length in favour of this much-injured editor, but which I feel to be now becoming tedious, for,

"And so to arms, victorious father,"

as the line is sanctioned by Malone, arms,' being used, as he asserts, for a dissyllable, (arms a dissyllable!) the second folio presents us with

till the issue of Pope's attempt was ascertained by
its accomplishment, and publication. The Shak-
speare of Theobald's editing was not given to the
world before the year 1733; when it obtained more
of the public regard than its illustrious predecessor,
in consequence of its being drawn from a somewhat
wider field of collation; and of its less frequent and
admission of conjecture. Theobald,
presumptuous
indeed, did not wholly abstain from conjecture:
but the palm of conjectural criticism was placed
much too high for the reach of his hand.

To Theobald, as an editor of Shakspeare, succeeded Sir Thomas Hanmer, who, in 1744, published a superb edition of the great dramatist from the press of Oxford. But Hanmer, building his work on that of Pope, and indulging in the wildest and most wanton innovations, deprived his edition of all pretensions to authenticity, and, consequently, to merit.

a few years, another was projected; and that might be more adequate to the claims of Shakspeare and of Britain, the conduct of it was placed, in homage to his just celebrity, in the hands of Pope. Pope showed himself more conscious of the nature of his task, and more faithful in his execution of it than his predecessor. He disclosed to the publie the very faulty state of his author's text, and "And so to arms, victorious, noble father." suggested the proper means of restoring it: he I have said enough to convince my readers of the collated many of the earlier editions, and he cleared falsity of the charges of stupidity and gross igno- the page of Shakspeare from many of its deformirance, brought by Malone against the editor of the ties: but his collations were not sufficiently extensecond folio edition of our Poet's dramatic works. sive; and he indulged, perhaps, somewhat too I am far from assuming to vindicate this editor much in conjectural emendation. This exposed from the commission of many flagrant errors: but him to the attacks of the petty and minute critics; he is frequently right, and was unquestionably con- and, the success of his work falling short of his exversant, let Malone assert what he pleases, with pectations, he is said to have contracted that enhis author's language and metre. It was not, mity to verbal criticism, which actuated him during therefore, without cause, that Steevens held his la- the remaining days of his life. His edition was bours in much estimation. Malone was an inval-published in the year 1725. Before this was underuable collector of facts: his industry was indefati- taken, Theobald, a man of no great abilities and of gable: his researches were deep: his pursuit of little learning, had projected the restoration of truth was sincere and ardent: but he wanted the Shakspeare; but his labours had been suspended, talents and the taste of a critic; and of all the edi- or their result had been withheld from the press, tors, by whom Shakspeare has suffered, I must consider him as the most pernicious. Neither the indulged fancy of Pope, nor the fondness for innovation in Hanmer, nor the arrogant and headlong self-confidence of Warburton has inflicted such cruel wounds on the text of Shakspeare, as the assuming dulness of Malone. Barbarism and broken rhythm dog him at the heels wherever he treads. In praise of the third and the fourth folio editions of our author's dramas, printed respectively in 1664 and 1685, nothing can be advanced. Each of these editions implicitly followed its immediate predecessor, and, adopting all its errors, increased them to a frightful accumulation with its own. With the text of Shakspeare in this disorder, the public of Britain remained satisfied during many years. From the period of his death he had not enforced that popularity to which his title was undeniable. Great, though inferior, men, Jonson, Fletcher, Massinger, Shirley, Ford, &c. got possession of the stage, and retained it till it ceased to exist under the puritan domination. On the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, the theatre indeed was again opened; but, under the influence of the vicious taste of the new monarch, it was surrendered to a new school (the French school) of the drama; and its mastery was held by Dryden, with many subordinates, during a long succession of years. Throughout this whole period, Shakspeare was nearly for-planations to be just. gotten by his ungrateful or blinded countrymen. His splendour, it is true, was gleaming above the horizon; and his glory, resting in purple and gold upon the hill-summits, obtained the homage of a select band of his worshippers: but it was still hidden from the eyes of the multitude; and it was long before it gained its "meridian tower," whence it was to throw its " glittering shafts "" over a large portion of the earth. At length, about the commencement of the last century, Britain began to open her eyes to the excellency of her illustrious son, THE GREAT POET OF NATURE, and to discover a solicitude for the integrity of his works. A new and a more perfect edition of them became the demand of the public; and, to answer it, an edition, under the superintendence of Rowe, made its appearance in 1709. Rowe, however, either forgetting or shrinking from the high and laborious duties, which he had undertaken, selected, most unfortunately, for his model, the last and the worst of the folio editions; and, without collating either of the first two folios or any of the earlier quartos, he gave to the disappointed public a transcript much too exact of the impure text which lay opened before him. Some of its grosser errors, however, he corrected; and he prefixed to his edition a short memoir of the life of his author; which, meagre and weakly written as it is, still constitutes the most authentic biography that we possess of our mighty bard.

