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through jealousy, causeless or well founded, another kills a beloved wife, and himself after, there is no more to be said; they are dead, and there an end; Or if in the scenes of Comedy, parties are engaged, and plots formed, for the furthering or preventing the completion of that great article Cuckoldom, we expect to be satisfied in the point as far as the nature of so nice a case will permit, or at least to see such a manifest disposition as will leave us in no doubt of the event. By the bye, I cannot but think that the Comic writers of the last age treated this matter as of more importance, and made more bustle about it, than the temper of the present times will well bear; and it is therefore to be hoped that the Dramatic authors of the present day, some of whom, to the best of my judgment, are deserving of great praise, will consider and treat this business, rather as a common and natural incident arising out of modern manners, than as worthy to be held forth as the great object and sole end of the Play.

But whatever be the question, or whatever the character, the curtain must not only be dropt before the eyes, but over the minds of the spectators, and nothing left for further examination and curiosity. But how was this to be done in regard to Falstaff? He was not involved in the fortune of the Play; he was engaged in no action which, as to him, was to be compleated; he had reference to no system, he was attracted to no center; he passes thro' the Play as a lawless meteor, and we wish to know what course he is afterwards likely to take: He is detected and disgraced, it is true; but he lives by detection, and thrives on disgrace; and we are desirous to see him detected and disgraced again. The Fleet might be no bad scene of further amusement ;-he carries all within him, and what matter where, if he be still the same, possessing the same force of mind, the same wit, and the same incongruity. This, Shakespeare was fully sensible of, and knew that this character could not be compleatly dismissed but by death." Our author," says the Epilogue to the Second Part of Henry IV., "will continue the

"story with Sir John in it, and make you merry with fair "Catherine of France; where, for any thing I know,

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Falstaff shall dye of a sweat, unless already he be killed "with your hard opinions." If it had been prudent in Shakespeare to have killed Falstaff with hard opinion, he had the means in his hand to effect it ;-but dye, it seems, he must, in one form or another, and a sweat would have been no unsuitable catastrophe. However we have reason to be satisfied as it is ;—his death was worthy of his birth and of his life: "He was born," he says, "about three o'clock in the afternoon, with a white head, and something a round belly." But if he came into the world in the evening with these marks of age, he departs out of it in the morning in all the follies and vanities of youth ;-" He was shaked" (we are told)" of a burning quotidian tertian;-the young King had run bad humours on the knight;—his heart was fracted and "corroborate; and a' parted just between twelve and one, even "at the turning of the tide, yielding the crow a pudding, and passing directly into Arthur's bosom, if ever man went into "the bosom of Arthur."-So ended this singular buffoon; and with him ends an Essay, on which the reader is left to bestow what character he pleases: An Essay professing to treat of the Courage of Falstaff, but extending itself to his Whole character; to the arts and genius of his PoeticMaker, SHAKESPEARE; and thro' him sometimes, with ambitious aim, even to the principles of human nature itself.

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NOTES

NICHOLAS ROWE

2. Some Latin without question, etc.

This passage, down to the reference to the scene in Henry V., is omitted by Pope. Love's Labour's Lost, iv. 2, 95; Titus Andronicus, iv. 2, 20; Henry V., iii. 4.

3. Deer-stealing. This tradition-which was first recorded in print by Rowe has often been doubted. See, however, Halliwell-Phillipps's Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare, 1886, ii., p. 71, and Mr. Sidney Lee's Life of Shakespeare, pp. 27, etc.

4. the first Play he wrote. Pope inserted here the following note: "The highest date of any I can yet find is Romeo and Juliet in 1597, when the author was 33 years old, and Richard the 2d and 3d in the next year, viz. the 34th of his age.' The two last had been printed in

1597.

Mr. Dryden seems to think that Pericles, etc. This sentence was omitted by Pope.

5. the best conversations, etc. Rowe here controverts the opinion expressed by Dryden in his Essay on the Dramatic Poetry of the Last Age: "I cannot find that any of them had been conversant in courts, except Ben Johnson; and his genius lay not so much that way as to make an improvement by it. Greatness was not then so easy of access, nor conversation so free, as now it is" (Essays, ed. W. P. Ker, i., p. 175).

A fair Vestal. Midsummer Night's Dream, ii. 1, 158. In the original Rowe adds to his quotations from Shakespeare the page references to his own edition.

