, Riziel, Razael, and Raphael."[517:A]

Books are, consequently, represented as one of the chief sources of Prospero's influence over the spiritual world. He himself declares,—

———————— "I'll to my book; For yet, ere supper time, must I perform Much business appertaining;"[517:B]

and, on relinquishing his art, he says, that

—— "deeper than did ever plummet sound, I'll drown my book;"[517:C]

whilst Caliban, conspiring against the life of his benefactor, tells Stephano, that, before he attempts to destroy him, he must

—————————————— "Remember, First to possess his books; for without them He's but a sot, as I am, nor hath not One spirit to command."[517:D]

Though we perceive the effect of Prospero's spells, the mode by which they are wrought does not appear; we are only told that silence is necessary to their success:—

——————————— "Hush, and be mute, Or else our spell is marr'd."[517:E]

He afterwards assures us, that his "charms crack not," and that his "spirits obey;" and, in one instance, he commissions Ariel to "untie the spell" in which he had bound Caliban and his companions.[518:A]

It is probable that any attempt to represent the forms of adjuration and enchantment would have been either too ludicrous or too profane for the purposes of the poet. In the one instance, the mysterious solemnity of the scene would have been destroyed; and in the other, the serious feelings of the spectator might have been shocked; at least, such are the results on the mind of the reader, in perusing the numerous specimens of adjuration in the fifteenth book of Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft. One of these, as including an example of the then fashionable mode of conjuration, that of fixing the spirit in a beryl, glass, or stone, according to the practice of Dee and Kelly, shall be given; omitting, however, all those invocations and addresses which, by a frequent use of names and phrases the most hallowed and sacred, must, on such occasions, prove alike indecorous and disgusting. The adjuration in question is termed by Scot, "an experiment of the dead," or, "conjuring for a dead spirit:" it commences in the following manner, and terminates in obtaining the services of a good and beautiful spirit of the fairy tribe; and such we may suppose to have been the process through which Prospero procured the obedience and ministration of Ariel, for we are expressly told, that "graves" at his "command"

"Have waked their sleepers; oped and let them forth."

"First fast and praie three daies, and absteine thee from all filthinesse; go to one that is new buried, such a one as killed himselfe, or destroied himself wilfullie: or else get thee promise of one that shal be hanged, and let him sweare an oth to thee, after his bodie is dead, that his spirit shall come to thee, and doe thee true service, at thy commandements, in all daies, houres, and minutes. And let no persons see thy doings, but thy fellow. And about eleven o clocke in the night, go to the place where he was buried, and saie with a bold faith and hartie desire, to have the spirit come that thou dost call for, thy fellow having a candle in his left hand, and in his right hand a christall stone, and saie these words following, the maister having a hazell wand in his right hand, and these names—written thereupon, Tetragrammaton + Adonay + Craton. Then strike three strokes on the ground, and saie, Arise, Arise, Arise!—

"The maister standing at the head of the grave, his fellow having in his hands the candle and the stone, must begin the conjuration as followeth, and the spirit will appeare to you in the christall stone, in a faire forme of a child of twelve yeares of age. And when he is in, feele the stone, and it will be hot; and feare nothing, for he or shee will shew manie delusions, to drive you from your worke. Feare God, but feare him not."

Then follows a long conjuration to constrain the appearance of the spirit, which being effected, another is pronounced to compell him to fetch the "fairie Sibylia."

"This done, go to a place fast by, and in a faire parlor or chamber, make a circle with chalke:—and make another circle for the fairie Sibylia to appeare in, foure foote from the circle thou art in, and make no names therein, nor cast anie holie thing therein, but make a circle round with chalke; and let the maister and his fellowe sit downe in the first circle, the maister having the booke in his hand, his fellow having the christall stone in his right hand, looking in the stone when the fairie dooth appeare."

The fairie Sibylia is then seventimes cited to appear:—"I conjure thee Sibylia, O gentle virgine of fairies, by all the angels of [Symbol: Jupiter] and their characters and vertues, and by all the spirits of [Symbol: Jupiter] and [Symbol: Venus] and their characters and vertues, and by all the characters that be in the firmament, and by the king and queene of fairies, and their vertues, and by the faith and obedience which thou bearest unto them,—I conjure thee O blessed and beautifull virgine, by all the riall words aforesaid; I conjure thee Sibylia by all their vertues to appeare in that circle before me visible, in the forme and shape of a beautifull woman in a bright and white vesture, adorned and garnished most faire, and to appeare to me quicklie without deceipt or tarrieng, and that thou faile not to fulfill my will and desire effectuallie."

The spirit in the christall stone having produced Sibylia within the circle, she is bound to appear "at all times visiblie, as the conjuration of words leadeth, written in the booke," and the ceremony is wound up in the subsequent terms:—"I conjure thee Sibylia, O blessed virgine of fairies, by the king and queene of fairies, and by their vertues,—to give me good counsell at all times, and to come by treasures hidden in the earth, and all other things that is to doo me pleasure, and to fulfill my will, without any deceipt or tarrieng; nor yet that thou shalt have anie power of my bodie or soule, earthlie or ghostlie, nor yet to perish so much of my bodie as one haire of my head. I conjure thee Sibylia by all the riall words aforesaid, and by their vertues and powers, I charge and bind thee by the vertue thereof, to be obedient unto me, and to all the words aforesaid, and this bond to stand betweene thee and me, upon paine of everlasting condemnation, Fiat, fiat, fiat. Amen."[520:A]

The Sibylia of this incantation was, therefore, in origin, form, manners, and potency, very much assimilated to the Ariel of our author's Tempest, being gentle, beautiful, yet possessing great influence, and exerting high authority over numerous inferior essences and powers. Thus the spirits employed by Prospero were subservient to Ariel, and under his immediate direction, partly by his own rank in the hierarchy of elemental existences, and partly by the aid of Prospero.[520:B]

The orders of spirits constituting the miraculous machinery of The Tempest are in Hamlet ranged under four heads,

—— "In sea or fire, in earth or air,"—

a distribution which, though seeming naturally to spring from the usual nomenclature of the elements, was not the division generally adopted; for Scot, detailing the opinion of Psellus "De Operatione Demonum," classes the elementary spirits under six heads, by the addition of subterranean spirits, and spirits of darkness, "subterranei et lucifugi;" and the Talmudists and Platonists add to these, solar, lunar, and stellar spirits; but our poet was probably influenced in his enumeration, by the perusal of Batman uppon Bartholome, who tells us, in a manner calculated to make an impression on the mind, that "spirites are divided one from another, that some are called firie, some earthly, some airie, some watrie. Heereupon those foure rivers in Hell, are sayd to be of divers natures, to wit, PHLEGETHON firie, COCYTUS airie, STYX watrye, ACHERON earthly."[521:A] We are the more inclined to believe this to have been the case, notwithstanding the obvious facility of such a classification, because it appears to us, that in a prior part of this book, the germ of Caliban's generation may be detected. "Incubus," observes this commentator on Bartholome, "doth infest and trouble women, and Succubus doth infest men, by the which wordes (taken from Augustine "De Civitate Dei") it is manifest, that the godly, chast, and honest minded, are not free from this gross subjection, although more commonly the dishonest are molested therewith. Some hold opinion, that Marline in the time of Vortiger king of great Britaine 470 yeres before Christ, was borne after this manner. Hieronimus Cardanus in his tretise De rebus contra naturam, seemes to be of opinion that spirits or divells may beget and conceive but not after y{e} common manner, yet he reciteth a storie of a young damoisell of Scotland which was got with child of an inchaunted divell, thinking that he had bene a fayre young man which had layen with hir, whereupon she brought foorth so deformed a monster, that he feared the beholders." He then proceeds to observe, that the spirits thus procreating are not of a "subtill Materia," "but a more grose and earthie cause, as Nymphæ, Dryades, Hobgoblins, and Fairies," adding, that two instances of such connection, "it is no straunge secret to disclose," had taken place "in fewe yeares heere in Englande."[522:A]

We find Prospero, in fact, employing these four classes of spirits in succession, but in every instance, through the immediate or remote agency of Ariel. Those of fire are thus described:—

——————— "Now on the beak, Now in the waist, the deck, in every cabin, I flam'd amazement: Sometimes, I'd divide, And burn in many places; on the top-mast, The yards and bowsprit, would I flame distinctly, Then meet, and join: Jove's lightnings, the precursors O' the dreadful thunder-claps, more momentary And sight-out-running were not:—

—————————— "All, but mariners, Plung'd in the foaming brine, and quit the vessel, Then all a-fire with me: the king's son, Ferdinand, With hair up-staring (then like reeds, not hair,) Was the first man that leap'd; cried, _Hell is empty, And all the devils are here_."[522:B]

The spirits of the water are divided into sea-nymphs, or elves of brooks and standing lakes. Under the first of these characters they are most exquisitely introduced as solacing Ferdinand, after the terrors of his shipwreck:—

"Come unto these yellow sands, And then take hands Court'sied when you have, and kiss'd, (The wild waves whist,) Foot it featly here and there; And, sweet sprites, the burden bear."

Nothing, indeed, can be more appropriately wild than the imagery of the ensuing song, which arrests the ear of Ferdinand whilst he is uttering his astonishment at the previous melody:—

"Where should this musick be? i' the air, or the earth? It sounds no more:——Sitting on a bank, Weeping again the king my father's wreck, This musick crept by me upon the waters; Allaying both their fury, and my passion, With it's sweet air: thence I have follow'd it, Or it hath drawn me rather:—But 'tis gone. No, it begins again."

"Full fathom five thy father lies; Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange. Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell: Hark! now I hear them,—ding—dong, bell."[523:A]

Well may Ferdinand exclaim, "This is no mortal business!"

The spirits of earth, or goblins, were usually employed by Prospero as instruments of punishment. Thus Caliban, apprehensive of chastisement for bringing in his wood too slowly, gives us a fearful detail of their inflictions:—

——————————— "His spirits hear me— For every trifle are they set upon me: Sometime like apes, that moe and chatter at me, And after bite me; then like hedg-hogs, which Lie tumbling in my bare-foot way, and mount Their pricks at my foot-fall: sometime am I All wound with adders, who, with cloven tongues, Do hiss me into madness."[524:A]

They are afterwards commissioned, in the shape of hounds, to hunt this hag-born monster, and his friends Trinculo and Stephano, Prospero telling Ariel,—

"Go, charge my goblins that they grind their joints With dry convulsions; shorten up their sinews With aged cramps; and more pinch-spotted make them, Than pard, or cat o'mountain."[524:B]

Lastly, the spirits of air, as beings of a more delicate and refined nature, are appointed by our magician to personate, under the direction of Ariel, a "most majestic vision;" "spirits," says their great task-master,

———————————— "which by mine art I have from their confines call'd to enact My present fancies;"[524:C]

and which, on the fading of this "insubstantial pageant," melt "into air, into thin air."

It appears, also, that these etherial forms were occupied night and day in chanting the most delicious melodies, or in suggesting the most delightful dreams. The isle, says Caliban,

————————————— "is full of noises, Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments Will hum about mine ears; and sometime voices, That, if I then had wak'd after long sleep, Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming, The clouds, methought, would open, and shew riches Ready to drop upon me; that, when I waked, I cry'd to dream again."[524:D]

But of the filmy texture, the tiny dimensions, and fairy recreations of these elegant beings, we have the most exquisite description in the song which the poet puts into the mouth of Ariel on the prospect of his approaching freedom:—

"Where the bee sucks, there suck I; In a cowslip's bell I lie: There I couch when owls do cry. On the bat's back I do fly, After summer merrily: Merrily, merrily, shall I live now, Under the blossom that hangs on the bough."[525:A]

That all these elementary spirits were agents only on compulsion, and their obedience the result solely of magic power, is evident from the conduct of Ariel, and the language of Caliban; the former repeatedly asking for liberty, and the latter declaring, that "they all do hate him, as rootedly as I."

It is equally clear, from various parts of this play, that each class had a period prescribed for its operations: thus Prospero threatens Caliban, that

———————————————— "urchins Shall for that vast of night that may work, All exercise on thee;"[525:B]

and, in invoking the various elves, he speaks of those

"that rejoice To hear the solemn curfew;"[525:C]

a doctrine which is still more minutely expressed in other dramas of our poet. In Hamlet, for instance, we are told that, at "the crowing of the cock,"

"The extravagant and erring spirit hies To his confine;"[525:D]

and in King Lear, that the foul "fiend Flibbertigibbet begins at curfew, and walks till the first cock."[526:A]

One principal reason for the reluctancy expressed by Ariel and his associates was, that they were driven, by the irresistible control of the magician, to perform deeds often alien to their dispositions, and to which, if left to themselves, they were either partially or totally inadequate, and, indeed, for the most part utterly averse. We accordingly find Prospero, in his celebrated invocation to these various ministers of his art, addressing them in a tone of high authority; "by 'your' aid," he exclaims,

"(Weak masters though ye be) I have be-dimm'd The noon-tide sun, call'd forth the mutinous winds, And 'twixt the green sea and the azur'd vault Set roaring war: to the dread rattling thunder Have I given fire, and rifted Jove's stout oak With his own bolt: the strong bas'd promontory Have I made shake; and by the spurs pluck'd up The pine and cedar: graves, at my command, Have wak'd their sleepers; oped, and let them forth By my so potent art."[526:B]

This is a passage, in which, with its immediately preceding context, Shakspeare has been indebted, as Dr. Farmer observes, to Gelding's translation of the Medea of Ovid; having evidently, in many parts, adopted the very language of that version. But it is also strictly conformable to the powers with which the magicians of his own day were invested. "These," says Scot, "deale with no inferiour causes: these fetch divels out of hell, and angels out of heaven; these raise up what bodies they list, though they were dead, buried, and rotten long before; and fetch soules out of heaven or hell.—These, I saie, take upon them also the raising of tempests, and earthquakes, and to doo as much as God himselfe can doo. These are no small fooles, they go not to worke with a baggage tode, or a cat, as witches doo; but with a kind of majestie, and with authoritie they call up by name, and have at their commandement—divells, who have under them, as their ministers, a great multitude of legions of petty divels."[527:A]

We may finally remark, that over the popular creed relative to the Art of Magic, and which, as detailed in the common books and traditions on the subject, presents us with little but what is either ridiculous or revolting, Shakspeare has exerted a species of enchantment which infinitely surpasses that of the most profound Magi of classic or of Gothic lore; eliciting from materials equally crude, gigantic, and extravagant, the elements of beauty, sublimity, and awful wonder; and unfolding such a picture of what may be conceived within the reach of human skill and science, and so much of the philosophy of poetry in his glimpses of the spiritual world, that while we are spell-struck by the creations of a fancy beyond all others glowing and romantic, we yet feel ourselves in the presence, and bow before the throne, of Nature.