On the failure of this edition, after the pause of

The bow of Ulysses was next seized by a mighty hand-by the hand of Warburton; whose Shakspeare was published in 1747. It failed of success; for, conceiving that the editor intended to make his author his showman to exhibit his erudi. tion and intellectual power, the public quickly neglected his work; and it soon disappeared from cir culation, though some of its proffered substitutions must be allowed to be happy, and some of its ex

After an interval of eighteen years, Shakspeare obtained once more an editor of great name, and seemingly in every way accomplished to assert the rights of his author. In 1765 Doctor Samuel John son presented the world with his long-promised edition of our dramatist: and the public expecta tion, which had been highly raised, was again doomed to be disappointed. Johnson had a powerful intellect, and was perfectly conversant with human life: but he was not sufficiently versed in black-letter lore; and, deficient in poetic taste, he was unable to accompany our great bard in the higher flights of his imagination. The public in general were not satisfied with his commentary or his text: but to his preface they gave the most unlimited applause. The array and glitter of its words; the regular and pompous march of its periods, with its pervading affectation of deep thought and of sententious remark, seem to have fascinated the popular mind; and to have withdrawn from the common observation its occasional poverty of meaning; the inconsistency of its praise and censure; the falsity in some instances of its critical remarks; and its defects now and then even with. respect to composition. It has, however, its merits, and Heaven forbid that I should not be just to them. It gives a right view of the difficulties to be encoun tered by the editor of Shakspeare: it speaks modestly of himself, and candidly of those who had preceded him in the path which he was treading:

it assigns to Pope, Hanmer, and Warburton, those victims to the rage of the minute critics, their due proportion of praise: it is honourably just, in short, to all, who come within the scope of its observations, with the exception of the editor's great author alone. To him also the editor gives abundant praise; but against it he arrays such a frightful host of censure as to command the field; and to leave us to wonder at our admiration of an object so little worthy of it, though he has been followed by the admiration of more than two entire centuries. But Johnson was of a detracting and derogating spirit. He looked at mediocrity with kindness: but of proud superiority he was impatient; and he always seemed pleased to bring down the man of the ethereal soul to the mortal of mere clay. His maxim seems evidently to have been that, which was recommended by the Roman poet to his countrymen,

"Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos.”

and was content to lose it!" Shakspeare lost the world! He won it in an age of intellectual giants the Anakims of mind were then in the land; and in what succeeding period has he lost it? But, not to take advantage of an idle frolic of the edi tor's imagination, can the things be which he asserts? Can the author, whom he thus degrades, be the man, whom the greater Jonson, of James's reign, hails as, "The pride, the joy, the wonder of the age!" No! it is impossible! and if we come to a close examination of what our preface writer has here alleged against his author, of which I have transcribed only a part, we shall find that one half of it is false, and one, some thing very like nonsense, disguised in a garb of tin sel embroidery, and covered, as it moves statelily along, with a cloud of words :

