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HAZLITT
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LECTURES
ON
E LITERATURE OF THE
AGE OF ELIZABETH,
AND
RACTERS OF SHAKESPEAR'S PLAYS.
BY
WILLIAM HAZLITT,
thor of " Table Talk," "Lectures on the English Poets,"
English Comic Writers," &c., &c.
"The
LONDON:
DALDY, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN,
1870.
1
ADVERTISEMENT
ΤΟ
THE ORIGINAL EDITION.

The
he "AGE OF ELIZABETH" (as it relates to the history
r Literature) I would be understood to mean the
from the Reformation to the end of Charles I.,
ding the writers of a certain School or style of
ry or Prose, who flourished together or immediately
eeded one another within this period. I have, in
following pages, said little of two of the greatest
ers of that age, Shakspeare and Spenser, because I
treated of them separately in former publications.*
haracters of Shakspeare's Plays, 1817, and Lectures on the
sh Poets, 1818.-ED.

PREFACE.
TH present course of Lectures was originally published
shortly after their delivery at the Surrey Institution in
the year 1820. The reception of the Volume was favour-
able; and it has been frequently reprinted both here
and in America.
To the present re-publication, with a view to rendering
the series now in course of completion as deserving as
possible of favour, illustrative notes have been added,
where they appeared to be necessary, and all the extracts
hav been carefully collated with the best existing texts
of the several authors quoted.
the
An excellent criticism on these Lectures was contri-
buted to the Edinburgh Review, by the late Mr. Justice
Talfourd; it may be found reprinted among his Miscel-
laneous Works, Philadelphia, 1842, 8vo.
It is to be observed here, that in the British Museum
is a copy of this volume (edit. 1820), with MSS. note,
by the celebrated German critic and dramatist, Ludwig
Tieck.
ENSINGTON. Sept. 15, 1869.
W. C. H,

CONTENTS.
LECTURE I.
Introductory. General View of the Subject.
PAGE
1
LECTURE II.
On the Dramatic Writers contemporary with Shakspeare, [Sack-
ville], Lyly, Marlowe, Heywood, Middleton, and Rowley. 29
LECTURE III.
On Marston, Chapman, Decker, and Webster
. 72
LECTURE IV.
་
On Beaumont and Fletcher, Ben Jonson, Ford and Massinger 107
LECTURE V.
On single Plays, Poerns, &c.; "The Four P's;" "The Return
from Parnassus;"
""Gammer Gurton's Needle;" and other
1
Works
•
LECTURE VI.
•
144
On Miscellaneous Poems; F. Beaumont, P. Fletcher, Drayton,
Daniel, &c.; Sir P. Sidney's "Arcadia," and other Works 172


viii
Contents.
i
LECTURE VII.
Character of Bacon's Works-Compared as to style with Sir
Thomas Browne and Jeremy Taylor.
LECTURE VIII.
On the Spirit of Ancient and Modern Literature-On the
German Drama, contrasted with that of the Age of
Elizabeth
F
239


LECTURES
ON THE
AGE OF ELIZABETH, &c.
LECTURE I.—INTRODUCTORY.
GENERAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT.
THE AGE OF ELIZABETH was distinguished beyond, per-
haps, any other in our history by a number of great men,
famous in different ways, and whose names have come
down to us with unblemished honours: statesmen,
warriors, divines, scholars, poets, and philosophers;
Raleigh, Drake, Coke, Hooker, and-high and more
sounding still, and still more frequent in our mouths—
Shakespear, Spenser, Sidney, Bacon, Jonson, Beaumont
and Fletcher, men whom fame has eternised in her long
and lasting scroll, and who, by their words and acts,
vere benefactors of their country, and ornaments of
human nature. Their attainments of different kinds
ore the same general stamp, and it was sterling; what
hey did had the mark of their age and country upon it.
Perhaps the genius of Great Britain (if I may so speak
vithout offence or flattery) never shone out fuller or
righter, or looked more like itself, than at this period.
Our writers and great men had something in them that
avoured of the soil from which they grew: they were
B
2

2
General View of the Subject.
not French; they were not Dutch, or German, or Gi
or Latin; they were truly English. They did not
out of themselves to see what they should be;
sought for truth and nature, and found it in themse
There was no tinsel, and but little art; they wer
the spoilt children of affectation and refinement, but a
bold, vigorous, independent race of thinkers, with pro-
digious strength and energy, with none but natural
grace, and heartfelt, unobtrusive delicacy. They were
not at all sophisticated. The mind of their country was
great in them, and it prevailed. With their learning
and unexampled acquirement, they did not forget that
they were men: with all their endeavours after excel-
lence, they did not lay aside the strong original bent and
character of their minds. What they performed was
chiefly nature's handiwork; and Time has claimed it
for his own. To these, however, might be added ofthers
not less learned, nor with a scarce less happy vein, but
less fortunate in the event, who, though as renowned in
their day, have sunk into "mere oblivion," and of
whom the only record (but that the noblest) is to be
found in their works. Their works and their names,
'poor, poor dumb names," are all that remains of such
men as Webster, Decker, Marston, Marlowe, Chapman,
Heywood, Middleton, and Rowley! "How lov'd, how
honour'd once, avails them not: though they were
the friends and fellow-labourers of Shakespear, sharing
his fame and fortunes with him, the rivals of Jonson,
and the masters of Beaumont and Fletcher's well-sung
woes! They went out one by one unnoticed, like
evening lights, or were swallowed up in the headlong
torrent of puritanic zeal which succeeded, and swep
away everything in its unsparing course, throwing up
the wrecks of taste and genius at random, and at long
fitful intervals, amidst the painted gewgaws and foreign
frippery of the reign of Charles II., and from which w
""

General View of the Subject.
only now recovering the scattered fragments and
en images to erect a temple to true Fame! How
before it will be completed?
I can do anything to rescue some of these writers
hopeless obscurity, and to do them right, without
udice to well-deserved reputation, I shall have suc-
ceeded in what I chiefly propose. I shall not attempt,
indeed, to adjust the spelling, or restore the pointing, as
if the genius of poetry lay hid in errors of the press,
but, leaving these weightier matters of criticism to those
who are more able and willing to bear the burden, try
to bring out their real beauties to the eager sight,
"draw the curtain of Time, and show the picture of
Genius," restraining my own admiration within reason-
able (bounds!
There is not a lower ambition, a poorer way of thought,
than that which would confine all excellence, or arrogate
its final accomplishment to the present or modern times.
We ordinarily speak and think of those who had the
misfortune to write or live before us, as labouring under
very singular privations and disadvantages in not having
the benefit of those improvements which we have made,
as buried in the grossest ignorance, or the slaves “of
poring pedantry;" and we make a cheap and infallible
estimate of their progress in civilisation upon a gradu-
ated scale of perfectibility, calculated from the meridian
of our own times. If we have pretty well got rid of
the narrow bigotry that would limit all sense or virtue to
our own country, and have fraternised, like true cos-
mopclites, with our neighbours and contemporaries, we
have made our self-love amends by letting the generation
we live in engross nearly all our admiration, and by
pronouncing a sweeping sentence of barbarism and
ignorance on our ancestry backwards, from the com-
mencement (as near as can be) of the nineteenth or
the latter end of the eighteenth century. From thence

4
General View of the Subject.
we date a new era, the dawn of our own intellect
that of the world, like "the sacred influence of lig
glimmering on the confines of Chaos and old ni
new manners rise, and all the cumbrous "pomp of
days” vanishes, and is lost in worse than Gothic d
ness. Pavilioned in the glittering pride of our superfl
accomplishments and upstart pretensions, we fancy that
everything beyond that magic circle is prejudice and
error; and all before the present enlightened period
but a dull and useless blank in the great map of Time.
We are so dazzled with the gloss and novelty of modern
discoveries, that we cannot take into our mind's eye the
vast expanse, the lengthened perspective of human
intellect, and a cloud hangs over and conceals its loftiest
monuments, if they are removed to a little distance from
us-the cloud of our own vanity and shortsightedness.
The modern sciolist stultifies all understanding but his
own, and that which he conceives like his own. We
think, in this age of reason and consummation of phi-
losophy, because we knew nothing twenty or thirty
years ago, and began to think then, for the first time in
our lives, that the rest of mankind were in the same
predicament, and never knew anything till we did; that
the world had grown old in sloth and ignorance, had
dreamt out its long minority of five thousand years in a
dozing state, and that it first began to wake out of sleep,
to rouse itself, and look about it, startled by the light
of our unexpected discoveries, and the noise we made
about them. Strange error of our infatuated self-love!
Because the clothes we remember to have seen worn
when we were children are now out of fashion, and
our grandmothers were then old women, we con-
ceive, with magnanimous continuity of reasoning, that it
must have been much worse three hundred years before,
and that grace, youth, and beauty are things of modern
date-as if Nature had ever been old, or the sun had first

General View of the Subject.
5.
e on our folly and presumption. Because, in a word,
ast generation, when tottering off the stage, were
o active, so sprightly, and so promising as we were,
egin to imagine, that people formerly must have
led about in a feeble, torpid state, like flies in
er, in a sort of dim twilight of the understanding;
can we think what thoughts they could conceive,"
e absence of all those topics that so agreeably
en and diversify our conversation and literature,
king the imperfection of our knowledge for the
t of their organs, as if it was necessary for us to
a register and certificate of their thoughts, or as if,
use they did not see with our eyes, hear with our
and understand with our understandings, they
hear, see, and understand nothing. A falser in-
ce could not be drawn, nor one more contrary to
maxims and cautions of a wise humanity. Think,"
Shakespear, the prompter of good and true feelings,
re's livers out of Britain." So there have been
ers, and great and sound ones, before our time.
had the same capacities that we have, sometimes
er motives for their exertion, and, for the most part,
ame subject-matter to work upon. What we learn
Nature, we may hope to do as well as they; what
arn from them, we may in general expect to do
What is, I think, as likely as anything to cure
this overweening admiration of the present, and
gled contempt for past times, is the looking at the
old pictures at Raphael's heads, at Titian's faces,
ude's landscapes. We have there the evidence of
nses, without the alterations of opinion or disguise
guage. We there see the blood circulate through
eins (long before it was known that it did so), the
red and white "by Nature's own sweet and cun-
hand laid on," the same thoughts passing through
ind and seated on the lips, the same blue sky, and
6
General View of the Subject.
glittering sunny vales, "where Pan, knit with the G
and the Hours in dance, leads on the eternal spr
And we begin to feel, that nature and the mind of
are not a thing of yesterday, as we had been le
suppose; and that "there are more things in he
and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy."
grant that we improve, in some respects, in a
formly progressive ratio, and build, Babel-high, o
foundation of other men's knowledge, as in matte
science and speculative inquiry, where by going
over the same general ground, certain general co
sions have been arrived at, and in the number of pe
reasoning on a given subject, truth has at last bee
upon, and long-established error exploded; yet this
not apply to cases of individual power and knowl
to a million of things beside, in which we are st
seek as much as ever, and in which we can only ho
find, by going to the fountain head of thought and
perience. We are quite wrong in supposing (as w
apt to do) that we can plead an exclusive title t
and wisdom, to taste and genius, as the net produc
clear reversion of the age we live in, and that a
have to do to be great, is to despise those who have
before us as nothing.
Or, even if we admit a saving clause in this swe
proscription, and do not make the rule absolut
very nature of the exceptions shows the spirit in
they are made. We single out one or two sti
instances, say Shakespear or Bacon, which we
fain treat as prodigies, and as a marked contrast
rudeness and barbarism that surrounded them.
we delight to dwell upon and magnify; the prais
wonder we heap upon their shrines, are at the ex
of the time in which they lived, and would leave it
indeed. We make them out something more
human, "matchless, divine, what we will," so to
General View of the Subject.
7
them no rule for their age, and no infringement of the
abstract claim to superiority which we set up.
Instead
of letting them reflect any lustre, or add any credit to
the period of history to which they rightfully belong, we
only make use of their example to insult and degrade it
till more beneath our own level.
is the present fashion to speak with veneration of
English literature; but the homage we pay to it is
akin to the rites of superstition, than the worship
he religion. Our faith is doubtful, our love cold,
nowledge little or none. We now and then repeat
ames of some of the old writers by rote; but we
arehy of looking into their works. Though we seem
disposed to think highly of them, and to give them every
credit for a masculine and original vein of thought, as a
matter of literary courtesy and enlargement of taste, we
are afraid of coming to the proof, as too great a trial of
our candour and patience. We regard the enthusiastic
admiration of these obsolete authors, or a desire to make
proselytes to a belief in their extraordinary merits, as
an amiable weakness, a pleasing delusion; and prepare
to listen to some favourite passage, that may be referred
to in support of this singular taste, with an incredulous
smile; and are in no small pain for the result of the
hazardous experiment; feeling much the same awkward
condescending disposition to patronise these first crude
attempts at poetry and lispings of the Muse, as when a
fond parent brings forward a bashful child to make a
display of its wit or learning. We hope the best, put
a good face on the matter, but are sadly afraid the
thing cannot answer. Dr. Johnson said of these writers
generally, that "they were sought after because they
were scarce, and would not have been scarce had they
been much esteemed." His decision is neither true
history nor sound criticism. They were esteemed, and
they deserved to be so.

8
General View of the Subject.
One cause that might be pointed out here, as having
contributed to the long-continued neglect of our earlier
writers, lies in the very nature of our academic institu-
tions, which unavoidably neutralises a taste for the
productions of native genius, estranges the mind from
the history of our own literature, and makes it in eac
successive age like a book sealed. The Greek
Roman classics are a sort of privileged text-books,
standing order of the day, in a University educa
and leave little leisure for a competent acquain
with, or due admiration of, a whole host of able w
of our own, who are suffered to moulder in obscuri
the shelves of our libraries, with a decent reservati of
one or two top-names, that are cried up for form's sake,
and to save the national character. Thus we keep a
few of these always ready in capitals, and strike off the
rest, to prevent the tendency to a superfluous popula-
tion in the republic of letters: in other words, to prevent
the writers from becoming more numerous than the
readers. The ancients are become effete in this respect:
they no longer increase and multiply; or, if they have
imitators among us, no one is expected to read, and still
less to admire them. It is not possible that the learned
professors and the reading public should clash in this
way, or necessary for them to use any precautions
against each other. But it is not the same with the
living languages, where there is danger of being over
whelmed by the crowd of competitors; and pedantry
has combined with ignorance to cancel their unsatisfied
claims.

twc
We affect to wonder at Shakespear and one
more of that period, as solitary instances upon record:
whereas it is our own dearth of information that makes
the waste; for there is no time more populous of intel
lect, or more prolific of intellectual wealth, than the on
we are speaking of. Shakespear did not look upon him
General View of the Subject.
self in this light, as a sort of monster of poetical genius,
or on his contemporaries as "less than smallest dwarfs,”
when he speaks with true, not false, modesty of himself
and them and of his wayward thoughts, "desiring this
man's art, and that man's scope." We fancy that there
were no such men that could either add to or take any
thing away from him, but such there were. He indeed
overlooks and commands the admiration of posterity, but
he does it from the table-land of the age in which he
lived. He towered above his fellows, "in shape and
gesture proudly eminent;" but he was one of a race of
giants-the tallest, the strongest, the most graceful and
beautiful of them. But it was a common and a noble
brood* He was not something sacred and aloof from the
vulgar herd of men, but shook hands with Nature and
the circumstances of the time, and is distinguished from
his immediate contemporaries, not in kind, but in degree
and greater variety of excellence. He did not form a
* "Shakespeare,' says Hazlitt, 'towered above his fellows, in
shape and gesture proudly eminent; but he was one of a race of
giants—the tallest, the strongest, the most graceful and beautiful of
them; but it was a common and a noble brood." A falser remark, I
conceive, has been seldom made by a critic. Shakespeare is not
only immeasurably superior to the dramatists of his time in creative
power, in insight into the human heart, and in profound thought;
but he is, moreover, utterly unlike them in almost every respect-
unlike them in his method of developing character, in his diction,
in his versification: nor should it be forgotten that some of those
scenes which have been most admired in the works of his contempo-
raries were intended to affect the audience at the expense of nature
and probability, and therefore stand in marked contrast to all that
we possess as unquestionably from the pen of Shakespeare."-Some
Account of the Life of Shakespeare, by the late Mr. Dyce (edit. of
Shakespeare, 1868, i. 130–1).
I have quoted the foregoing passage, because there seemed to me
to be some degree of doubt, whether the remark made by the author
in this case was so false as represented by Mr. Dyce, and whether
Mr. Dyce had not, in point of fact, a little misapprehended the
meaning of the author; moreover, compare what follows.—ED.

10
General View of the Subject.
า
7
class or species by himself, but belonged to a class or
species. His age was necessary to him; nor could he
have been wrenched from his place, in the edifice of
which he was so conspicuous a part, without equal injury
to himself and it. Mr. Wordsworth says of Milton, that
his soul was like a star, and dwelt apart." This cannot
be said with any propriety of Shakespear, who certainly
moved in a constellation of bright luminaries, and "drew
after him a third part of the heavens." If we allow, for
argument's sake (or for truth's, which is better), that he
was in himself equal to all his competitors put together
yet there was more dramatic excellence in that age tham
in the whole of the period that has elapsed since. If
his contemporaries, with their united strength, would
hardly make one Shakespear, certain it is that all his
successors would not make half a one.
With the excep-
tion of a single writer, Otway, and of a single play of
his (Venice Preserved), there is nobody in tragedy and
dramatic poetry (I do not here speak of comedy) to be
compared to the great men of the age of Shakespear, and
immediately after. They are a mighty phalanx of
kindred spirits closing him round, moving in the same
orbit, and impelled by the same causes in their whirling
and eccentric career. They had the same faults and
the same excellences; the same strength and depth and
richness; the same truth of character, passion, imagina-
tion, thought, and language, thrown, heaped, massed
together without careful polishing or exact method, but
poured out in unconcerned profusion from the lap of
Nature and Genius in boundless and unrivalled mag-
nificence. The sweetness of Decker, the thought of
Marston, the gravity of Chapman, the grace of Fletcher
and his young-eyed wit, Jonson's learned sock, the flow-
ing vein of Middleton, Heywood's ease, the pathos of
Webster, and Marlowe's deep designs, add a double lustre
to the sweetness, thought, gravity, grace, wit, artless

General View of the Subject.
11
nature, copiousness, ease, pathos, and sublime concep-
tions of Shakespear's Muse. They are indeed the scale!
by which we can best ascend to the true knowledge and ✓
love of him. Our admiration of them does not lessen
our relish for him; but, on the contrary, increases and
confirms it. For such an extraordinary combination and
development of fancy and genius many causes may be
assigned; and we may seek for the chief of them in
religion, in politics, in the circumstances of the time,
the recent diffusion of letters, in local situation, and in
the character of the men who adorned that period, and
availed themselves so nobly of the advantages placed
within their reach.
I shall here attempt to give a general sketch of these
causes, and of the manner in which they operated to
mould and stamp the poetry of the country at the period
of which I have to treat; independently of incidental
and fortuitous causes, for which there is no accounting,
but which, after all, have often the greatest share in
determining the most important results.
The first cause I shall mention, as contributing to this
general effect, was the Reformation, which had just then
taken place. This event gave a mighty impulse and
increased activity to thought and inquiry, and agitated
the inert mass of accumulated prejudices throughout
Europe. The effect of the concussion was general; but
the shock was greatest in this country. It toppled down
the full-grown, intolerable abuses of centuries at a blow;
heaved the ground from under the feet of bigoted faith
and slavish obedience; and the roar and dashing of
opinions, loosened from their accustomed hold, might be
heard like the noise of an angry sea, and has never yet
subsided. Germany first broke the spell of misbegotten
fear, and gave the watchword; but England joined the
shout, and echoed it back with her island voice, from her
thousand cliffs and craggy shores, in a longer and a louder

