The very necessity for these stirring words | annihilated.
would show us that from henceforth John is
but a puppet without a will. The blight of
Arthur's death is upon him; and he moves
on to his own destiny, whilst Faulconbridge
defies or fights with his enemies; and his
revolted lords, even while they swear

"A voluntary zeal, and unurged faith,"

to the invader, bewail their revolt, and

lament

"That, for the health and physic of our right,
We cannot deal but with the very hand
Of stern injustice and confused wrong."
But the great retribution still moves on-
ward. The cause of England is triumphant;
"the lords are all come Lack :"-but the
king is "poisoned by a monk :"-

"Poison'd,-ill fare;-dead, forsook, cast off:
And none of you will bid the winter come,
To thrust his icy fingers in my maw;
Nor let my kingdom's rivers take their course
Through my burn'd bosom; nor entreat the
north

Causes and consequences, separated in the proper history by long digressions and tedious episodes, are brought together. The attributed murder of Arthur lost John all the inheritances of the house of Anjou, and allowed the house of Capet to triumph in his overthrow. Out of this grew a larger ambition, and England was invaded. The death of Arthur and the events which marked the last days of John were separated in their cause and effect by time only, over which the poet leaps. It is said that a man who was on the point of drowning saw, in an instant, all the events of his life in connection with his approaching end. So sees the poet. It is his to bring the beginnings and the ends of events into that real union and dependence which even the philosophical historian may overlook in tracing their course. It is the poet's office to preserve a unity of action; it is the historian's to show a consistency of progress. In the chroniclers we have manifold changes of fortune in the life of John after Arthur of Brittany has fallen. In Shakspere Arthur of Brittany is

To make his bleak winds kiss my parched at once revenged. The heartbroken mother lips,

And comfort me with cold:-I do not ask you
much,

I beg cold comfort; and you are so strait,
And so ingrateful, you deny me that."

The interval of fourteen years between the
death of Arthur and the death of John is

and her boy are not the only sufferers from double courses. The spirit of Constance is appeased by the fall of John. The Niobe of a Gothic age, who vainly sought to shield her child from as stern a destiny as that with which Apollo and Artemis pursued the daughter of Tantalus, may rest in peace.

CHAPTER II.

A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM.

'A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM' was first | Fisher. It is difficult to say whether both of printed in 1600. In that year there appeared two editions of the play: the one published by Thomas Fisher, a bookseller; the other by James Roberts, a printer. The differences between these two editions are very slight. Steevens, in his collection of twenty plays, has reprinted that by Roberts, giving the variations of the edition by

these were printed with the consent of the author, or whether one was genuine and the other pirated. If the entries at Stationers' Hall may be taken as evidence of a proprietary right, the edition by Fisher is the genuine one, 'A booke called A Mydsomer Nyghte Dreame' having been entered by him Oct. 8, 1600. One thing is perfectly

clear to us — that the original of these | before expressed, that he had written these editions, whichever it might be, was printed for the stage before his twenty-fifth year, from a genuine copy, and carefully super- when he was a considerable shareholder in intended through the press. The text ap- the Blackfriars company, some of them, perpears to us as perfect as it is possible to be, haps, as early as 1585, at which period the considering the state of typography in that vulgar tradition assigns to Shakspere—a day. There is one remarkable evidence of husband, a father, and a man conscious of this. The prologue to the interlude of the the possession of the very highest order of Clowns, in the fifth act, is purposely made talent the dignified office of holding horses inaccurate in its punctuation throughout. at the theatre door. The year 1594 is, as The speaker" does not stand upon points." | nearly as possible, the period where we would It was impossible to have effected the object place A Midsummer-Night's Dream,' with better than by the punctuation of Roberts's reference to our strong belief that Shakspere's edition; and this is precisely one of those earliest plays must be assigned to the commatters of nicety in which a printer would mencement of his dramatic career; and that have failed, unless he had followed an ex- two or three even of his great works had tremely clear copy, or his proofs had been then been given to the world in an unformed corrected by an author or an editor. The shape, subsequently worked up to completeplay was not reprinted after 1600, till it was ness and perfection. But it appears to us a collected into the folio of 1623; and the misapplication of the received meaning of text in that edition differs in few instances, words to talk of "the warmth of a youthful and those very slight ones, from that of the and lively imagination" with reference to preceding quartos. 'A Midsummer-Night's Dream,' and the Shakspere of thirty. We can understand these terms to apply to the unpruned luxuriance of the 'Venus and Adonis;' but the poetry of this piece, the almost continual rhyme, and even the poverty of the fable, are to us evidences of the very highest art having obtained a perfect mastery of its materials after years of patient study. Of all the dramas of Shakspere there is none more entirely harmonious than 'A Midsummer-Night's Dream.' All the incidents, all the characters, are in perfect subordinaation to the will of the poet. "Throughout the whole piece," says Malone, “the more exalted characters are subservient to the interests of those beneath them." Precisely so. An unpractised author-one who had not "a youthful and lively imagination” under perfect control,—when he had got hold of the Theseus and Hippolyta of the heroic ages, would have made them ultraheroical. They would have commanded events, instead of moving with the supernatural influence around them in harmony and proportion. "Theseus, the associate of Hercules, is not engaged in any adventure worthy of his rank or reputation, nor is he in reality an agent throughout the play."