34. OTHELLO: 1612. Mr. Malone has assigned the composition of this play to the year 1611, though, as he confesses, with little satisfaction to himself, in consequence of Dr. Warburton having considered the following passage, in the third act of this play, as an allusion to the institution of the order of Baronets, created by James the First, in 1611:—

—————— "the hearts of old gave hands, But our new heraldry is hands, not hearts."[527:B]

The baronets, remarks Warburton, "had an addition to their paternal arms, of an hand gules in an escutcheon argent. And we are not to doubt but that this was the new heraldry alluded to by our author."[527:C]

That the text contains a sly allusion to the new heraldry of hands in the baronet's arms, there cannot, as Mr. Douce has justly observed, be a doubt[528:A]; but, unfortunately for Mr. Malone's chronology, Dr. Warburton was mistaken as to the period of the grant of arms, Mr. Chalmers having clearly proved, that "the additional armorial bearing, of the bloody hand, was not given by the patent of creation.—But the King, wishing to ampliate his favour towards the baronets, granted them, by a second patent, dated the 28th of May 1612, among other preheminences, 'the arms of Ulster, that is, in a field argent, a hand geules, or a bloudie hand.'"[528:B]

Now, as we have it recorded, on the authority of Mr. Vertue's MS., that Othello was acted at court EARLY in the year 1613[528:C], it might have been imagined that Mr. Chalmers's discovery would have led him to the adoption of the epoch which we have chosen. But, strange as it may appear, this is not the case; for, finding Iago, in the subsequent act, remarking to Othello, in reference to Desdemona, "If you are so fond over her iniquity, give her patent to [528:D]offend," he immediately disputes the testimony of Vertue, which had been allowed in every other instance, and because a clamour had occurred in the House of Commons against patents of monopoly, in May, 1614, places Othello in this very year[528:E], when, but three pages before, he had spoken of "the audience" knowing, "from their feelings, how much vexation had arisen from the patents of monopoly, which Queen Elizabeth, and King James, had so frequently granted;" and referring, in a note, to a declaration of Sir Francis Bacon to the House of Commons, in which he tells them, "if you make a penal statute, the Queen will dispense with it, and grant a patent with a non obstante."[528:F]

Convinced that an allusion so indeterminate, and which might have been as much relished by an audience before, as after, the year 1614, ought not to weigh against a positive and respectable testimony, we feel no hesitation in expressing our belief that Othello was written in the interval elapsing between the 28th of May, 1612, and the 1st of January, 1613.

The tragedy of Othello, certainly one of the first-rate productions of its author, is yet, in our opinion, inferior, in point of originality and poetic wealth, to Macbeth, to Lear, to Hamlet, and The Tempest, though superior, perhaps, to every other play. It is, without doubt, an unrivalled representation of the passion of jealousy, in all its stages and effects; but the incidents, if we except the catastrophe, are pretty closely copied from the novel of Giraldi Cinthio, who, as Mr. Steevens has observed, "supplied our author with a regular and circumstantial outline." It has also been remarked by Mr. Dunlop, and with some truth, that "the characters of Iago, Desdemona, and Cassio, are taken from Cinthio with scarcely a shade of difference[529:A];" a declaration, however, which, with respect to Desdemona, cannot be admitted without great qualification; for with what beauty, with what pathetic impressiveness, is her part filled up, when compared with the sketch of the Italian novellist! We must also recollect, that although the incidents in which Othello is concerned be nearly the same in both productions, the character of the Moor has no prototype in Cinthio, but is exclusively the property of Shakspeare.

But the most extraordinary criticism which was probably ever passed on the general cast and execution of Othello, has fallen from the pen of Mr. Steevens. "Should readers," says this gentleman, "who are alike conversant with the appropriate excellences of poetry and painting, pronounce on the reciprocal merits of these great productions, (Othello and Macbeth,) I must suppose they would describe them as of different pedigrees. They would add, that one was of the school of Raphael, the other from that of Michael Angelo; and that if the steady Sophocles and Virgil should have decided in favour of Othello, the remonstrances of the daring Æschylus and Homer would have claimed the laurel for Macbeth."[530:A]

That Othello, being more regular in the construction of its fable than Macbeth, might, on that account, be preferred by Sophocles and Virgil, will readily be granted; but that it has, in its general style of composition, any pretensions to be classed as a production of the school of Raffaelle, the leading features of which, according to Sir Joshua Reynolds, are, in conception, beauty, dignity, and grace, and in execution, correctness of drawing and purity of taste[530:B], is an imagination alike extravagant and unfounded. Were we disposed to carry on the allusion to the art of painting, it might be said with a much greater approximation to truth, that this very impressive drama was designed in the school of Spagnuoletto, and tinted in that of Rembrandt; the dark strong manner of the former, and the bold pencil and distinct colouring of the latter, being infinitely more analogous to the strength of its characterisation, and the forcible and often contrasted tone of its composition.

What, for instance, can be more opposed in structure, or contrasted in manner, more partaking of the rapid transition of light and shade which distinguish the school of Rembrandt, than the characters of Othello and Desdemona. From the one we involuntarily retire, appalled by the storm of vindictive passion which agitates his breast; while the other, all tenderness, gentleness, and humility, is entwined about our hearts by the most fascinating ties of simplicity and spotless purity. The prevailing tone of the picture is, nevertheless, gloomy and terrific in the extreme, and the denouement such, as not even Spagnuoletto, though remarkable for the direful nature of his subjects, has ever exceeded.

We must acknowledge, however, that there is a grandeur and sublimity in the delineation of Othello, of which the painter just mentioned had no conception; for though in his jealousy he is sensual and ferocious, apart from this horrid phrenzy which burns within him quenchless as the fervors of his native climate, he exhibits many of the noblest virtues of humanity, being open, magnanimous, and brave, confiding, grateful, and affectionate; and, considering the subtlety with which his suspicions are fostered and inflamed, he becomes at length, from the intensity of his sufferings, an object both of pity and admiration.

Iago, the artful instrument of his ruin, the most cool and malignant villain which the annals of iniquity have ever recorded, would, from the detestation which accompanies his every action, be utterly insupportable in the representation, were it not for the talents, for the skill and knowledge in the springs and principles of human thought and feeling, which he constantly displays, and which, fortunately for the moral of the scene, while they excite and keep alive an eager interest and curiosity, shield him not from our abhorrence and condemnation.

Amid this whirlwind and commotion of hatred and revenge, the modest, the artless, the unsuspicious Desdemona, seems, in the soothing but transient influence which she exerts, like an evening star, that beams lovely, for a moment, on the dark heavings of the tempest, and then is lost for ever!

35. TWELFTH NIGHT: 1613. When Mr. Malone adopted the following passage, on the suggestion of Mr. Tyrwhitt[531:A], as a sufficient basis for the assignment of this play to the year 1614, he appears to have been easily and egregiously misled. Antonio, addressing Sir Toby Belch, says,—

——————— "If this young gentleman Have done offence, I take the fault on me:"

to which the knight replies:—"Nay, if you be an undertaker, I am for you[532:A];" a retort which Mr. Tyrwhitt imagined to contain an allusion to some persons who, in 1614, "had undertaken, through their influence in the House of Commons, to carry things according to His Majesty's wishes;" and who, in consequence of this conduct, were stigmatised with the invidious name of undertakers.[532:B] But we find, from a reference to the Journals of the House of Commons, that the terms Takers and Undertakers had been frequently used in King James's parliaments, anteriorly to 1614[532:C], and Mr. Ritson pertinently observes, that "Undertakers were persons employed by the King's purveyors to take up provisions for the royal household, and were no doubt exceedingly odious[532:D];" so that an allusion to this epithet, in a political sense, if one were here intended, could not serve to appropriate the date of 1614. This being the case, there can be no hesitation in adopting the opinion of Ritson and Mason, who conceive Sir Toby intended a mere quibble on the word, of which the simple meaning is, that of one man taking upon himself the quarrel of another.[532:D]

Having set aside, therefore, any chronological inference from this source, let us turn to Mr. Chalmers, who seems to have determined the date of this drama on better grounds. Yet of the three intimations on which he has formed his conclusion, the first, derived from a supposed reference to the British Undertakers for the plantation of Ulster, we believe to be entitled to as little credit as the kindred hypothesis of Mr. Malone. The second, which is founded on the evident intention of our poet to place in a ludicrous light the then very fashionable rage for duelling, is exclusively his own, and carries with it no inconsiderable weight. "In Twelfth Night," he remarks, "Shakspeare tried to effect, by ridicule, what the state was unable to perform by legislation. The duels, which were so incorrigibly frequent in that age, were thrown into a ridiculous light by the affair between Viola and Sir Andrew Ague-cheek. Sir Francis Bacon had lamented, in the House of Commons, on the 3d of March, 1609-10, the great difficulty of redressing the evil of duels, owing to the corruption of man's nature.[533:A] King James tried to effect what the Parliament had despaired of effecting; and, in 1613, he issued 'An Edict and Censure against Private Combats[533:B],' which was conceived with great vigour, and expressed with decisive force; but, whether with the help of Bacon, or not, I am unable to ascertain. This is another remarkable event in 1613, which the commentators have overlooked, though it may have caught Shakspeare's eye."[533:C]

The third, common to both chronologers, but which has only received its due influence, in the chronological scale, from the statement of Mr. Chalmers, turns on the declaration of Fabian to Sir Toby, that he would not give his part of the sport, alluding to the plot against Malvolio, "for a pension of thousands to be paid from the Sophy[533:D];" and on the assertion of Sir Toby to Sir Andrew Ague-cheek, that Viola had been "fencer to the Sophy."[533:E] Now it appears from Mr. Chalmers, that "in 1613, Sir Anthony Shirley published his travels into Persia; with his dangers and distresses, and his strange and unexpected deliverances;" that "Sir Robert Shirley, the brother of Sir Anthony, arrived in October, 1611, as Ambassador from the Sophy; bringing with him a Persian Princess, as his wife;" that "he remained here, through the whole of the year 1612, at an expence to King James of four pounds a day," and that "he departed in January, 1613."[533:F]

These intimations induced Mr. Chalmers to infer, "that Twelfth Night was written in 1613, while these various objects were in the eye, or in the recollection of the public;" a conclusion which we see no reason to dispute.

The dramatic career of our immortal poet could not be closed with a production, in its kind, more exquisitely finished, than the comedy of Twelfth Night. The serious and the humorous scenes are alike excellent; the former

——————— "give a very echo to the seat Where love is thron'd,"[534:A]

and are tinted with those romantic hues, which impart to passion the fascinations of fancy, and which stamp the poetry of Shakspeare with a character so transcendently his own, so sweetly wild, so tenderly imaginative. Of this description are the loves of Viola and Orsino, which, though involving a few improbabilities of incident, are told in a manner so true to nature, and in a strain of such melancholy enthusiasm, as instantly put to flight all petty objections, and leave the mind rapt in a dream of the most delicious sadness. The fourth scene of the second act more particularly breathes the blended emotions of love, of hope, and of despair, opening with a highly interesting description of the soothing effects of music, in allaying the pangs of unrequited affection, and in which the attachment of Shakspeare to the simple melodies of the olden time is strongly and beautifully expressed.

From the same source which has given birth to this delightful portion of the drama, appears to spring a large share of that rich and frolic humour which distinguishes its gayer incidents. The delusion of Malvolio, in supposing himself the object of Olivia's desires, and the ludicrous pretensions of Sir Andrew Ague-cheek to the same lady, fostered as they are by the comic manœuvres of the convivial Sir Toby, and the keen-witted Maria, furnish, together with the professional drollery of Feste the jester, an ever-varying fund of pleasantry and mirth; scenes in which wit and raillery are finely blended with touches of original character, and strokes of poignant satire.

To these thirty-five genuine plays[535:A], as they may be termed, a large number, when we consider that the life of their author extended very little beyond half a century, interest and unauthorised rumour have added a long list of spurious productions. Among these, we have assigned our reasons for placing what has been commonly called the First Part of King Henry the Sixth, but which, in Henslowe's catalogue of plays performed at the Rose theatre, is simply designated by the title of Henry the Sixth. In the same catalogue, also, is to be found Titus Andronicus, which, though printed like Henry, in the first folio, has, if possible, still fewer pretensions to authenticity, having been clearly ascertained by the commentators, both from external and internal evidence, to possess no claim to such distinction, and to hold no affinity with the undisputed works of Shakspeare.[536:A]

In a new edition of the Supplement, therefore, which Mr. Malone published in 1780, it is our recommendation that these two pieces be inserted, as proper companions for Locrine, Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cromwell, The London Prodigal, The Puritan, and A Yorkshire Tragedy. Of these wretched dramas, it has been now positively proved, through the medium of the Henslowe Papers, "that the name of Shakspeare, which is printed at length in the title-pages of Sir John Oldcastle, 1600, and The London Prodigal, 1605, was affixed to those pieces by a knavish bookseller, without any foundation," the following entry occurring in the manuscript, on the 16th of October, 1599:—"Received by me Thomas Downton, of Philip Henslowe, to pay Mr. Monday, Mr. Drayton, Mr. Wilson, and Hathway, for The first part of the Lyfe of Sir Jhon Ouldcastell, and in earnest of the Second Pte, for the use of the company, ten pound, I say received 10lb."[536:B]

Not content with this ample addition, which first appeared in the folio of 1664, the public has been further imposed upon by another illegitimate group, principally derived from a blind confidence in the accuracy of catalogues, and the fabrication of booksellers. From these sources, and from the authority of a volume formerly in the possession of King Charles the Second, and lettered on the back, SHAKSPEARE, Vol. I., the subsequent enumeration has been given by Mr. Steevens, viz.:—1. The Arraignment of Paris; 2. The Birth of Merlin; 3. Edward III.; 4. Fair Emm; 5. The Merry Devil of Edmonton; and 6. Mucedorus; to which may be added, from Warburton's Collection of Old Dramas, where they are said to have been entered on the books of the Stationers' Company, as written by Shakspeare, 7. Duke Humphrey, a Tragedy; and 8. The History of King Stephen, both registered, June 29. 1660.[537:A] George Peele, it appears, was the author of The Arraignment of Paris[537:B], and a writer, who signs himself T.B., of The Merry Devil of Edmonton[537:C], while the ascription of the plays, once in Warburton's library, was probably owing, at that distance of time, either to the ignorance, credulity, or fraud, of some heedless or mercenary trader.

To enter into any critical discussion of the merits or defects of these pieces, would be an utter abuse of time. We do not believe that, either in the play of Henry the Sixth, or Titus Andronicus, twenty lines can be found of Shakspeare's composition; and, in the residue of this first group, consisting of six more, we decidedly think not so many. In the second, including also eight dramas, the only production now extant, of any worth, is The Merry Devil of Edmonton, which contains a few pleasing and interesting passages expressed with ease and simplicity.