12
General View of the Subject.
strain. With that cry, the genius of Great Britain rose,
and threw down the gauntlet to the nations. There was
a mighty fermentation: the waters were out; public;
opinion was in a state of projection. Liberty was held
out to all to think and speak the truth. Men's brains
were busy; their spirits stirring; their hearts full; and
their hands not idle. Their eyes were opened to expect
the greatest things, and their ears burned with curiosity
and zeal to know the truth, that the truth might make
them free. The death-blow which had been struck
at scarlet vice and bloated hypocrisy loosened their
tongues, and made the talismans and love-tokens of Popish
superstition, with which she had beguiled her followers
and committed abominations with the people, fall harm
less from their necks.
The translation of the Bible was the chief enginé in
the great work.* It threw open, by a secret spring, the
rich treasures of religion and morality, which had been
there locked up as in a shrine. It revealed the visions
of the prophets, and conveyed the lessons of inspired
teachers (such they were thought) to the meanest of the
people. It gave them a common interest in the common
cause. Their hearts burnt within them as they read. It
gave a mind to the people, by giving them common sub-
jects of thought and feeling. It cemented their union
of character and sentiment; it created endless diversity
and collision of opinion. They found objects to employ
their faculties, and a motive in the magnitude of the
consequences attached to them, to exert the utmost
eagerness in the pursuit of truth, and the most daring
intrepidity in maintaining it. Religious controversy
sharpens the understanding by the subtlety and remote-
ness of the topics it discusses, and braces the will by
their infinite importance. We perceive in the history
of this period a nervous masculine intellect. No levity,
* This was Coverdale's version, printed abroad in 1535, folio.—ED.
General View of the Subject.
13
no feebleness, no indifference; or, if there were, it is a
relaxation from the intense activity which gives a tone
to its general character. But there is a gravity approach-
ing to piety; a seriousness of impression, a conscientious
severity of argument, an habitual fervour and enthusiasm
in their mode of handling almost every subject. The
debates of the schoolmen were sharp and subtle enough;
but they wanted interest and grandeur, and were, besides,
confined to a few: they did not affect the general mass
of the community. But the Bible was thrown open to
all ranks and conditions "to run and read," with its
wonderful Table of Contents from Genesis to the Revela-
tions. Every village in England would present the
scene so well described in Burns's Cotter's Saturday
Night. I cannot think that all this variety and weight
of knowledge could be thrown in all at once upon the
mind of a people, and not make some impression upon
it, the traces of which might be discerned in the manners
and literature of the age. For to leave more disputable
points, and take only the historical parts of the Old
Testament, or the moral sentiments of the New, there is
nothing like them in the power of exciting awe and ad-
miration, or of riveting sympathy. We see what Milton
has made of the account of the Creation, from the manner
in which he has treated it, imbued and impregnated with
the spirit of the time of which we speak. Or what is
there equal (in that romantic interest and patriarchal
simplicity which goes to the heart of a country, and
rouses it, as it were, from its lair in wastes and wilder-
nesses) to the story of Joseph and his Brethren, of
Rachel and Laban, of Jacob's Dream, of Ruth and Boaz,
the descriptions in the Book of Job, the deliverance of
the Jews out of Egypt, or the account of their captivity
and return from Babylon? * There is in all these parts
* The early writers of our own and other countries understood by
Babylon nothing more nor less than Egypt.-ED.
14
General View of the Subject.
of the Scripture, and numberless more of the same kind,
to pass over the Orphic hymns of David, the prophetic
denunciations of Isaiah, or the gorgeous visions of
Ezekiel, an originality, a vastness of conception, a depth
and tenderness of feeling, and a touching simplicity in
the mode of narration, which he who does not feel, need
be made of no "penetrable stuff." There is something in
the character of Christ, too (leaving religious faith quite
out of the question), of more sweetness and majesty, and
more likely to work a change in the mind of man, by
the contemplation of its idea alone, than any to be found
in history, whether actual or feigned. This character
is that of a sublime humanity, such as was never seen
on earth before nor since. This shone manifestly both
in His words and actions. We see it in His washing the
Disciples' feet the night before His death, that unspeak-
able instance of humility and love, above all art, all
meanness, and all pride, and in the leave He took of
them on that occasion: "My peace I give unto you; that
peace which the world cannot give, give I unto you";
and in His last commandment, that "they should love
one another." Who can read the account of His be-
haviour on the cross, when turning to His mother He
said, "Woman, behold thy son," and to the Disciple'
John, “Behold thy mother," and "from that hour that
Disciple took her to his own home,” without having his
heart smote within him! We see it in His treatment
of the woman taken in adultery, and in His excuse for
the woman who poured precious ointment on His gar-
ment as an offering of devotion and love, which is here'
all in all. His religion was the religion of the heart,
We see it in His discourse with the Disciples as they
walked together towards Emmaus, when their hearts
burned within them; in His sermon from the Mount,
in His parable of the Good Samaritan, and in that
of the Prodigal Son-in every act and word of His
General View of the Subject.
15
life, a grace, a mildness, a dignity and love, a patience
and wisdom worthy of the Son of God. His whole life
and being were imbued, steeped in this word, charity;
it was the spring, the well-head from which every thought
and feeling gushed into act; and it was this that breathed
a mild glory from His face in that last agony upon the
cross, "when the meek Saviour bowed His head and
died," praying for His enemies. He was the first true
teacher of morality; for He alone conceived the idea of
a pure humanity. He redeemed man from the worship
of that idol, self, and instructed him by precept and ex-
ample to love his neighbour as himself, to forgive our
enemies, to do good to those that curse us and despite-
fully use us. He taught the love of good for the sake
of good, without regard to personal or sinister views,
and made the affections of the heart the sole seat of mo-
rality, instead of the pride of the understanding or the
sternness of the will. In answering the question, “Who
is our neighbour?" as one who stands in need of cur
assistance, and whose wounds we can bind up, He has done
more to humanise the thoughts and tame the unruly
passions, than all who have tried to reform and benefit
mankind. The very idea of abstract benevolence, of
the desire to do good because another wants our services,
and of regarding the human race as one family, the off-
spring of one common parent, is hardly to be found in
any other code or system. It was "to the Jews a
stumbling-block, and to the Greeks foolishness." The
Greeks and Romans never thought of considering others,
but as they were Greeks or Romans, as they were bound
to them by certain positive ties, or, on the other hand,
as separated from them by fiercer antipathies. Their
virtues were the virtues of political machines; their
vices were the vices of demons, ready to inflict or to
endure pain with obdurate and remorseless inflexibility
of purpose. But in the Christian religion, "we perceive
16
General View of the Subject.
a softness coming over the heart of a nation, and the iron
scales that fence and harden it, melt and drop off." It
becomes malleable, capable of pity, of forgiveness, of
relaxing in its claims, and remitting its power. We
strike it, and it does not hurt us: it is not steel or
marble, but flesh and blood, clay tempered with tears,
and "soft as sinews of the new-born babe." The Gospel
was first preached to the poor, for it consulted their wants
and interests, not its own pride and arrogance. It first
promulgated the equality of mankind in the community
of duties and benefits. It denounced the iniquities of
the chief Priests and Pharisees, and declared itself at
variance with principalities and powers, for it sympa-
thises not with the oppressor, but the oppressed. It first
abolished slavery, for it did not consider the power of
the will to inflict injury, as clothing it with a right to
do so.
Its law is good, not power. It at the same time
tended to wean the mind from the grossness of sense,
and a particle of its Divine flame was lent to brighten
and purify the lamp of love!
There have been persons who, being sceptics as to the
Divine mission of Christ, have taken an unaccountable
prejudice to His doctrines, and have been disposed to
deny the merit of His character; but this was not the
feeling of the great men in the age of Elizabeth (what-
ever might be their belief), one of whom says of Him,
with a boldness equal to its piety :
"The best of men
That e'er wore earth about Him, was a sufferer;
A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit ;
The first true gentleman that ever breathed."
This was old honest Decker, and the lines ought to
embalm his memory to every one who has a sense either
of religion, or philosophy, or humanity, or true genius.
Nor can I help thinking, that we may discern the traces
General View of the Subject.
17
of the influence exerted by religious faith in the spirit
of the poetry of the age of Elizabeth, in the means of
exciting terror and pity, in the delineation of the passions
of grief, remorse, love, sympathy, the sense of shame,
in the fond desires, the longings after immortality, in
the heaven of hope, and the abyss of despair it lays open
to us.*
The literature of this age then, I would say, was
strongly influenced (among other causes), first by the
spirit of Christianity, and secondly by the spirit of
Protestantism.
The effects of the Reformation on politics and phi-
losophy may be seen in the writings and history of the
next and of the following ages. They are still at work,
and will continue to be so. The effects on the poetry of
the time were chiefly confined to the moulding of the
character, and giving a powerful impulse to the intellect
of the country. The immediate use or application that
was made of religion to subjects of imagination and
fiction was not (from an obvious ground of separation)
so direct or frequent as that which was made of the
classical and romantic literature.
For much about the same time, the rich and fascinat-
ing stores of the Greek and Roman mythology, and
those of the romantic poetry of Spain and Italy, were
eagerly explored by the curious, and thrown open in
translations to the admiring gaze of the vulgar. This
last circumstance could hardly have afforded so much
advantage to the poets of that day, who were themselves,
in fact, the translators, as it shows the general curiosity
and increasing interest in such subjects, as a prevailing
feature of the times. There were translations of Tasso
* In some Roman Catholic countries, pictures in part supplied
the place of the translation of the Bible: and this dumb art aroso
in the silence of the written oracles.
C
18
General View of the Subject.
by Fairfax,* and of Ariosto by Harrington,† of Homer ‡
and Hesiod § by Chapman, and of Virgil || long before, /
and Ovid soon after; there was Sir Thomas North's
translation of Plutarch,** of which Shakspeare has made
such admirable use in his Coriolanus and Julius Cæsar ;
and Ben Jonson's tragedies of Catiline and Sejanus may
themselves be considered as almost literal translations
into verse, of Tacitus, Sallust, and Cicero's Orations in
his consulship. Boccaccio, the divine Boccaccio, Petrarch,
Dante, the satirist Aretine, Machiavel, Castiglione, and
others, were familiar to our writers,†† and they make
* First printed in 1600, folio; but in 1594, Richard Carew of
Antony, Cornwall, published, or rather had published for him,
Cantos I.-V., more being promised, but never making their appear-
ance.-ED.
† Printed in 1591, folio, with curious page illustrations by
Rogers.-ED.
Ten books of Homer's Iliad were published in 1581, in an
English translation by Arthur Hall, M.P. for Grantham; the first
instalment of Chapman's Homeric labours did not appear till 1598,
and it is scarcely probable that Shakspeare availed himself of a
work which was not completed till 1614, two years before his death,
and long after he had ceased to write.-ED.
§ Of Hesiod's works, the earliest version, by Chapman, was not
committed to the press till 1618, two years after Shakspeare's death.
-ED.
Alluding to the Earl of Surrey's version of the Eneid, of
which the first complete edition was printed in 1557; for we can
scarcely reckon Caxton's prose paraphrase from the French, printed
in 1490, as coming within the category of classical translations.—ED.
There were several early English versions of this classic by
Turbervile, Googe, and others.-ED.
**First printed in 1579, folio.-ED.
But there were no early translations in our language of Dante,
Aretine, or, indeed (so far as his magnum opus is concerned), of
Boccaccio. The first known edition of the Decameron in English is
that of 1620–5, folio. But the Triomfi of Petrarch found an early,
if not a very competent, interpreter, in Henry Parker, Lord Morley;
and of the Cortegiano at Castiglione, and Machiavelli's Arte della
Guerra, we have English versions contemporary with Shakspeare
and his fellows.-ED.
General View of the Subject.
19
occasional mention of some few French authors, as
Ronsard and Du Bartas;† for the French literature
had not at this stage arrived at its Augustan period,
and it was the imitation of their literature a century
afterwards, when it had arrived at its greatest height
(itself copied from the Greek and Latin), that enfeebled
and impoverished our own. But of the time that we are
considering, it might be said, without much extravagance,
that every breath that blew, that every wave that rolled
to our shores, brought with it some accession to our
knowledge, which was engrafted on the national genius.
In fact, all the disposable materials that had been
accumulating for a long period of time, either in our
own, or in foreign countries, were now brought together,
and required nothing more than to be wrought up,
polished, or arranged in striking forms, for ornament and
use. To this every inducement prompted; the novelty
of the acquisition of knowledge in many cases, the
emulation of foreign wits and of immortal works, the
want and the expectation of such works among ourselves,
the opportunity and encouragement afforded for their
production by leisure and affluence; and, above all, the
insatiable desire of the mind to beget its own image,
and to construct out of itself, and for the delight and
admiration of the world and posterity, that excellence
of which the idea exists hitherto only in its own breast,
and the impression of which it would make as universal
as the eye of Heaven, the benefit as common as the air
we breathe. The first impulse of genius is to create
what never existed before: the contemplation of that,
which is so created, is sufficient to satisfy the demands
* I know of no poetical work by Ronsard in early English litera-
ure.-ED.
† Alluding, of course, to Sylvester's translation which, commenced
bout 1590, was not completed till 1607. But as early as 1584,
Thomas Hudson published at Edinburgh Du Bartas's History of
udith in Form of a Poem.-Ed.
20
General View of the Subject.
of taste; and it is the habitual study and imitation of the
original models that takes away the power, and even
wish to do the like. Taste limps after genius, and from
copying the artificial models, we lose sight of the living
principle of Nature. It is the effort we make, and the
impulse we acquire, in overcoming the first obstacles,
that projects us forward; it is the necessity for exertion
that makes us conscious of our strength; but this neces-
sity and this impulse once removed, the tide of fancy
and enthusiasm, which is at first a running stream, soon
settles and crusts into the standing pool of dulness,
criticism and vertu.
What also gave an unusual impetus to the mind of man
at this period, was the discovery of the New World, and
the reading of voyages and travels. Green islands and
golden sands seemed to arise, as by enchantment, out of
the bosom of the watery waste, and invite the cupidity,
or wing the imagination of the dreaming speculator.
Fairyland was realised in new and unknown worlds.
“Fortunate fields and groves and flowery vales, thrice
happy isles," were found floating, "like those Hesperian
gardens famed of old," beyond Atlantic seas, as dropt
from the zenith. The people, the soil, the clime, every-
thing gave unlimited scope to the curiosity of the
traveller and reader. Other manners might be said to
enlarge the bounds of knowledge, and new mines of
wealth were tumbled at our feet. It is from a voyage
to the Straits of Magellan that Shakspeare has taken the
hint of Prospero's Enchanted Island, and of the savage
Caliban with his god Setebos.* Spenser seems to have
had the same feeling in his mind in the production of
* See a Voyage to the Straits of Magellan, 1594. [But to wha
source Skakspeare was really indebted for the first suggestion o
his enchanting drama, still remains a question, of which no perfectly
satisfactory solution has yet been offered, after all the researche
and conjectures of the editors.-ED.]
General View of the Subject.
21
his Faëry Queen, and vindicates his poetic fiction on this
very ground of analogy :
"Right well I wote, most mighty sovereign,
That all this famous antique history
Of some the abundance of an idle brain
Will judged be, and painted forgery,
Rather than matter of just memory:
Since none that breatheth living air, doth know
Where is that happy land of faëry
Which I so much do vaunt, but nowhere show,
But vouch antiquities, which nobody can know.
But let that man with better sense avise,
That of the world least part to us is read:
And daily how through hardy enterprize
Many great regions are discovered,
Which to late age were never mentioned.
Who ever heard of th' Indian Peru?
Or who in venturous vessel measured
The Amazons' huge river, now found true?
Or fruitfullest Virginia who did ever view?
Yet all these were when no man did them know,
Yea, have from wisest ages hidden been:
And later times things more unknown shall show.
Why then should witless man so much misween
That nothing is but that which he hath seen?
What if within the moon's fair shining sphere,
What if in every other star unseen,
Of other worlds he happily should hear,
He wonder would much more; yet such to some appear."
Fancy's air-drawn pictures after history's waking
dream showed like clouds over mountains; and from the
romance of real life to the idlest fiction, the transition
seemed easy. Shakspeare, as well as others of his time,
availed himself of the old chronicles, and of the tradi-
tions of fabulous inventions contained in them in such
ample measure, and which had not yet been appropriated.
to the purposes of poetry or the drama. The stage was
a new thing; and those who had to supply its demands
22
General View of the Subject.
"*
laid their hands upon whatever came within their reach :
they were not particular as to the means, so that they
gained the end. Lear is founded on an old ballad;
Othello on an Italian novel; Hamlet on a Danish, and
Macbeth on a Scotch tradition: one of which is to be
found in Saxo-Grammaticus, and the last in Hollinshed.
The Ghost-scenes and the Witches in each are authenti-
cated in the old Gothic history. There was also this
connecting link between the poetry of this age and the
supernatural traditions of a former one, that the belief
in them was still extant, and in full force and visible
operation among the vulgar (to say no more) in the time
of our authors. The appalling and wild chimeras of
superstition and ignorance, "this bodiless creation ecstasy
is very cunning in, were inwoven with existing man-
ners and opinions, and all their effects on the passions
and terror or pity might be gathered from common and
actual observation-might be discerned in the workings
of the face, the expressions of the tongue, the writh-
ings of a troubled conscience. "Your face, my thane,
is as a book, where men may read strange matters."+
Midnight and secret murders, too, from the imperfect
state of the police, were more common; and the fero-
cious and brutal manners that would stamp the brow of
the hardened ruffian or hired assassin, more incorrigible
and undisguised. The portraits of Tyrrel and Forrest.
were, no doubt, done from the life. We find that the
ravages of the plague, the destructive rage of fire, the
poisoned chalice, lean famine, the serpent's mortal sting,
and the fury of wild beasts, were the common topics of
their poetry, as they were common occurrences in more
remote periods of history. They were the strong ingre-
dients thrown into the cauldron of tragedy, to make it
"thick and slab." Man's life was (as it appears to me)
* Hamlet, iii. 4.
† Macbeth, i. 5.
General View of the Subject.
23
more full of traps and pitfalls; of hair-breadth accidents
by flood and field; more waylaid by sudden and startling
evils; it trod on the brink of hope and fear; stumbled
upon fate unawares; while the imagination, close behind
it, caught at and clung to the shape of danger, or
“ snatched a wild and fearful joy" from its escape. The
accidents of nature were less provided against; the ex-
cesses of the passions and of lawless power were less
regulated, and produced more strange and desperate
catastrophes. The tales of Boccaccio are founded on the
great pestilence of Florence,* Fletcher the poet died
of the plague,† and Marlowe was stabbed in a tavern
quarrel. The strict authority of parents, the inequality
of ranks, or the hereditary feuds between different fami-
lies, made more unhappy loves or matches.
"The course of true love never did run smooth." §
Again, the heroic and martial spirit which breathes in
our elder writers, was yet in considerable activity in the
reign of Elizabeth. The age of chivalry was not then
quite gone, nor the glory of Europe extinguished for
ever." Jousts and tournaments were still common with
the nobility in England and in foreign countries: Sir
Philip Sidney was particularly distinguished for his pro-
ficiency in these exercises (and indeed fell a martyr to
his ambition as a soldier), and the gentle Surrey was
*The black death of 1348.-ED.
+ The plague of 1625. He was buried in the churchyard of St.
Saviour's, Southwark, which afterwards received the mortal remains
of Massinger.-Ed.
According to Beard's Theater of God's Judgments, 1597; and
indeed the same story, which is doubtless founded on fact, is to be
found elsewhere. It occurs in the common-place book of Henry
Oxenden, of Canterbury, 1647, related as it is to be found (copied
from an early MS. memorandum) in Mr. Dyce's edition of Marlowe,
1850. But, in the Oxenden MS., the name of the narrator is given
in full.-ED.
§ Midsummer Night's Dream, i. 1.
24
General View of the Subject.
still more famous, on the same account, just before him.
It is true, the general use of fire-arms gradually super-
seded the necessity of skill in the sword, or bravery in
the person and as a symptom of the rapid degeneracy
in this respect, we find Sir John Suckling soon after
boasting of himself as one—
"Who prized black eyes, and a lucky hit
At bowls, above all the trophies of wit."
It was comparatively an age of peace,
"Like strength reposing on his own right arm;"
but the sound of civil combat might still be heard in the
distance, the spear glittered to the eye of memory, or
the clashing of armour struck on the imagination of the
ardent and the young. They were borderers on the
savage state, on the times of war and bigotry, though in
the lap of arts, of luxury, and knowledge. They stood
on the shore and saw the billows rolling after the storm :
they heard the tumult, and were still." The manners
and out-of-door amusements were more tinctured with a
spirit of adventure and romance. The war with wild
beasts, &c., was more strenuously kept up in country
sports. I do not think we could get from sedentary
poets, who had never mingled in the vicissitudes, the
dangers, or excitements of the chase, such descriptions
of hunting and other athletic games, as are to be found
in Shakspeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, or Fletcher's
Two Noble Kinsmen.
With respect to the good cheer and hospitable living
of those times, I cannot agree with an ingenious and
agreeable writer of the present day, that it was general
or frequent. The very stress laid upon certain holidays
and festivals, shows that they did not keep up the same
Saturnalian licence and open house all the year round.
They reserved themselves for great occasions, and made
General View of the Subject.
25
the best amends they could for a year of abstinence and
toil by a week of merriment and convivial indulgence.
Persons in middle life at this day, who can afford a good
dinner every day, do not look forward to it as any par-
ticular subject of exultation: the poor peasant, who can
only contrive to treat himself to a joint of meat on a
Sunday, considers it as an event in the week. So, in the
old Cambridge comedy of the Return from Parnassus,*
we find this indignant description of the progress of
luxury in those days, put into the mouth of one of the
speakers:
'Why is't not strange to see a ragged clerk,
Some stammell weaver, or some butcher's son,
That scrubb'd alate within a sleeveless gown,
When the commencement, like a morrice dance,
Hath put a bell or two about his legs,
Created him a sweet clean gentleman:
How then he 'gins to follow fashions.
He whose thin sire dwells in a smoky roof,
Must take tobacco, and must wear a lock.
His thirsty dad drinks in a wooden bowl,
But his sweet self is served in silver plate.
His hungry sire will scrape you twenty legs
For one good Christmas meal on New-year's Day,
But his maw must be capon-cramm'd each day." †
This does not look as if in those days "it snowed of
meat and drink," as a matter of course, throughout the
year! The distinctions of dress, the badges of different
professions, the very signs of the shops, which we have.
set aside for written inscriptions over the doors, were,
as Mr. Lamb observes, a sort of visible language to the
magination, and hints for thought. Like the costume
* Printed in 1606, 4to, but written during the reign of Eliza-
beth. It is a shrewd and lively dramatic satire on many of the
poets and playwrights of the period, like the Great Assizes holden
n Parnassus, 1645, and Suckling's Session of the Poets.-ED.
[Act iii. sc. 2. Hawkins' Origin of the English Drama, 1773,
ii. 248 9.