Infert se septus nebula, mirabile dictu,

Per medios, miscetque viris neque cernitur ullt

To discover the falsity or the inanity of the ideas, In the pre-eminence of intellect, when it was imme- which strut in our editor's sentences against the diately in his view, there was something which ex-fame of his author, we have only to strip them of cited his spleen; and he exulted in its abasement. the diction which envelopes them; and then, with In his page, "Shakspeare, in his comic scenes, is a Shakspeare in our hands, to confront them, in seldom successful when he engages his characters their nakedness, with the truth as it is manifested in reciprocations of smartness and contests of sar- in his page. But we have deviated from our casm: their jests are commonly gross, and their straight path to regard our editor as a critic in his pleasantry licentious. In tragedy, his performance preface, when we ought, perhaps, to consider him seems to be constantly worse as his labour is more. only in his notes, as a commentator to explain the The effusions of passion, which exigence forces out, obscurities; or, as an experimentalist to assay are, for the most part, striking and energetic: but the errors of his author's text. As an unfolder of whenever he solicits his invention or strains his intricate and perplexed passages, Johnson must faculties, the offspring of his throes is tumour, be allowed to excel. His explanations are always meanness, tediousness, and obscurity! In narra-perspicuous; and his proffered amendments of a tion he affects a disproportionate pomp of diction, and a wearisome train of circumlocution, &c. &c. His declamations or set speeches are commonly cold and weak, for his power was the power of Nature! when he endeavoured, like other tragic writers, to catch opportunities of amplification; and, instead of inquiring what the occasion demanded, to show how much his stores of knowledge could supply, he seldom escapes without the pity or resentment of his reader ?"' "But the admirers of this great poet have never less reason to indulge their hopes of supreme excellence, than when he seems fully resolved to sink them in dejection, and mollify them with tender emotions by the fall of greatness, the danger of innocence, or the crosses of love. He is not long soft and pathetic without some idle conceit or contemptible equivocation. He no sooner moves than he counteracts himself; and terror and pity, as they are rising in the mind, are checked and blasted with sudden frigidity!" The egregious editor and critic then proceeds to confound his author with his last and most serious charge, that of an irreclaimable attachment to the offence of verbal conceit. This charge the editor illustrates and enforces, to excite our attention and to make an irresistible assault on our assent, with a variety of figurative and magnificent allusion. First, "a quibble is to Shakspeare, what luminous vapours (a Will o' the wisp) are to travellers: he follows it at all adventures: it is sure to lead him out of his way, and sure to ingulf him in the mire. It has some malignant power over his mind, and its fascinations are irresistible," &c. It then becomes a partridge or a pheasant; for "whatever be the dignity or the profundity of his disquisition, &c. &c. let but a quibble spring up before him and he leaves his work unfinished." It next is the golden apple of Atalanta :-"A quibble is to Shakspeare the golden apple for which he will always turn aside from his career, or stoop from his elevation. A quibble, poor and barren as it is, gave him such delight that he was content to purchase it at the sacrifice of reason, propriety, and truth;" and, lastly, the meteor, the bird of game, and the golden apple are converted into the renowned queen of Egypt: for "a quibble is to him (Shakspeare) the fatal Cleopatra, for which he lost the world,

corrupt text are sometimes successful. But the expectations of the world had been too highly raised to be satisfied with his performance; and it was only to the most exceptionable part of it, the mighty preface, that they gave their unmingled applause. In the year following the publication of Johnson's edition, in 1766, George Steevens made his first appearance as a commentator on Shakspeare; and he showed himself to be deeply conversant with that antiquarian reading, of which his predecessor had been too ignorant. In 1768, an edition of Shakspeare was given to the public by Capell; a man fondly attached to his author, but much too weak for the weighty task which he undertook. He had devoted a large portion of his life to the collection of his materials: he was an industrious collator, and all the merit, which he possesses, must be derived from the extent and the fidelity of his collations. In 1773 was pub lished an edition of our dramatist by the associated labours of Johnson and Steevens; and this edition, in which were united the native powers of the former, with the activity, the sagacity, and the antiquarian learning of the latter, still forms the standard edition for the publishers of our Poet. In 1790 Malone entered the lists against them as a competitor for the editorial palm. After this publication, Malone seems to have devoted the remaining years of his life to the studies requisite for the illustration of his author; and at his death he bequeathed the voluminous papers, which he had prepared, to his and my friend, James Boswell, the younger son of the biographer of John son; and by him these papers were published in twenty octavo volumes, just before the close of his own valuable life. That the fund of Shakspearian information has been enlarged by this publication, cannot reasonably be doubted: that the text of Shakspeare has been injured by it, may confidently be asserted. As my opinion of Malone, as an annotator on Shakspeare, has been already expressed, it would be superfluous to repeat it. His stores of antiquarian knowledge were at least equal to those of Steevens: but he was not equally endowed by Nature with that popular commentator: Malone's intellect was unquestionably of a subordinate class. He could collect and

We have now seen, from the first editorial attempt of Rowe, a whole century excited by the greatness of one man, and sending forth its most ambitious spirits, from the man of genius down to the literary mechanic, to tend on him as the vassals of his royalty, and to illustrate his magnifi cence to the world. Has this excitement had an adequate cause? or has it been only the frenzy of the times, or a sort of meteorous exhalation from an idle and over-exuberant soil? Let us examine our great poet, and dramatist, with the eye of impartial criticism; and then let the result of our examination form the reply to these interrogatories of doubt.