We have still to notice some vague reports relative to our poet's occasional junction with his contemporaries in dramatic composition: thus, we are told, that he assisted Ben Jonson in his [537:D]Sejanus; Davenport, in his Henry the First[537:E], and Fletcher, in his Two Noble Kinsmen.[537:F] Of these traditional stories, the first has been very deservedly given up, as "entirely out of the question[538:A];" the second rests merely on the unsupported assertion of a Stationers' Register[538:B], and the third, though more express and distinct, has been completely refuted by Colman and Steevens.[538:C] Indeed, there is much reason to suppose that The Two Noble Kinsmen was not written until after the death of Shakspeare.[538:D]

From what has been said, under each article of the preceding chronology, perhaps no very inadequate idea may be formed of the DRAMATIC CHARACTER of our poet; but, it will be expected here, and it is indeed essential to a just and facile comprehension of the subject, that a summary or condensed view of this character be attempted, in order, by collecting the scattered rays into a focus, to throw upon it a due degree of brilliancy and strength.

With the view of ascertaining the peculiar GENIUS OF HIS DRAMA, it is necessary that we should attend to a distinction, which has been very correctly and luminously laid down by some late German critics, particularly by Herder and Schlegel, who oppose the modern to the ancient drama, under the appellation of the Gothic or romantic, assimilating the antique or classical theatre to a group in sculpture, and the Gothic or romantic to an extensive picture, separation being the essence of the former, and combination of the latter; or, in other words, that the spirit of the Grecian drama is plastic, and that of the English picturesque.

In fact, the Romantic Drama is the result of that great change which took place in society on the extinction of the western empire, when the blended influence of Christianity and Chivalry, operating on the stern virtues of the Teutonic tribes, gave birth to a spirit of seriousness and sentiment, of love and honour, of enterprise and adventure, which led to a constant aspiration after the great, the wonderful, the wild, and, by mingling the melancholy of a sublime religion with an enthusiastic homage for female worth, threw an anxious but unparalleled interest over all the relations of existence, and all the products of intellectual effort.

The effect of this combination on the poetry of the middle ages, and more especially on that of the immediately subsequent centuries, in impressing it with an awful and mysterious character, has been beautifully sketched by Schlegel, particularly where, as in the following passage, he accounts for the solemn and contemplative cast of its structure, by tracing its dependency on the genius of our faith. "Among the Greeks," he observes, "human nature was in itself all-sufficient; they were conscious of no wants, and aspired at no higher perfection than that which they could actually attain by the exercise of their own faculties. We, however, are taught by superior wisdom that man, through a high offence, forfeited the place for which he was originally destined; and that the whole object of his earthly existence is to strive to regain that situation, which, if left to his own strength, he could never accomplish. The religion of the senses had only in view the possession of outward and perishable blessings; and immortality, in so far as it was believed, appeared in an obscure distance like a shadow, a faint dream of this bright and vivid futurity. The very reverse of all this is the case with the Christian; every thing finite and mortal is lost in the contemplation of infinity; life has become shadow and darkness, and the first dawning of our real existence opens in the world beyond the grave. Such a religion must waken the foreboding, which slumbers in every feeling heart, to the most thorough consciousness, that the happiness after which we strive we can never here attain; that no external object can ever entirely fill our souls; and that every mortal enjoyment is but a fleeting and momentary deception. When the soul, resting as it were under the willows of exile, breathes out its longing for its distant home, the prevailing character of its songs must be melancholy. Hence the poetry of the ancients was the poetry of enjoyment, and ours is that of desire: the former has its foundation in the scene which is present, while the latter hovers betwixt recollection and hope. Let me not be understood to affirm that every thing flows in one strain of wailing and complaint, and that the voice of melancholy must always be loudly heard. As the austerity of tragedy was not incompatible with the joyous views of the Greeks, so the romantic poetry can assume every tone, even that of the most lively gladness; but still it will always, in some shape or other, bear traces of the source from which it originated. The feeling of the moderns is, upon the whole, more intense, their fancy more incorporeal, and their thoughts more contemplative."[540:A]

Who does not perceive that this reference to futurity, this apprehension of the possible consequences of death, which chills the blood with awful emotion, and mingles fear even with the energies of hope, is peculiarly characteristic of the serious drama of Shakspeare? In what poet, for instance, shall we find the terrors of dissolution painted with such appalling strength? where nature recoiling with such involuntary horror from the thoughts of extinction? and where those blended feelings which, on the eve of our departure, even agitate the good, ere the forms of earthly love sink into night, and a world unknown receives the disembodied spirit? Need we point to Henry the Sixth, to Hamlet, to Measure for Measure, to Macbeth, and to many others, for proofs of this continual appeal to life beyond the grave, this perpetual effort to unite, with influential power, these two states of our existence, certainly one of the most striking distinctions which separate the romantic from the antique style of dramatic fiction, and in which, as in every other feature of this species of poetry, Shakspeare was the first who, in our own or any other country, exhibited such unrivalled excellence, as to constitute him, in every just sense of the term, the founder of this species of the drama.

For have we not, in his productions, the noblest model of that comprehensive form which, including under one view all the varieties and vicissitudes of human being, presents us with a picture in which not only the virtues and the vices, but the follies and the frailties, the levities and the mirth of man, are harmonised and blended into a perfect whole, connected too, and that intimately, with a vast range of surrounding circumstances which, both in the foreground and in the distance, are so managed, as, by the illusory aid of tinting, grouping, and shadowing, to assist in the production of a great and determinate effect. To evince the superiority of this mode of composition over that which prevailed on the Grecian stage, it is only necessary to reflect, that the concatenated series of events which is unfolded, with so much unity of design, in the single drama of Macbeth, could only be represented, on the simple and confined plan of the school of Athens, by a trilogy, or succession of distinct tragedies! Can a system, thus necessarily broken into insulated parts, be put into competition with the rich and full evolution of the romantic or Shakspearean drama?

It is evident, therefore, that the romantic or picturesque drama should be judged by laws and regulations of its own; that it is a distinct order of art, displaying great originality and invention, and a much more perfect and profound view of human life and its dependencies, than any anterior effort in the same department of literature; and as all the productions of our poet are exclusively referable to this order, of which he is, without dispute, the greatest master, a brief enquiry into the CONDUCT OF HIS DRAMA cannot fail to throw some light on the subject.

Of the three unities, upon which so much stress has been laid by the French critics, Shakspeare has in general, and, for the most part, very judiciously, rejected two. One of these, the unity of place, was, indeed, indissolubly connected with the tragedy of the Greeks; for as the chorus was continually on their stage, no curtain could be dropped, nor was any change of scene therefore possible; but the unity of time was, most assuredly, neither rigidly observed by them, nor did it constitute any essential part of their system; on the contrary, Aristotle, after remarking, "that the dramatic fable should have such a length that the connexion of the circumstances may easily be remembered," immediately afterwards declares of this very length, that "as far as regards the time of the performance and the spectators, it has no relation to the poetic art," and that "as to the natural boundary of the action, the greater it is the better, provided it be perspicuous."[542:A] In fact, as to unity of place, no rule was required, this limitation, as we have seen, being the inevitable consequence of the defective and insulated construction of their dramatic fable; and as to unity of time, the observation which we have just quoted from Aristotle is decisive, the circumstances attending both these supposed laws being such, as fully to warrant the assertion of Mr. Twining, who, commenting on the Stagyrite, observes, that "with respect to the strict unities of time and place, no such rules were imposed on the Greek poets by the critics, or by themselves; nor are imposed on any poet, either by the nature, or the end, of the dramatic imitation itself;" and we may add, that, in as far as both have been simultaneously reduced to practice, either by the Greeks themselves, or by their still more scrupulous imitators the French, have interest and probability been proportionably sacrificed.

Whether Shakspeare, therefore, acting solely from his own judgment, rejected, or, guided merely by the usage of his day, overlooked, these unities, a great point was gained for all the lovers of nature and verisimilitude. For, omitting regulations which, though generally or partially observed by the ancients, were either altogether arbitrary, or only locally necessary, he has adopted two of which it may be said, that neither time, circumstance, nor opinion, can diminish the utility. To unity of action, the indispensable requisite of every well-constituted fable, he has added, what in him is found more perfect than in any other writer, unity of feeling, as applicable not only to individual character, but to the prevailing tone and influence of each play. Thus, while it must be confessed that the former is, in a few instances, broken in upon, by the admission of extraneous personages or occurrences, in no respect is the latter, throughout the whole range of his productions, forgotten or violated.

It is to this sedulous attention in the preservation of unity of feeling, that Shakspeare owes much of his fascination and powers of impression over the hearts and minds of his audience. It has been duly panegyrised by the critics with respect to his delineation of character; but as referable to the expression and effect of an entire drama, it has been too much overlooked. What, for example, can be more distinct than the tone of feeling which pervades every portion of Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth, and how consistently is this tone preserved throughout each! Through the first, from its opening to its close, breathe the freshness and the fragrance of youth and spring, their sweetness, their innocency, and alas! their transiency; while in the second, a tempest of more than midnight horror, and the still more turbulent strife of human vice and passion, howl for ever in our ears! Again, how delightful is the tender and philosophic melancholy, which steals upon us in every scene of As You Like It, and how contrasted with the bustle and vivacity, the light and effervescent wit which animate, and sparkle in, the dialogue of Much Ado about Nothing!—We consider this unity, by which the separate parts of a drama are rendered so strictly subservient to a single and a common object, namely, the production of a combined and uniform impression, as one of the most remarkable proofs of the depth and comprehensiveness of the mind of Shakspeare.

This excellence is the more extraordinary, as no part in the conduct of his drama is perhaps so prominent, as that mixture of seriousness and mirth, of comic and tragic effect, which springs from the very structure itself of the romantic drama. But this interchange of emotion serves only to place the intention of the poet, and the fulness of his success, more completely in our view; for he has almost always contrived, that the ludicrous personages of his play should give essential aid to the pre-determined effect of the composition as a whole; and this co-operation is even most apparent, where the impression intended to be excited is the most tragic: thus the anguish which lacerates the bosom of Lear, when deserted by his children, and driven forth amid the horrors of the tempest, is augmented almost to madness by the sarcastic drollery of the fool; developed, indeed, with an energy and strength which no other expedient could have accomplished.

These contrasts, which are, in fact, of the very essence of the romantic drama, as requiring richer and more varied accompaniments than the antique species, form, in their whole spirit and effect, a sufficient apology, were one in the least necessary, for the tragi-comic texture of our author's principal productions.

By embracing in one view the whole of the checkered scene of human existence, its joys and sorrows, its perpetually shifting circumstances and relations, and by blending these into one harmonious picture, Shakspeare has achieved a work to which the ancient world had nothing similar, and which, of all the efforts of human genius, demands perhaps the widest and profoundest exertion of intellect. It demands a knowledge of man, both as a genus and a species; of man, as acting from himself, and of man in society under all its aspects and revolutions: it demands a knowledge of what has influenced and modified his character from the earliest dawn of record; and, above all, it demands a conversancy of the most intimate kind with his constitution, moral, intellectual, and religious; so that in detaching a portion of history for the purposes of dramatic composition, the philosopher shall be as discernible in the execution as the poet.

It is this depth and comprehension of design in the conduct of his drama, this amplitude of "a mind reflecting ages past[545:A]," which, while it has rendered Shakspeare an object of admiration to the intelligent student of nature, has occasioned him to be so often and so grossly misinterpreted by the narrow critic and the careless reader.

To these brief remarks on the Genius and Conduct, it will be necessary to add a few observations on the Characters, the Passions, the Comic Painting, and the Imaginative Powers, of his drama.

"To give a stage, Ample, and true with life,—voice, action, age, To story coldly told— To raise our ancient sovereigns from their herse, To enliven their pale trunks,"

and to make us

"Joy in their joy, and tremble at their rage,"

is, indeed, a task of the utmost magnitude and difficulty, but one in which our poet has succeeded with a felicity altogether unparalleled. His characters live and breathe before us; we perceive not only what they say and do, but what they feel and think; and we are tempted to believe, that like some magician of old, he possessed the art of transfusing himself into the frame, and of speaking through the organs, of those whom he wished to represent; so exactly has he drawn, without deviation from the general laws and broad tract of life, each class and condition of mankind.

Whether he delineate the possessor of a throne, or the tenant of a cottage; the warrior in battle, or the statesman in debate; youth in its fervour, or old age in its repose; guilt in agony, or innocence in peace; the votaries of pleasure, or the victims of despair; we behold each character developing itself, not through the medium of self-description, but, as in actual experience, through the influence and progression of events, and through the re-action of surrounding agents. Thus, from the mutual working of conflicting interests and emotions, from their various powers of coalescence and repulsion, the characters of Shakspeare are, like those in real life, evolved with an energy and strength, with a freedom and boldness of outline which will, probably for ever, stamp them with the seal of unapproachable excellence.

Nor is he less distinguished for an illimitable sway over the Passions:—

——————————— "To move A chilling pity— To strike—both joy and ire; To steer the affections; and by heavenly fire Mold us anew,— Yet so to temper passion, that our ears Take pleasure in their pain, and eyes in tears Both weep and smile"—

are some of the noblest attributes of the dramatic poet, and more peculiarly characteristic of Shakspeare than of any other writer. The birth and progress of the numerous passions which awaken pity and terror, he has unfolded, indeed, with such minute fidelity to nature, that it is scarcely possible, as Madame De Stael has observed, to sympathise thoroughly with Shakspeare's sufferers, without tasting also of the bitter experience of real life.

The pathos of Shakspeare is either simple or figurative, in accordancy with the character, and in proportion to the intensity of the feeling, from which it emanates. The sigh of suffering merit, or the pang of unrequited love, affects us most when clothed in the language of perfect simplicity; but the energy, the paroxysm of extreme sorrow, naturally bursts into figurative language, nay often demands that very play of imagery and words, for which our bard has been ignorantly condemned, but which, like laughter amid the horrors of madness, can alone impress us with an adequately keen sense of the overwhelming agony of the soul. Of these two modes of exciting pity, we possess very striking examples in the sufferings of Katherine in Henry the Eighth, and in the parental afflictions of Constance in King John.

The excitement, indeed, of unallayed pity must necessarily either be very short, or very painful, and it has therefore been the endeavour of our dramatist, according to the language of the fine old bard just quoted,

———— "so to temper passion, that our ears Take pleasure in their pain;"

and this he has effected, and often with great skill and judgment, by a transient intermixture of playful fancy or comic allusion, of which, instances without number are to be found dispersed throughout his plays.