26
General View of the Subject.
of different foreign nations, they had an immediate
striking and picturesque effect, giving scope to the
fancy. The surface of society was embossed with hiero-
glyphics, and poetry existed "in complement extern." *
The poetry of former times might be directly taken from
real life, as our poetry is taken from the poetry of former
times. Finally, the face of Nature, which was the same
glorious object then that it is now, was open to them;
and coming first, they gathered her fairest flowers to live
for ever in their verse:-the movements of the human
heart were not hid from them, for they had the same
passions as we, only less disguised, and less subject to
control. Decker has given an admirable description of
a madhouse in one of his plays. But it might be per-
haps objected, that it was only a literal account taken
from Bedlam at that time: and it might be answered,
that the old poets took the same method of describing
the passions and fancies of men whom they met at large.
which forms the point of communion between us:
for the title of the old play, A Mad World, my
Masters,† is hardly yet obsolete; and we are pretty
much the same Bedlam still, perhaps a little better
managed, like the real one, and with more care and
humanity shown to the patients!
Lastly, to conclude this account: What gave a unity
and common direction to all these causes, was the
natural genius of the country, which was strong in thes
writers in proportion to their strength. We are a nation
of islanders, and we cannot help it, nor mend ourselve
if we would. We are something in ourselves, nothing
when we try to ape others. Music and painting are no
our forte: for what we have done in that way has bee
* Othello, i. 1.
The title of this play by Thomas Middleton, printed in 1608
was probably adopted from its popularity, and was borrowed b
other writers.-ED.
General View of the Subject.
27
That is our
to be wished we had in no
Our situation has given us
little, and that borrowed from others with great diffi-
culty. But we may boast of our poets and philosophers.
That's something. We have had strong heads and
sound hearts among us.
Thrown on one side of the
world, and left to bustle for ourselves, we have fought
out many a battle for truth and freedom.
natural style; and it were
instance departed from it.
a certain cast of thought and character; and our liberty
has enabled us to make the most of it. We are of a stiff
clay, not moulded into every fashion, with stubborn
joints not easily bent. We are slow to think, and there-
fore impressions do not work upon us till they act in
masses. We are not forward to express our feelings,
and therefore they do not come from us till they force
their way in the most impetuous eloquence. Our lan-
guage is, as it were, to begin anew, and we make use of
the most singular and boldest combinations to explain
ourselves. Our wit comes from us, "like birdlime,
brains and all." We pay too little attention to form
and method, leave our works in an unfinished state, but
still the materials we work in are solid and of Nature's
mint; we do not deal in counterfeits. We both under
and over do, but we keep an eye to the prominent
features, the main chance. We are more for weight
than show; care only about what interests ourselves,
instead of trying to impose upon others by plausible
appearances, and are obstinate and intractable in not
conforming to common rules, by which many arrive at
their ends with half the real waste of thought and
crouble. We neglect all but the principal object, gather
our force to make a great blow, bring it down, and re-
apse into sluggishness and indifference again. Materiam
uperabat opus, cannot be said of us. We may be ac-
cused of grossness, but not of flimsiness; of extrava-
gance, but not of affectation; of want of art and
28
General View of the Subject.
refinement, but not of a want of truth and nature. Our
literature, in a word, is Gothic and grotesque; unequal
and irregular; not cast in a previous mould, nor of one
uniform texture, but of great weight in the whole, and
of incomparable value in the best parts. It aims at an
excess of beauty or power, hits or misses, and is either
very good indeed, or absolutely good for nothing. This
character applies in particular to our literature in the
age of Elizabeth, which is its best period, before the
introduction of a rage for French rules and French
models; for whatever may be the value of our own ori-
ginal style of composition, there can be neither offence
nor presumption in saying, that it is at least better than
our second-hand imitations of others. Our understand-
ing (such as it is and must remain to be good for any-
thing) is not a thoroughfare for commonplaces, smooth
as the palm of one's hand, but full of knotty points and
jutting excrescences, rough, uneven, overgrown with
brambles; and I like this aspect of the mind (as some
one said of the country), where Nature keeps a good deal
of the soil in her own hands. Perhaps the genius of
our poetry has more of Pan than of Apollo; "but Pan
is a god, Apollo is no more!"
( 29 )
.
LECTURE II.
ON THE DRAMATIC WRITERS CONTEMPORARY WITH SHAK-
SPEARE: [SACKVILLE] LYLY, MARLOWE, HEYWOOD, MIDDLE-
TON, AND ROWLEY.
THE PERIOD Of which I shall have to treat (from the
Reformation to the middle of [the reign of] Charles I.)
was prolific in dramatic excellence, even more than in any
other. In approaching it, we seem to be approaching
the RICH STROND described in Spenser, where treasures of
all kinds lay scattered, or rather crowded together on
the shore in inexhaustible but unregarded profusion,
“rich as the oozy bottom of the deep in sunken wrack and
sumless treasuries." We are confounded with the variety,
and dazzled with the dusky splendour of names sacred
in their obscurity, and works gorgeous in their decay,
"majestic, though in ruin," like Guyon when he entered
the Cave of Mammon, and was shown the massy pillars
and huge unwieldy fragments of gold, covered with
dust and cobwebs, and "shedding a faint shadow of
uncertain light—
"Such as a lamp whose light doth fade away,
Or as the moon clothed with cloudy night
Doth show to him that walks in fear and sad affright."
The dramatic literature of this period only wants ex-
ploring, to fill the inquiring mind with wonder and
delight, and to convince us that we have been wrong in
lavishing all our praise on "new-born gawds, though
they are made and moulded of things past;" and in
giving “to dust, that is a little gilt, more laud than gilt
30
Sackville and Norton.
o'er-dusted.'
""* In short, the discovery of such an un-
suspected and forgotten mine of wealth will be found
amply to repay the labour of the search, and it will be
hard if in most cases curiosity does not end in admira-
tion and modesty teach us wisdom. A few of the most
singular productions of these times remain unclaimed;
of others the authors are uncertain; many of them are
joint productions of different pens; but of the best the
writers' names are in general known, and obviously
stamped on the productions themselves. The names of
Ben Jonson, for instance, Massinger, Beaumont and
Fletcher, are almost, though not quite, as familiar to us
as that of Shakspeare; and their works still keep regu-
lar possession of the stage. Another set of writers in-
cluded in the same general period (the end of the six-
teenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century),
who are next, or equal, or sometimes superior, to these
in power, but whose names are now little known, and
their writings nearly obsolete, are Lyly, Marlowe,
Marston, Chapman, Middleton and Rowley, Heywood,
Webster, Decker, and Ford. I shall devote the present
and two following Lectures to the best account I can
give of these, and shall begin with some of the least
known.
The earliest tragedy of which I shall take notice (I
believe the earliest that we have†) is that of Ferrex and
Porrex, or Gorboduc (as it has been generally called),
the production of Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst,
afterwards created Earl of Dorset, assisted by one
Thomas Norton. This was first acted with applause
* Troilus and Cressida, iii. 3.
No: for before 1551 Nicholas Udall, master of Eton School,
had produced Ralph Roister Doister, besides other plays or interludes,
most probably, no longer preserved.-E.
This was Thomas Norton, of Sharpenhoe, co. Bedford, where he
was born in 1532. He had probably a subordinate share in the
composition of Gorboduc.-ED.
Sackville and Norton.
31
before the Queen in 1561, the noble author being then
quite a young man. This tragedy being considered as
the first in our language, is certainly a curiosity, and in
other respects it is also remarkable; though, perhaps,
enough has been said about it. As a work of genius, it
may be set down as nothing, for it contains hardly a
memorable line or passage; as a work of art, and the
first of its kind attempted in the language, it may be
considered as a monument of the taste and skill of the
authors. Its merit is confined to the regularity of the
plot and metre, to its general good sense, and strict at-
tention to common decorum. If the poet has not stamped
the peculiar genius of his age upon this first attempt, it
is no inconsiderable proof of strength of mind and con-
ception sustained by its own sense of propriety alone,
to have so far anticipated the taste of succeeding times
as to have avoided any glaring offence against rules and
models, which had no existence in his day. Or perhaps
a truer solution might be, that there were as yet no ex-
amples of a more ambiguous and irregular kind to tempt
him to err, and as he had not the impulse or resources
within himself to strike out a new path, he merely ad-
hered with modesty and caution to the classical models
with which, as a scholar, he was well acquainted. The
language of the dialogue is clear, unaffected, and intel-
ligible without the smallest difficulty, even to this day;
it has “no figures nor no fantasies," to which the most
fastidious critic can object, but the dramatic power is
nearly none at all. It is written expressly to set forth
the dangers and mischiefs that arise from the division of
sovereign power; and the several speakers dilate upon
the different views of the subject in turn, like clever
schoolboys set to compose a thesis, or declaim upon the
fatal consequences of ambition, and the uncertainty of
human affairs. The author, in the end, declares for the
loctrine of passive obedience and non-resistance; a
32
Sackville and Norton.
doctrine which indeed was seldom questioned at that
time of day. Eubulus, one of the old king's counsellors,
thus gives his opinion :
"Eke fully with the duke my mind agrees,
That no cause serves, whereby the subject may
Call to account the doings of his prince;
Much less in blood by sword to work revenge:
No more than may the hand cut off the head.
In act nor speech: no, not in secret thought,
The subject may rebel against his lord,
Or judge of him that sits in Cæsar's seat,
With grudging mind to damn those he mislikes.
Though kings forget to govern as they ought,
Yet subjects must obey as they are bound."*
Yet how little he was borne out in this inference by
the unbiassed dictates of his own mind, may appear
from the freedom and unguarded boldness of such lines
as the following, addressed by a favourite to a prince, as
courtly advice:
“Know ye that lust of kingdoms hath no law:
The gods do bear and well allow in kings
The things that they abhor in rascal routs.
When kings on slender quarrels run to wars,
And then in cruel and unkindly wise
Command thefts, rapes, murder of innocents,
The spoil of towns, ruins † of mighty realms;
Think you such princes do suppose themselves
Subject to laws of kind and fear of gods?
Murders and violent thefts in private men
Are heinous crimes, and full of foul reproach;
Yet none offence, but deck'd with noble name
Of glorious conquests in the hands of kings."§
The principal characters make as many invocations to
the names of their children, their country, and their
* [Shakspeare Society's edition by Mr. W. D. Cooper, 1847, p. 147.]
† Shakspeare Society's edition reads reigns, which does no
seem to yield any sense.-ED.
So the genuine edition of 1570. The spurious edition of 1565
has suppress.-ED.
§ [Ibid. pp. 118-19.]
Sackville and Norton.
33
iends, as Cicero in his Orations, and all the topics in-
sted upon are open, direct, urged in the face of day,
ith no more attention to time or place, to an enemy
ho overhears, or an accomplice to whom they are ad-
ressed; in a word, with no more dramatic insinuation
- by-play than the pleadings in a court of law. Almost
Le only passage that I can instance, as rising above this
dactic tone of mediocrity into the pathos of poetry, is
e where Marcella laments the untimely death of her
ver, Ferrex :
"Ah! noble prince, how oft have I beheld
Thee mounted on thy fierce and trampling steed,
Shining in armour bright before the tilt;
And with thy mistress' sleeve tied on thy helm,
And charge thy staff to please thy lady's eye,
That bow'd the head-piece of thy friendly foe!
How oft in arms on horse to bend the mace,
How oft in arms on foot to break the sword,
Which never now these eyes may see again !" *
There seems a reference to Chaucer in the wording of
e following lines:
"Then saw I how he smiled with slaying knife
Wrapp'd under cloke, then saw I deep deceit
Lurk in his face, and death prepared for me."†
Sir Philip Sidney says of this tragedy: "Our
agedies and comedies (not without cause cried out
ainst), observing rules neither of lowest civility nor of
ilful poetry, excepting Gorboduc (again, I say, of those
at I have seen), which notwithstanding, as it is full of
tely speeches, and well-sounding phrases, climbing to
e height of Seneca his style, and as full of notable
›rality; which it doth most delightfully teach, and so
tain the very end of poetry." And Mr. Pope, whose
[Edition of 1570, pp. 143-4.]
"The smiler with the knife under his cloke."-Knight's Tale.
[Apologie for Poetrie, 1595, repr. Arber, p. 63.]
D
34
""
Sackville's "Induction."
taste in such matters was very different from Sir Philip
Sidney's, says in still stronger terms, "that the writers
of the succeeding age might have improved as much in
other respects, by copying from him a propriety in the
sentiments, an unaffected perspicuity of style, and an
easy flow in the numbers. In a word, that chastity,
correctness, and gravity of style, which are so essential
to tragedy, and which all the tragic poets who followed,
not excepting Shakspeare himself, either little under-
stood, or perpetually neglected." It was well for us and
them that they did so!
The Induction to the Mirrour for Magistrates does his
Muse more credit. It sometimes reminds one of Chaucer,
and at others seems like an anticipation, in some de-
gree, both of the measure and manner of Spenser. The
following stanzas may give the reader an idea of the merit
of this old poem, which was published in 1563 :*
"By him † lay heavy sleep, the cousin of death
Flat on the ground, and still as any stone,
A very corpse, save yielding forth a breath.
Small keep took he, whom fortune frowned on,
Or whom she lifted up unto the throne
Of high renown, but as a living death,
So dead alive, of life he drew the breath.
The body's rest, the quiet of the heart,
The travail's ease, the still night's fear was he.
And of our life in earth the better part,
Reaver of sight, and yet in whom we see
Things oft that tide, and oft that never be.
Without respect esteeming equally
King Cræsus pomp, and Irus poverty.
* The first edition of the Mirror for Magistrates appeared i
1559, 4to; but Sackville's Induction was first included in th
reprint of 1563.—Ed.
† Sackville's Works, ed. 1859, p. 110, et seq.
Sackville's "Induction."
35
And, next in order, sad* Old Age we found,
His beard all hoar, his eye hollow and blind,
With drooping cheer still pouring on the ground,
As on the place where Nature him assign'd
To rest, when that the sisters had untwin'd
His vital thread, and ended with their knife
The fleeting course of fast declining life.
There heard we him with broke and hollow plaint
Rue with himself his end approaching fast,
And all for nought his wretched mind torment,
With sweet remembrance of his pleasures past,
And fresh delights of lusty youth forewast.
Recounting which, how would he sob and shriek!
And to be young again of Jove beseek.†
キ
​But, and ‡ the cruel fates so fixed be,
That time forepast cannot return again.
This one request of Jove yet prayed he:
That in such withered plight, and wretched pain,
As eld (accompanied with his loathsome train)
Had brought on him, all were it woe and grief,
He might a while yet linger forth his life.
And not so soon descend into the pit:
Where death, when he the mortal corps hath slain,
With retchless hand in grave doth cover it,
Thereafter never to enjoy again
The gladsome light, but in the ground y-lain
In depth of darkness waste and wear to nought,
As he had near into the world been brought.
But who had seen him, sobbing how he stood,
Unto himself, and how he would bemoan
His youth forepast, as though it wrought him good
To talk of youth, all were his youth foregone,
He would have mus'd and marvell'd much, whereon
This wretched age should life desire so fain,
And knows full well life doth but length his pain.
* The editor of 1859 points this passage as follows: "And next,
order sad, Old Age," &c.
+ Beseech.
i.e. if.
36
Lyly the Euphuist.
Crookback'd he was, toothshaken, and blear-ey'd,
Went on three feet, and sometime crept on four,
With old lame bones, that rattled by his side,
His scalp all pill'd,* and he withheld forelore:
His withered fist still knocking at death's door,
Fumbling and driveling as he draws his breath,
For brief, the shape and messenger of death.”
John Lyly (born in the Weald of Kent about the
year 1553) was the author of Midas and Endymion, of
Alexander and Campaspe, and of the comedy of Mother
Bombie. Of the last it may be said, that it is very much
what its name would import—old, quaint, and vulgar.
I may here observe, once for all, that I would not be
understood to say, that the age of Elizabeth was all of
gold without any alloy. There was both gold and lead
in it, and often in one and the same writer. In our im-
patience to form an opinion, we conclude, when we first
meet with a good thing, that it is owing to the age; or,
if we meet with a bad one, it is characteristic of the
age, when, in fact, it is neither; for there are good and
bad in almost all ages, and one age excels in one thing,
another in another :-only one age may excel more and
in higher things than another, but none can excel
equally and completely in all. The writers of Elizabeth,
as poets, soared to the height they did, by indulging
their own unrestrained enthusiasm: as comic writers, they
chiefly copied the manners of the age, which did not
give them the same advantages over their successors.
Lyly's comedy, for instance, is "poor, unfledged, has
never winged from view o' th' nest," † and tries in vain
to rise above the ground with crude conceits and clumsy
levity. Lydia, the heroine of the piece, is silly enough
if the rest were but as witty. But the author has showr
no partiality in the distribution of his gifts. To saj
truth, it was a very common fault of the old comedy
† Cymbeline, iii. 3.
* i.e. pealed, bald.
Lyly the Euphuist.
37
that its humours were too low, and the weaknesses ex-
posed too great to be credible, or an object of ridicule,
even if they were. The affectation of their courtiers is
passable, and diverting as a contrast to present manners;
but the eccentricities of their clowns are 66
very toler-
able, and not to be endured." Any kind of activity of
mind might seem to the writers better than none; any
nonsense served to amuse their hearers; any cant phrase,
any coarse allusion, any pompous absurdity, was taken
for wit and drollery. Nothing could be too mean, too
foolish, too improbable, or too offensive, to be a proper
subject for laughter. Any one (looking hastily at this
side of the question only) might be tempted to suppose
the youngest children of Thespis a very callow brood,
chirping their slender notes, or silly swains “grating
their lean and flashy jests on scrannel pipes of wretched
straw." The genius of comedy looked too often like)
a lean and hectic pantaloon; love was a slip-shod
shepherdess; wit a parti-coloured fool like Harlequin,
and the plot came hobbling, like a clown, after all. Al
string of impertinent and farcical jests (or rather blun-
ders) was with great formality ushered into the world
as "a right pleasant and conceited comedy." Comedy
could not descend lower than it sometimes did, without
glancing at physical imperfections and deformity. The
two young persons in the play before us, on whom the
event of the plot chiefly hinges, do in fact turn out to
be no better than changelings and natural idiots. This
is carrying innocence and simplicity too far. So, again,
the character of Sir Tophas in Endymion, an affected,
blustering, talkative, cowardly pretender, treads too
near upon blank stupidity and downright want of com-
mon sense to be admissible as a butt for satire. Shak-
speare has contrived to clothe the lamentable nakedness
of the same sort of character with a motley garb from the
wardrobe of his imagination, and has redeemed it from
38
Lyly the Euphuist.
insipidity by a certain plausibility of speech, and playful
extravagance of humour. But the undertaking was
nearly desperate.
Ben Jonson tried to overcome the
difficulty by the force of learning and study, and
thought to gain his end by persisting in error; but he
only made matters worse, for his clowns and coxcombs
(if we except Bobadil) are the most incorrigible and
insufferable of all others. The story of Mother Bombie
is little else than a tissue of absurd mistakes, arising
from the confusion of the different characters one with
another, like another Comedy of Errors, and ends in their
being (most of them) married in a game at cross-pur-
poses to the persons they particularly dislike.
To leave this, and proceed to something pleasanter,
Midas and Endymion, which are worthy of their names
and of the subject. The story in both is classical, and
the execution is for the most part elegant and simple.
There is often something that reminds one of the grace-
ful communicativeness of Lucian or of Apuleius, from
whom one of the stories is borrowed. Lyly made a more
attractive picture of Grecian manners at second-hand
than of English characters from his own observation.
The poet (which is the great merit of a poet in such a
subject) has transported himself to the scene of action,
to ancient Greece or Asia Minor; the manners, the
images, the traditions, are preserved with truth and deli-
cacy, and the dialogue (to my fancy) glides and sparkles
like a clear stream from the Muses' spring. I know few
things more perfect in characteristic painting, than the
exclamation of the Phrygian shepherds, who, afraid of
betraying the secret of Midas' ears, fancy that "the
very reeds bow down, as though they listened to their
talk"; nor more affecting in sentiment, than the
apostrophe addressed by his friend Eumenides to Endy-
mion, on waking from his long sleep: "Behold the twig
to which thou laidest down thy head, is now become a
Lyly the Euphuist.
39
tree.” The narrative is sometimes a little wandering
and desultory; but if it had been ten times as tedious,
this thought would have redeemed it; for I cannot con-
ceive of any thing more beautiful, more simple or touch-
ing, than this exquisitely chosen image and dumb proof
of the manner in which he had passed his life, from
youth to old age, in a dream, a dream of love. Happy
Endymion! Faithful Eumenides! Divine Cynthia !
Who would not wish to pass his life in such a sleep, a
long, long sleep, dreaming of some fair heavenly god-
dess, with the moon shining upon his face, and the trees
growing silently over his head! There is something in
this story which has taken a strange hold of my fancy,
perhaps "out of my weakness and my melancholy;"
but for the satisfaction of the reader, I will quote the
whole passage: "It is silly sooth, and dallies with the
innocence of love, like the old age:"
"Cynthia. Well, let us to Endymion. I will not be so stately
(good Endymion) not to stoop to do thee good and if thy liberty
consist in a kiss from me, thou shalt have it. And although my
mouth hath been heretofore as untouched as my thoughts, yet now
to recover thy life (though to restore thy youth it be impossible) I
will do that to Endymion, which yet never mortal man could boast
of heretofore, nor shall ever hope for hereafter. [She kisses him.]
Eumenides. Madam, he beginneth to stir.
Cynthia. Soft, Eumenides, stand still.
Eumenides. Ah! I see his eyes almost open.
Cynthia. I command thee once again, stir not: I will stand
behind him.
Panelion. What do I see? Endymion almost awake?
Eumenides. Endymion, Endymion, art thou deaf or dumb? Or
hath this long sleep taken away thy memory? Ah! my sweet En-
dymion, seest thou not Eumenides, thy faithful friend, thy faithful
Eumenides, who for thy sake hath been careless of his own content?
Speak, Endymion! Endymion! Endymion!
Endymion. Endymion! I call to mind such a name.
Eumenides. Hast thou forgotten thyself, Endymion? Then do
I not marvel thou rememberest not thy friend. I tell thee thou art
Endymion, and I Eumenides. Behold also Cynthia, by whose
40
Lyly the Euphuist.
favour thou art awaked, and by whose virtue thou shalt continue
thy natural course.
Cynthia. Endymion! Speak, sweet Endymion! Knowest thou
not Cynthia?
Endymion. Oh heavens! whom do I behold?
divine Cynthia?
Fair Cynthia,
What! a grey
Cynthia. I am Cynthia, and thou Endymion.
Endymion. Endymion! What do I hear?
beard, hollow eyes, withered body, decayed limbs, and all in one
night?
Eumenides. One night! Thou hast here slept forty years, by
what enchantress, as yet it is not known: and behold the twig to
which thou laidest thy head, is now become a tree. Callest thou
not Eumenides to remembrance?
Endymion. Thy name I do remember by the sound, but thy
favour I do not yet call to mind: only divine Cynthia, to whom
time, fortune, destiny, and death are subject, I see and remember;
and in all humility I regard and reverence.
Cynthia. You shall have good cause to remember Eumenides,
who hath for thy safety forsaken his own solace.
Endymion. Am I that Endymion, who was wont in court to lead
my life, and in jousts, tourneys, and arms, to exercise my youth?
Am I that Endymion?
Eumenides. Thou art that Endymion, and I Eumenides: wilt
thou not yet call me to remembrance?
Endymion. Ah! sweet Eumenides, I now perceive thou art he,
and that myself have the name of Endymion; but that this should
be my body, I doubt: for how could my curled locks be turned to
grey hairs, and my strong body to a dying weakness, having waxed
old and not knowing it?
Cynthia. Well, Endymion, arise: awhile sit down, for that thy
limbs are stiff and not able to stay thee, and tell what thou hast
seen in thy sleep all this while-what dreams, visions, thoughts,
and fortunes? for it is impossible but in so long time thou shouldst
see things strange." *
It does not take away from the pathos of this poetical
allegory on the chances of love and the progress of
human life, that it may be supposed to glance indirectly
at the conduct of Queen Elizabeth to our author, who,
after fourteen years' expectation of the place of Master
* Lyly's Works, ed. 1858, i. 65-6. (Endymion v. 1.)
Lyly the Euphuist.
41
*
of the Revels, was at last disappointed. This princess.
took no small delight in keeping her poets in a sort of
fools' paradise. The wit of Lyly, in parts of this ro-
mantic drama, seems to have grown spirited and classical
with his subject. He puts this fine hyperbolical irony
in praise of Dipsas (a most unamiable personage, as it
will appear) into the mouth of Sir Tophas :
:
"O what a fine thin hair hath Dipsas! What a pretty low fore-
head! What a tall and stately nose! What little hollow eyes!
What great and goodly lips! How harmless she is, being tooth-
less! Her fingers fat and short, adorned with long nails like a
bittern! What a low stature she is, and yet what a great foot she
carrieth! How thrifty must she be, in whom there is no waist! ‡
How virtuous she is like to be, over whom no man can be jealous!"§
It is singular that the style of this author, which is
extremely sweet and flowing, should have been the butt
of ridicule to his contemporaries, particularly Drayton,
who compliments Sidney as the author that
"Did first reduce
Our tongue from Lyly's writing, then in use;
Talking of stones, stars, plants, of fishes, flies,
Playing with words and idle similes,
As the English apes and very zanies be
Of every thing that they do hear and see":
which must apply to the prose style of his work, called
Euphues and his England, and is much more like Sir
* This is, in all probability, an inexact statement. Lyly ad
dressed two petitions to Queen Elizabeth on this subject-both,
perhaps, in the course of 1577-8. See memoir of the poet, prefixed
to ed. 1858, pp. xvii. xx.-Ed.
† Low foreheads were considered a great deformity in Elizabeth's
time. Constant allusions to this feeling occur in the dramas and
other popular productions of that age.
A jeu de mots, of which the old dramatists were rather fond.-ED.
§ Act iii. sc. 3; Works, i. 36-7.
||First published in 1579-80. The first part, entitled Euphues,
the Anatomy of Wit, appeared in 1579; and the sequel, Euphues and
his England, followed in 1580.-ED.
12
Lyly the Euphuist.
*
Philip Sidney's own manner than the dramatic style of
our poet. Besides the passages above quoted, I might
refer to the opening speeches of Midas, and again to the
admirable contention between Pan and Apollo for the
palm of music. His Alexander and Campaspe is another
sufficient answer to the charge. This play is a very
pleasing transcript of old manners and sentiment. It
is full of sweetness and point, of Attic salt and the
honey of Hymettus. The following song given to
Apelles would not disgrace the mouth of the prince o
painters:
(6
'Cupid and my Campaspe play'd
At cards for kisses, Cupid paid;
He stakes his quiver, bow, and arrows;
His mother's doves, and team of sparrows;
Loses them too; then down he throws
The coral of his lip, the rose
Growing on 's cheek (but none knows how),
With these the crystal of his brow,
And then the dimple of his chin;
All these did my Campaspe win.
At last he set her both his eyes:
She won, and Cupid blind did rise.
O, Love! has she done this to thee?
What shall, alas! become of me?"†
The conclusion of this drama is as follows. Alexander
addressing himself to Apelles, says:
"Well, enjoy one another: I give her thee frankly, Apelles.
Thou shalt see that Alexander maketh but a toy of love, and
leadeth affection in fetters: using fancy as a fool to make him
sport, or a minstrel to make him merry. It is not the amorous
glance of an eye can settle an idle thought in the heart: no, no, it
is children's game, a life for sempsters and scholars; the one, prick-
ing in clouts, have nothing else to think on; the other, picking
fancies out of books, have little else to marvel at. Go, Apelles,
* First published in 1584.-ED.
† Campaspe, iii. 5; Works, 1858, i. 128-9.
Lyly-Marlowe.
43
take with you your Campaspe; Alexander is cloyed with looking on
that which thou wonderest at.
Apelles. Thanks to your Majesty on bended knee; you have
honoured Apelles.
Campaspe. Thanks with bowed heart; you have blessed Cam-
[Exeunt.
paspe.
Alexander. Page, go warn Clytus and Parmenio, and the other
lords, to be in a readiness; let the trumpet sound, strike up the
drum, and I will presently into Persia. How now, Hephestion, is
Alexander able to resist love as he list?
Hephestion. The conquering of Thebes was not so honourable as
the subduing of these thoughts.
Alexander. It were a shame Alexander should desire to command
the world, if he could not command himself. But come, let us go.
And, good Hephestion, when all the world is won, and
every country is thine and mine, either find me out another to sub-
due, or on my word I will fall in love."*
Marlowe is a name that stands high, and almost first
in this list of dramatic worthies. He was a little be-
fore Shakspeare's time,† and has a marked character
both from him and the rest. There is a lust of power
in his writings, a hunger and thirst after unrighteous-
ness, a glow of the imagination, unhallowed by any thing
but its own energies. His thoughts burn within him
like a furnace with bickering flames; or throwing out
black smoke and mists that hide the dawn of genius,
or, like a poisonous mineral, corrode the heart. His
Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, though an imperfect
and unequal performance, is his greatest work. Faustus
himself is a rude sketch, but it is a gigantic one.
This
character may be considered as a personification of the
pride of will and eagerness of curiosity, sublimed beyond
the reach of fear and remorse.
He is hurried away, and,
as it were, devoured by a tormenting desire to enlarge
his knowledge to the utmost bounds of nature and art,
* Campaspe, i. 148-9.
† He died about 1594. He was killed in a brawl at Deptford,
June 1, 1593, having been stabbed by one Henry Archer. See
Dyce's edition of Marlowe, 1850, i. 33.
44
Christopher Marlowe.
and to extend his power with his knowledge. He would
realise all the fictions of a lawless imagination, would
solve the most subtle speculations of abstract reason;
and for this purpose, sets at defiance all mortal conse-
quences, and leagues himself with demoniacal power,
with "fate and metaphysical aid." The idea of witch-
craft and necromancy, once the dread of the vulgar and
the darling of the visionary recluse, seems to have had
its origin in the restless tendency of the human mind to
conceive of and aspire to more than it can achieve by
natural means, and in the obscure apprehension that the
gratification of this extravagant and unauthorised de-
sire can only be attained by the sacrifice of all our
ordinary hopes and better prospects to the infernal
agents that lend themselves to its accomplishment. Such
is the foundation of the present story. Faustus, in his
impatience to fulfil at once and for a moment, for a few
short years, all the desires and conceptions of his soul,
is willing to give in exchange his soul and body to the
great enemy of mankind. Whatever he fancies becomes
by this means present to his sense; whatever he com-
mands is done. He calls back time past, and antici-
pates the future: the visions of antiquity pass before
him, Babylon in all its glory, Paris and Enone; all the
projects of philosophers or creations of the poet pay
tribute at his feet; all the delights of fortune, of ambi-
tion, of pleasure, and of learning, are centered in hist
person; and from a short-lived dream of supreme felicity
and drunken power, he sinks into an abyss of darkness
and perdition. This is the alternative to which he sub-
mits; the bond which he signs with his blood! As the
outline of the character is grand and daring, the execu
tion is abrupt and fearful. The thoughts are vast and
irregular; and the style halts and staggers under them,
"with uneasy steps;"- "such footing found the sole of
unblest feet." There is a little fustian and incongruity
Christopher Marlowe.
45
.
of metaphor now and then, which is not very injurious
to the subject. It is time to give a few passages in
llustration of this account. He thus opens his mind at
the beginning:
"How am I glutted with conceit of this?
Shall I make spirits fetch me what I please?
Resolve me of all ambiguities?
Perform what desperate enterprise I will?
I'll have them fly to India for gold,
Ransack the ocean for orient pearl,
And search all corners of the new-found world,
For pleasant fruits and princely delicates.
I'll have them read me strange philosophy,
And tell the secrets of all foreign kings:
I'll have them wall all Germany with brass,
And make swift Rhine circle fair Wertenberg;
I'll have them fill the public schools with silk,
Wherewith the students shall be bravely clad;
I'll levy soldiers with the coin they bring,
And chase the Prince of Parma from our land,
And reign sole king of all the provinces:
Yea, stranger engines for the brunt of war
Than was the fiery keel at Antwerp's bridge,
I'll make my servile spirits to invent.
Enter Valdes and Cornelius.
Come, German Valdes, and Cornelius,
And make me blest with your sage conference.
Valdes, sweet Valdes, and Cornelius,
Know that your words have won me at the last,
To practise magic and concealed arts
Philosophy is odious and obscure;
•
Both law and physic are for petty wits;
'Tis magic, magic, that hath ravish'd me.
Then, gentle friends, aid me in this attempt;
And I, that have with subtle syllogisms
Gravell'd the pastors of the German church,
And made the flow'ring pride of Wertenberg
Swarm to thy problems, as the infernal spirits
On sweet Musæus when he came to hell,
Will be as cunning as Agrippa was,
Whose shadow made all Europe honour him.
46
Marlowe's "Faustus."
Valdes. Faustus, these books, thy wit, and our experience
Shall make all nations to canonize us.
As Indian Moors obey their Spanish lords,
So shall the spirits of every element
Be always serviceable to us three.
Like lions shall they guard us when we please;
Like Almain rutters with their horsemen's staves,
Or Lapland giants trotting by our sides:
Sometimes like women, or unwedded maids,
Shadowing more beauty in their airy brows
Than have the white breasts of the Queen of Love.
From Venice they shall drag huge argosies,
And from America the golden fleece,
That yearly stuffs old Philip's treasury;*
If learned Faustus will be resolute.
Faustus. Valdes, as resolute am I in this
As thou to live; therefore object it not."+
In his colloquy with the fallen angel, he shows the
fixedness of his determination :
"What, is great Mephistopheles so passionate
For being deprived of the joys of heaven?
Learn thou of Faustus manly fortitude,
And scorn those joys thou never shalt possess."+
Yet we afterwards find him faltering in his resolution
and struggling with the extremity of his fate :
'My heart's so hardened, I cannot repent:
Scarce can I name salvation, faith, or heaven:
But fearful echoes thunder in mine ears:
'Faustus, thou art damn'd!' these swords, and knives,
Poison, guns, halters, and envenom'd steel
Are laid before me to dispatch myself;
And long ere this I should have slain myself,
Had not sweet pleasure conquer'd deep despair.
Have I not made blind Homer sing to me
Of Alexander's love and Enon's death?
And hath not he that built the walls of Thebes
With ravishing sound of his melodious harp,
Made music with my Mephistopheles?
* An anachronism.
† Works, ed. Dyce, ii. 12, 13.
‡ Ibid. p. 21.
Marlowe's "Faustus."
47
Why should I die, then, or basely despair?
I am resolv'd; Faustus shall ne'er repent.
Come, Mephistopheles, let us dispute again,
And argue of divine astrology.”*
•
There is one passage more of this kind, which is so
striking and beautiful, so like a rapturous and deeply
passionate dream, that I cannot help quoting it here: it
is the address to the apparition of Helen :
Re-enter Helen.
Faustus. Was this the face that launch'd a thousand
ships,
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss. [Kisses her.]
Her lips suck forth my soul! See, where it flies!
Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again.
Here will I dwell, for Heaven is in these lips,
And all is dross that is not Helena.
I will be Paris, and for love of thee,
Instead of Troy shall Wertenberg be sack'd;
And I will combat with weak Menelaus,
And wear thy colours on my plumed crest;
Yea, I will wound Achilles in the heel,
And then return to Helen for a kiss.
Oh! thou art fairer than the evening air,
Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars:
Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter,
When he appear'd to hapless Semele;
More lovely than the monarch of the sky
In wanton Arethusa's azur'd arms;
And none but thou shalt be my paramour."
[Exeunt.t
The ending of the play is terrible, and his last excla-
mations betray an anguish of mind and vehemence of
passion, not to be contemplated without shuddering:
[The clock has just struck eleven.]
(6 Ah, Faustus!
Now hast thou but one bare hour to live,
And then thou must be damn'd perpetually.
* Works, ed. Dyce, ii. 36–7.
† Ibid. p. 75.
48
Marlowe's "Faustus."
Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven,
That time may cease, and midnight never come.
Fair Nature's eye, rise, rise again, and make
Perpetual day; or let this hour be but
A year, a month, a week, a natural day,
That Faustus may repent, and save his soul
•
[The clock strikes twelve.
Oh, it strikes, it strikes! Now, body, turn to air,
Or Lucifer will bear thee quick to hell.
[Thunder and lightning.
Oh, soul! be chang'd into little water-drops,
And fall into the ocean; ne'er be found.
[Enter Devils.]
My God, my God, look not so fierce on me!
Adders and serpents, let me breathe a while!
Ugly hell, gape not! Come not, Lucifer!
I'll burn my books! Oh! Mephistopheles." *
Perhaps the finest trait in the whole play, and that
which softens and subdues the horror of it, is the interest
taken by the two scholars in the fate of their master,
and their unavailing attempts to dissuade him from his
relentless career. The regard to learning is the ruling
passion of this drama; and its indications are as mild
and amiable in them as its ungoverned pursuit has been
fatal to Faustus:
"Yet, for he was a scholar once admir'd
For wondrous knowledge in our German schools,
We'll give his mangled limbs due burial;
And all the students, cloth'd in mourning black,
Shall wait upon his heavy funeral."†
So the chorus :
"Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight,
And burned is Apollo's laurel bough,
That sometime grew within this learned man.”‡
* Works, ed. Dyce, ii. 79-82.
† Ibid. p. 156. It is to be remarked that the passage wher
these lines occur was first added in 1616, probably by another hand
-ED.
‡ Ibid. pp. 83-84.
Marlowe's "Faustus."
49
And still more affecting are his own conflicts of mind
and agonising doubts on this subject just before, when
he exclaims to his friends:
"Oh, gentlemen! Hear me with patience, and tremble not at my
speeches. Though my heart pant and quiver to remember that
have been a student here these thirty years; oh! would I had never
seen Wertenberg, never read book!"
A finer compliment was never paid, nor a finer lesson
ever read to the pride of learning. The intermediate
comic parts, in which Faustus is not directly concerned,
are mean and grovelling to the last degree. One of the
clowns says to another: "Snails! what hast got there?
A book? Why thou canst not tell ne'er a word on't.”
Indeed, the ignorance and barbarism of the time, as here
described, might almost justify Faustus' overstrained
admiration of learning, and turn the heads of those who
possessed it, from novelty and unaccustomed excitement,
as the Indians are made drunk with wine! Goëthe, the
German poet, has written a drama on this tradition of
his country, which is considered a masterpiece. I can-
not find, in Marlowe's play, any proofs of the atheism or
impiety attributed to him, unless the belief in witchcraft
and the Devil can be regarded as such; and at the time
ne wrote, not to have believed in both, would have been
construed into the rankest atheism and irreligion. There
s a delight, as Mr. Lamb says, "in dallying with inter-
Hicted subjects;" but that does not, by any means, im-
oly either a practical or speculative disbelief of them.
- Lust's Dominion; or, The Lascivious Queen,* is refer-
ble to the same general style of writing; and is a
triking picture, or rather caricature, of the unrestrained
ove of power, not as connected with learning, but with
egal ambition and external sway. There is a good deal
* There is no authority for the ascription of this drama to the
en of Marlowe, although it is given to him in the edition of his
Works, by Robinson, 1826, 3 vols. 8vo.-ED.