amass; but he could not combine and arrange. and their recurrence in cases were their aid seems Like a weak soldier under heavy armour, he is to be unnecessary. Mr. Singer and I may occaoppressed by his means of safety and triumph.sionally differ in our opinions respecting the text, He sinks beneath his knowledge, and cannot pro- which he has adopted: but, these instances of fitably use it. The weakness of his judgment de- our dissent, it is fully as probable that I may be prived the result of his industry of its proper effect. wrong as he. I feel, in short, confident, on the He acts on a right principle of criticism: but, ig-whole, that Mr. Singer is now advancing, not to norant of its right application, he employs it for claim, (for to claim is inconsistent with his modesty,) the purposes of error. He was not, in short, but to obtain a high place among the editors of formed of the costly materials of a critic; and no Shakspeare; and to have his name enrolled with bour, against the inhibition of Nature, could the names of those who have been the chief benefashion him into a critic. His page is pregnant factors of the reader of our transcendent Poet. with information: but it is thrown into so many involutions and tangles, that it is lighter labour to work it out of the original quarry than to select it amid the confusion in which it is thus brought to your hand. If any copy of indisputable authority had been in existence, Malone would have produced a fac-simile of it, and would thus, indeed, have been an admirable editor of his author, for not a preposition, a copulative, a particle, a comma to be found in his original, would have been out of its place in his transcript. But no such authentic copy of Shakspeare could be discovered; and something more than diligence and accuracy was required in his editor and to nothing more than diligence and accuracy could Malone's very humble and circum- Shakspeare took his stories from any quarter, scribed abilities aspire. Attaching, therefore, fic- whence they were offered to him; from Italian titious authority to some of the earlier copies, he novels; from histories; from old story-books; followed them with conscientious precision; and, from old plays; and even from old ballads. In one disclaiming all emendatory criticism, he rejoiced in instance, and in one alone, no prototype has been his fidelity to the errors of the first careless or illi- found for his fiction; and the whole of "The Temterate transcriber. He closed the long file of the pest," from its first moving point to the plenieditors of Shakspeare. But although no formal tude of its existence, must be admitted to be the editor or commentator has hitherto appeared to offspring of his wonderful imagination.* supply the place left vacant by Malone, yet does whence soever he drew the first suggestion of his the importance of our bard continue to excite the story, or whatever might be its original substance, man of talents to write in his cause, and to refresh he soon converts it into an image of ivory and the wreath of fame, which has hung for two centu- gold, like that of the Minerva of Phidias; and then, ries on his tomb. On this occasion I must adduce beyond the efficacy of the sculptor's art, he breathes the name of Skottowe, a gentleman who has recently into it the breath of life. This, indeed, is spoken gratified the public with a life of Shakspeare, invol- only of his tragedies and comedies: for his histories, ving a variety of matter respecting him, in a style as they were first called, or historical dramas, are eminent for its compression and its neatness. To transcripts from the page of Hall or Hollingshead; Mr. Skottowe I must acknowledge my especial and, in some instances, are his workings on old obligations, for not infrequently relieving me from plays, and belong to him no otherwise than as he the prolixities and the perplexities of Malone; and imparted to them the powerful delineation of chasometimes for giving to me information in a com-racter, or enriched them with some exquisite scenes. pendious and lucid form, like a jewel set in the rich simplicity of gold.

When I speak of Malone as the last of the editors of Shakspeare, I speak, of course, with reference to the time at which I am writing, when no later editor has shown himself to the world. But when I am placed before the awful tribunal of the Public, a new Editor of our great dramatist will stand by my side who, whilst I can be only a suppliant for pardon, may justly be a candidate for praise. With Mr. SINGER, the editor in question, I am personally unacquainted; and till a period, long subsequent to my completion of the little task which I had undertaken, I had not seen a line of his Shakspearian illustrations. But, deeming it right to obtain some knowledge of the gentleman, who was bound on the same voyage of adventure, in the same vessel with myself, I have since read the far greater part of his commentary on my author; and it would be unjust in me not to say, that I have found much in it to applaud, and very little to censure. Mr. Singer's antiquarian learning is accurate and extensive: his critical sagacity is considerable; and his judgment generally approves itself to be correct. He enters on the field with the strength of a giant; but with the diffidence and the humility of a child. We sometimes wish, indeed, that his humility had been less: for he is apt to defer to inferior men, and to be satisfied with following when he is privileged to lead. His explanations of his author are frequently happy; and sometimes they illustrate a passage, which had been left in unregarded darkness by the commentators who had preceded him. The sole fault of these explanatory notes (if such indeed d can be deemed a fault) is their redundancy;