Yet great as we acknowledge the influence of Shakspeare to have been, in eliciting the tears of pity and compassion, he has surpassed not only others, but himself, in the power and extent of his dominion over the sources and operation of terror. "It may be said of crimes painted by Shakspeare," remarks an accomplished critic, "as the Bible says of Death, that he is the KING OF TERRORS[547:A];" an assertion fully warranted by an appeal to Richard, to Lear, to Hamlet, to Macbeth, where this soul-harrowing emotion, as derived from natural or supernatural causes, from remorseless cruelty, from phrenzy-stricken sorrow, from conscious guilt or withering fear, is depicted with an energy so awful and appalling as to blanch the cheek and chill the blood of every intellectual being. More especially do we pursue his creations with trembling hope and breathless apprehension, when he traces the wanderings of despair, when he presents to our view that "shipwreck of moral nature," in which "the storm of life surpasses its strength."[548:A]

The scenes which are necessarily required for the developement of villany and its artifices, must, of course, disclose many deeds of atrocity and vice, from which the unpolluted mind recoils with shuddering astonishment; but vividly, and justly too, as these have been portrayed by our poet, in all their native deformity, he has, with only one or two exceptions, so managed the exhibition, that, unless to very feeble minds, the impression never becomes too painful to be borne. Some qualifying property in the head or heart of the offender, or some repose from the intervention of more amiable or more cheerful characters, occurs to subdue to its proper tone what would otherwise amount to torture. Thus the disgust which would be apt to arise from contemplating the gigantic iniquity of Richard the Third, is corrected by an almost involuntary admiration of his intellectual vigour; and the merciless revenge of Shylock, being perpetually broken in upon by the alleviating harmonies of love and pity in the characters of those who surround him, passes not beyond the due limits of tragic emotion.[548:B]

The inimitable felicity, indeed, with which Shakspeare has intermingled the finest chords of pity and of terror, such as we listen to, with unsated rapture in his Romeo, his Lear, and his Othello, has been a subject of eulogium to thousands, but never can it meet, from mortal tongue, with praise of corresponding worth. For who shall paint the beauty of those transitions, when on a night of horror breaks the first bright ray of heaven, the dawn of light and hope; when, like the sounds of an Æolian harp amid the pauses of a tempest, the still soft voice of love succeeds the tumult of despair, and whispers to the troubled spirit accents of mercy, peace, and pardon?

It is perhaps only of Shakspeare that it can be said with truth, that his comic possesses the same unrivalled merit as his tragic drama. The force and versatility of his painting in this department, its richness, its depth, and its expression, and, more than all, the originality and fecundity of invention which it every where exhibits, astonish, and almost overwhelm the mind in its endeavour to form an estimate of powers so gigantic, and which may not be altogether incommensurate with its scope and comprehensiveness. Whether we consider his delineations of this kind as the product of pure fiction, or founded on the costume of his age, they alike delight us by their novelty and their adhesion to nature. Falstaff and Parolles are, in many respects, as much the birth of fancy as Caliban or Ariel; but being strictly confined within the pale of humanity, and displaying all its features with living truth and distinctness, the inventive felicity of their combination is apt to escape us through our familiarity with its component parts. His Fools, or Clowns, on the contrary, were, in his time, of daily occurrence, and not only to be found in the court of the monarch, and the castle of the baron, but in the hall of the squire, and even beneath the roof of the churchman; yet, from comparing what history has recorded of this motley tribe with the spirited sketches of our author, how has he heightened their wit and sarcasm!—to such a degree, indeed, that they have frequently become in his hands personages of poetic growth, wild and grotesque, it is true, yet powerfully original.

This pre-eminence of Shakspeare in the characterisation of his fools probably led to their dramatic extinction; for it must have been found very difficult to support their tone and spirit after such a model. Beaumont and Fletcher, it has been observed, have but rarely introduced them; Ben Jonson and Massinger never[550:A]; and yet the court-fool had not ceased to exist in the reign of Charles the First, nor the domestic until the commencement of the eighteenth century.[550:B]

Another of the great distinctions which have elevated Shakspeare so completely above the dramatic class of poets, is the splendour and infinity of his imagination—

"To out-run hasty time, retrieve the fates, Roll back the heavens, blow ope the iron gates Of death and Lethe——by art to learn The physiognomy of shades, and give Them sudden birth—'and' from 'his' lofty throne, Create and rule a world, and work upon Mankind by secret engines,"

was deemed, even by his contemporaries, the peculiar destiny of our bard; a destination that has been still more thoroughly felt and acknowledged by succeeding ages, and by which, without sacrificing any of the more legitimate provinces of the drama, he has acquired for his poetry that stamp of glowing inspiration, which more than places it on a level with the daring flights of Homer, of Dante, or of Milton; while, at the same time, there exclusively belongs to him an insinuating loveliness of fancy that endears him to our feelings, and brings with it a recognition of that visionary happiness which charmed our earliest youth, when all around us breathed enchantment, and the heart alone responded to the fairy melodies of love and hope.

What contrast, for instance, of poetic power has ever exceeded that which we experience in passing from the mysterious horrors of Hamlet and Macbeth, from the visitations of the midnight spectre, and the unhallowed rites of witchcraft, to the sportive revelry of the tripping elves, and the exquisite delights of Ariel; from the fiend-like character of Iago, from the soul-harrowing distraction of Lear, and the unearthly wildness of Edgar, to that music of paradise which falls melting from the tongue of Juliet or Miranda!

Were we to lengthen this summary by any dissertation on the morality of our author's drama, it might justly be considered as a work of supererogation. So completely, indeed, does this, the most valuable result of composition, pervade every portion of his dramatic writings, that we can scarcely open a page of his best plays without being forcibly struck by its lessons of virtue and utility; such as are applicable, not only to extraordinary occasions, but to the common business and routine of life; and such as, while they must make every individual better acquainted with his own nature and conditional destiny, are calculated, beyond any other productions of unrevealed wisdom, to improve that nature, and to render that destiny more happy and exalted.

Still less is it necessary to comment on the faults of Shakspeare, for they lie immediately on the surface. When we add, that some coarsenesses and indelicacies which, however, as they excite no passion and flatter no vice, are, in a moral light, not injurious; some instances of an injudicious play on words, and a few violations, not of essential, but merely of technical, costume, form their chief amount, no little surprise, it is possible, may be excited; but let us recollect, that many of the defects which prejudice and ignorance have attributed to Shakspeare, have, on being duly weighed and investigated, assumed the character of positive excellences. Among these, for example, it will be sufficient to mention the composite or mixed nature of his drama, and his general neglect of the unities of time and place, features in the conduct of his plays which, though they have for a long period heaped upon his head a torrent of contemptuous abuse, are, at length, acknowledged to have laid the foundation, and to have furnished the noblest model of a dramatic literature, in its principles and spirit infinitely more profound and comprehensive than that which has descended to us from the shores of Greece.

It was in reference to the narrow and mistaken views which were once entertained of the genius of Shakspeare; it was in refutation of the calumnies of Rymer, and the senseless invective of Voltaire, who had charged us with an extravagant admiration of this barbarian, that Mr. Morgan, forty years ago, stood forward the avowed champion, and, we may add, one of the most eloquent defenders which his country has yet produced, of England's calumniated Bard.

Speaking of the magic influence which our poet almost invariably exerts over his auditors, he remarks, that "on such an occasion, a fellow, like Rymer, waking from his trance, shall lift up his Constable's staff, and charge this great Magician, this daring practicer of arts inhibited, in the name of Aristotle, to surrender; whilst Aristotle himself, disowning his wretched officer, would fall prostrate at his feet and acknowledge his supremacy.—'O supreme of Dramatic excellence! (might he say) not to me be imputed the insolence of fools. The bards of Greece were confined within the narrow circle of the Chorus, and hence they found themselves constrained to practice, for the most part, the precision, and copy the details of nature. I followed them, and knew not that a larger circle might be drawn, and the drama extended to the whole reach of human genius. Convinced, I see that a more compendious nature may be obtained; a nature of effects only, to which neither the relations of place, or continuity of time, are always essential. Nature, condescending to the faculties and apprehensions of man, has drawn through human life a regular chain of visible causes and effects: But Poetry delights in surprize, conceals her steps, seizes at once upon the heart, and obtains the sublime of things without betraying the rounds of her ascent: True Poesy is magic, not nature; an effect from causes hidden or unknown. To the Magician I prescribed no laws; his law and his power are one; his power is his law.—If his end is obtained, who shall question his course? Means, whether apparent or hidden, are justified in Poesy by success; but then most perfect and most admirable when most concealed.'—

"'Yes,' whatever may be the neglect of some, or the censure of others, there are those, who firmly believe that this wild, this uncultivated Barbarian has not yet obtained one half of his fame; and who trust that some new Stagyrite will arise, who, instead of pecking at the surface of things, will enter into the inward soul of his compositions, and expel, by the force of congenial feelings, those foreign impurities which have stained and disgraced his page. And as to those spots which still remain, they may perhaps become invisible to those who shall seek them thro' the medium of his beauties, instead of looking for those beauties, as is too frequently done, thro' the smoke of some real or imputed obscurity. When the hand of time shall have brushed off his present Editors and Commentators, and when the very name of Voltaire, and even the memory of the language in which he has written, shall be no more, the Apalachian mountains, the banks of the Ohio, and the plains of Sciola shall resound with the accents of this Barbarian: In his native tongue he shall roll the genuine passions of nature; nor shall the griefs of Lear be alleviated, or the charms and wit of Rosalind be abated by time."[554:A]

Since this eloquently prophetic passage was written, how has the fame of Shakspeare increased! Not only in England has the growth of a more enlightened criticism operated in his favour, but on the continent an enthusiasm for his genius has been kindled, which, we may venture to say, will never be extinguished. In Germany, the efforts of Herder[554:B], of Goethe[554:C], of Tieck[554:D], and, above all, of Augustus William Schlegel, the "new Stagyrite," as he may justly be termed, the best critic on, and the best translator, of our author[554:E], have, as it were, naturalised the poet; and if in France the labours of Le Mercier and Ducis have failed to produce a similar effect, yet a taste for Shakspeare in the original has been very powerfully heightened by the nervous and elegant compositions of De Stael.

Nor has Europe alone borne testimony to the progress of his reputation; not twenty years had passed over the glowing predictions of Morgan, when the first transatlantic edition of Shakspeare appeared at Philadelphia[555:A]; nor is it too much to believe that, ere another century elapse, the plains of Northern America, and even the unexplored wilds of Australasia, shall be as familiar with the fictions of our poet, as are now the vallies of his native Avon, or the statelier banks of the Thames.

It is, indeed, a most delightful consideration for every lover and cultivator of our literature, and one which should excite, amongst our authors, an increased spirit of emulation, that the language in which they write, is destined to be that of so large a portion of the new world; a field of glory to which the genius of Shakspeare will assuredly give an imperishable permanency; for the diffusion and durability of his fame are likely to meet with no limit save that which circumscribes the globe, and closes the existence of time.

FOOTNOTES:

[492:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xvi. p. 422.

[494:A] The representation of the character of Coriolanus by Mr. Kemble, which realises the very conception of the poet, and which in spirit, manner, and costume, can scarcely be deemed susceptible of improvement, has rendered this drama very popular in our own day.

[495:A] Winter's Tale, act i. sc. 2.

[495:B] Illustrations, vol. i. p. 347.

[495:C] Osborne's Works, 9th edit. 8vo. 1689, p. 477.

[496:A] History of Great Britain, folio, 1653, p. 12.

[496:B] "I am inclined to think," says Mr. Malone, "that he (Jonson) joined these plays in the same censure, in consequence of their having been produced at no great distance of time from each other."—Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ii. p. 326. note. That this passage was intended, however, as a censure on Shakspeare remains doubtful.

[496:C] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ii. p. 326.

[497:A] It appears, from Mr. Malone, that the copy of The Winter's Tale, licensed by Sir George Buck, had been lost.—Vide Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ii. p. 326. note.

[498:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ix. p. 209.

[498:B] Illustrations of Shakspeare, vol. i. p. 364.

[498:C] Lectures on Dramatic Literature, vol. ii. p. 181.—That Shakspeare considered the romantic incidents of this play as properly designated by the appellation of an old tale, is evident from his own application of the phrase to several parts of the plot. Thus, in the second scene of the fifth act, we find it used in the following passages:—

"How goes it now, sir? this news, which is called true, is so like an old tale."

"2d Gent. What, pray you, became of Antigonus, that carried hence the child?

3d Gent. Like an old tale still."

And again, in the next scene:—

"Paul. That she is living, Were it but told, you should be hooted at, Like an old tale."

[499:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ix. p. 362. Act iv. sc. 3.

[499:B] Ibid. vol. ix. p. 343. Act iv. sc. 3.

[500:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ix. pp. 366, 367. Act iv. sc. 3.

[500:B] Winwood's Memoirs, vol. iii. p. 422.

[500:C] Supplemental Apology, pp. 438, 439.

[501:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ii. p. 363.

[502:A] Wilson's Historie of Great Britain, pp. 64, 65.

[502:B] The idea of the witch, says Mr. Steevens, might have been caught from Dionyse Settle's Reporte of the Last Voyage of Captaine Frobisher, 12mo. bl. l. 1577. He is speaking of a woman found on one of the islands described:—"The old wretch, whome divers of our Saylers supposed to be a Divell, or a Witche, plucked off her buskins, to see if she were clouen footed, and for her ougly hewe and deformitie, we let her goe."—Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iv. p. 33. STEEVENS.

Eden tells us in his History of Travayle, 1577, that "the giantes, when they found themselves fettered, roared like bulls, and cried upon Setebos to help them."—Ibid. vol. iv. p. 43. note by Farmer.

Mr. Douce thinks that the name of Caliban's mother, Sycorax, was probably taken by Shakspeare from the following passage in Batman uppon Bartholome, 1582:—"The raven is called corvus of Corax . . . . . . it is said that ravens birdes be fed with deaw of heaven all the time that they have no black feathers, by benefite of age." Lib. xii. c. 10.—Illustrations, vol. i. p. 8.

[503:A] Vide Chalmers's Apology, p. 578.

[503:B] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iv. p. 3.

[504:A] As the passage which we have just quoted from Jourdan's pamphlet is, as Mr. Chalmers confesses, in the first edition of 1610, what necessity was there for referring us, for Shakspeare's obligation, to little more than a second edition of it, under the title of "A Plaine Description," &c.?—Vide Chalmers's Apology, p. 580.

[504:B] Illustrations of Shakspeare, vol. i. pp. 5-7.

[505:A]

"Alon. If thou beest Prospero, Give us particulars of thy preservation: How thou hast met us here, who _three hours since Were wreck'd upon this shore_." Act v. sc. 1. Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iv. pp. 160, 161.

"Alon. What is this maid, with whom thou wast at play? Your eld'st acquaintance cannot be three hours." Act v. p. 163.

[509:A] Discoverie of Witchcraft, edit. of 1584. pp. 467-469.

[509:B] Anatomy of Melancholy, p. 33.