E
50
1
Christopher Marlowe.
1
of the same intense passion, the same recklessness of
purpose, the same smouldering fire within: but there is
not any of the same relief to the mind in the lofty ima-
ginative nature of the subject; and the continual repe-
tition of plain practical villany and undigested horrors
disgusts the sense and blunts the interest. The mind
is hardened into obduracy, not melted into sympathy, by
such barefaced and barbarous cruelty. Eleazar, the
Moor, is such another character as Aaron in Titus An-
dronicus, and this play might be set down without
injustice as “pue-fellow" to that. I should think Mar-
lowe has a much fairer claim to be the author of Titus
Andronicus than Shakspeare,* at least from interna.
evidence; and the argument of Schlegel, that it mus
have been Shakspeare's, because there was no one else
capable of producing either its faults or beauties, fail:
in each particular. The Queen is the same character ir
both these plays; and the business of the plot is carried
on in much the same revolting manner, by making th
nearest friends and relatives of the wretched victims th
instruments of their sufferings and persecution by an
arch-villain. To show, however, that the same strong
braced tone of passionate declamation is kept up, tak
the speech of Eleazar on refusing the proffered crown:
66
What, do none rise ?
No, no, for kings indeed are deities.
And who'd not (as the sun) in brightness shine?
To be the greatest is to be divine.
Who among millions would not be the mightiest?
To sit in godlike state; to have all eyes
Dazzled with admiration, and all tongues
Shouting loud prayers; to rob every heart
* It is not altogether improbable that Marlowe had a share :
the composition of this drama, licensed for the press in 1593, bi
known at present in no edition earlier than that of 1600.-Ed.
Christopher Marlowe.
51
Of love; to have the strength of every arm;
A sovereign's name, why 'tis a sovereign charm.
This glory round about me hath thrown beams:
I have stood upon the top of Fortune's wheel,
And backward turn'd the iron screw of fate.
The destinies have spun a silken thread
About my life; yet, noble Spaniards, see
Hoc tantum tanti; thus I cast aside
The shape of majesty, and on my knee
[Kneels; the cardinal fetches the crown, and
sets it on the chair.
To this imperial state lowly resign
This usurpation; wiping off your fears
Which stuck so hard upon me. ""*
This is enough to show the unabated vigour of the
uthor's style. This strain is certainly doing justice to
he pride of ambition, and the imputed majesty of kings.
We have heard much of "Marlowe's mighty line,"
nd this play furnishes frequent instances of it.
There
re a number of single lines that seem struck out in the
eat of a glowing fancy, and leave a track of golden
re behind them. The following are a few that might
e given :
"I know he is not dead! I know proud death
Durst not behold such sacred majesty."
*
*
"Hang both your greedy ears upon my lips,
Let them devour my speech, suck in my breath.”
*
*
*
"From discontent grows treason,
And on the stalk of treason, death."
*
*
"Tyrants swim safest in a crimson flood."
*
e two following lines—
*
*
"Oh! I grow dull, and the cold hand of sleep
Hath thrust his icy fingers in my breast".
* Act v. sc. 1; Dilke's Old English Plays, 1816, i. 168–69.
52
Christopher Marlowe.
are the same as those in King John-
"And none of you will bid the winter come
To thrust his icy fingers in my maw.
And, again, the Moor's exclamation-
"Now by the proud complexion of my cheeks,
Ta'en from the kisses of the amorous sun
">
is the same as Cleopatra's-
"Think of me that am with Phoebus' amorous pinches black," &c.†
Eleazar's sarcasm-
"These dignities,
Like poison, make men swell; this rat's-bane honour,
Oh! 'tis so sweet! they'll lick it till they burst"
shows the utmost virulence of smothered spleen; and
his concluding strain of malignant exultation has beer
but tamely imitated by Young's Zanga:
+
+
Now tragedy, thou minion of the night,
Rhamnusia's pewfellow, ‡ to thee I'll sing,
Upon a harp made of dead Spanish bones,
The proudest instrument the world affords.
To thee that never blushest, though thy cheeks
Are full of blood, O Saint Revenge, to thee
I consecrate my murders, all my stabs," &c.
It may be worth while to observe, for the sake of th
curious, that many of Marlowe's most sounding line
consist of monosyllables, or nearly so. The repetitio
of Eleazar's taunt to the cardinal, retorting his ow
words upon him-" Spaniard or Moor, the saucy slav
shall die "-may perhaps have suggested Faulconbridge
spirited reiteration of the phrase: "And hang a calve
skin on his recreant limbs.'
""
·
I do not think The Rich Jew of Malta so chara
* Act v. sc. 7; Dyce's 2nd edit.
† Antony and Cleopatra, i. 5.
Ibid.
This expression seems to be ridiculed by Falstaff.
Marlowe's "Jew of Malta."
53
eristic a specimen of this writer's powers. It has not
he same fierce glow of passion or expression. It is
extreme in act, and outrageous in plot and catastrophe ;
out it has not the same vigorous filling up. The author
seems to have relied on the horror inspired by the sub-
ect, and the national disgust excited against the prin-
eipal character, to rouse the feelings of the audience:
or the rest, it is a tissue of gratuitous, unprovoked, and
ncredible atrocities, which are committed, one upon the
back of the other, by the parties concerned, without
notive, passion, or object. There are, notwithstanding,
some striking passages in it, as Barabas' description of
he bravo, Philia Borzo ;* the relation of his own unac-
countable villanies to Ithamore; his rejoicing over his
recovered jewels "as the morning lark sings over her
young;" and the backwardness he declares in himself to
forgive the Christian injuries that are offered him,†
which may have given the idea of one of Shylock's
*"He sent a shaggy, tottered, staring slave,
That when he speaks, draws out his grisly beard,
And winds it twice or thrice about his ear:
Whose face has been a grindstone for men's swords:
His hands are hack'd, some fingers cut quite off;
Who, when he speaks, grunts like a hog, and looks
Like one that is employed in catzerie
And cross-biting; such a rogue
As is the husband to a hundred whores;
And I by him must send three hundred crowns." 1
†“In spite of these swine-eating Christians
(Unchosen nations, never circumcised;
Poor villains, such as were ne'er thought upon,
Till Titus and Vespasian conquer'd us)
Am I become as wealthy as I was.
They hoped my daughter would ha' been a nun ;
But she's at home and I have bought a house
As great and fair as is the governor's:
And there, in spite of Malta, will I dwell,
1 Act iv. Dyce's edition, i. 322.
54
Marlowe's "Edward II."
speeches, where he ironically disclaims any enmity to
the merchants on the same account. It is perhaps hardly
fair to compare the Jew of Malta with the Merchant of
Venice; for it is evident, that Shakspeare's genius
shows to as much advantage in knowledge of character,
in variety and stage effect, as it does in point of general
humanity.
Edward II. is, according to the modern standard of
composition, Marlowe's best play. It is written with few
offences against the common rules, and in a succession
of smooth and flowing lines. The poet, however, suc-
ceeds less in the voluptuous and effeminate descriptions
which he here attempts, than in the more dreadful
and violent bursts of passion. Edward II. is drawn
with historic truth, but without much dramatic effect.
The management of the plot is feeble and desultory;
little interest is excited in the various turns of fate;
the characters are too worthless, have too little energy,
and their punishment is, in general, too well deserved,
to excite our commiseration; so that this play will
bear, on the whole, but a distant comparison with
Having Ferneze's hand; whose heart I'll have,
Aye, and his son's too, or it shall go hard.
I am not of the tribe of Levi, I,
That can so soon forget an injury.
We Jews can fawn like spaniels when we please;
And when we grin we bite; yet are our looks
As innocent and harmless as a lamb's.
I learn'd in Florence how to kiss my hand,
Heave up my shoulders when they call me dog,
And duck as low as any bare-foot friar :
Hoping to see them starve upon a stall,
Or else be gather'd for in our synagogue,
That when the offering-basin comes to me,
Even for charity I may spit into it."'
¹ Act ii. Works, i. 268-9.
Thomas Heywood.
55
Shakspeare's Richard II. in conduct, power, or effect.
But the death of Edward II., in Marlowe's tragedy, is
certainly superior to that of Shakspeare's King; and in
heart-breaking distress, and the sense of human weak-
ness, claiming pity from utter helplessness and conscious
misery, is not surpassed by any writer whatever:
"Edward. Weep'st thou already? List a while to me,
And then thy heart, were it as Gurney's is,
Or as Matrevis, hewn from the Caucasus,
Yet will it melt, ere I have done my tale.
This dungeon, where they keep me, is the sink
Wherein the filth of all the castle falls.
Lightborn. Oh, villains!
Edward. And here in mire and puddle have I stood
This ten days' space; and lest that I should sleep,
One plays continually upon a drum.
They give me bread and water, being a king;
So that, for want of sleep and sustenance,
My mind's distemper'd, and my body's numb'd:
And whether I have limbs or no, I know not.
Oh! would my blood drop out from every vein,
As doth this water from my tatter'd robes !
Tell Isabel the queen, I look'd not thus,
When for her sake I ran at tilt in France,
And there unhors'd the Duke of Cleremont."*
There are some excellent passages scattered up and
down. The description of the King and Gavestone
looking out of the palace window, and laughing at the
courtiers as they pass, and that of the different spirit
shown by the lion and the forest deer, when wounded,
are among the best. The Song "Come, live with me
and be my love," to which Sir Walter Raleigh wrote an
answer, is Marlowe's.†
Heywood I shall mention next, as a direct contrast to
Marlowe in every thing but the smoothness of his verse.
* Works, ed. Dyce, ii. 281-2.
+ Both the song and the answer are printed in England's Helicon,
600; but the letter is subscribed Ignoto.-ED.
56
Heywood's Plays.
As Marlowe's imagination glows like a furnace, Hey-
wood's is a gentle, lambent flame that purifies without
consuming. His manner is simplicity itself. There is
nothing supernatural, nothing startling or terrific. He
makes use of the commonest circumstances of every-day
life, and of the easiest tempers, to show the workings,
or rather the inefficacy of the passions, the vis inertia
of tragedy. His incidents strike from their very famili-
arity, and the distresses he paints invite our sympathy,
from the calmness and resignation with which they are
borne. The pathos might be deemed purer from its
having no mixture of turbulence or vindictiveness in
it;
and in proportion as the sufferers are made to deserve
a better fate. In the midst of the most untoward re-
verses and cutting injuries, good nature and good sense
keep their accustomed sway. He describes men's errors
with tenderness, and their duties only with zeal, and
the heightenings of a poetic fancy. His style is equally
natural, simple, and unconstrained.
The dialogue
(bating the verse) is such as might be uttered in or
dinary conversation. It is beautiful prose put into
heroic measure.
It is not so much that he uses the
common English idiom for everything (for that I think
the most poetical and impassioned of our elder drama
tists do equally), but the simplicity of the characters
and the equable flow of the sentiments, do not require o:
suffer it to be warped from the tone of level speaking
by figurative expressions or hyperbolical allusions. A
few scattered exceptions occur now and then, where th
hectic flush of passion forces them from the lips, and
they are not the worse for being rare. Thus, in th
play called A Woman Killed with Kindness,* Wendol
when reproached by Mrs. Frankford with his obliga
tions to her husband, interrupts her hastily, by saying:)
* First printed in 1607, 4to, and reprinted for the Shakspear
Society in 1850.-Ed.
Heywood's Plays.
57
"Oh! speak no more;
For more than this I know, and have recorded
Within the red-leaved table of my heart."*
And farther on, Frankford, when doubting his wife's
fidelity, says, with less feeling indeed, but with much
elegance of fancy :
Drops of cold sweat sit dangling on my hairs,
Like morning's dew upon the golden flowers."†
So also, when returning to his house at midnight to
make the fatal discovery, he exclaims:
"Astonishment,
Fear, and amazement, beat upon my heart,
Even as a madman beats upon a drum."
It is the reality of things present to their imagina-
tions, that makes these writers so fine, so bold, and yet
so true in what they describe. Nature lies open to them
like a book, and was not to them "invisible, or dimly
seen" through a veil of words and filmy abstractions.
Such poetical ornaments are, however, to be met with at
considerable intervals in this play, and do not disturb
the calm serenity and domestic simplicity of the author's
style. The conclusion of Wendoll's declaration of love
to Mrs. Frankford may serve as an illustration of its
general merits, both as to thought and diction:
66
Fair, and of all beloved, I was not fearful
Bluntly to give my life into your hand,
And at one hazard all my earthly means.
Go, tell your husband: he will turn me off,
And I am then undone. I care not, I;
'Twas for your sake. Perchance in rage he'll kill me;
I care not; 'twas for you. Say I incur
The general name of villain through the world,
* Shakspeare Society's edition, p. 117.
† Ibid. p. 124.
‡ Ibid. p. 143.
58
Heywood's Plays.
Of traitor to my friend: I care not, I;
Beggary, shame, death, scandal, and reproach:
For you I'll hazard all: why, what care I?
For you I'll love, and in your love I'll die.” *
The affecting remonstrance of Frankford to his wife,
and her repentant agony at parting with him, are
already before the public, in Mr. Lamb's Specimens.
The winding up of this play is rather awkwardly man-
aged, and the moral is, according to established usage,
equivocal. It required only Frankford's reconciliation
to his wife, as well as his forgiveness of her, for the
highest breach of matrimonial duty, to have made A
Woman Killed with Kindness a complete anticipation of
the Stranger. Heywood, however, was in that respect
but half a Kotzebue! The view here given of country
manners is truly edifying. As in the higher walk of
tragedy we see the manners and moral sentiments of
kings and nobles of former times, here we have the feuds
and amiable qualities of country esquires and their
relatives; and such as were the rulers, such were their
subjects. The frequent quarrels and ferocious habits of
private life are well exposed in the fatal rencounter
between Sir Francis Acton and Sir Charles Mountford
about a hawking match, in the ruin and rancorous per-
secution of the latter in consequence, and in the hard,
unfeeling, cold-blooded treatment he receives in his dis-
tress from his own relations, and from a fellow of the
name of Shafton. After reading the sketch of this last
character, who is introduced as a mere ordinary person-
age, the representative of a class, without any preface
or apology, no one can doubt the credibility of that of
Sir Giles Overreach, who is professedly held up (I
should think almost unjustly) as a prodigy of grasping
and hardened selfishness. The influence of philosophy
and prevalence of abstract reasoning, if it has done
* Shakspeare Society's edition, p. 117
Heywood's Plays.
59
nothing for our poetry, has done, I should hope, some-
thing for our manners. The callous declaration of one
of these unconscionable churls-
"This is no world in which to pity men
might have been taken as a motto for the good old times
in general, and with a very few reservations, if Hey-
wood has not grossly libelled them. Heywood's plots
have little of artifice or regularity of design to recom-
mend them. He writes on carelessly, as it happens,
and trusts to Nature, and a certain tranquillity of spirit,
for gaining the favour of the audience. He is said,
besides attending to his duties as an actor, to have com-
posed regularly a sheet a day. This may account in
some measure for the unembarrassed facility of his style.
His own account* makes the number of his writings for
the stage, or those in which he had a main hand, up-
wards of 200.† In fact, I do not wonder at any quantity
that an author is said to have written; for the more a
man writes, the more he can write.
The same remarks will apply, with certain modifica-
tions, to other remaining works of this writer, the Royal
King and Loyal Subject, a Challenge for Beauty, and the
English Traveller. The barb of misfortune is sheathed
in the mildness of the writer's temperament, and the
story jogs on very comfortably, without effort or resist-
ance, to the euthanasia of the catastrophe. In two of
these, the person principally aggrieved survives, and
feels himself none the worse for it. The most splendid
passage in Heywood's comedies is the account of" Ship-
wreck by Drink," in the English Traveller, which was
* In the preface to the English Traveller, 1633.—Ed.
To many of these he probably did little more than make addi-
tions, the dramas being already written and paid for, to suit altered
circumstances or requirements.-ED.
60
Middleton and Rowley.
the foundation of Cowley's Latin poem, Naufragium
Joculare.
The names of Middleton and Rowley, with which I
shall conclude this Lecture, generally appear together
as two writers who frequently combined their talents in
the production of joint pieces. Middleton (judging
from their separate works) was "the more potent spirit"
of the two; but they were neither of them equal to
some others. Rowley appears to have excelled in de-
scribing a certain amiable quietness of disposition and
disinterested tone of morality, carried almost to a para-
doxical excess, as in his Fair Quarrel, and in the comedy
of A Woman never Vexed, which is written in many parts,
with a pleasing simplicity and naïveté equal to the
novelty of the conception. Middleton's style was not
marked by any peculiar quality of his own, but was
made up, in equal proportions, of the faults and excel-
lences common to his contemporaries. In his Women
beware Women, there is a rich marrowy vein of internal
sentiment, with fine occasional insight into human
nature, and cool cutting irony of expression. He is
lamentably deficient in the plot and dénouement of the
story. It is like the rough draught of a tragedy, with a
number of fine things thrown in, and the best made use of
first; but it tends to no fixed goal, and the interest de-
creases, instead of increasing, as we read on, for want of
previous arrangement and an eye to the whole. We
have fine studies of heads, a piece of richly-coloured
drapery, “a foot, a hand, an eye from Nature drawn,
that's worth a history;" but the groups are ill-disposed,
nor are the figures proportioned to each other or the
size of the canvas. The author's power is in the subject,
not over it; or he is in possession of excellent materials
which he husbands very ill. This character, though it
applies more particularly to Middleton, might be applied
generally to the age. Shakspeare alone seemed to stand
Middleton's Plays.
61
He
over his work, and to do what he pleased with it.
saw to the end of what he was about, and with the
same faculty of lending himself to the impulses of
Nature and the impression of the moment, never forgot
that he himself had a task to perform, nor the place
which each figure ought to occupy in his general design.
The characters of Livia, of Bianca, of Leantio and his
Mother, in the play of which I am speaking, are all
admirably drawn. The art and malice of Livia show
equal want of principle and acquaintance with the
world; and the scene in which she holds the mother in
suspense, while she betrays the daughter into the power
of the profligate duke, is a masterpiece of dramatic
skill. The proneness of Bianca to tread the primrose
path of pleasure, after she has made the first false step,
and her sudden transition from unblemished virtue to
the most abandoned vice, in which she is notably
seconded by her mother-in-law's ready submission to
the temptations of wealth and power, form a true and
striking picture. The first intimation of the intrigue
that follows, is given in a way that is not a little re-
markable for simplicity and acuteness.
Bianca says:
"Did not the duke look up? Methought he saw us."
To which the more experienced mother answers:
"That's every one's conceit that sees a duke.
If he look stedfastly, he looks straight at them,
When he perhaps, good careful gentleman,
Never minds any, but the look he casts
Is at his own intentions, and his object
Only the public good.” *
It turns out, however, that he had been looking at
them, and not “at the public good." The moral of this
tragedy is rendered more impressive from the manly,
* Middleton's Works, ed. Dyce, iv. 537.
62
Middleton's Plays.
independent character of Leantio in the first instance,
and the manner in which he dwells, in a sort of doting
abstraction, on his own comforts, in being possessed of
a beautiful and faithful wife. As he approaches his
own house, and already treads on the brink of perdition,
he exclaims with an exuberance of satisfaction not to be
restrained:
"How near am I now to a happiness
That earth exceeds not! Not another like it:
The treasures of the deep are not so precious,
As are the conceal'd comforts of a man
Lock'd up in woman's love. I scent the air
Of blessings when I come but near the house :
What a delicious breath marriage sends forth!
The violet-bed's not sweeter. Honest wedlock
Is like a banqueting-house built in a garden,
On which the spring's chaste flowers take delight
To cast their modest odours; when base lust,
With all her powders, paintings, and best pride,
Is but a fair house built by a ditch side.
When I behold a glorious dangerous strumpet,
Sparkling in beauty and destruction too,
Both at a twinkling, I do liken straight
Her beautified body to a goodly temple
That's built on vaults where carcasses lie rotting;
And so by little and little I shrink back again,
And quench desire with a cool meditation;
And I'm as well, methinks. Now for a welcome
Able to draw men's envies upon man:
A kiss now that will hang upon my lip,
As sweet as morning dew upon a rose,
And full as long; after a five days' fast
She'll be so greedy now and cling about me:
I take care how I shall be rid of her;
And here 't begins."
This dream is dissipated by the entrance of Bianca
and his Mother :
"Bian. O, sir, you're welcome home.
Moth. O, is he come? I am glad on't.
* Middleton's Works, ed. Dyce, iv. 569–70.
Middletons Plays.
63
Lean. Is that all?
Why this is dreadful now as sudden death
To some rich man, that flatters all his sins
With promise of repentance when he's old,
And dies in the midway before he comes to't.
Sure you're not well, Bianca. How dost, prithee?
Bian. I have been better than I am at this time.
Lean. Alas, I thought so.
Bian. Nay, I have been worse too,
That now you see me, sir.
Lean. I'm glad thou mend❜st yet,
I feel my heart mend too. How came it to thee?
Has any thing dislik'd thee in my absence?
Bian. No, certain, I have had the best content
That Florence can afford.
Lean. Thou makest the best on't:
Speak, mother, what's the cause? you must needs know.
Moth. Troth, I know none, son; let her speak herself;
Unless it be the same gave Lucifer
A tumbling cast;-that's pride.
Bian. Methinks this house stands nothing to my mind
I'd have some pleasant lodging i' th' high street, sir;
Or if 'twere near the court, sir, that were much better;
Tis a sweet recreation for a gentlewoman
To stand in a bay-window, and see gallants.
Lean. Now I've another temper, a mere stranger
To that of yours, it seems; I should delight
To see none but yourself.
Bian. I praise not that;
Too fond is as unseemly as too churlish.
I would not have a husband of that proneness
To kiss me before company, for a world :
Beside, 'tis tedious to see one thing still, sir,
Be it the best that ever heart affected;
Nay, were't yourself, whose love had power, you know
To bring me from my friends, I'd not stand thus,
And gaze upon you always; troth, I could not, sir;
As good be blind, and have no use of sight,
As look on one thing still: what's the eye's treasure,
But change of objects? You are learned, sir,
And know I speak not ill; 'tis full as virtuous
or woman's eye to look on several men,
s for her heart, sir, to be fix'd on one.
Lean. Now thou com'st home to me; a kiss for that word.
[Aside.
64
Middleton's Plays.
Bian. No matter for a kiss, sir; let it pass;
"Tis but a toy, we'll not so much as mind it ;
Let's talk of other business, and forget it.
What news now of the pirates? any stirring?
Prithee discourse a little.
Moth. [Aside.] I'm glad he's here yet
To see her tricks himself; I had lied monstrously
If I had told 'em first.
Lean. Speak, what's the humour, sweet,
You make your lips so strange? this was not wont.
Bian. Is there no kindness betwixt man and wife,
Unless they make a pigeon-house of friendship,
And be still billing? 'tis the idlest fondness
That ever was invented; and 'tis pity
It's grown a fashion for poor gentlewomen;
There's many a disease kiss'd in a year by't,
And a French curt'sy made to't: alas, sir,
Think of the world, how we shall live; grow serious;
We have been married a whole fortnight now.
Lean. How? a whole fortnight! why, is that so long?
Bian. 'Tis time to leave off dalliance; 'tis a doctrine
Of your own teaching, if you be remember'd,
And I was bound to obey it.
Moth. [Aside.] Here's one fits him;
This was well catch'd, i' faith, son; like a fellow
That rids another country of a plague,
And brings it home with him to his own house. [Knocking with
Who knocks?
Lean. Who's there now? Withdraw you, Bianca;
Thou art a gem no stranger's eye must see,
Howe'er thou'rt pleas'd now to look dull on me.
[Exit Bianca.
The Witch of Middleton is his most remarkable pe
formance; both on its own account, and from the u
that Shakspeare has made of some of the characters an
speeches in his Macbeth. Though the employme
which Middleton has given to Hecate and the rest,
thwarting the purposes and perplexing the business
* Middleton's Works, ed. Dyce, iv. 570–3.
†This is still to be regarded as an open question, although so
of the critics have undertaken to decide it in favour of the l
eminent writer.-ED.
Middleton's "Witch."
65
familiar and domestic life, is not so grand or appalling
as the more stupendous agency of Shakspeare has as-
signed them, yet it is not easy to deny the merit of the
first invention to Middleton, who has embodied the ex-
isting superstitions of the time, respecting that anoma-
lous class of beings, with a high spirit of poetry, of the
most grotesque and fanciful kind. The songs and incan-
tations made use of are very nearly the same. The other
parts of this play are not so good; and the solution of
the principal difficulty, by Antonio's falling down a
trap-door, most lame and impotent. As a specimen of
the similarity of the preternatural machinery, I shall
here give one entire scene:
"The Witches' Habitation.
Enter Hecate, Stadlin, Hoppo, and other Witches.
Firestone in the background.
Hec. The moon's a gallant: see how brisk she rides.
Stad. Here's a rich evening, Hecate.
Hec. Aye, is't not, wenches,
To take a journey of five thousand miles?
Hop. Our's will be more to-night.
Hec. O, 'twill be precious.
Heard you the owl yet?
Stad. Briefly in the copse,
As we came through now.
Hec. 'Tis high time for us then.
Stad. There was a bat hung at my lips three times,
As we came through the woods, and drank her fill:
Old Puckle saw her.
Hec. You are fortunate still:
The very seritch-owl lights upon your shoulder,
And woos you like a pigeon. Are you furnish'd?
Have you your ointments?
Stad. All.
Hec. Prepare to flight then.
I'll overtake you swiftly.
Stad. Hie thee, Hecate;
We shall be up. betimes.
Hec. I'll reach you quickly. [Exeunt all the Witches except Hecate.
F
66
Middleton's "Witch."
Enter Firestone.
Fire. They are all going a-birding to-night. They talk of fowls
i' th' air that fly by day, I'm sure they'll be a company of foul sluts
there to-night. If we have not mortality after 't, I'll be hang'd, for
they are able to putrify it, to infect a whole region. She spies me
now.
Hec. What, Firestone, our sweet son?
Fire. A little sweeter than some of you; or a dunghill were too
good for me.
Hec. How much hast here?
Fire. Nineteen, and all brave plump ones,
Besides six lizards and three serpentine eggs.
Hec. Dear and sweet boy! What herbs hast thou?
Fire. I have some mar-martin, and man-dragon.
Hec. Marmarittin and mandragora thou would'st say.
[Aside.
Fire. Here's panax too. I thank thee; my pan aches, I'm sure,
With kneeling down to cut 'em.
Hec. And salago,
Hedge-hyssop too! How near he goes my cuttings!
Were they all cropt by moonlight?
Fire. Every blade of 'em,
Or I'm a moon-calf, mother.
Hec. Hie thee home with 'em.
Look well to th' house to-night: I'm for aloft.
Fire. Aloft, quoth you? I would you would break your nec]
once, that I might have all quickly [Aside].-Hark, hark, mother
They are above the steeple already, flying over your head with
noise of musicians.
Hec. They're they indeed. Help, help me! I'm too late else.
Пec.
SONG [above].
Come away, come away!
Hecate, Hecate, come away!
I come, I come, I
I come, I come,
With all the speed I may,
With all the speed I may.
Where's Stadlin?
(Voice above.) Here.
Hec.
Where's Puckle?
Middleton's "Witch."
67
(Voice above.) Here.
Hec.
Above.)
Hec.
Spirit.)
Hec.
Fire.
And Hoppo too, and Hellwain too:
We lack but you, we lack but you.
Come away, make up the count!
I will but 'noint, and then I mount.
[A spirit like a Cat descends.]
There's one come down to fetch his dues;
A kiss, a coll, a sip of blood;
And why thou stay'st so long,
I muse, I muse,
Since the air's so sweet and good.
O, art thou come?
What news, what news?
All goes still to our delight,
Either come, or else
Refuse, refuse.
Now I'm furnish'd for the flight.
Hec. (going up.)
Hark, hark! The cat sings a brave treble in her own
language!
Now I go, now I fly,
Malkin, my sweet spirit, and I.
O, what a dainty pleasure 'tis
To ride in the air
When the moon shines fair,
And sing, and dance, and toy, and kiss!
Over woods, high rocks, and mountains,
Over seas, our mistress' fountains,
Over steep towers and turrets,
We fly by night, 'mongst troops of spirits.
No ring of bells to our ears sounds,
No howls of wolves, no yelps of hounds;
No, not the noise of water's breach,
Or cannon's throat, our height can reach.
(Voices above.) No ring of bells, &c.
Fire. Well, mother, I thank your kindness. You must be gam-
bolling i' th' air, and leave me to walk here like a fool and a
mortal.
[Exit."
The incantation scene at the cauldron is also the ori-
ginal of that in Macbeth, and is in like manner intro-
luced by the Duchess's visiting the witches' habitation :
* [Middleton's Works, ed. Dyce, iv. 301-5.]
68
Middleton's "Witch."
"The abode of Hecate: a cauldron in the centre.
Enter Duchess, Hecate, and Firestone.
Hec. What death is't you desire for Almachildes?
Duch. A sudden and a subtle,
Hec. Then I've fitted you.
Here lie the gifts of both sudden and subtle;
His picture made in wax, and gently molten
By a blue fire, kindled with dead men's eyes,
Will waste him by degrees.
Duch. In what time, prithee?
Hec. Perhaps in a moon's progress.
Duch. What? A month?
Out upon pictures, if they be so tedious!
Give me things with some life.
Hec. Then seek no farther.
Duch. This must be done with speed, dispatched this night,
If it be possible.
Hec. I have it for you:
Here's that will do't; stay but perfection's time,
And that's not five hours hence.
Duch. Canst thou do this?
Hec. Can I?
Duch. I mean so, closely.
Hec. So closely do you mean too?
Duch. So artfully, so cunningly.
Hec. Worse and worse; doubts and incredulities,
They make me mad. Let scrupulous creatures know,
Cum volui, ripis ipsis mirantibus, amnes
In fontes rediere suos: concussaque sisto,
Stantia concutio cantu freta; nubila pello,
Nubilaque induco: ventos abigoque vocoque.
Vipereas rumpo verbis et carmine fauces ;
Et silvas moveo, jubeoque tremiscere montes,
Et mugire solum, manesque exire sepulchris.
Te quoque, luna, traho. Can you doubt me then, dau hter?
That can make mountains tremble, miles of woods walk;
Whole earth's foundations bellow, and the spirits
Of the entomb'd to burst out from their marbles;
Nay, draw yond moon to my involv'd designs?
Fire. I know as well as can be when my mother's mad, and our
great cat angry; for one spits French then, and th' other spits
Latin.
[Aside.
Middleton's "Witch."
69
Duch. I did not doubt you, mother.
Hec. No? what did you?
My power's so firm, it is not to be question'd.
Duch. Forgive what's past and now I know th' offensiveness
That vexes art, I'll shun th' occasion ever.
Hec. Leave all to me and my five sisters, daughter.
It shall be conveyed in at howlet-time.
Take you no care. My spirits know their moments;
Raven or scritch-owl never fly by th' door,
But they call in (I thank 'em), and they lose not by❜t.
I give 'em barley soak'd in infant's blood:
They shall have semina cum sanguine,
Their gorge cramm'd full, if they come once to our house:
We are no niggard.
[Exit Duchess.
Fire. They fare but too well when they come hither. They ate
up as much t'other night as would have made me a good conscion-
able pudding.
Hec. Give me some lizard's brain: quickly, Firestone!
[Firestone brings the different ingredients for the charm, as Hecate
calls for them.]
Where's grannam Stadlin, and all the rest o' th' sisters?
Fire. All at hand, forsooth.
Enter Stadlin and other Witches.
Hec. Give me marmarittin; some bear-breech. When?
Fire. Here's bear-breech and lizard's brain, forsooth.
Hec. Into the vessel;
And fetch three ounces of the red-hair'd girl
I kill'd last midnight.
Fire. Whereabouts, sweet mother?
Hec. Hip; hip or flank. Where is the acopus?
Fire. You shall have acopus, forsooth.
Hec. Stir, stir about, whilst I begin the charm.
Black spirits and white; red spirits and gray;
Mingle, mingle, mingle, you that mingle may.
Titty, tiffin,
Keep it stiff in;
Firedrake, Puckey,
Make it lucky;
Liard, Robin,
You must bob in.
70
Middleton's "Witch."
Round, around, around, about, about ;
All ill come running in; all good keep out!
1st Witch. Here's the blood of a bat.
Hec. Put in that; O, put in that.
2nd Witch. Here's libbard's-bane.
Hec. Put in again.
1st Witch. The juice of toad; the oil of adder.
2nd Witch. Those will make the younker madder.
Hec. Put in-there's all-and rid the stench.
Fire. Nay, here's three ounces of the red-hair'd wench.
All. Round, around, around, &c.
Hec. So, so, enough: into the vessel with it.
There, 't hath the true perfection. I'm so light
At any mischief: there's no villainy
But is a-tune, methinks.
Fire. A tune! 'Tis to the tune of damnation then, I warrant you;
and that song hath a villainous burthen.
Hec. Come, my sweet sisters; let the air strike our tune,
Whilst we show reverence to yond peeping moon.
[Aside.
[They dance the Witches' dance, and exeunt.” *
I will conclude this account with Mr. Lamb's obser-
vations on the distinctive characters of these extraordi-
nary and formidable personages, as they are described
by Middleton or Shakspeare:
66
Though some resemblance may be traced between
the charms in Macbeth and the incantations in this
play, which is supposed to have preceded it, this coinci-
dence will not detract much from the originality of
Shakspeare. His witches are distinguished from the
witches of Middleton by essential differences. These
are creatures to whom man or woman, plotting some
dire mischief, might resort for occasional consultation.
Those originate deeds of blood, and begin bad impulses.
From the moment that their eyes first meet
Macbeth's, he is spell-bound. That meeting sways his
destiny. He can never break the fascination. These
witches can hurt the body; those have power over the
to men.
* [Middleton's Works, ed. Dyce, iv. 325–9.]
Middleton's "Witch."
71
soul. Hecate, in Middleton, has a son, a low buffoon:
the hags of Shakspeare have neither child of their own,
nor seem to be descended from any parent. They are
foul anomalies, of whom we know not whence they
sprung, nor whether they have beginning or ending.
As they are without human passions, so they seem to
be without human relations. They come with thunder
and lightning, and vanish to airy music. This is all we
know of them. Except Hecate, they have no names,
which heightens their mysteriousness. The names, and
some of the properties which Middleton has given to
his hags, excite smiles. The weird sisters are serious
things. Their presence cannot consist with mirth. But
in a lesser degree, the witches of Middleton are fine
creations. Their power to is, in some measure, over
the mind. They raise jars, jealousies, strifes, like a
thick scurf o'er life.'
( 72 )
:
LECTURE III.
ON MARSTON, CHAPMAN, DECKER, AND WEBSTER.
""
THE writers of whom I have already treated, may be
said to have been "no mean men;" those of whom I
have yet to speak are certainly no whit inferior. Would
that I could do them any thing like justice! It is not
difficult to give at least their seeming due to great and
well-known names; for the sentiments of the reader
meet the descriptions of the critic more than half way,
and clothe what is perhaps vague and extravagant praise
with a substantial form and distinct meaning. But in
attempting to extol the merits of an obscure work of
genius, our words are either lost in empty air, or are
"blown stifling back upon the mouth that utters
them. The greater those merits are, and the truer
the praise, the more suspicious and disproportionate
does it almost necessarily appear; for it has no re-
lation to any image previously existing in the public
mind, and therefore looks like an imposition fabricated
out of nothing. In this case, the only way that I know
of is, to make these old writers (as much as can be)
vouchers for their own pretensions, which they are well
able to make good. I shall in the present lecture give
some account of Marston and Chapman, and afterwards
of Decker and Webster.
Marston is a writer of great merit, who rose to tra-
gedy from the ground of comedy, and whose forte was
not sympathy, either with the stronger or softer emo-
tions, but an impatient scorn and bitter indignation
against the vices and follies of men, which vented itself
John Marston.
73
*
either in comic irony or in lofty invective. He was pro-
perly a satirist. He was not a favourite with his contem-
poraries, nor they with him. He was first on terms of
great intimacy, and afterwards at open war, with Ben
Jonson; and he is most unfairly criticised in The Return
from Parnassus, under the name of Monsieur Kinsayder,*
as a mere libeller and buffoon. Writers in their life-
time do all they can to degrade and vilify one another,
and expect posterity to have a very tender care of their
reputations! The writers of this age, in general, can-
not however be reproached with this infirmity. The
number of plays that they wrote in conjunction, is a
proof of the contrary; and a circumstance no less curi-
bus, as to the division of intellectual labour, than the
cordial union of sentiment it implied. Unlike most
poets, the love of their art surmounted their hatred of
one another. Genius was not become a vile and vulgar
pretence, and they respected in others what they knew
to be true inspiration in themselves. They courted the
applause of the multitude, but came to one another for
judgment and assistance. When we see these writers
working together on the same admirable productions,
year after year, as was the case with Beaumont and
Fletcher, Middleton and Rowley, with Chapman, Decker,
and Jonson, it reminds one of Ariosto's eloquent apo-
strophe to the Spirit of Ancient Chivalry, when he has
seated his rival knights, Renaldo and Ferraw, on the
same horse:
"Oh ancient knights of true and noble heart,
They rivals were, one faith they liv'd not under ;
Besides, they felt their bodies shrewdly smart
Of blows late given, and yet (behold a wonder)
Through thick and thin, suspicion set apart,
Like friends they ride, and parted not asunder,