But

Το

These pieces, however, which affect not the com-
bination of a fable; but, wrought upon the page of
the chronicler or of the elder dramatist, follow the
current of events, as it flows on in historic succes-
sion, must be made the first subjects of our re-
marks; and we will then pass to those dramas,
which are more properly and strictly his own.
these historical plays, then, whatever may be their
original materials, the power of the Poet has com-
municated irresistible attraction; not, as Samuel
Johnson would wish us to believe, "by being not
long soft or pathetic without some idle conceit or
contemptible equivocation:" not "by checking
and blasting terror and pity, as they are rising in
the mind, with sudden frigidity," but by the strong-
est exertions of the highest poetry; and by com-
manding, with the royalty of genius, every avenue
to the human heart. For the truth of what we
assert, we will make our appeal to the frantic and
soul-piercing lamentations of Constance in "King
John;" to the scene between that monarch and
Hubert; and between Hubert and young Arthur;
to the subsequent scene between Hubert and his
murderous sovereign, when the effects of the re-
ported death of Arthur on the populace are de-
scribed, and the murderer quarrels with his agent.
to the scene, finally, in which the king dies, and
which concludes the play.

For the evidence of the power of our great Poet we might appeal also to many scenes and descrip tions even in "Richard II.;" though of all his historical dramas this, perhaps, is the least instinct

with animation, and the least attractive with dra-
matic interest. Of "Richard II." we may say
with Mr. Skottowe, that, "though it is an exquisite
poem, it is an indifferent play." But in the drama
which, in its historic order, succeeds to it, we re-
ceive an ample compensation for any failure of the
dramatist in "Richard II." In every page of "Henry
IV.," both the serious and the comic, Shakspeare "is
himself again ;" and our fancy is either elevated
or amused without the interruption of a single dis-
cordant or uncharacteristic sentiment. Worcester,
indeed, says,

"And 'tis no little reason bids us speed
To save our heads by raising of a head,"

and is thus guilty of a quibble; an offence of which the Prince, on two occasions, shows himself to be capable; once when he sees Falstaff apparently dead on the field of Shrewsbury; and once when, on his accession to the throne, he appoints his father's Chief Justice to a continuance in his high office: and these, as I believe, are the sole in stances of our Poet's dalliance with his Cleopatra, for whose love he was content to lose the world, throughout the whole of the serious parts of this long and admirable drama.

The succeeding play of "Henry V." bears noble testimony to the poetic and the dramatic supremacy of Shakspeare: to the former, more especially in its three fine choruses, one of them serving as the prologue to the play, one opening the third act, and one describing the night preceeding the battle of Agincourt: to the latter, in every speech of the King's, and in the far greater part of the remaining dialogue, whether it be comic or tragic. "Henry V.," however, is sullied with some weak and silly scenes; and, on the whole, is certainly inferior in dramatic attraction to its illustrious predecessor. But it is a very fine production, and far-far above the reach of any other English writer, who has been devoted to the service of the stage.

