the grave, or the skin, bone, or any part of the dead perfon, to be employed or used in any manner of witchcraft, forcery, charm, or enchantment; 4. or fhall use, practife or exercise any fort of witchcraft, forcery, charm, or enchantment; 5. whereby any perfon shall be destroyed, killed, wafted, confumed, pined, or lamed in any part of the body; 6. That every fuch perfon being convicted, fhall fuffer death." This law was repealed in our own time.

Thus, in the time of Shakespeare, was the doctrine of witchcraft at once eftablished by law and by the fashion, and it became not only unpolite, but criminal to doubt it; and as prodigies are always feen in proportion as they are expected, witches were every day discovered, and multiplied so fast in some places, that bishop Hall mentions a village in Lancashire, where their number was greater than that of the houses. The jefuits and fectaries took advantage of this univerfal error, and endeavoured to promote the intereft of their parties by pretended cures of perfons afflicted by evil fpirits; but they were detected and exposed by the clergy of the established church.

Upon this general infatuation Shakespeare might be easily allowed to found a play, especially fince he has followed with great exactnefs fuch hiftories as were then thought true; nor can it be doubted that the scenes of enchantment, however they may now be ridiculed, were both by himself and his audience thought awful and affecting.

KING JOHN.

The tragedy of King John, though not written with the utmost power of Shakespeare, is varied with

a very pleasing interchange of incidents and cha. racters. The lady's grief is very affecting; and the character of the baftard contains that mixture of greatness and levity which this author delighted to exhibit,

KING RICHARD II.

This play is extracted from the Chronicle of Helimfhed, in which many paffages may be found which Shakespeare has, with very little alteration, tranfplanted into his fcenes; particularly a fpeech of the bishop of Carlile in defence of king Richard's unalienable right, and immunity from human jurifdiction.

Jonson who, in his Catiline and Sejanus, has inferted many fpeeches from the Roman hiftorians, was perhaps induced to that practice by the example of Shakespeare, who had condefcended fometimes to copy more ignoble writers. But Shakespeare had more of his own than Jonson, and if he fometimes was willing to fpare his labour, fhewed by what he performed at other times, that his extracts were made by choice or idleness rather than neceffity.

This play is one of thofe which Shakespeare has apparently revifed; but as fuccefs in works of invention is not always proportionate to labour, it is not finished at laft with the happy force of fome other of his tragedies, nor can be faid much to affect the paffions, or enlarge the understanding.

KING HENRY IV. PART II.

I fancy every reader, when he ends this play, cries out with Deflemone, "O most lame and im" potent

potent conclufion!" As this

As this play was not, to

our knowledge, divided into acts by the author, I could be content to conclude it with the death of Henry the Fourth.

In that Jerufalem fhall Harry die.

These scenes, which now make the fifth act of Henry the Fourth, might then be the first of Henry the Fifth; but the truth is, that they do unite very commodiously to either play. When these plays were represented, I believe they ended as they are now ended in the books; but Shakespeare feems to have defigned that the whole feries of action from. the beginning of Richard the Second, to the end of Henry the Fifth, fhould be confidered by the reader as one work, upon one plan, only broken into parts by the neceffity of exhibition.

None of Shakespeare's plays are more read than the First and Second Parts of Henry the Fourth. Perhaps no author has ever in two plays afforded fo much delight. The great events are interefting, for the fate of kingdoms depends upon them; the lighter occurrences are diverting, and, except one or two, fufficiently probable; the incidents are multiplied with wonderful fertility of invention, and the characters diverfified with the utmost nicety of discernment, and the profoundest skill in the nature of man.

The prince, who is the hero both of the comick and tragick part, is a young man of great abilities and violent paffions, whofe fentiments are right, though his actions are wrong; whofe virtues are obfcured by negligence, and whofe understanding is diffipated by levity. In his idle hours he is rather

loofe

loofe than wicked; and when the occafion forces out his latent qualities, he is great without effort, and brave without tumult. The trifler is roufed into a hero, and the hero again repofes in the trifler. This character is great, original, and just.

Percy is a rugged foldier, cholerick, and quarrelfome, and has only the foldier's virtues, generoty and courage.

But Falstaff unimitated, unimitable Falaf, how fhall I defcribe thee? Thou compound of fenie and vice; of fenfe which may be admired, but no efteemed; of vice which may be defpifed, bet hardly detefted. Falstaff is a character loaded with faults, and with thofe faults which naturally produce contempt. He is a thief and a glutton, a coward and a boafter, always ready to cheat the weak, and prey upon the poor; to terrify the timorous, and infult the defencelefs. At once obiequious and malignant, he fatirizes in their abfence thofe whom he lives by flattering. He is familiar with the prince only as an agent of vice, but of this familiarity he is fo proud, as not only to be fupercilious and haughty with common men, but to think his intereft of importance to the duke of Lancaster. Yet the man thus corrupt, thus de'picable, makes himself neceffary to the prince that defpifes him, by the most pleasing of all qualities, perpetual gaiety, by an unfailing power of exciting laughter, which is the more freely indulged, as his wit is not of the fplendid or ambitious kind, but confists in eafy fcapes and fallies of levity, which make sport, but raife no envy. It must be obferved, that he is ftained with no enormous or fanguinary

crimes,

crimes, fo that his licentioufnefs is not fo offenfive but that it may be borne for his mirth.

The moral to be drawn from this reprefentation is, that no man is more dangerous than he that, with a will to corrupt, hath the power to please; and that neither wit nor honefty ought to think themselves fafe with fuch a companion, when they fee Henry feduced by Falstaff.

KING HENRY V.

This play has many fcenes of high dignity, and many of easy merriment. The character of the king is well fupported, except in his courtship, where he has neither the vivacity of Hal, nor the grandeur of Henry. The humour of Pistol is very happily continued: his character has perhaps been the model of all the bullies that have yet appeared on the English ftage.

The lines given to the Chorus have many admirers; but the truth is, that in them a little may be praised, and much muft be forgiven; nor can it be easily discovered why the intelligence given by the Chorus is more neceffary in this play than in many others where it is omitted. The great defect of this play is the emptinefs and narrownefs of the laft act, which a very little diligence might have cafily avoided.

KING HENRY VI, PART I.

Of this play there is no copy earlier than that of the folio in 1623, though the two fucceeding parts are extant in two editions in quarto. That the

fecond