* The pseudonym, or nom de plume, under which he published, in
598, his Scourge of Villanie, and Pygmalion's Image.—ED.
74
John Marston.
Until the horse with double spurring drived
Unto a way parted in two arrived." *
Marston's Antonio and Mellida is a tragedy of con-
siderable force and pathos; but in the most critical
parts, the author frequently breaks off or flags without
any apparent reason but want of interest in his subject;
and, further, the best and most affecting situations and
bursts of feeling are too evidently imitations of Shak-
speare. Thus the unexpected meeting between Andru-
gio and Lucio, in the beginning of the third act, is a
direct counterpart of that between Lear and Kent, only
much weakened: and the interview between Antonio
and Mellida has a strong resemblance to the still more
affecting one between Lear and Cordelia, and is most
nost
wantonly disfigured by the sudden introduction of half
a page of Italian rhymes, which gives the whole an air
of burlesque. The conversation of Lucio and Andrugio,
again after his defeat, seems to invite, but will not bear
a comparison with Richard the Second's remonstrance
with his courtiers, who offered him consolation in his
misfortunes; and no one can be at a loss to trace the
allusion to Romeo's conduct on being apprised of his
banishment, in the termination of the following speech:
"Antonio. Each man takes hence life, but no man death:
He's a good fellow, and keeps open house:
A thousand thousand ways lead to his gate,
To his wide-mouthed porch: when niggard life
Hath but one little, little wicket through.
We wring ourselves into this wretched world
To pule and weep, exclaim, to curse and rail,
To fret and ban the fates, to strike the earth
As I do now. Antonio, curse thy birth,
And die."
The following short passage might be quoted as one
of exquisite beauty and originality:
* Sir John Harington's translation [1591].
John Marston.
75
"As having clasp'd a rose
Within my palm, the rose being ta’en away,
My hand retains a little breath of sweet;
So may man's trunk; his spirit slipp'd away,
Holds still a faint perfume of his sweet guest.” *
The character of Felice in this play is an admirable
satirical accompaniment, and is the favourite character
of this author (in all probability his own), that of a
shrewd, contemplative cynic, and sarcastic spectator in
he drama of human life. It runs through all his plays,
s shared by Quadratus and Lampatho in What You Will
it is into the mouth of the last of these that he has put
hat fine invective against the uses of philosophy, in the
account of himself and his spaniel, "who still slept
while baus'd leaves, tossed o'er the dunces, por'd on the
old print "),† and is at its height in the Fawn and Male-
vole, in his Parasitaster and Malcontent. These two
comedies are his chefs d'œuvre. The character of the
Duke Hercules of Ferrara, disguised as the Parasite,
in the first of these, is well sustained throughout, with
great sense, dignity, and spirit. He is a wise censurer
ɔf men and things, and rails at the world with charitable
bitterness. He may put in a claim to a sort of family
likeness to the Duke, in Measure for Measure: only the
latter descends from his elevation to watch in secret
over serious crimes; the other is only a spy on private
follies. There is something in this cast of character (at
least in comedy-perhaps it neutralises the tone and
interest in tragedy) that finds a wonderful reciprocity
in the breast of the reader or audience. It forms a
kind of middle term or point of union between the busy
actors in the scene and the indifferent bystander, insin-
uates the plot, and suggests a number of good whole-
some reflections, for the sagacity and honesty of which
* [Marston's Works, ed. 1856, i. 44 (Act iv. sc. 1).]
† [Ibid. p. 250.]
76
John Marston.
we do not fail to take credit to ourselves. We are le
into its confidence, and have a perfect reliance on it
sincerity. Our sympathy with it is without any draw
back; for it has no part to perform itself, and “i
nothing, if not critical." It is a sure card to play. W
may doubt the motives of heroic actions, or differ abou
the just limits and extreme workings of the passions.
but the professed misanthrope is a character that no on
need feel any scruples in trusting, since the dislike
folly and knavery in the abstract is common to knave
and fools with the wise and honest! Besides the ir
structive moral vein of Hercules as the Fawn or Para
sitaster, which contains a world of excellent matte
most aptly and wittily delivered, there are two othe
characters perfectly hit off-Gonzago, the old prince c
Urbino, and Granuffo, one of his lords in waiting
The loquacious, good-humoured, undisguised vanity (
the one is excellently relieved by the silent gravity (
the other. The wit of this last character (Granuffc
consists in his not speaking a word through the whol
play; he never contradicts what is said, and only assent
by implication. He is a most infallible courtier, an
follows the prince like his shadow, who thus graces hi
pretensions :
"We would be private, only Faunus stay; he is a wise fellov
daughter, a very wise fellow, for he is still just of my opinion; m
Lord Granuffo, you may likewise stay, for I know you'll sa
nothing.”*
And again, a little farther on, he says [to Hercules]
"This Granuffo is a right wise good lord, a man of exceller
discourse, and never speaks; his signs to me and men of profoun
reach instruct abundantly; he begs suits with signs, gives thank
with signs, puts off his hat leisurely, maintains his beard learnedl
* [Marston's Works, ed. 1856, ii. 41.]
John Marston.
77
keeps his lust privately, makes a nodding leg courtly, and lives
happily."—" Silence," replies Hercules, "is an excellent modest
grace; but especially before so instructing a wisdom as that of your
Excellency."
The garrulous self-complacency of this old lord is
kept up in a vein of pleasant humour; an instance of
which might be given in his owning of some learned
man, that "though he was no duke, yet he was wise;"
and the manner in which the others play upon this
foible, and make him contribute to his own discom-
fiture, without his having the least suspicion of the
plot against him, is full of ingenuity and counterpoint.
In the last scene he says, very characteristically:
"Of all creatures breathing, I do hate those things that struggle
to seem wise, and yet are indeed very fools. I remember when I
was a young man, in my father's days, there were four gallant
spirits, for resolution, as proper for body, as witty in discourse, as
any were in Europe; nay, Europe had not such. I was one of
them. We four did all love one lady; a most chaste Virgin she
was: we all enjoyed her, I well remember, and so enjoyed her, that,
despite the strictest guard was set upon her, we had her at our
pleasure. I speak it for her honour, and my credit. Where shall
you find such witty fellows now-a-days? Alas! how easy is it in
these weaker times to cross love-tricks! Ha! ha! lia! Alas! I
smile to think I must confess with some glory to mine own wisdom,
to think how I found out, and crossed, and curbed, and jerk'd, and
firk'd, and in the end made desperate Tiberio's hope. Alas! good
silly youth, that dared to cope with age and such a beard! I speak
it without glory.
Hercules. But what yet might your well-known wisdom think,
If such a one, as being most severe,
A most protested opposite to the match
Of two young lovers ;— who having barr'd them speech,
All interviews, all messages, all means
To plot their wished ends; even he himself
Was by their cunning made the go-between,
The only messenger, the token carrier;