Malone has assigned the composition of 'A Midsummer-Night's Dream' to the year 1594. We are not disposed to object to this, —indeed we are inclined to believe that he has pretty exactly indicated the precise year, as far as it can be proved by one or two allusions which the play contains. But we entirely object to the reasons upon which Malone attempts to show that it was one of our author's "earliest attempts in comedy." He derives the proof of this from "the poetry of this piece, glowing with all the warmth of a youthful and lively imagination, the many scenes which it contains of almost continual rhyme, the poverty of the fable, and want of discrimination among the higher personages." Malone would place 'A Midsummer-Night's Dream' in the same rank as 'The Two Gentlemen of Verona,' 'Love's Labour's Lost,' and The Comedy of Errors;' and he supposes all of them written within a year or two of each other. We have no objection to believe that our poet wrote 'A MidsummerNight's Dream' when he was thirty years of age, that is in 1594. But it so far exceeds the three other comedies in all the higher attributes of poetry, that we cannot avoid repeating here the opinion which we have

|

derful model, which, at the time it appeared, must have been the commencement of a great poetical revolution, and which has never ceased to influence our higher poetry, from Fletcher to Shelley,-was, according to Malone, the work of "the genius of Shakspeare, even in its minority.”

Mr. Hallam has, as might be expected, taken a much more correct view of this question than Malone. He places 'A Midsummer-Night's Dream' among the early plays; but, having mentioned 'The Comedy of Errors,' 'The Two Gentlemen of Verona,' 'Love's Labour's Lost,' and 'The Taming of the Shrew,' he adds, " Its superiority to those we have already mentioned affords some presumption that it was written after them.”*

Precisely so. An immature poet, again, if | power of the English language for purposes the marvellous creation of Oberon and Ti- of poetry, that composition would be the tania, and Puck, could have entered into such Midsummer-Night's Dream.' This wona mind, would have laboured to make the power of the fairies produce some strange and striking events. But the exquisite beauty of Shakspere's conception is, that, under the supernatural influence, "the human mortals" move precisely according to their respective natures and habits. Demetrius and Lysander are impatient and revengeful ;—Helena is dignified and affectionate, with a spice of female error; Hermia is somewhat vain and shrewish. And then Bottom! Who but the most skilful artist could have given us such a character? | Of him Malone says, "Shakspeare would naturally copy those manners first with which he was first acquainted. The ambition of a theatrical candidate for applause he has happily ridiculed in Bottom the weaver." A theatrical candidate for applause! Why, Bottom the weaver is the representative of the whole human race. His confidence in his own power is equally profound, whether he exclaims, "Let me play the lion too;" or whether he sings alone, "that they shall hear I am not afraid;" or whether, conscious that he is surrounded with spirits, he cries out, with his voice of authority, "Where's Peas-blossom?" In every situation Bottom is the same,—the same personification of that selflove which the simple cannot conceal, and the wise can with difficulty suppress. Malone thus concludes his analysis of the internal evidence of the chronology of 'A Midsummer-Night's Dream:' drama, of which the principal personages are thus insignificant, and the fable thus meagre and uninteresting, was one of our author's earliest compositions, does not, therefore seem a very improbable conjecture; nor are the beauties with which it is embellished inconsistent with this supposition." The beauties with which it is embellished include, of course, the whole rhythmical

"That a

structure of the versification. The poet has here put forth all his strength. We venture to offer an opinion that, if any single composition were required to exhibit the

'A Midsummer-Night's Dream' is mentioned by Francis Meres in 1598. The date of the first publication of the play, therefore, in 1600, does not tend to fix its chronology. Nor is it very material to ascertain whether it preceded 1598 by three, or four, or five years. The state of the weather in 1593 and 1594, when England was visited with peculiarly ungenial seasons, may have suggested Titania's beautiful description in Act II., Scene 2. The allusion of two lines in Act V. is by no means so clear :"The thrice three Muses mourning for the death

Of learning, late deceased in beggary."