The Merry Wives. The tradition that the Merry Wives was written at the command of Elizabeth had been recorded already by Dennis in the preface to his version of the play,-The Comical Gallant, or the Amours of Sir John Falstaffe (1702): "This Comedy was written at her command, and by her direction, and she was so eager to see it acted, that she commanded it to be finished in fourteen days; and was afterwards, as Tradition tells us, very well pleas'd at the Representation." Cf. Dennis's Defence of a Regulated Stage: "she not only commanded

Shakespear to write the comedy of the Merry Wives, and to write it in ten day's time," etc. (Original Letters, 1721, i., p. 232).

this part of Falstaff. Rowe is here indebted apparently to the account of John Fastolfe in Fuller's Worthies of England (1662). But neither in it, nor in the similar passage on Oldcastle in the Church History of Britain (1655, Bk. 1v., Cent. xv., p. 168), does Fuller say that the name was altered at the command of the queen, on objection being made by Oldcastle's descendants. This may have been a tradition at Rowe's time, as there was then apparently no printed authority for it, but, as Halliwell-Phillips showed in his Character of Sir John Falstaff, 1841, it is confirmed by a manuscript of about 1625, preserved in the Bodleian. Cf. also Halliwell-Phillips's Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare, 1886, ii., pp. 351, etc.; Richard James's Iter Lancastrense (Chetham Society, 1845, p. lxv.); and Ingleby's Shakespeare's Centurie of Prayse, 1879, pp. 164-5.

name of Oldcastle. Pope added in a footnote, "See the Epilogue to Henry 4th.'

6. Venus and Adonis. The portion of the sentence following this title was omitted by Pope because it is inaccurate. The Rape of Lucrece also was dedicated to the Earl of Southampton. The error is alluded to in Sewell's preface to the seventh volume of Pope's Shakespeare, 1725. Eunuchs. Pope reads "Singers."

The passage dealing with Spenser (p. 6, 1. 34, to p. 7, 1. 36) was omitted by Pope. But it is interesting to know Dryden's opinion, even though it is probably erroneous. Willy has not yet been identified.

8. After this they were professed friends, etc. This description of Ben Jonson, down to the words "with infinite labour and study could but hardly attain to," was omitted by Pope, for reasons which appear in his Preface. See pp. 54, 55.

Ben was naturally proud and insolent, etc. Rowe here paraphrases and expands Dryden's description in his Discourse concerning Satire of Jonson's verses to the memory of Shakespeare,-"an insolent, sparing, and invidious panegyric" (ed. W. P. Ker, ii., p. 18).

In a conversation, etc. The authority for this conversation is Dryden, who had recorded it as early as 1668 in his Essay of Dramatic Poesy, at the conclusion of the magnificent eulogy of Shakespeare. He had also spoken of it to Charles Gildon, who, in his Reflections on Mr. Rymer's Short View of Tragedy (1694), had given it with greater fulness of detail. Each of the three accounts contains certain particulars lacking in the other two, but they have unmistakably a common source. Dryden probably told the story to Rowe, as he had already told it to Gildon. The chief difficulty is the source, not of Rowe's information, but of Dryden's. As Jonson was present at the discussion, it must have taken place by 1637. It is such a discussion as prompted Suckling's Session of the Poets (1637), wherein Hales and Falkland figure. It cannot

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be dated "before 1633" (as in Ingleby's Centurie of Prayse, pp. 198-9). The Lord Falkland mentioned in Gildon's account is undoubtedly the second lord, who succeeded in 1633, and died in 1643. Dryden may have got his information from Davenant.

8. Pope condensed the passage thus: "Mr. Hales, who had sat still for some time, told 'em, That if Shakespear had not read the Ancients, he had likewise not stollen anything from 'em; and that if he would produce," etc.

9. Johnson did indeed take a large liberty. The concluding portion of this paragraph from these words is omitted by Pope.

The Menaechmi was translated by "W. W.," probably William Warner. It was licensed in June, 1594, and published in 1595, but, as the preface states, it had been circulated in manuscript before it was printed. The Comedy of Errors, which was acted by 1594, may have been founded on the Historie of Error, which was given at Hampton Court in 1576-7, and probably also at Windsor in 1582-3. Farmer's Essay, p. 200,

This passage dealing with Rymer is omitted by Pope. retains of this paragraph only the first two lines ( . . Works") and the last three ("so I will only take," etc.).

See

He

"Shakespear's

Thomas Rymer, the editor of the Fadera, published his Short View of Tragedy in 1693. The criticism of Othello and Julius Caesar contained therein he had promised as early as 1678 in his Tragedies of the Last Age. His "sample of Tragedy," Edgar or the British Monarch, appeared in 1678.

11. Falstaff's Billet-Doux omitted by Pope.

...

expressions of love in their way,

12. The Merchant of Venice was turned into a comedy, with the title the Jew of Venice, by George Granville, Pope's "Granville the polite," afterwards Lord Lansdowne. It was acted at Lincoln's Inn Fields in 1701. The part of the Jew was performed by Dogget. Betterton played Bassanio. See Genest's English Stage, ii. 243, etc.

is a little too much (line 13). Pope reads is too much.

Difficile est, etc.

Horace, Ars poetica, 128.

All the world, etc. As you like it, ii. 7. 139.

13. She never told her love, etc. Twelfth Night, ii. 4. 113-118: line 116, "And with a green and yellow melancholy" is omitted.

Pope omits a passage or two in (line 34).

ornament to the Sermons. Cf. Addison, Spectator, No. 61: "The greatest authors, in their most serious works, made frequent use of punns. The Sermons of Bishop Andrews, and the Tragedies of Shakespear, are full of them."

14. Pope omits former (line 5).

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