* Marston's Works, ed. 1856, ii. 55-6. There seems to be some
porruption in the old text.]
78
John Marston.
Told them the times when they might fitly meet,
Nay, show'd the way to one another's bed?” *
To which Gonzago replies, in a strain of exulting
dotage:
"May one have the sight of such a fellow for nothing?
Doth there breathe such an egregious ass?
Is there such a foolish animal in rerum natura?
How is it possible such a simplicity can exist? Let us not lose
our laughing at him, for God's sake; let folly's sceptre light upon
him, and to the Ship of Fools with him instantly.
Dondolo. Of all these follies I arrest your grace.Ӡ
Molière has built a play on nearly the same founda-
tion, which is not much superior to the present. Mar-
ston, among other topics of satire, has a fling at the
pseudo-critics and philosophers of his time, who were
"full of wise saws and modern instances." Thus he
freights his Ship of Fools:
"Dondolo. Yes, yes; but they got a supersedeas; all of them
proved themselves either knaves or madmen, and so were all let
go: there's none left now in our ship but a few citizens that let
their wives keep their shop-books, some philosophers, and a few
critics; one of which critics has lost his flesh with fishing at the
measure of Plautus' verses; another has vowed to get the consump-
tion of the lungs, or to leave to posterity the true orthography and
pronunciation of laughing.
•
Hercules. But what philosophers ha' ye?
Dondolo. O, very strange fellows; one knows nothing, dares not
aver he lives, goes, sees, feels.
Nymphadoro. A most insensible philosopher.
Dondolo. Another, that there is no present time; and that one
man to-day and to-morrow is not the same man; so that he that
yesterday owed money, to-day owes none; because he is not the
same man.
Herod. Would that philosophy I would hold good in law!
Hercules. But why has the Duke thus laboured to have all the
fools shipped out of his dominions?
* [Marston's Works, ed. 1856, ii. 101-2.]
‡
[The old copy has philosopher.]
† [Ibid.]
John Marston.
79
Dondolo. Marry, because he would play the fool alone, without
any rival."
Molière has enlarged upon the same topic in his
Mariage Forcé, but not with more point or effect.
Nymphadoro's reasons for devoting himself to the sex
generally, and Hercules' description of the different
qualifications of different men, will also be found to
contain excellent specimens, both of style and matter.
The disguise of Hercules as the Fawn, is assumed
voluntarily, and he is comparatively a calm and dis-
passionate observer of the times. Malevole's disguise
in the Malcontent has been forced upon him by usurpa-
tion and injustice, and his invectives are accordingly
more impassioned and virulent. His satire does not
"like a wild goose fly, unclaimed of any man,” but has
a bitter and personal application. Take him in the
words of the usurping Duke's account of himself:
*
"This Malevole is one of the most prodigious affections that ever
conversed with Nature;-a man, or rather a monster, more dis-
content than Lucifer when he was thrust out of the Presence. His
ppetite is insatiable as the grave, as far from any content as from
heaven: his highest delight is to procure others' vexation, and
herein he thinks he truly serves heaven; for 'tis his position, who-
oever in this earth can be contented, is a slave, and damned;
herefore does he afflict all, in that towards which they are most
ffected., The elements struggle with him; his own soul is at
ariance within himself; his speech is halter-worthy at all hours.
like him: faith, he gives good intelligence to my spirit; makes
he understand those weaknesses which others' flattery palliates.
Hark! they sing.

Enter Malevole, after the Song.
Pietro Jacomo. See, he comes! Now shall you hear the ex-
emity of a malcontent; he is as free as air; he blows over every
an. And-Sir, whence come you now?
Malevole. From the public place of much dissimulation.
Pietro Jacomo. What didst there?
* [Marston's Works, ii. 71-2.]
80
John Marston.
Malevole. Talk with a usurer: take up at interest.
Pietro Jacomo. I wonder what religion thou art of?
Malevole. Of a soldier's religion.
Pietro Jacomo. And what dost think makes most infidels now?
Malevole. Sects, sects. . . . I am weary: would I were one of th
Duke's bounds now.
Pietro Jacomo. But what's the common news abroad? Tho
dogg'st rumour still.
Malevole. Common news? Why, common words are, God sav
ye, fare ye well: common actions, flattery and cozenage: commo
things, women and cuckolds.” *
In reading all this, one is somehow reminded perpe
tually of Mr. Kean's acting: in Shakspeare we do no
often think of him, except in those parts which he cor
stantly acts, and in those one cannot forget him.
might observe on the above passage, in excuse for son
bluntnesses of style, that the ideal barrier between nam
and things seems to have been greater then than no
Words have become instruments of more importan
than formerly. To mention certain actions, is almost
participate in them, as if consciousness were the same :
guilt. The standard of delicacy varies at different period
as it does in different countries, and is not a general te
of superiority. The French, who pique themselves (ar
justly, in some particulars) on their quickness of ta
and refinement of breeding, say and do things whic
we, a plainer and coarser people, could not think
without a blush. What would seem gross allusio:
to us at present, were without offence to our ancesto
and many things passed for jests with them, or matte
of indifference, which would not now be endured. R
finement of language, however, does not keep pace wi
simplicity of manners. The severity of criticism exe
cised in our theatres towards some unfortunate straggli
phrases in the old comedies, is but an ambiguous com
pliment to the immaculate purity of modern times. Mɛ
* [Marston's Works, ii. 206-7. |
Marston-Chapman.
81
ton's style was by no means more guarded than that of
is contemporaries. He was also much more of a free-
hinker than Marlowe, and there is a frequent and not
unfavourable allusion in his works to later sceptical
pinions. In the play of the Malcontent we meet with
n occasional mixture of comic gaiety, to relieve the
nore serious and painful business of the scene, as in the
asy loquacious effrontery of the old intriguante Maque-
ella, and in the ludicrous facility with which the idle
courtiers avoid or seek the notice of Malevole, as he is
n or out of favour; but the general tone and import of
he piece is severe and moral. The plot is somewhat too
ntricate and too often changed (like the shifting of a
cene), so as to break and fritter away the interest at
he end; but the part of Aurelia, the Duchess of Pietro
Tacomo, a dissolute and proud-spirited woman, is the
highest strain of Marston's pen. The scene in parti-
cular, in which she receives and exults in the supposed
news of her husband's death, is nearly unequalled in
›oldness of conception and in the unrestrained force of
assion, taking away not only the consciousness of guilt,
›ut overcoming the sense of shame.*
Next to Marston, I must put Chapman, whose name
s better known as the translator of Homer than as a
ramatic writer. He is, like Marston, a philosophic
bserver, a didactic reasoner; but he has both more
ravity in his tragic style, and more levity in his comic
ein. His Bussy d'Ambois, though not without interest
r some fancy, is rather a collection of apophthegms or
ointed sayings in the form of a dialogue than a poem
r a tragedy. In his verses the oracles have not ceased.
'very other line is an axiom in morals-a libel on man-
ind, if truth is a libel. He is too stately for a wit, in
is serious writings-too formal for a poet. Bussy
* See the conclusion of Lecture IV.
Ꮐ
!
1
82
George Chapman's Plays.
d'Ambois is founded on a French plot and French man
ners. The character, from which it derives its name
is arrogant and ostentatious to an unheard-of degree
but full of nobleness and lofty spirit. His pride an
unmeasured pretensions alone take away from his rea
merit; and by the quarrels and intrigues in which the
involve him, bring about the catastrophe, which has cor
siderable grandeur and imposing effect, in the manne
of Seneca. Our author aims at the highest things i
poetry, and tries in vain, wanting imagination and pas
sion, to fill up the epic moulds of tragedy with sens
and reason alone, so that he often runs into bombas
and turgidity-is extravagant and pedantic at one an
the same time. From the nature of the plot, whic
turns upon a love intrigue, much of the philosophy of thi
piece relates to the character of the sex.
Milton says:
"The way of women's will is hard to hit."
But old Chapman professes to have found the clue to i
and winds his uncouth way through all the labyrinth
love. Its deepest recesses “hide nothing from h
view." The close intrigues of court policy, the subt
workings of the human soul, move before him like
sea, dark, deep, and glittering with wrinkles for th
smile of beauty. Fulke Greville alone could go beyon
him in gravity and mystery. The plays of the latt‹
(Mustapha and Alaham) are abstruse as the mysteries
old, and his style inexplicable as the riddles of th
Sphinx. As an instance of his love for the obscur
the marvellous, and impossible, he calls up
“the gho
of one of the old kings of Ormus," as prologue to one
his tragedies; a very reverend and inscrutable pe
sonage, who, we may be sure, blabs no living secret
Chapman, in his other pieces, where he lays aside tl
gravity of the philosopher and poet, discovers an ul
expected comic vein, distinguished by equal truth
George Chapman's Plays:
83
nature and lively good humour. I cannot say that this
character pervades any one of his entire comedies; but
the introductory sketch of Monsieur D'Olive is the un-
doubted prototype of that light, flippant, gay, and infi-
nitely delightful class of character, of the professed.
men of wit and pleasure about town, which we have
in such perfection in Wycherley and Congreve, such as
Sparkish, Witwoud, and Petulant, &c., both in the senti-
ments and in the style of writing. For example, take
the last scene of the first act: *
Enter D'Olive.
Rhoderique. What, Monsieur D'Olive, the only admirer of wit
and good words.
D'Olive. Morrow, wits: morrow, good wits: my little parcels of
wit, I have rods in pickle for you. How dost, Jack; may I call
thee Sir Jack yet?
Mugeron. You may, sir; sir's as commendable an addition as
Jack, for aught I know.
D'Ol. I know it, Jack, and as common too.
Rhod. Go to, you may cover; we have taken notice of your em-
broidered beaver.
D'Ol. Look you: by Heaven thou'rt one of the maddest, bitter
slaves in Europe: I do but wonder how I made shift to love thee
all this while.
Rhod. Go to, what might such a parcel-gilt cover be worth?
Mug. Perhaps more than the whole piece besides.
D'Ol. Good, i'faith, but bitter. Oh, you mad slaves, I think
you had satyrs to your sires, yet I must love you, I must take
pleasure in you, and i'faith tell me, how is't? live I see you do, but
how? but how, wits?
| Rhod. Faith, as you see, like poor younger brothers.
D'Ol. By your wits.
Mug. Nay, not turned poets neither.
D'Ol. Good sooth! but indeed, to say truth, time was when the
sons of the Muses had the privilege to live only by their wits, but
* Monsieur D'Olive; a Comedie, as it was sundrie times acted by
her Maiesties children at the Blacke-Friers. By George Chapman.
Lond. 1606, 4to. The passage here quoted occurs at sig. B 2.
LED.
84
Chapman's "Monsieur D'Olive.”
:
times are altered, monopolies are now called in, and wit's become
a free trade for all sorts to live by. Lawyers live by wit, and they
live worshipfully soldiers live by wit, and they live honourably:
panders live by wit, and they live honestly. In a word, there are
but few trades but live by wit; only bawds and midwives live by
women's labours, as fools and fiddlers do by making mirth, pages
and parasites by making legs: painters and players by making
mouths and faces: ha, doest well, wits?
Rhod. Faith, thou followest a figure in thy jests, as country gen.
tlemen follow fashions, when they be worn threadbare.
D'Ol. Well, well, let's leave these wit skirmishes, and say, wher
shall we meet ?
Mug. How think you, are we not met now?
D'Ol. Tush! man, I mean at my chamber, where we may take
free use of ourselves; that is, drink sack, and talk satire, and le
our wits run the wild-goose-chase over court and country. I wil
have my chamber the rendezvous of all good wits, the shop of good
words, the mint of good jests, an ordinary of fine discourse; critics
essayists, linguists, poets, and other professors of that faculty o
wit, shall, at certain hours i' th' day, resort thither; it shall be
second Sorbonne, where all doubts or differences of learning, honour
duellism, criticism, and poetry, shall be disputed: and how, wits
do ye follow the court still?
Rhod. Close at heels, sir; and I can tell you, you have much t‹
answer to your stars, that you do not so too.
*
D'Ol. As why, wits? as why?
Rhod. Why, sir, the court's as 'twere the stage: and they tha
have a good suit of parts and qualities, ought to press thither t
grace them, and receive their due merit.
D'Ol. Tush, let the court follow me: he that soars too near the sur
melts his wings many times: as I am, I possess myself, I enjoy m
liberty, my learning, my wit: as for wealth and honour, let 'em† go
I'll not lose my learning to be a lord, nor my wit to be an aldermar
Mug. Admirable D'Olive!
D'Ol. And what! you stand gazing at this comet here, and a
mire it, I dare say.