This passage was once thought to allude to the death of Spenser. But the misfortunes and the death of Spenser did not take place till 1599. Even if the allusion were inserted between the first production of the piece and its publication in 1600, it is difficult to understand how an elegy on the great poet could have been called

'Some satire, keen and critical.”

T. Warton suggested "that Shakspeare here, perhaps, alluded to Spenser's poem entitled

'The Tears of the Muses, on the Neglect and Contempt of Learning.' This piece first

*Literature of Europe,' vol. ii. p. 387.

P

appeared in quarto, with others, 1591." We | little weight, and the point is certainly of greatly doubt the propriety of this conjec- very small consequence. ture, which Malone has adopted. Spenser's poem is certainly a satire in one sense of the word; for it makes the Muses lament that all the glorious productions of men that proceeded from their influence had vanished from the earth. All that

many respects wise-Dr. Johnson, who lived | the stage do not agree well together. The in a prosaic age, and fostered in this par- attempt to reconcile them in this instance ticular the real ignorance by which he was fails not only of effect, but of decorum. The surrounded. He sums up the merits of 'A ideal can have no place upon the stage, Midsummer-Night's Dream,' after this ex- which is a picture without perspective: traordinary fashion :—“ Wild and fantastical everything there is in the foreground. That as this play is, all the parts in their various which was merely an airy shape, a dream, a modes are well written, and give the kind of passing thought, immediately becomes an pleasure which the author designed. Fairies, unmanageable reality. Where all is left to in his time, were much in fashion: common the imagination (as is the case in reading), tradition had made them familiar, and Spen- every circumstance, near or remote, has an ser's poem had made them great." It is equal chance of being kept in mind, and tells perfectly useless to attempt to dissect such accordingly to the mixed impression of all criticism: let it be a beacon to warn us, and that has been suggested. But the imagination not a "load-star" to guide us. Old Pepys, cannot sufficiently qualify the actual imwith his honest hatred of poetry-"To the pressions of the senses. Any offence given King's Theatre, where we saw 'Midsummer- to the eye is not to be got rid of by exNight's Dream,' which I had never seen planation. Thus Bottom's head in the play before, nor shall ever again, for it is the is a fantastic illusion, produced by magic most insipid, ridiculous play that ever I saw spells: on the stage it is an ass's head, and in my life"-is to us more tolerable. nothing more; certainly a very strange costume for a gentleman to appear in. Fancy cannot be embodied any more than a simile can be painted; and it is as idle to attempt it as to personate Wall or Moonshine.”

Mr. Hallam accounts A MidsummerNight's Dream' poetical, more than dramatic; "yet rather so, because the indescribable profusion of imaginative poetry in this play overpowers our senses, till we can hardly observe anything else, than from any deficiency of dramatic excellence. For, in reality, the structure of the fable, consisting as it does of three, if not four actions, very distinct in their subjects and personages, yet wrought into each other without effort or confusion, displays the skill, or rather instinctive felicity, of Shakspeare, as much as in any play he has written.” Yet, certainly, with all its harmony of dramatic arrangement, this play is not for the stageat least not for the modern stage. It may reasonably be doubted whether it was ever eminently successful in performance. The tone of the epilogue is decidedly apologetic, and "the best of this kind are but shadows" is in the same spirit. Hazlitt has admirably described its failure as an acting drama in his own day:

"The Midsummer-Night's Dream,' when acted, is converted from a delightful fiction into a dull pantomime. All that is finest in the play is lost in the representation. The spectacle was grand; but the spirit was evaporated, the genius was fled. Poetry and

And yet, just and philosophical as are these remarks, they offer no objection to the opinion of Mr. Hallam, that in this play there is no deficiency of dramatic excellence. We can conceive that, with scarcely what can be called a model before him, Shakspere's early dramatic attempts must have been a series of experiments to establish a standard by which he should regulate what he addressed to a mixed audience. The plays of his middle and mature life, with scarcely an exception, are acting plays; and they are so, not from the absence of the higher poetry, but from the predominance of character and passion in association with it. But even in those plays which call for a considerable exercise of the unassisted imaginative faculty in an audience, such as 'The Tempest,' and 'A Midsummer-Night's Dream,' where the passions are not powerfully roused, and the senses are not held enchained by the interests of a plot, he is still essentially dramatic. What has been called of late years the dramatic poem-that something between the epic and the dramatic which is held to form an apology for whatever of episodical or