[510:A] Worthies of England, Part II. p. 116.

[511:A] Dibdin's Bibliomania, pp. 313-346. Mr. Dibdin has given us the following account of Dee's Library, "as drawn up by our philosopher himself."

"400 Volumes—printed and unprinted—bound and unbound—valued at 2000 lib.

"1 Greek, 2 French, and 1 High Dutch, volumes of MSS., alone worth 533 lib. 40 years in getting these books together.

"Appertaining thereto.

"Sundry rare and exquisitely made Mathematical Instruments.

"A radius Astronomicus, ten feet long.

"A magnet stone, or Load stone: of great virtue—which was sold out of the library but for v shill. and for it afterwards (yea piece-meal divided) was more than xx lib. given in money and value.

"A great case or frame of boxes, wherein some hundreds of very rare evidences of divers Irelandish territories, provinces, and lands, were laid up. Which territories, provinces, and lands, were therein notified to have been in the hands of some of the ancient Irish princes. Then, their submissions and tributes agreed upon, with seals appendant to the little writings thereof in parchment: and after by some of those evidences did it appear, how some of those lands came to the Lascies, the Mortuomars, the Burghs, the Clares, &c.

"A Box of Evidences antient of some Welch princes and noblemen—the like of Norman donation—their peculiar titles noted on the forepart with chalk only, which on the poor boxes remaineth. This box, with another containing similar deedes, were embezzled.

"One great bladder with about 4 pound weight, of a very sweetish thing, like a brownish gum in it, artificially prepared by thirty times purifying of it, hath more, than I could well afford him for 100 crownes; as may be proved by witnesses yet living.

"To these he adds his three Laboratories, 'serving for Pyrotechnia,' —which he got together after twenty years labor. 'All which furniture and provision, and many things already prepared, is unduly made away from me by sundry meanes, and a few spoiled or broken vessels remain, hardly worth 40 shillings.' But one feature more in poor Dee's character—and that is, his unparalleled serenity and good nature under the most griping misfortunes—remains to be described: and then we may take farewel of him with aching hearts.

"In the 10th chapter, speaking of the wretched poverty of himself and family ('having not one penny of certain fee, revenue, stipend, or pension, either left him or restored unto him')—Dee says that 'he has been constrained now and then to send parcels of his little furniture of plate to pawn upon usury; and that did he so oft till no more could be sent. After the same manner went his wive's jewels of gold, rings, bracelets, chains, and other their rarities, under the thraldom of the usurer's gripes: 'till non plus was written upon the boxes at home.'

"In the 11th chapter, he anticipates the dreadful lot of being brought 'to the stepping out of doors (his house being sold). He, and his, with bottles and wallets furnished, to become wanderers as homish vagabonds; or, as banished men, to forsake the kingdom!' Againe: 'with bloody tears of heart, he, and his wife, their seven children, and their servants, (seventeen of them in all) did that day make their petition unto their honors,' &c. Can human misery be sharper than this—and to be the lot of a philosopher and bibliomaniac? But VENIET FELICIUS ÆVUM."—Bibliomania, pp. 347-349.

[512:A] "In his edition of John Confrat. Monach. de. rebus. gestis Glaston., vol. ii., where twelve chapters (from whence the above note is partly taken) are devoted to the subject of our philosopher's travels and hardships." Bibliomania, p. 343. note.

[513:A] Vide Theatrum Chemicum, p. 481.

[513:B] Worthies of England, Pt. III. pp. 172, 173.

[514:A] Vide Weaver's Funeral Monuments, p. 45., and Wood's Athenæ Oxon. vol. i. col. 279.

[514:B] In what estimation Kelly was held in 1662, is evident from the opinion of Fuller, who closes his account of this daring impostor with the following sentence:—"If his pride and prodigality were severed from him, he would remain a person, on other accounts, for his industry and experience in practical Philosophy, worthy recommendation to posterity." Worthies, p. 174.

That Shakspeare was exempt from the astrological mania of his age, we learn from his fourteenth sonnet, where he tells us,—

"Not from the stars do I my judgment pluck; And yet methinks I have astronomy, But not to tell of good, or evil luck, Of plagues, of dearths, or season's quality: Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell, Pointing to each his thunder, rain, and wind; Or say with princes if it shall go well, By oft predict that I in heaven find."

[515:A] Discoverie of Witchcraft, book xv. chap. 42. p. 466.

[516:A] Discoverie of Witchcraft, p. 415.

[516:B] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iv. p. 53. Act i. sc. 2.

[516:C] Ibid. p. 152. Act v. sc. 1.

[517:A] Discoverie of Witchcraft, p. 451.

[517:B] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iv. p. 100. Act iii. sc. 1.

[517:C] Ibid. p. 152.

[517:D] Ibid. vol. iv. p. 106. Act iii. sc. 2.

[517:E] Ibid. p. 134. Act iv. sc. 1.

[518:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iv. p. 148. 167.

[520:A] Discoverie of Witchcraft, pp. 401, 402. 404-407.

[520:B] "Go," says Prospero, addressing Ariel,

———————————— "Go, bring the rabble, O'er whom I give thee power, here, to this place." Act iv. sc. 1.

[521:A] "Batman uppon Bartholome, His Booke, De Proprietatibus Rerum," &c. folio, 1582, p. 168. col. 4.—He tells us, however, in another place, that "in the region of the sunne, the spirits of the sunne are of more force than the rest. In the region of the moone, those spirites of the moone, and so of the residue." P. 170. col. 4.

[522:A] Batman uppon Bartholome, p. 84. col. 3, 4.

[522:B] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iv. p. 28. Act i. sc. 2.

[523:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iv. pp. 43-46. Act i. sc. 2.—This song has been admirably imitated by Kirke White in the opening of his fine fragment, entitled "The Dance of the Consumptives."—Vol. i. p. 295. 1st edit.

[524:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iv. p. 81. Act ii. sc. 2.

[524:B] Ibid. p. 147. Act iv. sc. 1.

[524:C] Ibid. p. 134. Act iv. sc. 1.

[524:D] Ibid. p. 109. Act iii. sc. 2.

[525:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iv. p. 154. Act v. sc. 1.

[525:B] Ibid. pp. 38, 39. Act i. sc. 2.

[525:C] Ibid. p. 151. Act v. sc. 1.

[525:D] Ibid. vol. xviii. pp. 24, 25. Act i. sc. 1.

[526:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xvii. p. 471. Act iii. sc. 4.

[526:B] Ibid. vol. iv. pp. 151, 152. Act v. sc. 1.

[527:A] Discoverie of Witchcraft, p. 377.

[527:B] Vide Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xix. p. 414. and note.

[527:C] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xix. p. 415. and vol. ii. p. 359.

[528:A] Illustrations of Shakspeare, vol. ii. p. 270.

[528:B] Supplemental Apology, p. 460.

[528:C] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ii. p. 359.

[528:D] Supplemental Apology, p. 459.

[528:E] Ibid. p. 162.

[528:F] Ibid. p. 459.

[529:A] History of Fiction, 1st edit. vol. ii. p. 365.

[530:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xix. pp. 528, 529.

[530:B] Reynolds's Works apud Malone, vol. i. p. 129., and vol. iii. p. 173., where this

"Unrivall'd sovereign of the realms of grace"

is characterized in a most masterly manner.

[531:A] Vide Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ii. p. 366.

[532:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. v. p. 373. Act iii. sc. 4.

[532:B] Ibid. vol. v. p. 374.

[532:C] Chalmers's Supplemental Apology, p. 442.

[532:D] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. v. p. 374. note.

[533:A] Howe's Chronicle, 1004, under the year 1613.

[533:B] It was printed by Barker, the King's Printer, the same year.

[533:C] Supplemental Apology, pp. 443, 444.

[533:D] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. v. p. 334. Act ii. sc. 5.

[533:E] Ibid. vol. v. p. 372. Act iii. sc. 4.

[533:F] Supplemental Apology, pp. 444, 445.

[534:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. v. p. 306. Act ii. sc. 4.

[535:A] Of these, twenty were published in 4to., (including Pericles, and omitting Titus Andronicus,) and the rest in the first folio, 1623. On this, the earliest complete collection of our author's plays, Mr. Steevens has given us, with the wit and humour which so peculiarly distinguished him, the following interesting jeu d'esprit:—

"Of all volumes, those of popular entertainment are soonest injured. It would be difficult to name four folios that are oftener found in dirty and mutilated condition, than this first assemblage of Shakspeare's plays—God's Revenge against Murder—The Gentleman's Recreation—and Johnson's Lives of the Highwaymen.

"Though Shakspeare was not, like Fox the Martyrologist, deposited in churches, to be thumbed by the congregation, he generally took post on our hall tables; and that a multitude of his pages have 'their effect of gravy,' may be imputed to the various eatables set out every morning on the same boards. It should seem that most of his readers were so chary of their time, that (like Pistol, who gnaws his leek and swears all the while,) they fed and studied at the same instant. I have repeatedly met with thin flakes of pie-crust between the leaves of our author. These unctuous fragments, remaining long in close confinement, communicated their grease to several pages deep on each side of them.—It is easy enough to conceive how such accidents might happen;—how aunt Bridget's mastication might be disordered at the sudden entry of the Ghost into the Queen's closet, and how the half-chewed morsel dropped out of the gaping Squire's mouth, when the visionary Banquo seated himself in the chair of Macbeth. Still, it is no small eulogium on Shakspeare, that his claims were more forcible than those of hunger.—Most of the first folios now extant, are known to have belonged to ancient families resident in the country.

"Since our breakfasts have become less gross, our favourite authors have escaped with fewer injuries; not that (as a very nice friend of mine observes) those who read with a coffee-cup in their hands, are to be numbered among the contributors to bibliothecal purity.

"I claim the merit of being the first commentator on Shakspeare who strove, with becoming seriousness, to account for the frequent stains that disgrace the earliest folio edition of his plays, which is now become the most expensive single book in our language; for, what other English volume without plates, and printed since the year 1600, is known to have sold, more than once, for thirty-five pounds fourteen shillings?"—Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ii. pp. 146, 147.

Since this note was written, a copy of the first folio has produced the enormous price of ONE HUNDRED POUNDS. See Roxburghe Catalogue, p. 112. No. 3786.

[536:A] Vide Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xxi. pp. 4, 5, 6.

[536:B] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iii. p. 390, 391.

[537:A] See Gentleman's Magazine, vol. lxxxv. p. 219., and Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ii. pp. 154, 155.

[537:B] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ii. p. 154. note.

[537:C] Ibid. p. 129.

[537:D] Capell's School of Shakspeare, vol. iii. p. 479. See also Gifford's Ben Jonson, vol. i. p. lxx.

[537:E] Gentleman's Magazine, vol. lxxxv. p. 219.

[537:F] On the authority of the title of the first quarto, printed in 1634, eighteen years after the death of Shakspeare.

[538:A] For proof of this, see Gifford's Jonson, vol. i. p. lxx. note.

[538:B] See Gent. Magazine, vol. lxxxv. p. 219., and Biographia Dramatica, 1782, vol. i. p. 118. article Davenport.

[538:C] Colman's Beaumont and Fletcher, vol. i. p. 118., and Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xxi. p. 401. et seq.

[538:D] "The Two Noble Kinsmen," observes Steevens, "could not have been composed till after 1611, nor perhaps antecedent to the deaths of Beaumont and our author, when assistance and competition ceased, and the poet, who resembled the latter most, had the fairest prospect of success. During the life of Beaumont, which concluded in 1615, it cannot well be supposed that Fletcher would have deserted him, to write in concert with any other dramatist. Shakspeare survived Beaumont only by one year, and, during that time, is known to have lived in Warwickshire, beyond the reach of Fletcher, who continued to reside in London till he fell a sacrifice to the plague in 1625."—Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xxi. p. 407.

[540:A] Lectures on Dramatic Literature, vol. i. pp. 15, 16.

[542:A] Pye's Aristotle, 4to. 1792, p. 22.

[545:A] This expression, and the verses which open some of the leading subjects of this summary, are taken from a poem "On worthy Master Shakspeare," supposed to have been the composition of Jasper Mayne, but which Mr. Godwin, if we recollect aright, for the book is not before us, is desirous of attributing, on account of its singular excellence, to the pen of Milton.—See his Lives of E. and J. Philips, 4to.

[547:A] "The Influence of Literature upon Society," by Madame De Stael-Holstein, vol. i. p. 294. Translation, 2d. edit. 1812.

[548:A] "The Influence of Literature upon Society," by Madame De Stael-Holstein, vol. i. p. 305. Translation, 2d edit. 1812.

[548:B] Of the soothing and delightful effect of this contrasted repose, Homer, more than any other writer, affords us abundant examples; perpetually introducing, in the midst of slaughter and contention, similes fraught with pathetic incident or picturesque description. One of these, for the purpose of being followed by an imitation which, in my opinion, greatly transcends the original, I shall now transcribe. The Grecian bard, after mentioning the fall of Simoisius, slain by Ajax, in the bloom of youth and beauty, thus proceeds:—

"——————————— Him, what time she went From Ida, with her parents to attend Their flocks on Simois' side, his mother bore, And thence they named him. But his days were few, Too few to recompense the care that rear'd His comely growth; for Ajax, mighty Chief, Received him on his pointed spear, and, pierced Through breast and shoulder, in the dust he fell. So, nourish'd long in some well-water'd spot, Crown'd with green boughs, the smooth-skinn'd poplar falls, Doom'd by the builder to supply with wheels Some splendid chariot, on the bank it lies, A lifeless trunk, to parch in summer airs." Cowper, Iliad IV.

Tender and beautiful as this must be deemed, greatly am I mistaken, if the following lines be not preferred. They are taken from an unpublished poem, entitled Alfred, the composition of Mr. John Fitchett of Warrington, whom I have the pleasure of personally knowing, and who, I trust, will pardon the liberty thus assumed, of endeavouring to accelerate the publication of his work, by the production of one of its numerous beauties. Alfred consists of twenty books, ten of which, in a printed form, lie now before me. In the eighth book, Berthun, a brave and youthful thane, is slain by the pagan Amund:—

"—————————— Down the hero fell, Riv'n through the brain. Sleep overcast his eyes. Full many a tear his early fate shall mourn Where on the woody side of Axham's vale His pleasant dwelling stands. In vain shall look At dawn or eve his tender wife to hail His glad return, but hopeless to her heart Press his fair image in her smiling babe. He fell, as by some murm'ring riv'let's side The tow'ring poplar, whose broad branches shade A rural cottage, guardian of its peace, Sinks crashing, and uptears the flow'ry bank, Whelm'd by the tempest; the defenceless cot Howls to the moaning wind: the birds behold Their nests, their young, in ruin lost: the brook Rolls o'er the tree whose image long it loved."

[550:A] Douce's Illustrations of Shakspeare, vol. ii. p. 327.