Rhod. And do not you?
D'Ol. Not I, I admire nothing but wit.
Rhod. But I wonder how she entertains time in that solitar
cell: does she not take tobacco, think you?
D'Ol. She does, she does: others make it their physic, she makı
* [Old copy has for.]
[Old copy has am.]
Chapman's "Monsieur D'Olive."
85
it her food: her sister and she take it by turn, first one, then the
other, and Vandome ministers to them both.
Mug. How sayest thou by that Helen of Greece, the Countess's
sister? there were a paragon, Monsieur D'Olive, to admire and
marry too.
D'Ol. Not for me.
Rhod. No? what exceptions lie* against the choice?
D'Ol. Tush, tell me not of choice; if I stood affected that way, I
would choose my wife as men do valentines, blindfold, or draw cuts
for them, for so I shall be sure not to be deceived in choosing; for
take this of me, there's ten times more deceit in women than in
horse-flesh; and I say still, that a pretty well-pac'd chambermaid
is the only fashion; if she grows full or fulsome, give her but six-
pence, to buy her a hand-basket, and send her the way of all flesh,
here's no more but so.
Mug. Indeed that's the savingest way.
'D'Ol. O me! what a hell 'tis for a man to be tied to the con-
tinual charge of a coach, with the appurtenances, horses, men, and
so forth: and then to have a man's house pestered with a whole
country of guests, grooms, panders, waiting-maids, &c. I careful
to please my wife, she careless to displease me; shrewish if she be
nonest; intolerable if she be wise, imperious as an empress all she
does must be law, all she says gospel: oh, what a penance 'tis to
endure her! I glad to forbear still, all to keep her loyal, and yet
perhaps, when all's done, my heir shall be like my horse-keeper ;
ie on't! the very thought of marriage were able to cool the hottest
Liver in France.
Rhod. Well, I durst venture twice the price of your gilt coney's
wool, we shall have you change your copy ere a twelvemonth's day.
Mug. We must have you dubb'd o' th' order; there's no remedy:
you that have, unmarried, done such honourable service in the
commonwealth, must needs receive the honour due to't in marriage.
Rhod. That he may do, and never marry.
D'Ol. As how, wits, i'faith: as how?
Rhod. For if he can prove his father was free o' th' order, and
hat he was his father's son, then, by the laudable custom of the
ity, he may be a cuckold by his father's copy, and never serve for't.
D'Ol. Ever good, i'faith!
Mug. Nay, how can he plead that, when 'tis well known his
ather died a bachelor?
Old copy reads lies, which, so far, is only an instance among
hany which might be adduced of the employment by our early
vriters of a plural verb with a singular noun.—ED.
86
Chapman's "Monsieur D'Olive.”
D'Ol. Bitter, in verity, bitter! But good still in its kind.
Rhod. Go to, we must have you follow the lantern of your fore-
fathers.
Mug. His forefathers? S'body, had he more fathers than one?
D'Ol. Why, this is right: here's wit canvast out on's coat, into's
jacket: the string sounds ever well, that rubs not too much ath' *
frets: I must love your wits, I must take pleasure in you. Fare-
well, good wits: you know my lodging; make an errand thither
now and then, and save your ordinary; do, wits, do.
Mug. We shall be troublesome tee.†
D'Ol. O God, sir, you wrong me, to think I can be troubled with
wit: I love a good wit as I love myself: if you need a brace or two of
crowns at any time, address but your sonnet, it shall be as sufficient
as your bond at all times: I carry half a score birds in a cage
shall ever remain at your call. Farewell, wits; farewell, good wits
[Exit
Rhod. Farewell the true map of a gull: by heaven he shall/to
th' court! 'tis the perfect model of an impudent upstart; the com
pound of a poet and a lawyer; he shall, sure, to th' court.
Mug. Nay, for God's sake, let's have no fools at court.
Rhod. He shall to't, that's certain. The duke had a purpose to
dispatch some one or other to the French king, to entreat him to
send for the body of his niece, which the melancholy Earl of St
Anne, her husband, hath kept so long unburied, as meaning one
grave should entomb himself and her together.
Mug. A very worthy subject for an embassage, as D'Olive is fo:
au ambassador agent; and 'tis as suitable to his brain, as hi
parcel-gilt beaver to his fool's head.
Rhod. Well, it shall go hard, but he shall be employed. O, 'ti
a most accomplished ass; the mongrel of a gull and a villain: the
very essence of his soul is pure villainy: the substance of his brain
foolery;-one that believes nothing from the stars upward. A
pagan in belief, an epicure beyond belief; prodigious in lust; pro
digal in wasteful expense, in necessary, most penurious. His wi
is to admire and imitate; his grace is to censure and detract; h
shall to th' court: i'faith, he shall thither: I will shape such em
ployment for him, as that he himself shall have no less content
ment, in making mirth to the whole court, than the Duke and th
whole court shall have pleasure in enjoying his presence. A knave
if he be rich, is fit to make an officer, as a fool, if he be a knave, i
fit to make an intelligencer.
[Exeunt."
*
[i.e. of the.]
+ [i.e. to ye.]
‡ [Ubi suprà, sig. B 2-4.]
Chapman-Webster.
87
His May-Day* is not so good. All Fools, The Widow's
Tears, and Eastward Ho,† are comedies of great merit
particularly the last). The first is borrowed a good
deal from Terence, and the character of Valerio, an ac-
complished rake, who passes with his father for a person
of the greatest economy and rusticity of manners, is an
excellent idea, executed with spirit. Eastward Ho was
written in conjunction with Ben Jonson and Marston;
and for his share in it, on account of some allusions to
the Scotch, just after the accession of James I. our
author, with his friends, had nearly lost his ears.‡
Such were the notions of poetical justice in those days!
The behaviour of Ben Jonson's mother on this occasion
is remarkable. “On his release from prison, he gave
an entertainment to his friends, among whom were
Camden and Selden. In the midst of the entertainment,
his mother, more an antique Roman than a Briton,
drank to him, and showed him a paper of poison, which
she intended to have given him in his liquor, having
first taken a portion of it herself, if the sentence for
his punishment had been executed." This play con-
tains the first idea of Hogarth's Idle and Industrious
Apprentices.
It remains for me to say something of Webster and
Decker. For these two writers I do not know how to
show my regard and admiration sufficiently. Noble-
ninded Webster, gentle-hearted Decker, how may I hope
o “express ye unblamed,” and repay to your neglected
nanes some part of the debt of gratitude I owe for
ɔroud and soothing recollections? I pass by the Appius
*This drama is certainly somewhat disappointing; like Mon-
ieur D'Olive and some other of Chapman's pieces, it is founded on
French material.-ED.
† In this drama, however, he was merely a part author, Jonson
nd Marston contributing portions.-ED.
See Marston's Works, ed. 1856, iii. 331.—ED.
88
Decker and Webster.
and Virginia of the former, which is however a good
sensible, solid tragedy, cast in a framework of the mos
approved models, with little to blame or praise in it
except the affecting speech of Appius to Virginia jus
before he kills her; as well as Decker's Wonder of
Kingdom, his Jacomo Gentili, that truly ideal characte
of a magnificent patron, and Old Fortunatus and hi
Wishing-cap, which last has the idle garrulity of age
with the freshness and gaiety of youth still upon it
cheek and in its heart. These go into the common cata
logue, and are lost in the crowd; but Webster's Vittori
Corombona I cannot so soon part with; and old hones
Decker's Signor Orlando Friscobaldo* I shall never for
get! I became only of late acquainted with this last
mentioned worthy character; but the bargain betwee:
us is, I trust, for life. We sometimes regret that we ha
not sooner met with characters like these, that seem t
raise, revive, and give a new zest to our being. / Vai:
the complaint! We should never have known thei
value, if we had not known them always: they are old
very old acquaintance, or we should not recognise ther
at first sight. We only find in books what is alread;
written within "the red-leaved tables of our hearts.
The pregnant materials are there; "the pangs, the in
ternal pangs are ready; and poor humanity's afflicte
will struggling in vain with ruthless destiny." But th
reading of fine poetry may indeed open the bleedin
wounds, or pour balm and consolation into them, o
sometimes even close them up for ever! Let any on
who has never known cruel disappointment, nor comfort
able hopes, read the first scene between Orlando an
Hippolito, in [Middleton and] Decker's play of the Hones
Whore, and he will see nothing in it. But I think fev
* A character in the play of the Honest Whore, 1601, by 'I
Decker and T. Middleton.-ED.
(
Decker and Middleton.
89
persons will be entirely proof against such passages as
some of the following:
"Enter Orlando Friscobaldo.
Hippolito. Who is that?
Omnes. Signor Friscobaldo.
Hip. Friscobaldo? O! pray call him, and leave me; we two
have business.
Carolo. Ho, signor! signor Friscobaldo, the lord Hippolito.
[Exeunt.
Orlando. My noble lord! the lord Hippolito! The duke's son!
his brave daughter's brave husband! How does your honour'd
lordship? Does your nobility remember so poor a gentleman as
signor Orlando Friscobaldo, old mad Orlando?
Hip. O, sir, our friends, they ought to be unto us as our jewels :
as dearly valued being locked up and unseen, as when we wear
them in our hands. I see, Friscobaldo, age hath not command of
your blood; for all time's sickle hath gone over you, you are
Orlando still.
Orl. Why, my lord, are not the fields mown and cut down, and
stript bare, and yet wear they not pied coats again? Though my
head be like a leek, white, may not my heart be like the blade,
green?
Hip. Scarce can I read the stories on your b.ow,
Which age hath writ there: you look youthful still.
Orl. I eat snakes, my lord, I eat snakes. My heart shall never
have a wrinkle in it, so long as I can cry Hem! with a clear voice.
Hip. You are the happier man, sir.
Orī. May not old Friscobaldo, my lord, be merry now,
ha?
I have a little, have all things; I have nothing: I have no wife, I
have no child, have no chick; and why should I not be in my
jocundare?
Hip. Is your wife then departed?
Orl. She's an old dweller in those high countries, yet not from
me here, she's here;
•
•
a good couple are seldom parted.
Hip. You had a daughter, too, sir, had you not?
Orl. O, my lord! this old tree had one branch, and but one
branch, growing out of it: it was young, it was fair, it was straight:
I pruned it daily, drest it carefully, kept it from the wind, helped
it to the sun; yet for all my skill in planting, it grew crooked,
* ¿.e. notwithstanding, although. We ought, perhaps, to print it
for-all.-ED.
90
Decker and Middleton.
it bore crabs: I hew'd it down. What's become of it, I neither
know nor care.
Hip. Then can I tell you what's become of it:
That branch is wither'd.
Orl. So 'twas long ago.
Hip. Her name, I think, was Bellafront; she's dead.
Orl. Ha! dead?
Hip. Yes, what of her was left, not worth the keeping,
Even in my sight was thrown into a grave.
Orl. Dead! my last and best peace go with her!
I see death's a
good trencherman; he can eat coarse homely meat as well as the
daintiest . . . . . Is she dead?
Hip. She's turned to earth.
Orl. Would she were turned to heaven. Umph! Is she dead? I
am glad the world has lost one of his idols: no whoremonger will
at midnight beat at the doors. In her grave sleep all my shame and
her own; and all my sorrows and all her sins.
Hip. I'm glad you're wax, not marble; you are made
Of man's best temper; there are now good hopes
That all these heaps of ice about your heart.
By which a father's love was frozen up,
Are thaw'd in those sweet show'rs fetch'd from your eyes;
We are ne'er like angels till our passion dies,
She is not dead, but lives under worse fate:
I think she's poor; and more to clip her wings,
Her husband at this hour lies in the jail
For killing of a man. To save his blood,
Does she live then?
I am
Join all your force with mine; mine shall be shown.
The getting of his life preserves your own.
Orl. In my daughter, you will say !
sorry I wasted tears upon a harlot! but the best is, I have a hand
kerchief to drink them up, soap can wash them all out again. Is
she poor?
Hip. Trust me, I think she is.
Orl. Then she's a right strumpet.
•
I never knew one of their
trade rich two years together; sieves can hold no water, nor harlots
hoard up money:
taverns, tailors, bawds, panders, fiddlers,
swaggerers, fools, and knaves, do all wait upon a common harlot's
trencher; she is the gallypot to which these drones fly, not for love
to the pot, but for the sweet sucket in it—her money, her money.
Hip. I almost dare pawn my word, her bosom
Gives warmth to no such snakes. When did you see her?
Orl. Not seventeen summers.
Hip. Is your hate so old ?
Decker and Middleton.
91
Orl. Older; it has a white head, and shall never die 'till she be
buried: her wrongs shall be my bed-fellow.
Hip. Work yet his life, since in it lives her fame.
Orl. No, let him hang, and half her infamy departs out of the
world. I hate him for her: he taught her first to taste poison: I
hate her for herself, because she refused my physic.
Hip. Nay, but, Friscobaldo,-
Orl. I detest her, I defy both she's not mine, she's--
Hip. Hear her but speak.
Orl. I love no mermaids; I'll not be caught with a quailpipe.
Hip. You're now beyond all reason.
your child, being poor.
Orl. 'Tis foolery: relieve her?
Were her cold limbs stretcht out upon a bier,
I would not sell this dirt under my nails
To buy her an hour's breath, nor give this hair,
Unless it were to choak her.
It's dotage to relieve
Hip. Fare you well, for I'll trouble you no more.
[Exit.
Oyl. And fare you well, sir [Exit Hippolito], go thy ways; we
have few lords of thy making, that love wenches for their honesty.
'Las my girl, art thou poor? Poverty dwells next door to des-
pair, there's but a wall between them: despair is one side of hell's
catchpoles, and lest that devil arrest her, I'll to her; yet she shall
not know me: she shall drink of my wealth as beggars do of
running water, freely: yet never know from what fountain's head it
flows. Shall a silly bird pick her own breast to nourish her young
ones and can a father see his child starve? that were hard: the
pelican does it, and shall not I?”*
The rest of the character is answerable to the begin-
ning. The execution is, throughout, as exact as the
conception is new and masterly. There is the least
colour possible used; the pencil drags; the canvas is
almost seen through: but then, what precision of out-
line, what truth and purity of tone, what firmness of
hand, what marking of character! The words and
answers all along are so true and penitent, that we
seem to see the gestures, and to hear the tone with
which they are accompanied. So when Orlando, dis-
* [Second Part of the Honest Whore, Act i. sc. 2 (Middleton's
Works, ed. Dyce, iii. 139-45).]
92
Decker and Middleton.
guised, says to his daughter, “You'll forgive me,” and
she replies, "I am not marble, I forgive you;" or
again, when she introduces him to her husband, saying
simply, "It is my father," there needs no stage direction
to supply the relenting tones of voice or cordial frank-
ness of manner with which these words are spoken. It
is as if there were some fine art to chisel thought, and
to embody the inmost movements of the mind in every-
day actions and familiar speech. It has been asked :
+
"Oh! who can paint a sunbeam to the blind,
Or make him feel a shadow with his mind?"
Sim-
But this difficulty is here in a manner overcome.
plicity and extravagance of style, homeliness and quaint-
ness, tragedy and comedy, interchangeably set their hands
and seals to this admirable production. We find the
simplicity of prose with the graces of poetry. The stalk
grows out of the ground; but the flowers spread their
flaunting leaves in the air. The mixture of levity in
the chief character bespeaks the bitterness from which
it seeks relief; it is the idle echo of fixed despair, jealous
of observation or pity. The sarcasm quivers on the lip,
while the tear stands congealed on the eye-lid. This
"tough senior," this impracticable old gentleman softens
into a little child; this choke-pear melts in the mouth
like marmalade. In spite of his professions of misan-
thropy, he watches over his daughter with kindly solici-
tude; plays the careful housewife; broods over her
lifeless hopes; nurses the decay of her husband's
fortune, as he had supported her tottering infancy;
saves the high-flying Matheo from the gallows more than
once, and is twice a father to them. The story has all
the romance of private life, all the pathos of bearing up
against silent grief, all the tenderness of concealed affec-
tion:—there is much sorrow patiently borne, and then
comes peace. Bellafront, in the two parts of this play
Decker and Middletor.
93
It is an
She gives
taken together, is a most interesting character.
extreme, and I am afraid almost an ideal case.
the play its title, turns out a true penitent, that is, a
practical one, and is the model of an exemplary wife.
She seems intended to establish the converse of the posi-
tion, that a reformed rake makes the best husband, the only
difficulty in proving which is, I suppose, to meet with
the character. The change of her relative position, with
regard to Hippolito, who, in the first part, in the san-
guine enthusiasm of youthful generosity, has reclaimed
her from vice, and in the second part, his own faith and
love of virtue having been impaired with the progress of
years, tries in vain to lure her back again to her former
follies, has an effect the most striking and beautiful. The
pleadings on both sides, for and against female faith and
constancy, are managed with great polemical skill,
assisted by the grace and vividness of poetical illus-
tration. As an instance of the manner in which Bella-
front speaks of the miseries of her former situation, “and
she has felt them knowingly," I might give the lines in
which she contrasts the different regard shown to the
modest or the abandoned of her sex:
"I cannot, seeing she's woven of such bad stuff,
Set colours on a harlot base enough.
Nothing did make me, when I lov'd them best,
To loath them more than this: when in the street
A fair young modest damsel I did meet;
She seem'd to all a dove, when I pass'd by,
And I to all a raven: every eye
That followed her, went with a bashful glance;
At me each bold and jeering countenance
Darted forth scorn: to her, as if she had been
Some tower unvanquished, would they vail ;*
'Gainst me swoln rumour hoisted every sail.
.*
She, crown'd with reverend praises, pass'd by them;
* Mr. Dyce (Middleton's Works, iii. 205) very unnecessarily
inserts between brackets the word bonnet before vail.-ED.
94
Decker and Middleton.
I, though with face mask'd, could not 'scape the hem;
For, as if heaven had set strange marks on whores,
Because they should be pointing-stocks to man,
Drest up in civilest shape a courtesan,
Let her walk saint-like, noteless and unknown,
Yet she's betray'd by some trick of her own.” *
Perhaps this sort of appeal to matter of fact and popular
opinion, is more convincing than the scholastic subtleties
of the Lady in Comus. The manner, too, in which Infelice,
the wife of Hippolito, is made acquainted with her hus-
band's infidelity, is finely dramatic; and in the scene
where she convicts him of his injustice by taxing herself
with incontinence first, and then turning his most gall-
ing reproaches to her into upbraidings against his own
conduct, she acquits herself with infinite spirit and
address. The contrivance by which in the first part,
after being supposed dead, she is restored to life, and
married to Hippolito, though perhaps a little far-fetched,
is affecting and romantic. There is uncommon beauty
in the Duke her father's description of her sudden ill-
In reply to Infelice's declaration on reviving.
"I'm well," he says :

ness.
Thou wert not so e'en now. Sickness' pale hand
Laid hold on thee, ev'n in the deadst of feasting:
And when a cup, crown'd with thy lover's health,
Had touch'd thy lips, a sensible cold dew
Stood on thy cheeks, as if that death had wept
To see such beauty altered."
Candido, the good-natured man of this play, is a
character of inconceivable quaintness and simplicity.
His patience and good-humour cannot be disturbed by
anything. The idea (for it is nothing but an idea) is a
droll one, and is well supported. He is not only re-
signed to injuries, but "turns them," as Falstaff says of
* [Ubi suprà, p. 205.]
Decker-Webster.
95
diseases, "into commodities." He is a patient Grizzel
out of petticoats, or a Petruchio reversed. He is as
determined upon winking at affronts, and keeping out of
scrapes at all events, as the hero of the Taming of a
Shrew is bent upon picking quarrels out of straws, and
signalising his manhood without the smallest provocation
to do so.
The sudden turn of the character of Candido,
on his second marriage, is, however, as amusing as it
is unexpected.
Matheo, "the high-flying" husband of Bellafront, is a
masterly portrait, done with equal ease and effect. He
Is a person almost without virtue or vice, that is, he is
in strictness without any moral principle at all. He has
no malice against others, and no concern for himself.
He is gay, profligate, and unfeeling, governed entirely
by the impulse of the moment, and utterly reckless of
consequences.
His exclamation when he gets a new
suit of velvet, or a lucky run on the dice,
fly high!" is an answer to all arguments.
or advice has no more effect upon him, than upon the
moth that flies into the candle. He is only to be left to
his fate. Orlando saves him from it, as we do the moth,
by snatching it out of the flame, throwing it out of the
window, and shutting down the casement upon it!

"Do we not
Punishment
Webster would, I think, be a greater dramatic genius
than Decker, if he had the same originality; and perhaps
is so, even without it. His White Devil and Duchess of
Malfi, upon the whole, perhaps, come the nearest to
Shakspeare of any thing we have upon record; the only
drawback to them, the only shade of imputation that can
be thrown upon them, "by which they lose some colour,”
is, that they are too like Shakspeare, and often direct
imitations of him, both in general conception and indivi-
dual expression. So far, there is nobody else whom it
would be either so difficult or so desirable to imitate;
but it would have been still better if all his characters
96
Decker and Webster.
had been entirely his own, had stood out as much from
others, resting only on their own naked merits, as that
of the honest Hidalgo, on whose praises I have dwelt so
much above. Decker has, I think, more truth of char-
acter, more instinctive depth of sentiment, more of the
unconscious simplicity of nature; but he does not, out of
his own stores, clothe his subject with the same richness
of imagination, or the same glowing colours of language.
Decker excels in giving expression to certain habitual,
deeply-rooted feelings which remain pretty much the
same in all circumstances, the simple uncompounded
elements of nature and passion: Webster gives more
scope to their various combinations and changeable
aspects, brings them into dramatic play by contrast
and comparison, flings them into a state of fusion by a
kindled fancy, makes them describe a wider arc of oscil-
lation from the impulse of unbridled passion, and carries
both terror and pity to a more painful and sometimes
unwarrantable excess. Decker is contented with the
historic picture of suffering; Webster goes on to sug-
gest, horrible imaginings. The pathos of the one tells
home and for itself; the other adorns his sentiments
with some image of tender or awful beauty. In a word,
Decker is more like Chaucer or Boccaccio; as Webster's
mind appears to have been cast more in the mould of
Shakspeare's, as well naturally as from studious emula-
tion. The Bellafront and Vittoria Corombona of these
two excellent writers, show their different powers and
turn of mind. The one is all softness; the other "all
fire and air." The faithful wife of Matheo sits at home
drooping, "like the female dove, the whilst her golden
couplets are disclosed;" while the insulted and persecuted
Vittoria darts killing scorn and pernicious beauty at her
enemies. This White Devil (as she is called) is made
fair as the leprosy, dazzling as the lightning. She is
dressed like a bride in her wrongs and her revenge. In

Webster's "Vittoria Corombona."
97

the trial scene in particular, her sudden indignant
answers to the questions that are asked her, startle the
hearers. Nothing can be imagined finer than the whole
conduct and conception of this scene, than her scorn of
her accusers and of herself. The sincerity of her sense
of guilt triumphs over the hypocrisy of their affected and
official contempt for it. In answer to the charge of
having received letters from the Duke of Brachiano, she
ays:
"Grant I was tempted:
•
Condemn you me, for that the Duke did love me?
So may you blame some fair and crystal river,
For that some melancholic distracted man
Hath drown'd himself in 't.”*
And again, when charged with being accessory to
her husband's death, and showing no concern for it:
She comes not like a widow; she comes arm'd
With scorn and impudence. Is this a mourning habit?Ӡ
she coolly replies :
"Had I foreknown his death, as you suggest,
I would have bespoke my mourning."‡
In the closing scenes with her cold-blooded assassins,
Lodovico and Gasparo, she speaks daggers, and might
almost be supposed to exorcise the murdering fiend out
of these true devils. Every word probes to the quick.
The whole scene is the sublime of contempt and indiffer-
ence :
"Vittoria. If Florence be i' th' court, would he would kill me.
Gasparo. Fool! princes give rewards with their own hands, but
death or punishment by the hands of others.
* [Act iii. sc. 2 (Webster's Works, ed. Hazlitt, ii. 62).]
† [Ibid. p. 59.]
‡ [Ubi suprà.]
H
Um
98
Webster's "Vittoria Corombona."
Lodovico [To Flamineo]. Sirrah, you once did strike me;
I'll strike you
Unto the centre.
Flam. Thou'lt do it like a hangman, a base hangman,
Not like a noble fellow; for thou seest
I cannot strike again.
Lod. Dost laugh?
Flam. Would'st have me die, as I was born, in whining?
Gasp. Recommend yourself to Heaven.
Flam. No, I will carry mine own commendations thither.
Lod. O, could I kill you forty times a-day,
And use 't four year together, 'twere too little :
Nought grieves, but that you are too few to feed
The famine of our vengeance. What do'st think on?
Flam. Nothing; of nothing: leave thy idle questions—
I am i' th' way to study a long silence :
To prate were idle. I remember nothing;
There's nothing of so infinite vexation
As man's own thoughts.
Lod. [To Vittor.] O thou glorious strumpet!
Could I divide thy breath from this pure air
When 't leaves thy body, I would suck it up,
And breathe 't upon some dunghill.
Vit. Cor. You my death's-man!
Methinks thou dost not look horrid enough;
Thou hast too good a face to be a hangman:
If thou be, do thy office in right form;
Fall down upon thy knees, and ask forgiveness.
Lod. O! thou hast been a most prodigious comet;
But I'll cut off your train. Kill the Moor first. [To Gasparo.
Vit. Cor. You shall not kill her first; behold my breast;
I will be waited on in death my servant
Shall never go before me.
Gasp. Are you so brave?
Vit. Cor. Yes, I shall welcome death
As princes do some great ambassadors ;
I'll meet thy weapon half way.
Lod. Thou dost tremble!
Methinks fear should dissolve thee into air.
Vit. Cor. O, thou art deceiv'd, I am too true a woman!
Conceit can never kill me. I'll tell thee what,
I will not in my death shed one base tear;
Or if look pale, for want of blood, not fear.
Gasp. [To Zanche.] Thou art my task, black fury.
Webster's "Vittoria Corombona."
99
Zanche. I have blood
s red as either of theirs! Wilt drink some?
Tis good for the falling-sickness. I am proud
Death cannot alter my complexion,
or I shall ne'er look pale.
Lod. Strike, strike,
With a joint motion.
Vit. Cor. 'Twas a manly blow:
he next thou giv'st, murder some sucking infant,
nd then thou wilt be famous." *
Such are some of the terrible graces of the obscure, for-
otten Webster. There are other parts of this play of
less violent, more subdued, and, if it were possible,
ven deeper character; such is the declaration of divorce
ronounced by Brachiano on his wife:
"Your hand I'll kiss:
This is the latest ceremony of my love;
I'll never more live with you," &c.
which is in the manner of, and equal to, Decker's finest
hings and others, in a quite different style of fanciful
poetry and bewildered passion; such as the lamentation
of Cornelia his mother for the death of Marcello, and
the parting scene of Brachiano; which would be as fine
as Shakspeare if they were not in a great measure bor-
-owed from his inexhaustible store. In the former,
fter Flamineo has stabbed his brother, and Hortensio
comes in, Cornelia exclaims :
"Alas! he is not dead; he's in a trance.
Why, here's nobody shall get any thing by his death;
Let me call him again, for God's sake.
Hor. I would you were deceiv'd.
Corn. O you abuse me, you abuse me, you abuse me! How many
ave gone away thus, for want of 'tendance? Rear up's head, rear
p's head; his bleeding inward will kill him.
Hor. You see he is departed.
Corn. Let me come to him; give me him as he is. If he be turid:
* [Ubi suprà, pp. 139-40.]

100
Webster's "Vittoria Corombona."
to earth, let me but give him one hearty kiss, and you shall pu
us both into one coffin. Fetch a looking-glass: see if his breat
will not stain it; or pull out some feathers from my pillow, an
lay them to his lips. Will you lose him for a little pains-taking
Hor. Your kindest office is to pray for him.
Corn. Alas! I would not pray for him yet. He may live to la
me i' th' ground, and pray for me, if you'll let me come to him.
Enter Brachiano, all armed save the beaver, with Flamineo an
others.
Brach. Was this your handy-work?
Flam. It was my misfortune.
Corn. He lies, he lies! he did not kill him.
him, that would not let him be better looked to.
Brach. Have comfort, my griev'd mother.
Corn. O you screech-owl!
Hor. Forbear, good madam.
Corn. Let me go, let me go.
These have kille
[She runs to Flamineo with her knife drawn, ane
coming to him, lets it fall.
The God of Heaven forgive thee! Dost not wonder
I pray for thee? I'll tell thee what's the reason:
I have scarce breath to number twenty minutes;
I'd not spend that in cursing. Fare thee well:
Half of thyself lies there; and may'st thou live
To fill an hour-glass with his moulder'd ashes,
To tell how thou should'st spend the time to come
In blest repentance.
Brach. Mother, pray tell me,
How came he by his death? What was the quarrel?
Corn. Indeed, my younger boy presum'd too much
Upon his manhood, gave him bitter words,
Drew his sword first; and so, I know not how,
For I was out of my wits, he fell with's head
Just in my bosom.
Page. This is not true, madam.
Corn. I pray thee, peace.
One arrow's graz'd already: it were vain
T' lose this for that will ne'er be found again." *
!
This is a good deal borrowed from Lear; but the in
most folds of the human heart, the sudden turns anċ
* [Ubi suprà, pp. 109-10.]

Webster's "Vittoria Corombona."
101
windings of the fondest affection, are also laid open with
so masterly and original a hand, that it seems to prove
the occasional imitations as unnecessary as they are
evident. The scene where the Duke discovers that he is
poisoned, is as follows, and equally fine:
"Brach. O, I am gone already. The infection
Flies to the brain and heart. O thou strong heart,
There's such a covenant 'tween the world and thee,
They're loth to break.
Giovanni. O my most lov'd father!
Brach. Remove the boy away:
Where's this good woman? Had I infinite worlds,
They were too little for thee: must I leave thee?
What say you, screech-owls? [To the Physicians.]
mortal?
Phy. Most deadly.
Brach. Most corrupted politic hangman !
You kill without book; but your art to save
Fails you as oft as great men's needy friends.
I that have given life to offending slaves
And wretched murderers, have I not power
To lengthen mine own a twelve-month?
Do not kiss me, for I shall poison thee.
[To Vittoria.
Is the venom
This unction is sent from the great Duke of Florence.
Francesco de Medici [in disguise]. Sir, be of comfort.
Brach. O thou soft natural death! thou art joint-twin
To sweetest slumber! no rough-bearded comet
Stares on thy mild departure: the dull owl
Beats not against thy casement; the hoarse wolf
Scents not thy carrion: pity winds thy corse,
Whilst horror waits on princes.
Vit. Cor. I am lost for ever.
Brach. How miserable a thing it is to die
[Enter Lodovico and Gasparo as Capuchins.]
'Mongst women howling! What are those?
Flam. Franciscans:
They have brought the extreme unction.
Brach. On pain of death, let no man name death to me :*
* See Hazlitt's Venetian Republic, 1860, iv. 175.-ED.
Um
102
Webster's "Vittoria Corombona."
It is a word most infinitely terrible.
Withdraw into our cabinet." *
The deception practised upon him by Lodovico an
Gasparo, who offer him the sacrament in the disguise o
monks, and then discover themselves to damn him, i
truly diabolical and ghastly. But the genius that sug
gested it was as profound as it was lofty. When the
are at first introduced, Flamineo says:
"See, see how firmly he doth fix his eye
Upon the crucifix."†
To which Vittoria answers:
"O, hold it constant :
It settles his wild spirits: and so his eyes
Melt into tears." ‡
The Duchess of Malfi is not, in my judgment, quite so
spirited or effectual a performance as the White Devil.
But it is distinguished by the same kind of beauties, clad
in the same terrors. I do not know but the occasional
strokes of passion are even profounder and more Shak-
spearian; but the story is more laboured, and the
horror is accumulated to an overpowering and insup-
portable height. However appalling to the imagination
and finely done, the scenes of the madhouse to which the
Duchess is condemned with a view to unsettle her reason,
and the interview between her and her brother, where
he gives her the supposed dead hand of her husband,
exceed, to my thinking, the just bounds of poetry and of
tragedy. At least, the merit is of a kind which, how-
ever great, we wish to be rare. A series of such exhi-
bitions obtruded upon the senses or the imagination must
tend to stupefy and harden, rather than to exalt the fancy
or meliorate the heart. I speak this under correction;
* [Webster's Works, ut suprà, 111-13.]
+ [Ibid. 117.]
‡ [Ibid.]