inimitable effect; and in the minor parts of the ex ecution of the drama, there is nothing among all the creations of poetry more splendid and terrific than the dream of Clarence. But this noble effort of the tragic power is not altogether faultless. Some of its scenes, as not promoting the action of the drama, are superfluous and even tedious; and the violation of history, for the purpose of introdu cing the deposed queen, Margaret, upon the stage, may reasonably be censured. I am not certain, however, that I should be satisfied to resign her on the requisition of truth. Her curses are thrilling, and their fulfilment is awful. Shakspeare, as it may be remarked, has accumulated uncommitted crimes on the head of the devoted Richard. By the historian, this monarch is cleared of the deaths of Clarence and of Anne, his wife: to the latter of whom he is said to have approved himself an affectionate husband; whilst the murder of Clarence is imputed to the intrigues of the relations of his sister-in-law, the queen. His hand certainly did not shed the blood of the pious Henry; and even his assassination of the two illegitimate sons of his brother, Edward, is supported by very questionable evidence, for there is reason to think that the eldest of these young princes walked at his uncle's coronation; and that the youngest escaped to meet his death, under the name of Perkin Warbeck, from the hand of the first Tudor. But the scene of Shakspeare has stamped deeper and more indelible deformity on the memory of the last sovereign of the house of York, than all the sycophants of the Tudors had been able to impress; or than all that the impartiality, and the acute research of the modern historian have ever had the power to erase. We are certain that Richard possessed a lawful title to the throne which he filled: that he was a wise and,patriotic sovereign: that his death was a calamity to his country, which it surrendered to a race of usurpers and tyrants, who trampled on its liberties, and stained its soil with much innocent and rich blood:-to that cold-blooded murderer Of "Henry VI.," that drum and trumpet thing, as and extortioner, Henry VII.-to that monster of it has happily been called by a man of genius, who cruelty and lust, his ferocious son: to the sangui ranged himself with the advocates of Shakspeare, Inary and ruthless bigot, Mary: to the despotic and shall not take any notice on the present occasion, as the three parts of this dramatized history are nothing more than three old plays, corrected by the hand of Shakspeare, and here and there illustrious with the fire-drops which fell from his pen. Though we consider them, therefore, as possessing much attraction, and as disclosing Shakspeare in their outbreaks of fine writing, and in their strong characteristic portriature, we shall now pass them by to proceed without delay to their dramatic successor, His next task was one of yet greater difficulty:'Richard III." Of "Richard II.," fine as it oc- to smooth down the rugged features of the eighth casionally is in poetry, and rich in sentiment and Henry, and to plant a wreath on the brutal and pathos, we have remarked that, with reference to blood-stained brow of the odious father of Elizathe other productions of its great author, it was low beth. This task he has admirably executed, and in the scale of merit. In "Richard II." he found without offering much violation to the truth of hisan insufficient and an unawakening subject for history. He has judiciously limited his scene to that genius, and it acted drowsily, and as if it were half asleep but in the third Richard there was abundant excitement for all its powers; and the victim of Tudor malignity and calumny rushes from the scene of our mighty dramatist in all the black efficiency of the demoniac tyrant. Besides Sir Thomas More's history of Richard of Gloster, our Poet had the assistance, as it seems, of a play upon the same subject, which had been popular before he began his career upon the stage. Adhering servilely neither to the historian nor to the old dramatist, Shakspeare contented himself with selecting from each of them such parts as were suited to his purpose; and with the materials thus obtained, compounded with others supplied by his own invention, he has produced a drama, which cannot be read in the closet, or seen in its representation on the stage without the strongest agitation of the mind. The character of Richard is drawn with

The late Mr. Maurice Morgann; who wrote an eloquent essay on the dramatic character of Falstaff.

unamiable Elizabeth; the murderess of a suppliant queen, of kindred blood, who had fled to her for protection. Such was the result of Bosworth's field, preceded, as it was on the stage of Shakspeare, by visions of bliss to Richmond, and by visions of terror to Richard. But Shakspeare wrote with all the prejudices of a partisan of the Tudors: and at a time also when it was still expedient to flatter that detestable family.

period of the tyrant's reign in which the more disgusting deformities of his character had not yet been revealed-to the death of Catharine, the fall of Wolsey, and the birth of Elizabeth: and the crowned savage appears to us only as the generous, the munificent, the magnanimous monarch, striking down the proud, and supporting with a strong arm the humble and the oppressed. But the whole pathos and power of the scene are devoted to Catharine and Wolsey. On these two characters the dramatist has expended all his force; and our pity is inseparably attached to them to the last moment of their lives. They expire, indeed, bedewed with our tears. Of this, the last of Shakspeare's dramatic histories, it may be remarked that it is writ ten in a style different from that of its predeces. sors: that it is less interspersed with comic scenes; that in its serious parts its diction is more stately and formal; more elevated and figurative: that its figures are longer and more consistently sustained: that it is more rich in theatric exhibition, or in the spectacle, as Aristotle calls it, and by whom it is

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.