[550:B] Of court-fools, it is observed by Mr. Douce, that "Muckle John, the fool of Charles the First, and the successor of Archee Armstrong, is perhaps the last regular personage of the kind."—Illustrations, vol. ii. p. 308.

We also find an epitaph by Dean Swift, on Dicky Pierce, the Earl of Suffolk's fool, who was buried in Berkeley church-yard, June 18. 1728, in the same ingenious essay. Vide Dissertation on the Clowns and Fools of Shakspeare,—Illustrations, vol. ii. p. 309.

[554:A] Essay on the Dramatic Character of Falstaff, pp. 69, 70, 71. and 64, 65.

[554:B] In his Blättern von deutscher Art und Kunst.

[554:C] In his Wilhelm Meister.

[554:D] Poetisches Journal, 1800.

[554:E] For just and discriminative characters of Schlegel and his writings, see the Germany of Madame De Stael, and the Monthly and Edinburgh Reviews.

[555:A] In the year 1795. Printed and sold by Bioren and Madan.—Vide Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ii. p. 149.

Chapter XIII

A BRIEF VIEW OF DRAMATIC POETRY AND ITS CULTIVATORS, DURING SHAKSPEARE'S CONNECTION WITH THE STAGE.

That the master-spirit which Shakspeare exhibited in the eyes of his contemporaries; that the great improvements which he had made on the drama of Peele and Marlowe, and their associates, should excite the wonder, and call forth the emulation of his age, were events naturally to be expected. He was accordingly the founder of a school of dramatic art which continued to flourish until extinguished by those convulsions that destroyed the monarch, and overturned the government of the country,—a school to which we have since had nothing similar, or even approximating in excellence.

The fate, however, of the leader and his disciples has been widely different. During the life-time of Shakspeare, the spirit of competition forbade an open acknowledgment of his pre-eminence, and those who had run the race of glory with him, and outlived his day, had influence sufficient, either from personal interest, or the charm of novelty, to procure a more frequent representation of their own productions, however inferior, than of those of their departed luminary. But, when the grave had closed alike on their great exemplar and on themselves, apart, indeed, was their allotment in the estimation of the living; for while the former sprang from the tomb with fresh energy and beauty, over the latter dropped, comparatively, the mantle of oblivion! Yet, not for ever!

Though lost, for a time, in the effulgence of that lustre which has continued to brighten ever since its revivescence, they have nevertheless, through an intrinsic though more subdued brilliancy of their own, begun, at length, to emerge into day, and their demand upon the justice of criticism, for their station and their fame, is loud and imperative.

Let us, therefore, as far as our brief limits will permit, and in furtherance of what has been so judiciously commenced, co-operate in the endeavour to apportion to these immediate successors of our matchless bard, the honour due to their exertions. If correctly attributed, it cannot be trifling, and may assist in forming a just notion of the most valuable period of our dramatic poesy.

We shall commence with those who, in their own age, were deemed the rivals, and followed, indeed, fast upon the footsteps of Shakspeare, hesitating not to give priority of notice to the name of JOHN FLETCHER, who, though hitherto inseparably united in fame and publication with his friend Francis Beaumont, deserves, both from the comparative number and value of his pieces, a separate and exclusive consideration.

Of the fifty-three plays which have been ascribed to these poetical friends, it appears that not more than nine or ten were the joint productions of Beaumont and Fletcher; in still fewer was he assisted by Massinger, Rowley, and Field, and the ample residue, independent of two pieces now lost, and known to have been his sole composition, was therefore the entire product of Fletcher's genius.[557:A] With this curious fact we were first made acquainted by Sir Aston Cokain, who, speaking of the thirty-four plays of these poets, as published in the folio of 1647, informs us, that

—— "Beaumont of those many writ in few; And Massinger in other few: the main Being sole issues of sweet Fletcher's brain."[557:B]

In fact, as Sir Aston has elsewhere told us[557:C], the bulk of the collection was written after Beaumont's death, which took place in 1615; the fecundity of Fletcher being so great, that in the interval between that event and his own decease in 1625, he had produced nearly forty dramas, besides some which were left in an unfinished state, and completed by Shirley.

It is also necessary to add, that the ten plays which issued from the firm of Beaumont and Fletcher are, by no means, the best of the entire series: they are Philaster,—The Maids Tragedy,—King and No King,—The Knight of the Burning Pestle,—Cupid's Revenge,—The Coxcomb,—The Captain,—The Honest Man's Fortune,—The Scornful Lady, and The False One[558:A]; productions, in allusion to which it has been said, and perhaps with no great injustice, that "if the plays of Beaumont were thrown out of the collection by Beaumont and Fletcher, the remainder would form a richer ore."[558:B]

Warrantable, therefore, upon this statement, must it be deemed, should we now drop the name of Beaumont, after observing, that a portion of the merits and defects of Fletcher may be attributed to his friend, and that, in the estimation of Ben Jonson, (on this subject the most unexceptionable testimony,) he possessed, beyond all others of his age, a sound and correct judgment.[558:C]

The characteristic of Fletcher, in the serious department of his art, was a peculiar mastery in the delineation of the softer passions, especially of love. There is a sweetly pensive tone in many of his pictures of this kind, which steals upon the mind with the most insinuating charm, producing that species of pathos which soothes while it gently agitates the soul; a feeling too sad and melancholy for the genius of comedy, and too mild and subdued for that of tragedy, but admirably adapted to an intermediate style of composition, of which he has given us some happy instances under the title of tragi-comedy. It must be confessed, however, that an impression of feebleness and effeminacy, a sickliness of sentiment, and a want of dignity in the pity which he endeavours to excite, but too often accompany his efforts, even in this his favourite province.

Yet not unfrequently did Fletcher aspire to the loftiest heights of the dramatic muse; to the terrible, to the wildly awful, to the agony of grief. But here he sank beneath the genius of Shakspeare; in his endeavour to be great, there is a labour and contortion which frequently betrays the struggle to have been painfully arduous; an impression which we never receive from the drama of his predecessor, who seems to attain the highest elevation with an ease and spontaneity of movement, which suggests an idea, approaching to sublimity, of the fulness and extent of his resources. But, as an elegant critic has observed, Fletcher was "too mistrustful of Nature; he always goes a little on one side of her. Shakspeare chose her without a reserve: and had riches, power, understanding, and long-life, with her, for a dowry."[559:A]

Very different, however, was the result of his efforts, when he touched the gaieties of life; for in this path, he moves with a grace and legerity which has not often been equalled. He displays, it is true, little humour, and consequently not much strength of character; but we are told, on good authority[559:B], that no poet before him had painted the conversation of the gentlemen of his day with such fidelity and truth; a declaration which impresses us with an high opinion of the vivacity and intellectual smartness of the dialogue of that age; for there is in the representation of Fletcher an almost perpetual effervescency and corruscation of wit and repartee.

The imagination of Fletcher, when not straining after the eagle wing of the bard of Avon, was fertile and felicitous in an extraordinary degree. The romantic, the fanciful, the playful, are epithets peculiarly descriptive of its range and tone, within which he frequently emulates with success the excellence of his great master. There appears, indeed, in several of his pieces, an evident intention of entering the lists with Shakspeare. Thus the exquisitely pleasing character of Euphrasia, under the disguise of a page, in Philaster, was undoubtedly intended to rival the similar concealments in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, in As You Like It, in Cymbeline, and in Twelfth Night. Amoret, in The Faithful Shepherdess, is a delightful counterpart of Perdita, in The Winter's Tale, and throughout The Two Noble Kinsmen, and especially in the character of the Jailor's daughter, there is a striking, and, in general, a very happy effort made, to copy the express colouring of Shakspeare's style, and his mode of representing the wanderings of a disordered intellect.

But when, regardless of the hazardous nature of the experiment, he attempts, in his Sea Voyage, to emulate the magic structure and wild imagery of The Tempest, his ambition serves but to show, that he had formed a very inadequate estimate of his own powers.

Yet the failure in such an enterprise can reflect no disgrace, and from what has been said, it must necessarily be inferred, that we consider Fletcher as holding a very high, if not the highest rank, in the school of Shakspeare.

How much is it to be lamented then, that excellence such as this should have been polluted by the grossest spirit of licentiousness; for it would appear, from the tenour of many of our author's plays, that, in his vocabulary, sensuality and sensibility were synonymous terms; so nakedly and ostentatiously has he brought forward the most immodest impulses of sexual appetite. Shakspeare may be, and is, occasionally, coarse and unreserved in his language; but, if compared with Fletcher, the nudity of his expressions is like the marble statue of a vestal, when contrasted with the wanton exposure of a prostitute.

As we wish to be spared the pain of reverting to such a subject, for which the age of Fletcher and his successors offers, unfortunately, but too many opportunities, it shall here be closed with a single expression of regret, that a department of poetry which, in itself, seems better calculated than any other to serve the cause of virtue, should be degraded to a purpose thus base and unworthy.[561:A]

On a level with, if not one degree above the writings of Fletcher, follow the purer and more chastised productions of PHILIP MASSINGER, a poet of unwearied vigour and consummate elegance. That he had, in conjunction with others, composed for the stage some years anterior to the death of Shakspeare, there is every reason to conclude; for his first arrival in London, in 1606, was, we are told, under necessitous circumstances, and with the view of dedicating his talents to dramatic literature; and, though his Virgin Martyr, his earliest publication, did not appear until 1622, it was a notorious fact, that he had written in conjunction both with Beaumont and Fletcher.[561:B] It is almost certain, indeed, from what Mr. Gifford has stated, that, in the interval just mentioned, he had brought on the stage not less than eight or ten plays.[561:C]

The English drama never suffered a greater loss, (for all Shakspeare's pieces have descended to us,) than in the havoc which time and negligence have committed among the works of Massinger; for of thirty-eight plays attributed to his pen, only eighteen have been preserved!

Massinger, like Fletcher, pursued the path in which Shakspeare had preceded him with such imperishable glory; but he wants the tenderness and wit of the former, and that splendour of imagination and that dominion over the passions, which characterise the latter. He has, however, qualities of his own, sufficiently great and attractive, to gift him with the envied lot of being contemplated, in union with these two bards, as one of the chief pillars and supporters of the Romantic drama.

He exhibits, in the first place, a perfectibility, both in diction and versification, of which we have, in dramatic poesy at least, no corresponding example. There is a transparency and perspicuity in the texture of his composition, a sweetness, harmony, and ductility, together with a blended strength and ease in the structure of his metre, which, in his best performances, delight, and never satiate the ear.

To this, in some degree technical merit, must be added a spirit of commanding eloquence, a dignity and force of thought, which, while they approach the precincts of sublimity, and indicate great depth and clearness of intellect, show, by the nervous elegance of language in which they are clothed, a combination and comprehension of talent of very unfrequent occurrence.

These qualities are, it must be allowed, not peculiar to dramatic poetry; but when we find, that to their possession are added a powerful discrimination and marked consistency of character, no inconsiderable display of humour, much fertility of invention in the preparation and developement of his incidents, and an unprecedented degree of grace and amenity in the construction of several of his comic scenes, together with a fund of ethic knowledge, an exquisite sense of moral feeling, and above all, a glow of piety, in many instances amounting to sublimity, we willingly ascribe to Massinger originality and dramatic excellence of no inferior order.

But when Dr. Ferriar, closing his Essay on the Writings of Massinger, asserts that he "ranks immediately under Shakspeare himself[562:A]," we must crave permission to hesitate for a moment, in reference to the enchanting tenderness of Fletcher.

"If there be a class of writers, of which, above all others," observes Mr. Gilchrist, "England may justly be proud, it is of those, for the stage, coeval with and immediately succeeding Shakspeare[563:A];" an observation which the names alone of Fletcher and Massinger would sufficiently justify; but when to these we are enabled to add such fellow-artists as Ford, Webster, Middleton, &c. we are astonished that even the talents of Shakspeare should, for so long a period, have eclipsed their fame.

FORD'S first appearance as an author, was in a copy of verses to the memory of the Earl of Devonshire, in 1606, and his earliest play of which we have the date of performance, was "A Bad Beginning makes a Good Ending," acted at court, in 1613[563:B]; but it is probable that the three plays mentioned with this, in Mr. Warburton's Collection, and like it, never published, and now lost[563:C], were likewise early, and perhaps anterior compositions.

As it was the fashion, at this period, for dramatic writers to commence their course in conjunction with others, we find Ford accepting frequent assistance from his friends: thus The Sun's Darling, The Fairy Knight, and The Bristowe Merchant, were written in conjunction with Decker; and The Witch of Edmonton, with the aid of both Decker and Rowley.

Of the pieces which were exclusively the product of his own genius, 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, though not published the first, was the first written, and was succeeded by The Lover's Melancholy, The Broken Heart, Love's Sacrifice, Perkin Warbeck, The Fancies Chast and Noble, and The Ladies Tryal.

Ford possesses nothing of the energy and majesty of Massinger, and but little of the playful gaiety and picturesque fancy of Fletcher, yet scarcely Shakspeare himself has exceeded him in the excitement of pathetic emotion. Of this, his two Tragedies of 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, and the Broken Heart, bear the most overpowering testimony. Though too much loaded in their fable with a wildness and horror often felt as repulsive, they are noble specimens of dramatic genius; and who that has a heart to feel, or an eye to weep, can, in the first of these productions, view even the unhallowed loves of Giovanni and Annabella; or in the second, the hapless and unmerited fates of Calantha and Penthea, with a cheek unbathed in tears!

JOHN WEBSTER, whom we shall place immediately after Ford, as next, perhaps, in talent, resembled him in a predilection for the terrible and the strange, but with a cast of character still more lawless and impetuous. Of the six plays which he produced, two were written in conjunction with William Rowley, and are comedies; the remaining four, containing three tragedies, and a tragi-comedy, are the issue of his unaided pen. The tragedies, especially The White Devil, or Vittoria Corombona, first printed in 1612, and The Dutchesse of Malfy, in 1623, are very striking, though, in many respects, very eccentric proofs of dramatic vigour.

It appears, however, from the dedication to the "White Devil," that our author was well acquainted with the laws of the ancient drama, and that "willingly, and not ignorantly," he adopted the Romantic or Shakspearean form. The last paragraph of this address is a pleasing instance of his diffidence, liberality, and good sense:—"For mine own part," says he, "I have ever truly cherished my good opinion of other men's worthy labours, especially of that full and heightened stile of master Chapman; the laboured and understanding works of master Jonson; the no less worthy composures of the both worthily excellent master Beaumont, and master Fletcher; and lastly, (without wrong last to be named,) the right happy and copious industry of master Shakspeare, master Decker, and master Heywood, wishing what I write may be read by their light; protesting that, in the strength of mine own judgment, I know them so worthy, that though I rest silent in my own work, yet to most of their's I dare (without flattery) fix that of Martial:—

—— "non norunt hæc monumenta mori."[565:A]

The silence which modesty dictated to Webster, ought long ago to have been broken, by a declaration, that he was fully entitled to a niche in the same temple of Fame with those whom he has here commemorated. In his pictures of wretchedness and despair, he has introduced touches of expression which curdle the very blood with terror, and make the hair stand erect. Of this, the death of The Dutchesse of Malfy, with all its preparatory horrors, is a most distinguishing proof. The fifth act of his Vittoria Corombona shows, also, with what occasional skill he could imbibe the imagination of Shakspeare, particularly where its features seem to breathe a more than earthly wildness. The danger, however, which almost certainly attends such an aspiration after, what may be called inimitable excellence, Webster has not escaped; for, where his master moves free and etherial, an interpreter for other worlds, he but too often seems laboriously striving to break from terrestrial fetters; and, when liberated, he is, not unfrequently, "an extravagant and erring spirit." Yet, with all their faults, his tragedies are, most assuredly, stamped with, and consecrated by, the seal of genius.

Not less than twenty-four plays are ascribed to THOMAS MIDDLETON, of which, sixteen at least, appear to owe their existence entirely to himself: the rest are written in conjunction with Jonson, Fletcher, Massinger, Decker, and Rowley. Middleton, it is probable, began to compose for the stage shortly after Shakspeare[565:B], for one of his pieces was published as early as 1602, and eight had passed the press before 1612. His talents were principally directed towards comedy, only two tragedies, The Changeling, and Women beware Women, and two tragi-comedies, The Phœnix and The Witch, being included in the list of his productions.

Humour, wit, and character, though in a degree inferior to that which distinguishes the preceding poets, are to be found in the comedy of Middleton; and, occasionally, a pleasing interchange of elegant imagery and tender sentiment. His tragedy is not devoid of pathos, though possessing little dignity or elevation; but there is, in many of his plays, and especially in the tragi-comedy of The Witch, a strength and compass of imagination which entitle him to a very respectable rank among the cultivators of the Romantic drama.

A more than common celebrity has attached itself to this last-named composition, in consequence of the conjecture of Mr. Steevens, that it preceded Macbeth, and afforded to Shakspeare the prima stamina of the supernatural machinery of that admirable play. This may readily be granted, without aspersing the originality of the Bard of Avon; for if we except the mere idea of the introduction of such an agency into dramatic poetry, there is little beside a few verbal forms of incantation, and two or three metrical invocations, of singular notoriety perhaps at the period, which can be considered as betraying any marks of imitation. In every other respect, affinity or resemblance there is none; for the Witches of Middleton and of Shakspeare are beings essentially distinct both in origin and office. The former are creatures of flesh and blood, possessing power, indeed, to inflict disease, and to execute more than common mischief, but very subordinate instruments of evil, when compared with the spiritual essence and mysterious sublimity of the Weird Sisters, who are the authors not only of nameless deeds, but who are nameless themselves, who float upon the midnight storm, direct the elemental strife, and, more than this, who wield the passions and the thoughts of man.

The hags of Middleton are, however, drawn with a bold and creative pencil, and seem to take a middle station between the terrific sisterhood of Shakspeare, and the traditionary witch of the country-village. They are pictures full of fancy, but not kept sufficiently aloof from the ludicrous and familiar.

On the same elevation with Middleton, as to dramatic merit, may we place the name of THOMAS DECKER, who, if he has not equalled his contemporary in the faculty of imagination, has, in some instances, exceeded him, in the vigorous conception of his characters, and the skilful management of his fable. So early as 1600, had he published one of his best dramas, under the title of Old Fortunatus, which, together with The Honest Whore, printed in 1604, very adequately prove that his talents were of no inferior class; the character of Orleans in the first of these plays, and that of Bellafront in the second, exhibiting not only many beautiful ideas in richly poetical language, but many indications of an original and discriminative mind.

The fertility of Decker was great; for independent of numerous pieces of a miscellaneous kind, he wrote or contributed to write, not fewer than thirty-two plays. Several of these, however, were never printed, and are not now, probably, in existence; and two which were once in Mr. Warburton's possession, perished with his ill-fated collection. There is reason to suppose that twelve, if not fifteen, originated solely with himself, and for the remainder, his associates were Middleton, Massinger, and Ford, Webster, Day, and Rowley. With the latter and Ford, he wrote The Witch of Edmonton, the execution of which shows, that, though he has availed himself, with much effect, of the common superstitions connected with his subject, he was, in point of fancy, inferior to Middleton, the Witch of this triumvirate being little more than the ignorant and self-deluded victim of the folly of the times, then, under the shape of decrepid and female old age, to be found in almost every hamlet in the kingdom.

Decker has been more known to posterity by his connection and quarrel with Ben Jonson, than by his own works, a fate which has also obscured the writings and reputation of JOHN MARSTON, who, in his life-time, was not undeservedly celebrated both as a dramatic and a satiric poet. In the former capacity he produced eight plays, of which the two parts of Antonio and Mellida, The Insatiate Countess, and The Malcontent, published as early as 1602, 1603, and 1604, reflect great credit on his abilities. These, and indeed all his dramas, give evidence of great wealth and vigour of description, of much felicity in expression, and of much passionate eloquence; nor are his characters raw or indistinct sketches, but highly coloured and well supported. The compliment, however, which some modern writers have paid him, on the score of chastity of thought and style, is, we are sorry to say, most unmerited; for neither is it supported by the opinion of his contemporaries, nor by the testimony of his own writings. So greatly was he a sinner in this respect, that an old satirist says of him,—

"Tut, what cares he for modest, close couched terms, Cleanly to gird our looser libertines? Give him plain-naked words, stripped from their shirts, That might beseem plain-dealing Aretine."[568:A]

If fecundity were a test of genius, no writer, with the exception of Lopez de Vega, would stand upon such elevated ground as THOMAS HEYWOOD, who tells us, in the Preface to his English Traveller, a tragi-comedy, that it was "one reserved amongst 220 in which he had either an entire hand or at the least a main finger;" a degree of industry and fertility which may justly excite our astonishment.

It is perhaps equally extraordinary, that, in periods so late as the reigns of Elizabeth, James, and Charles, and when the art of printing was in full activity, only twenty-six of this prodigious number should have issued from the press, a paucity for which their author accounts, in the preface just quoted, in the following manner: "One reason," he avers, "is that many of them, by shifting and change of companies, have been negligently lost; others of them are still retained in the hands of some actors, who think it against their peculiar profit to have them come in print; and a third, that it never was any great ambition in me, to bee, in this kind, voluminously read."

This apathy or modesty has, no doubt, deprived us of some interesting plays; for though Heywood had little of the enthusiasm or fancy of the genuine poet, there are in several of the pieces which remain, an unaffected ease and simplicity, and a power of touching the heart, which merit preservation in no common degree. He abounds, too, in pictures of domestic life very minutely finished, correct without being cold, and effective without being overcharged. To his skill in exciting pathetic emotion, his tragedy entitled A Woman killed with Kindness bears the most impressive testimony.

Heywood, as may be conceived, began early, and continued long to write. Of the dramas which are left us, the first published, was his Death of Robert Earle of Huntington, dated 1601, and the last, the tragi-comedy of Fortune by Land and Sea, dated 1655. He was occasionally assisted by Rowley, Brome, &c.

Greatly superior in poetic force and vigour to Heywood, but equally inferior as to truth of dramatic imitation, we have now to mention the venerably epic name of GEORGE CHAPMAN, the translator of Homer, and the friend of Shakspeare and Jonson, with whom, as a writer for the stage, he was nearly coeval.

Though the author of more comedies than tragedies, the genius of Chapman was infinitely better calculated for the latter province. Many beauties, it must be granted, are to be found in some of his comedies, especially in his All Fooles, and Widdowe's Tears, but they stand aloof from the character of the department, in which they are included. It is, in fact, in the lofty and heroic drama, in the more elevated and descriptive parts of tragedy, that he excels; in a grandeur often wild and irregular, but highly animated and striking. Thus the two tragedies, entitled Bussy D'Ambois, breathe a chivalric spirit truly inspiring, and, however censured by Dryden[569:A] for tumour and incorrectness of style, excite in the reader a sensation of involuntary transport. It will readily be admitted, however, that such a mode of composition is by no means adapted to dramatic purposes, and presents no safe or legitimate model. Chapman wrote sixteen plays, besides assisting Jonson and Marston in Eastward Hoe, and Shirley in at least two of his productions.

With nearly all the poets whom we have hitherto mentioned did WILLIAM ROWLEY unite in the composition of various pieces for the stage; namely, with Massinger, Middleton, and Heywood, Ford, Decker, and Webster, and, it has even been said, with Shakspeare, in a play entitled The Birth of Merlin. For this last association, however, there appears to be no other foundation than the bookseller's assertion, who printed this play in 1662, and which is totally unsupported by any other evidence external or internal.

But Rowley wanted not talent and originality for independent exertion, and five dramas out of nine which have been attributed solely to his pen, have reached us from the press. That a writer who was deemed a worthy assistant in such plays as The Witch of Edmonton, The Thracian Wonder, and The Spanish Gipsey, must have possessed no very inferior abilities, can admit of little doubt, and is confirmed indeed by his own exclusive compositions; for A Match at Midnight, and All's Lost by Lust, the former in the comic, and the latter in the tragic, department of his art, evince, in incident and humour, in character and in pathos, powers which repel the charge of mediocrity. Upon the whole, however, we consider him as ranking last in the roll of worthies who have thus far graced our pages.

Among the crowd of poets who commenced writers for the stage during the dramatic life-time of Shakspeare, and who were peculiarly disciples of the same school, we have now, in our opinion, noticed the most eminent; and if we add to the list, the names of TAILOR, TOMKIS, and TOURNEUR, the first the author of The Hog hath lost his Pearl, the second of Albumazar, and the third of The Revenger's Tragedy, The Atheist's Tragedy, and The Nobleman, productions in which some very beautiful passages are to be found, and some entire scenes of great merit, we shall not probably be charged with the omission of any thing which could materially serve to heighten our idea of this unrivalled period of the Romantic drama. Beyond the limits, indeed, to which we are confined, one great name, that of Shirley, meriting, in many respects, the celebrity which now accompanies the memory of Massinger and Fletcher, would require particular attention; but we must hasten to conclude this branch of the subject, by a simple enumeration, in alphabetical order, of those who, in any degree, contributed to fill the school of Shakspeare whilst its founder was in existence:—

Armin, Robert. Barnes, Barnaby. Barry, Lodowick. Bird, William. Borne, William. Boyle, William. Brandon, Samuel. Brewer, Anthony. Campion, Thomas. Carey, Elizabeth. Chettle, Henry. Cook, John. Dauborn, Robert. Day, John. Downton, Thomas. Drayton, Michael. Field, Nathaniel. Goff, Thomas. Hathway, Richard. Haughton, William. Hawkins, —— Jubey, William. Machin, Lewis. Massey, Charles. Mason, John. Munday, Anthony. Pett, —— Porter, Henry. Rankins, William. Ridley, Samuel. Robinson, —— Rowley, Samuel. Sharpman, Edward. Shawe, Robert. Singer, John. Slaughter, Martin. Smith, William. Smith, Wentworth. Stephens, John. Taylor, John. Wadeson, Anthony. Wilkins, George. Wilson, Robert. Wilson, ——[571:A]

In this long list, the only name of celebrity is that of Michael Drayton, and it is a circumstance very extraordinary, and much to be regretted, that, although we find, from the manuscripts of Dulwich College, this great poet had written an entire play, under the title of William Longsword, and had contributed towards the composition of not less than twenty others, whilst we learn, at the same time, from Meres[571:B], that he was well known as a writer of tragedy, not a particle of his authenticated poetry, in this province, should have reached posterity.

After this concise view of the contemporaries of Shakspeare, whom we conceive to have in general adopted, either tacitly or avowedly, and with an approximation nearly proportioned to their talents, the style and structure of his drama, we have now to bring forward the mighty leader of another school, which, if not equally excellent with that established by Shakspeare, possesses the most undoubted originality, and, in its peculiar walk, a degree of merit which neither in its own day, nor in any subsequent period, has encountered any successful rivalry. To this description is it necessary to add the name of BEN JONSON?

Some attempts at a more classical construction of our drama had been made about the period when Jonson began to write: Daniel, for instance, had published his Cleopatra, in 1594, after the models of antiquity, and Alexander Earl of Stirling, printed, in 1603 and 1604, his Monarchic Tragedies, in which a regular chorus is introduced; but these were abortive efforts, unsupported by the requisite abilities for dramatic composition, and it remained for Jonson to impress upon his own age, and upon posterity, the conviction that an equally correct form of art might be combined with some of the striking excellences of the Romantic school.

It is probable that when Jonson first began to write for the theatre, which we find, from Mr. Henslowe's memorandums, was as early as 1593, and in conjunction with Decker, Marston, Chettle, &c., he conformed himself to their mode of composition; but no sooner had he ventured on the stage with a comedy exclusively his own, than he aspired to the establishment of a Dramatic Literature in this province, which, while it should adhere to the structure of the classical model, might exhibit various and extensive views of human nature, and uniformly have for its object the correction of vice and folly through the medium of unsparing satire.

Success, in a very extraordinary degree, accompanied this first adventure of laudable ambition, which under the title of Every Man in his Humour made its appearance, at The Rose theatre, in 1596, and, with material alterations and improvements, at The Globe, in 1598. This was followed, at various periods, and almost to the very close of his life, by thirteen more pieces in the same department, of which ten are comedies, and the remaining three, as their author chose to designate them, comical satires.

That these productions, though in the line peculiarly adapted to his genius, should be equally excellent, it would be extravagant to expect. The best, and, we may add, the most incomparable in their kind, are the play just mentioned, Volpone, or The Fox, Epicœne, or The Silent Woman, and The Alchemist. As much inferior to these, but yet possessed of considerable merit, we may next enumerate The Case is Altered, The Devil is an Ass, and The Staple of News; and lastly, though not devoid of interesting and well written passages, Bartholomew Fair, The New Inn, The Magnetic Lady, and A Tale of a Tub. The comical satires, entitled Every Man out of his Humour, Cynthia's Revels, and The Poetaster, are, especially the last, composed in a tone of indignant strength; and, as their appellation might lead us to suppose, are personal and severe; but probably not more so than the occasion warranted.

The fair fame of Jonson which, both in a moral and dramatic light, has, for more than a century, been overwhelmed by a cloud of ignorance and prejudice, now brightens with more than pristine lustre, through the liberal and generous efforts of some accomplished scholars of the present day; and if ever it be permitted to departed spirits to witness the transactions of this sublunary sphere, with what delight and gratitude must the spirit of the injured bard look down upon the labours of his learned friends, upon the noble and disinterested protection of a Gilchrist, a Godwin, and a Gifford!