regarded as a component part of the drama. To any attentive reader these distinguishing characters of the dramatic history of Henry VIII. must be To illustrate what I mean, let us contemplate sufficiently obvious; and we can only wonder that Portia, Desdemona, Imogen, Rosalind, Beatrice, the same mind should produce such fine pieces as Cordelia, and Ophelia. They are equally amiable those of "Henry IV.," " Richard III.," and and affectionate women; equally faithful and at"Henry VIII.," each written with a pen appropri- tached as wives, as friends, as daughters: two of ate to itself, and the last with a pen not employed them, also, are noted for the poignancy and sparkle of their wit: and yet can it be said that any one of in any other instance. If we were to pause in this stage of our progress, them can be mistaken for the other; or that a single we might confidently affirm that we had suggested speech can with propriety be transferred from the to the minds of our readers such a mass of poetic lips of her to whom it has been assigned by her and dramatic genius as would be sufficient to excite dramatic creator? They are all known to us as the the general interest of an intellectual and literary children of one family, with a general resemblance, people. But we are yet only in the vestibule which and an individual discrimination. Benedict and opens into the magnificence of the palace, where Mercutio are both young men of high birth; of Shakspeare is seated on the throne of his great-known valour; of playful wit, delighting itself in ness. The plays, which we have hitherto been pleasantry and frolic: yet are they not distinguished considering, are constructed, for the most part, beyond the possibility of their being confounded? with materials not his own, supplied either by the So intimately conversant is our great dramatist arcient chronicler, or by some preceding drama- with the varieties of human nature, that he scatters tist; and are wrought up without any reference to character, as a king on his accession scatters gold, nat essential portion of a drama, a plot or fable. among the populace; and there is not one, perhaps, But when he is disengaged from the incumbrances of his subordinate agents, who has not his peculiar to which he had submitted in his histories, he as- features and a complexion of his own. So mighty sumes the full character of the more perfect dra- is our Poet as a dramatic creator, that characters matist; and discovers that art, for which, equally of the most opposite description are thrown in equal with the powers of his imagination, he was cele- perfection and with equal facility from his hand. brated by Ben Jonson. In some of his plays, in- The executive decision of Richard; the meditative deed, we acknowledge the looseness with which his inefficiency of Hamlet; the melancholy of Jaques, fable is combined, and the careless hurry with which which draws subjects of moral reflection from every he accelerates its close: but in the greater triumphs object around him; and the hilarity of Mercutio, of his genius, we find the fable artificially planned which forsakes him not in the very act of dying; and solidly constructed. In "The Merchant of the great soul of Macbeth, maddened and bursting Venice," in "Romeo and Juliet," in "Lear," in under accumulated guilt; and "the unimitated and "Othello," and, above all, in that intellectual won-inimitable Falstaff," (as he is called by S. Johnson, der, "The Tempest," we may observe the fable in the single outbreak of enthusiasm extorted from managed with the hand of a master, and contribu- him by the wonders of Shakspeare's page) revellting its effect, with the characters and the dialogue, ing in the tavern at Eastcheap, or jesting on the to amuse, to agitate, or to surprise. In that beau-field of Shrewsbury, are all the creatures of one tiful pastoral drama, "As You Like It," the sudden plastic intellect, and are absolute and entire in thei disappearance of old Adam from the scene has kind. Malignity and revenge constitute the founbeen a subject of regret to more than one of the dation on which are constructed the two very dissicommentators: and Samuel Johnson wishes that milar characters of Shylock and Iago. But there the dialogue between the hermit, as he calls him, is something terrific and even awful in the inexora and the usurping duke, the result of which was the bility of the Jew, whilst there is nothing but meanconversion of the latter, had not been omitted on ness in the artifices of the Venetian standardthe stage. But old Adam had fulfilled the purposes bearer. They are both men of vigorous and acute of his dramatic existence, and it was, therefore, understandings: we hate them both; but our ha properly closed. He had discovered his honest at-tred of the former is mingled with involuntary retachment to his young master, and had experienced his young master's gratitude. He was brought into a place of safety; and his fortunes were now blended with those of the princely exiles of the forest. There was no further part for him to act; and he passed naturally from the stage, no longer the object of our hopes or our fears. On the subject of S. Johnson's wish respecting the dialogue between the old religious man and the guilty duke, we may shortly remark, that nothing could have been more undramatic than the intervention of such a scene of dry and didactic morality, at such a crisis of the drama, when the minds of the audience were heated, and hurrying to its approaching close. Like Felix in the sacred history, the royal criminal might have trembled at the lecture of the noly man: but the audience, probably, would have been irritated or asleep. No! Shakspeare was not so ignorant of his art as to require to be instructed in it by the author of Irene.