Under such circumstances, and with such a triumvirate in his support, it were needless, and, indeed, it were unjust, to do more than repeat in this place their own summary of his merit as a comic poet, to which we will now add, once for all, however unimportant it may be, the expression of our conviction of the general justness of their sentiments with regard to his writings, and of the unanswerable nature of their defence with regard to his moral character; a tribute which we are, beyond measure, gratified in paying, as whilst they have impartially brought forward the great talents of Jonson, they have paid a full and frank acknowledgment to the superior comprehensiveness of the genius of Shakspeare; and have, at the same time, placed in a striking point of view the steady friendship which subsisted between these two luminaries of the dramatic world.

It is, however, only with the literary character of Jonson that we are now occupied; and on the topic immediately before us, the consideration of his comic powers, Mr. Godwin has cursorily, but very justly remarked, that "these, perhaps, compose his strongest claim to the admiration of all posterity. He excels every writer that ever existed, in the article of humour; and it is a sort of identical proposition to say, that humour is the soul of comedy. Even the caustic severity of his turn of mind aided him in this. He seized with the utmost precision the weaknesses of human character, and painted them with a truth that is altogether irresistible. Shakspeare has some characters of humour marvellously felicitous. But the difference between these two great supporters of the English drama, in the point of view we are considering, lies here. Humour is not Shakspeare's mansion, the palace wherein he dwells; there are many of his comedies, where the humorous characters rather form the episode of the piece; poetry, the manifestation of that lovely medium through which all creation appeared to his eye, and the quick sallies of repartee, are the objects with which his comic muse more usually delights herself. But Ben Jonson is all humour; and the fertility of his muse, in characters of this sort, is wholly inexhaustible."[574:A]

With a fuller elucidation of the subject, which laid more directly before him, Mr. Gifford, after commenting on the inutility of the common practice of contrasting the two poets, and after observing that "Shakspeare wants no light but his own; 'for' as he never has been equalled, and in all human probability never will be equalled, it seems an invidious employ, at best, to speculate minutely on the precise degree in which others fell short of him," proceeds to state, that "the judgment of Jonson was correct and severe, and his knowledge of human nature extensive and profound. He was familiar with the various combinations of the humours and affections, and with the nice and evanescent tints by which the extremes of opposing qualities melt into one another, and are lost to the vulgar eye: but the art which he possessed in perfection, was that of marking in the happiest manner the different shades of the same quality, in different minds, so as to discriminate the voluptuous from the voluptuous, the covetous from the covetous, &c.

"In what Hurd calls 'picturing,' he was excellent. His characters are delineated with a breadth and vigour, as well as a truth, that display a master hand; his figures stand prominent on the canvas, bold and muscular, though not elegant; his attitudes, though sometimes ungraceful, are always just; while his strict observation of proportion, (in which he was eminently skilled,) occasionally mellowed the hard and rigid tone of his colouring, and by the mere force of symmetry, gave a warmth to the whole, as pleasing as it was unexpected. Such, in a word, was his success, that it may be doubted whether he has been surpassed, or even equalled, by any of those who have attempted to tread in his steps.

"In the plots of his comedies, which were constructed from his own materials, he is deserving of undisputed praise. Without violence; without, indeed, any visible effort, the various events of the story are so linked together, that they have the appearance of accidental introduction; yet they all contribute to the main design, and support that just harmony which alone constitutes a perfect fable. Such, in fact, is the rigid accuracy of his plans, that it requires a constant, and almost painful attention, to trace out their various bearings and dependencies. Nothing is left to chance: before he sat down to write, he had evidently arranged every circumstance in his mind; preparations are made for incidents which do not immediately occur; and hints are dropped, which can only be comprehended at the unravelling of the piece. The play does not end with Jonson, because the fifth act is come to a conclusion; nor are the most important events precipitated, and the most violent revolutions of character suddenly effected, because the progress of the story has involved the poet in difficulties from which he cannot otherwise extricate himself. This praise, whatever be its worth, is enhanced by the rigid attention paid to the unities; to say nothing of those of place and character, that of time is so well observed in most of his comedies, that the representation occupies scarcely an hour more on the stage, than the action would require in real life."[576:A]

Mr. Gifford then goes on to explain, why Jonson, "with such extraordinary requisites for the stage, joined to a strain of poetry always manly, frequently lofty, and sometimes sublime," should not have retained his popularity; accounting for this result by the assignment of three causes, of which the first was, his dismissing "the grace and urbanity which mark his lighter pieces whenever he approached the stage, putting on the censor with the sock;" the second sprung from the circumstance, that "Jonson was the painter of humours, not of passions," and aiming less to excite laughter in his hearers, "than to feast their understanding, and minister to their rational improvement," he frequently brought forward unamiable and uninteresting characters, pests which he wished to extirpate from society, not only by rendering them ridiculous, but by exhibiting them in an odious and disgusting light; and the third was, "a want of just discrimination. He seems to have been deficient," observes Mr. Gifford, "in that true tact or feeling of propriety which Shakspeare possessed in full excellence. He appears to have had an equal value for all his characters, and he labours upon the most unimportant, and even disagreeable of them, with the same fond and paternal assiduity which accompanies his happiest efforts."[577:A] This laboured and indiscriminate finishing may be termed, indeed, one of the prominent characteristics of Jonson's composition; and has, perhaps, more than any thing else, contributed to obscure his reputation.

The genius of Jonson seems to have forsaken him, when he touched the tragic chords. Neither pity nor terror answered to his call, and Sejanus and Catiline are valuable, principally, for their correct, though cold and hard, delineations of Roman character and costume. It is remarkable, that, in the construction of these tragedies, Jonson has deserted his Athenian masters, and, adopting the licence of the Romantic school, he has laid aside the unities of time and place; but without acquiring that breadth and freedom in the execution of his subjects, with which such deviations ought to have been accompanied.

The devotion of the poet to this high department of his art was not confined, however, to these two Roman dramas; he had planned a tragedy on the Fall of Mortimer, of which only a small fragment remains; and we find, from the Dulwich Manuscripts, that, the year preceding the first performance of Sejanus, he had actually been engaged in writing a play on the subject of Richard the Third:—"Lent unto Benjemy Johstone," says Henslowe's memorandum, "at the appoyntment of E. Alleyn and Wm. Birde the 22 June 1602, in earnest of a boocke called Richard Crook-back, and for new adycions for Jeronymo, the some of x lb."[577:B] The Richard of Jonson, and the Macbeth of Milton!—would that time had spared the one and witnessed the execution of the other! How delightful, how interesting might have been the labour of comparison!

If Jonson failed, as he must be allowed to have done, in communicating pathos and interest to his tragic productions, he has made us ample amends by the unrivalled excellence of his numerous Masques, a species of dramatic poetry, to which he, and he alone, put the seal of perfection. Here his imagination, which, in the peculiar line of comedy he cultivated, had but little scope for expansion, and was, in his tragedies, altogether repressed, by an undeviating adhesion to the letter of history, expatiated as in its native element. "No sooner," remarks Mr. Gifford, "has he taken down his lyre, no sooner touched on his lighter pieces, than all is changed as if by magic, and he seems a new person. His genius awakes at once, his imagination becomes fertile, ardent, versatile, and excursive; his taste pure and elegant; and all his faculties attuned to sprightliness and pleasure."[578:A]

No greater honour, however, has been paid to the memory of Jonson, than the proof which Mr. Godwin has brought forward of his being the favourite author of Milton, "the predecessor that he chiefly had in his eye, and whom he seems principally to resemble in his style of composition."[579:A] Among the numerous passages by which he has substantiated this fact, none are more conspicuous than those that breathe the spirit of the lyrical portion of the Masques; for "Milton," as he observes, "will certainly be found to have studied his compositions in this kind more assiduously, than those of any of his contemporaries.—It would be strange indeed, if the poet, who in early youth composed the Mask of Comus, had not diligently studied the writings of Ben Jonson."[579:B] Can there be a test of merit more indisputable than this? for Comus, though by no means faultless as a Masque, has to boast of a poetry more rich and imaginative than is to be found in any other composition, save The Tempest of Shakspeare.

"It is not however," proceeds Mr. Godwin, "in lighter and incidental matters only, that Milton studied the great model afforded him by Jonson: we may find in him much that would almost tempt us to hold opinion with Pythagoras, and to believe that the very spirit and souls of some men became transfused into their poetical successors. The address of our earlier poet to the two universities, prefixed to his most consummate performance, the comedy of The Fox, will strike every reader familiar with the happiest passages of Milton's prose, with its wonderful resemblance.—They were both of them emphatically poets who had sounded the depths, and formed themselves in the school, of classic lore.

"The difference between 'them' may perhaps best be illustrated from the topic of religion. They had neither of them one spark of libertine and latitudinarian unbelief. But Jonson was not, like Milton, penetrated with his religion. It is to him a sort of servitude—it is not the principle that actuates, but the check that controls him. But in Milton, it is the element in which he breathes, a part of his nature. He acts, 'as ever in his Great Task-master's eye:' and this is not his misfortune; but he rejoices in his condition, that he has so great, so wise, and so sublime a Being, to whom to render his audit."[580:A]

The labours of Jonson closed with a species of dramatic poetry in which he had made no previous attempt, and we have only to regret that it was left in an unfinished state; for had the Sad Shepherd been completed in the style of excellence in which it was commenced, it would have been superior not only to the Faithful Shepherdess of Fletcher, but perhaps to any thing which he himself had written.

When Jonson, in his noble and generous eulogium on Shakspeare, tells us, that

"He was not of an age, but for all time,"

he seized a characteristic of which the reverse, in some degree, applies to himself; for had he paid less attention to the minutiæ of his own age, and dedicated himself more to universal habits and feelings, his popularity would have nearly equalled that of the poet whom he loved and praised. Yet his fame rests on a broad and durable foundation, and we point, with pride and triumph, to that matchless constellation of dramatic merit, where burn, with inextinguishable glory, the mighty, names of SHAKSPEARE, JONSON, FLETCHER, MASSINGER.

FOOTNOTES:

[557:A] Vide Malone's Dryden, vol. i. part ii. p. 101.

[557:B] Verses addressed to Mr. Humphrey Mosely, published in his Poems, Epigrams, &c. 1658.

[557:C] Verses addressed to Mr. Charles Cotton.

[558:A] See Malone's Dryden, vol. i. part ii. p. 101. note.

[558:B] Monthly Review, new series, vol. lxxxi. p. 126.

[558:C] Malone's Dryden, vol. i. part ii. p. 100.—Fuller tells us, in his quaint but emphatic manner, that Beaumont brought "the ballast of judgment," and Fletcher "the sail of phantasie."—Worthies, part ii. p. 288.

[559:A] Lamb's Specimens of English Dramatic Poets, p. 409.

[559:B] Dryden on Dramatic Poesy.

[561:A] Would that the Commentators on Shakspeare had pursued the plan which Mr. Gifford has adopted in his edition of Massinger, who, speaking of the freedoms of his author, declares, that "those who examine the notes with a prurient eye, will find no great gratification of their licentiousness. I have called in no 'one' (he adds) to drivel out gratuitous obscenities in uncouth language; no 'one' to ransack the annals of a brothel for secrets 'better hid:' where I wished not to detain the reader, I have been silent, and instead of aspiring to the fame of a licentious commentator, sought only for the quiet approbation with which the father or the husband may reward the faithful editor."—Massinger, vol. i. pp. lxxxiii. lxxxiv.

[561:B] Gifford's Massinger, vol. i. pp. xii. xiv. Introduction.

[561:C] Ibid. vol. i. pp. xviii.-xx.

[562:A] Gifford's Massinger, vol. i. Essay on the Writings of Massinger, p. cxxvi.

[563:A] Letter to William Gifford, Esq. on the late edition of Ford's Plays, 8vo. 1811, p. 7.

[563:B] Vide Chalmers's Biographical Dictionary, vol. xiv. p. 465.

[563:C] Gentleman's Magazine, vol. lxxxv. p. 219.

[565:A] Vide Ancient British Drama, vol. iii. p. 3.

[565:B] The Old Law, in which he assisted Rowley, was acted in its original state, and before it was re-touched by Massinger, in 1599.

[568:A] Returne from Parnassus, act i. sc. 2.—Vide Ancient British Drama, vol. i. p. 49.

[569:A] In his Dedication to the Spanish Fryer.

[571:A] This writer is mentioned by Meres in 1598, and praised for his skill in comedy.

[571:B] Vide Witt's Treasury, p. 281.

[574:A] Jonson's Works by Gifford, vol. i. pp. ccxcix. ccc.

[576:A] Gifford's Jonson, vol. i. Memoirs of Jonson, pp. ccxiii.-ccxv.

[577:A] Gifford's Jonson, vol. i. Memoirs, pp. ccxvi.-ccxix.

[577:B] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iii. p. 394.

[578:A] Gifford's Jonson, vol. i. Memoirs, p. ccxxx. After the passage which we have inserted in the text, follow these admirable observations:—

"Such were the Masques of Jonson, in which, as Mr. Malone says, 'the wretched taste of those times found amusement.' That James and his court delighted in them cannot be doubted, and we have only to open the Memoirs of Winwood and others to discover with what interest they were followed by the nobility of both sexes. Can we wonder at this? There were few entertainments of a public kind at which they could appear, and none in which they could participate. Here all was worthy of their hours of relaxation. Mythologues of classic purity, in which, as Hurd observes, the soundest moral lessons came recommended by the charm of numbers, were set forth with all the splendour of royalty, while Jones and Lanier, and Lawes and Ferrabosco, lavished all the grace and elegance of their respective arts on the embellishment of the entertainment.

"But in what was 'the taste of the times wretched?' In poetry, painting, architecture, they have not since been equalled; in theology, and moral philosophy, they are not even now surpassed; and it ill becomes us, who live in an age which can scarcely produce a Bartholomew Fair farce, to arraign the taste of a period which possessed a cluster of writers, of whom the meanest would now be esteemed a prodigy. And why is it assumed that the followers of the court of James were deficient in what Mr. Malone is pleased to call taste? To say nothing of the men, (who were trained to a high sense of decorum and intellectual discernment under Elizabeth,) the Veres, the Wroths, the Derbys, the Bedfords, the Rutlands, the Cliffords, and the Arundels, who danced in the fairy rings, in the gay and gallant circles of these enchanting devices, of which our most splendid shows are, at best, but beggarly parodies, were fully as accomplished in every internal and external grace as those who, in our days, have succeeded to their names and honours."—Memoirs, pp. ccxxx. ccxxxi.

[579:A] Gifford's Jonson, vol. i. p. ccxcvii.

[579:B] Ibid. vol. i. pp. ccciii.-cccv.

[580:A] Gifford's Jonson, vol. i. p. cccvii.