Webster's "Duchess of Malfi."
103
but I hope the objection is a venial common-place. In
different style altogether are the directions she gives
about her children in her last struggles:
"I pray thee, look thou giv'st my little boy
Some syrup for his cold, and let the girl
Say her pray'rs ere she sleep. Now what you please—” *
and her last word, "mercy," which she recovers just
strength enough to pronounce; her proud answers to her
tormentors, who taunt her with her degradation and
misery “But I am Duchess of Malfi still "t—as if the
heart rose up, like a serpent coiled, to resent the indig-
nities put upon it, and being struck at, struck again;
and the staggering reflection her brother makes on her
death, “Cover her face: mine eyes dazzle: she died
young" Bosola replies:
"I think not so: her infelicity
Seemed to have years too many.
Ferdinand. She and I were twins:
And should I die this instant, I had liv'd
Her time to a minute."§
This is not the bandying of idle words and rhetorical
common-places, but the writhing and conflict, and the
sublime colloquy of man's nature with itself!
The Revenger's Tragedy, by Cyril Tourneur,|| is the
* [Webster's Works, iv. p. 244.]
+ "Am not I thy Duchess?
Bosola. Thou art some great woman, sure; for riot
Begins to sit on thy forehead (clad in gray hairs)
Twenty years sooner
Than on a merry milkmaid's.
Thou sleep'st worse than if a mouse
Should be forced to take up her lodging in a cat's ear:
A little infant that breeds its teeth, should it lie with thee,
Would cry out, as if thou wert
The more unquiet bed-fellow.
Duch. I am Duchess of Malfy still."
‡ [Webster's Works, iv. p. 248.] § [Ibid.] || Lond. 1607, 4to.—ED

104
Cyril Tourneur.
only other drama equal to these and to Shakspeare, in
“the dazzling fence of impassioned argument," in preg
nant illustration, and in those profound reaches off
thought which lay open the soul of feeling. The play
on the whole, does not answer to the expectations it ex
cites; but the appeals of Castiza to her mother, who
endeavours to corrupt her virtuous resolutions, "Mother
come from that poisonous woman there," with others off
the like kind, are of as high and abstracted an essence of
poetry as any of those above mentioned.
In short, the great characteristic of the elder dramatic
writers is, that there is nothing theatrical about them,
In reading them, you only think how the persons int
whose mouths certain sentiments are put, would have
spoken or looked: in reading Dryden and others of that
school, you only think, as the authors themselves seera
to have done, how they would be ranted on the stage by
some buskined hero or tragedy-queen. In this respect,
indeed, some of his more obscure contemporaries have
the advantage over Shakspeare himself, inasmuch as
we have never seen their works represented on the stage;
and there is no stage-trick to remind us of it. The char-
acters of their heroes have not been cut down to fit into
the prompt-book, nor have we ever seen their names
flaring in the play-bills in small or large capitals. I do
not mean to speak disrespectfully of the stage; but I
think still higher of Nature, and next to that, of books.
They are the nearest to our thoughts: they wind into
the heart; the poet's verse slides into the current of our
blood. We read them when young, we remember them
when old. We read there of what has happened to
others; we feel that it has happened to ourselves. They
are to be had everywhere cheap and good. We breathe
but the air of books: we owe everything to their authors,
on this side barbarism; and we pay them easily with
contempt while living, and with an epitaph when dead!


The Early Dramatists.
105
Michael Angelo is beyond the Alps; Mrs. Siddons has
left the stage, and us to mourn her loss. Were it not so,
there are neither picture-galleries nor theatres royal on
Salisbury Plain, where I write this; but here, even
here, with a few old authors, I can manage to get through
the summer or the winter months, without ever knowing
what it is to feel ennui. They sit with me at breakfast;
they walk out with me before dinner. After a long
walk through unfrequented tracks, after starting the
hare from the fern, or hearing the wing of the raven
rustling above my head, or being greeted by the
woodman's "stern good-night," as he strikes into
his narrow homeward path, I can "take mine ease
at mine inn,” beside the blazing hearth, and shake
hands with Signor Orlando Friscobaldo, as the oldest
acquaintance I have. Ben Jonson, learned Chapman,
Master Webster, and Master Heywood, are there; and
seated round, discourse the silent hours away. Shak-
speare is there himself, not in Cibber's manager's coat.
Spenser is hardly yet returned from a ramble through
the woods, or is concealed behind a group of nymphs,
fawns, and satyrs. Milton lies on the table, as on an
altar, never taken up or laid down without reverence.
Lyly's Endymion sleeps with the moon, that shines in at
the window; and a breath of wind stirring at a distance
seems a sigh from the tree under which he grew old.
Faustus disputes in one corner of the room with fiendish
faces, and reasons of divine astrology. Bellafront soothes
Matheo, Vittoria triumphs over her judges, and old Chap-
man repeats one of the hymns of Homer, in his own fine
translation! I should have no objection to pass my life
in this manner out of the world, not thinking of it, nor
it of me; neither abused by my enemies, nor defended
by my friends; careless of the future, but sometimes
* At Winterslow Hut, not far from the village of the same name.
See Memoirs of William Hazlitt, 1867, i. 259.—Ed.

106
The Early Dramatists.
dreaming of the past, which might as well be forgotten
Mr. Wordsworth has expressed this sentiment well (per
haps I have borrowed it from him):
"Books, dreams, are both a world; and books, we know,
Are a substantial world, both pure and good,
Round which, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood,
Our pastime and our happiness may grow.
*
Two let me mention dearer than the rest.
The gentle lady wedded to the Moor,
And heavenly Una with her milk-white lamb.
Blessings be with them and eternal praise,
The poets, who on earth have made us heirs
Of truth and pure delight in deathless lays.
Oh, might my name be number'd among theirs,
Then gladly would I end my mortal days!"
I have no sort of pretension to join in the concluding
wish of the last stanza; but I trust the writer feels that
this aspiration of his early and highest ambition is
already not unfulfilled !

( 107 )
LECTURE IV.
ON BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, BEN JONSON, FORD, AND
MASSINGER.
BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, with all their prodigious
merits, appear to me the first writers who in some
measure departed from the genuine tragic style of the
age of Shakspeare. They thought less of their sub-
ject, and more of themselves, than some others. They
had a great and unquestioned command over the
stores both of fancy and passion; but they availed
themselves too often of common-place extravagances
and theatrical trick. Men at first produce effect by
studying Nature, and afterwards they look at Nature
only to produce effect. It is the same in the history
of other arts, and of other periods of literature.
With respect to most of the writers of this age, their sub-
ject was their master. Shakspeare was alone, as I have
said before, master of his subject; but Beaumont and
Fletcher were the first who made a plaything of it, or a
convenient vehicle for the display of their own powers.
The example of preceding or contemporary writers had
given them facility; the frequency of dramatic exhibition
had advanced the popular taste; and this facility of
production, and the necessity for appealing to popular
applause, tended to vitiate their own taste, and to make
them willing to pamper that of the public for novelty
and extraordinary effect. There wants something of the
sincerity and modesty of the older writers. They do not
wait Nature's time, or work out her materials patiently
and faithfully, but try to anticipate her, and so far defeat

108
Beaumont and Fletcher.
themselves. They would have a catastrophe in every
scene; so that you have none at last: they would raise
admiration to its height in every line; so that the
impression of the whole is comparatively loose and
desultory. They pitch the characters at first in too
high a key, and exhaust themselves by the eagerness
and impatience of their efforts. We find all the prodi
gality of youth, the confidence inspired by success, an
enthusiasm bordering on extravagance, richness running
riot, beauty dissolving in its own sweetness.
They
are like heirs just come to their estates, like lovers in
the honeymoon. In the economy of Nature's gifts, they
“misuse the bounteous Pan, and thank the gods amiss.
Their productions shoot up in haste, but bear the
marks of precocity and premature decay. Or they are
two goodly trees, the stateliest of the forest, crowned
with blossoms, and with the verdure springing at
their feet; but they do not strike their roots far enough
into the ground, and the fruit can hardly ripen for the
flowers!
It cannot be denied that they are lyrical and descrip-
tive poets of the first order; every page of their writings
is a florilegium: they are dramatic poets of the second
class, in point of knowledge, variety, vivacity, and effect;
there is hardly a passion, character, or situation which
they have not touched in their devious range, and what-
ever they touched they adorned with some new grace or
striking feature: they are masters of style and versifica-
tion in almost every variety of melting modulation or
sounding pomp of which they are capable: in comic wit
and spirit, they are scarcely surpassed by any writers of
any age. There they are in their element, “like eagles
newly baited;" but I speak rather of their serious poetry;
--and this, I apprehend, with all its richness, sweetness,
loftiness, and grace, wants something-stimulates more
than it gratifies, and leaves the mind in a certain sense

Beaumont and Fletcher.
109
exhausted and unsatisfied. Their fault is a too osten-
tatious and indiscriminate display of power. Everything
seems in a state of fermentation and effervescence, and
not to have settled and found its centre in their minds.
The ornaments, through neglect or abundance, do not
always appear sufficiently appropriate; there is evidently
a rich wardrobe of words and images to set off any senti-
ments that occur, but not equal felicity in the choice of
the sentiments to be expressed; the characters in general
do not take a substantial form, or excite a growing inte-
rest, or leave a permanent impression; the passion does
not accumulate by the force of time, of circumstances,
and habit, but wastes itself in the first ebullitions of
surprise and novelty.
Besides these more critical objections, there is a too
frequent mixture of voluptuous softness or effeminacy
of character with horror in the subjects, a conscious weak-
ness (I can hardly think it wantonness) of moral constitu-
tion struggling with wilful and violent situations, like
the tender wings of the moth, attracted to the flame
that dazzles and consumes it. In the heyday of their
youthful ardour, and the intoxication of their animal
spirits, they take a perverse delight in tearing up some
rooted sentiment, to make a mawkish lamentation over
it; and fondly and gratuitously cast the seeds of crimes
into forbidden grounds, to see how they will shoot up
and vegetate into luxuriance, to catch the eye of fancy.
They are not safe teachers of morality: they tamper with
it like an experiment tried in corpore vili; and seem to
regard the decomposition of the common affections, and
the dissolution of the strict bonds of society, as an agree-
able study and a careless pastime. The tone of Shak-
speare's writings is manly and bracing; theirs is at once
insipid and meretricious in the comparison. Shakspeare
never disturbs the grounds of moral principle; but leaves
his characters (after doing them heaped justice on all

110
Beaumont and Fletcher.
sides) to be judged of by our common sense and natura
feeling. Beaumont and Fletcher constantly bring i
equivocal sentiments and characters, as if to set them u
up
to be debated by sophistical casuistry, or varnished over
with the colours of poetical ingenuity. Or Shakspeare
may be said to "cast the diseases of the mind, only to
restore it to a sound and pristine health.” The dramatic
paradoxes of Beaumont and Fletcher are, to all appear
ance, tinctured with an infusion of personal vanity an
laxity of principle. I do not say that this was the
character of the men; but it strikes me as the character
of their minds. The two things are very distinct. The
greatest purists (hypocrisy apart) are often free livers;
and some of the most unguarded professors of a general
license of behaviour have been the last persons to take
the benefit of their own doctrine, from which they reap
nothing, but the obloquy and the pleasure of startling
their "wonder-wounded" hearers. There is a division
of labour even in vice. Some persons addict themselves
to the speculation only, others to the practice. The
peccant humours of the body or the mind break out
in various ways. One man sows his wild oats in his
neighbour's field: another on Mount Parnassus; from
whence, borne on the breath of fame, they may hope
to spread and fructify to distant times and regions.
Of the latter class were our poets, who, I believe, led
unexceptionable lives, and only indulged their imagina-
tions in occasional unwarrantable liberties with the
Muses. What makes them more inexcusable, and con-
firms this charge against them, is, that they are always
abusing "wanton poets," as if willing to shift suspicion
from themselves.
Beaumont and Fletcher were the first also who laid
the foundation of the artificial diction and tinselled
pomp of the next generation of poets, by aiming at a
profusion of ambitious ornaments, and by translating

Beaumont and Fletcher.
111
he commonest circumstances into the language of
hetaphor and passion. It is this misplaced and inor-
inate craving after striking effect and continual ex-
itement that had at one time rendered our poetry the
host vapid of all things, by not leaving the moulds of
oetic diction to be filled up by the overflowings of
ature and passion, but by swelling out ordinary and
nmeaning topics to certain preconceived and indispens-
ble standards of poetical elevation and grandeur.
hall endeavour to confirm this praise, mixed with un-
willing blame, by remarking on a few of their principal
ragedies. If I have done them injustice, the resplen-
dent passages I have to quote will set everything to
rights.
I
The Maid's Tragedy is one of the poorest. The
nature of the distress is of the most disagreeable and
repulsive kind; and not the less so because it is en-
tirely improbable and uncalled for. There is no sort
of reason, or no sufficient reason to the reader's mind,
why the king should marry off his mistress to one of
his courtiers, why he should pitch upon the worthiest
for this purpose, why he should, by such a choice, break
off Amintor's match with the sister of another principal
support of his throne (whose death is the consequence),
why he should insist on the inviolable fidelity of his
former mistress to him after she is married, and why
her husband should thus inevitably be made acquainted
with his dishonour, and roused to madness and revenge,
except the mere love of mischief, and gratuitous delight
in torturing the feelings of others, and tempting one's
own fate.
The character of Evadne, however-her naked, un-
blushing impudence, the mixture of folly with vice,
her utter insensibility to any motive but her own
pride and inclination, her heroic superiority to any
* First printed in 1619, 4to.-ED.

112
Beaumont and Fletcher.
1
signs of shame or scruples of conscience from a recol
lection of what is due to herself or others are wel
described; and the lady is true to herself in her repent
ance, which is owing to nothing but the accidenta
impulse and whim of the moment. The deliberate
voluntary disregard of all moral ties and all pretence
to virtue, in the structure of the fable, is nearly unac
countable. Amintor (who is meant to be the hero of
the piece) is a feeble, irresolute character: his slavish
recanting loyalty to his prince, who has betrayed and
dishonoured him, is of a piece with the tyranny and
insolence of which he is made the sport; and even his
tardy revenge is snatched from his hands, and he kills
his former betrothed and beloved mistress, instead
executing vengeance on the man who has destroyed his
peace of mind and unsettled his intellects. The king,
however, meets his fate from the penitent fury of
Evadne; and on this account, The Maid's Tragedy was
forbidden to be acted in the reign of Charles II. as
countenancing the doctrine of regicide.* Aspatia is a
beautiful sketch of resigned and heart-broken melan-
choly; and Calianax, a blunt, satirical courtier, is a
character of much humour and novelty.
There are
striking passages here and there, but fewer than in
almost any of their plays. Amintor's speech to Evadne,
when she makes confession of her unlooked-for remorse,
is, I think, the finest:
"Do not mock me:
Though I am tame, and bred up with my wrongs,
Which are my foster-brothers, I may leap,
Like a hand-wolf, into my natural wildness,
And do an outrage: prithee, do not mock me!"†
A King and No King, which is on a strangely
* See Dyce's Beaumont and Fletcher, i. 316.—Ed.
† [Dyce's B. and F., i. 390 (Act iv. sc. 1).]
First printed in 1619, 4to.-ED.

Beaumont and Fletcher.
113
chosen subject as strangely treated, is very superior
in power and effect. There is an unexpected reserva-
tion in the plot, which, in some measure, relieves the
painfulness of the impression. Arbaces is painted in
gorgeous, but not alluring colours. His vainglorious
pretensions and impatience of contradiction are admir-
ably displayed, and are so managed as to produce an
involuntary comic effect to temper the lofty tone of
tragedy, particularly in the scenes in which he affects
to treat his vanquished enemy with such condescending
kindness; and perhaps this display of upstart pride was
meant by the authors as an oblique satire on his low
origin, which is afterwards discovered. His pride of
self-will and fierce impetuosity are the same in war and
in love. The haughty voluptuousness and pampered
effeminacy of his character admit neither respect for his
misfortunes nor pity for his errors. His ambition is a
fever in the blood; and his love is a sudden transport
of ungovernable caprice that brooks no restraint, and is
intoxicated with the lust of power, even in the lap of
pleasure, and the sanctuary of the affections. The pas-
sion of Panthea is, as it were, a reflection from, and
lighted at the shrine of her lover's flagrant vanity. In
the elevation of his rank, and in the consciousness of
his personal accomplishments, he seems firmly per-
suaded (and by sympathy to persuade others) that
there is nothing in the world which can be an object
of liking or admiration but himself. The first birth
and declaration of this perverted sentiment to himself,
when he meets with Panthea after his return from
conquest, fostered by his presumptuous infatuation and
the heat of his inflammable passions, and the fierce
and lordly tone in which he repels the suggestion
of the natural obstacles to his sudden phrensy, are in
Beaumont and Fletcher's most daring manner: but
the rest is not equal. What may be called the love-
I

114
Beaumont and Fletcher.
scenes are equally gross and common-place; and instead
of any thing like delicacy or a struggle of different
feelings, have all the indecency and familiarity of a
brothel. Bessus, a comic character in this play, is a
swaggering coward, something between Parolles and
Falstaff.
The False One is an indirect imitation of Antony and
Cleopatra. We have Septimius for Enobarbus and Cæsar
for Antony. Cleopatra herself is represented in her
girlish state, but she is made divine in
"Youth that opens like perpetual spring,"
and promises the rich harvest of love and pleasure that
succeeds it. Her first presenting herself before Cæsar,
when she is brought in by Sceva, and the impression
she makes upon him, like a vision dropt from the
clouds, or
"Like some celestial sweetness, the treasure of soft love,"
are exquisitely conceived. Photinus is an accomplished
villain, well read in crooked policy and quirks of state;
and the description of Pompey has a solemnity and gran-
deur worthy of his unfortunate end. Septimius says,
bringing in his lifeless head: :
""Tis here, 'tis done! Behold, you fearful viewers,
Shake, and behold the model of the world here,
The pride and strength! Look, look again ! 'tis finished!
That that whole armies, nay, whole nations,
Many and mighty kings, have been struck blind at,
And fled before, wing'd with their fears and terrors,
That steel'd War waited on, and Fortune courted,
That high-plum'd Honour built up for her own;
Behold that mightiness, behold that fierceness,
Behold that child of war, with all his glories,
By this poor hand made breathless!"*
* [Act ii. sc. 1, Dyce's ed. vi. 237.]

Beaumont and Fletcher.
115
And again Cæsar says of him, who was his mortal
enemy (it was not held the fashion in those days, nor
will it be held so in time to come, to lampoon those
whom you have vanquished):
"Oh thou conqueror,
Thou glory of the world once, now the pity:
Thou awe of nations, wherefore didst thou fall thus?
What poor fate followed thee, and plucked thee on
To trust thy sacred life to an Egyptian?
The life and light of Rome to a blind stranger,
That honourable war ne'er taught a nobleness,
Nor worthy circumstance show'd what a man was?
That never heard thy name sung but in banquets,
And loose, lascivious pleasures? to a boy,
That had no faith to comprehend thy greatness,
No study of thy life to know thy goodness? .
Egyptians, dare you think your high pyramides,
Built to out-dure the sun, as you suppose,
Where your unworthy kings lie rak'd in ashes,
Are monuments fit for him! No, brood of Nilus,
Nothing can cover his high fame but heaven;
No pyramids set off his memories,
But the eternal substance of his greatness,
To which I leave him."*
It is something worth living for, to write or even
read such poetry as this is, or to know that it has
been written, or that there have been subjects on
which to write it! This, of all Beaumont and Fletcher's
plays, comes the nearest in style and manner to
Shakspeare, not excepting the first act of the Two
Noble Kinsmen, which has been sometimes attributed to
him.
The Faithful Shepherdess † by Fletcher alone, is "a
perpetual feast of nectar'd sweets, where no crude surfeit
reigns." The author has in it given a loose to his fancy,
* [Act ii. sc. 1, Dyce's ed. vi. 244-5.]
+ First printed without date, probably in 1610 or 1611.--ED.

116
Beaumont and Fletcher.
and his fancy was his most delightful and genial quality:
where, to use his own words:
"He takes most ease, and grows ambitious
Thro' his own wanton fire and pride delicious."
The songs and lyrical descriptions throughout are
luxuriant and delicate in a high degree. He came
near to Spenser in a certain tender and voluptuous
sense of natural beauty; he came near to Shakspeare
in the playful and fantastic expression of it. The whole
composition is an exquisite union of dramatic and past
toral poetry; where the local descriptions receive a
tincture from the sentiments and purposes of the speaker
and each character, cradled in the lap of Nature, paints
"her virgin fancies wild" with romantic grace and
classic elegance.
The place and its employments are thus described by
Chloe to Thenot:
"Here be woods as green
As any; air likewise as fresh and sweet
As where smooth Zephyrus plays on the fleet
Face of the curled streams, with flowers as many
As the young spring gives, and as choice as any:
Here be all new delights, cool streams and wells,
Arbours o'ergrown with woodbine; caves, and dells;
Choose where thou wilt, whilst I sit by and sing,
Or gather rushes, to make many a ring
For thy long fingers; tell thee tales of love,—
How the pale Phoebe, hunting in a grove,
First saw the boy Endymion, from whose eyes
She took eternal fire that never dies;
How she conveyed him softly in a sleep,
His temples bound with poppy, to the steep
Head of old Latmus, where she stoops each night,
Gilding the mountain with her brother's light,
To kiss her sweetest."*
* [Act i. sc: 3.]

Beaumont and Fletcher.
117
There are few things that can surpass in truth and
beauty of allegorical description, the invocation of
Amaryllis to the god of shepherds, Pan, to save her
from the violence of the Sullen Shepherd, for Syrinx'
sake:
"For her dear sake,
That loves the rivers' brinks, and still doth shake
In cold remembrance of thy quick pursuit !"*
Or again, the friendly Satyr promises Clorin :
"Brightest, if there be remaining
Any service, without feigning
I will do it; were I set
To catch the nimble wind, or get
Shadows gliding on the green."
It would be a task no less difficult than this, to follow
the flight of the poet's muse, or catch her fleeting graces,
fluttering her golden wings, and singing in notes angel-
ical of youth, of love, and joy!
There is only one affected and ridiculous character
in this drama, that of Thenot in love with Clorin. He
is attached to her for her inviolable fidelity to her
buried husband, and wishes her not to grant his suit,
lest it should put an end to his passion. Thus he pleads
to her against himself:
"If you yield, I die
To all affection; 'tis that loyalty
You tie unto this grave I so admire;
And yet there's something else I would desire,
If you would hear me, but withal deny.
Oh, Pan, what an uncertain destiny
Hangs over all my hopes! I will retire;
For if I longer stay, this double fire
Will lick my life up."+
* [Act v. sc. 3.]
† [Act ii. sc. 3.]
118
Beaumont and Fletcher.
This is paltry quibbling. It is spurious logic, not
genuine feeling. A pedant may hang his affections on
the point of a dilemma in this manner; but Nature does
not sophisticate; or when she does, it is to gain her
ends, not to defeat them.
The Sullen Shepherd turns out too dark a character
in the end, and gives a shock to the gentle and pleasing
sentiments inspired throughout.
The resemblance of Comus to this poem is not so
great as has been sometimes contended, nor are the
particular allusions important or frequent. Whatever
Milton copied, he made his own. In reading the Faithful
Shepherdess, we find ourselves breathing the moonlight
air under the cope of heaven, and wander by forest
side or fountain, among fresh dews and flowers, fol-
lowing our vagrant fancies, or smit with the love of
Nature's works. In reading Milton's Comus, and
most of his other works, we seem to be entering a
lofty dome raised over our heads and ascending to
the skies, and as if Nature and every thing in it were
but a temple and an image consecrated by the poet's
art to the worship of virtue and pure religion. The
speech of Clorin, after she has been alarmed by the
satyr, is the only one of which Milton has made a free
use:
"And all my fears go with thee.
What greatness or what private hidden power
Is there in me, to draw submission
From this rude man and beast? Sure I am mortal:
The daughter of a shepherd; he was mortal,
And she that bore me mortal: Prick my hand,
And it will bleed; a fever shakes me, and
The self-same wind that makes the young lambs shrink,
Makes me a-cold: my fear says, I am mortal.
Yet I have heard (my mother told it me,
And now I do believe it), if I keep
My virgin flow'r uncropt, pure, chaste, and fair,
No goblin, wood-god, fairy, elf, or fiend,
Beaumont and Fletcher.
119
Satyr, or other power that haunts the groves,
Shall hurt my body, or by vain illusion
Draw me to wander after idle fires;
Or voices calling me in dead of night
To make me follow, and so tole me on
Thro' mire and standing pools to find my ruin;
Else, why should this rough thing, who never knew
Manners, nor smooth humanity, whose heats
Are rougher than himself, and more misshapen,
Thus mildly kneel to me? Sure there's a pow'r
In that great name of Virgin, that binds fast
All rude uncivil bloods, all appetites
That break their confines: then, strong Chastity,
Be thou my strongest guard, for here I'll dwell
In opposition against fate and hell!"*
Ben Jonson's Sad Shepherd comes nearer it in style
and spirit, but still with essential differences, like the
two men, and without any appearance of obligation.
Ben's is more homely and grotesque. Fletcher's is
more visionary and fantastical. I hardly know which
to prefer. If Fletcher has the advantage in general
power and sentiment, Jonson is superior in naïveté and
truth of local colouring.
The Two Noble Kinsmen † is another monument of
Fletcher's genius; and it is said also of Shakspeare's.
The style of the first act has certainly more weight,
more abruptness, and more involution, than the general
style of Fletcher, with fewer softenings and fillings-
up to sheathe the rough projecting points and piece
the disjointed fragments together. For example, the
* [Act i. sc. 1.]
† Not printed till 1634, many years after Fletcher's death. It
is included in the third and fourth folios of Shakspeare, and
in the second folio of Beaumont and Fletcher; in Beaumont and
Fletcher's Works by Dyce, vol. xi; and in Dyce's second edition of
Shakspeare, 1868, vol. ix. Mr. Dyce says (Shaksp. ix. 117) that
he is convinced that portions of the play are from Shakspeare's
pen.-ED.
120
Beaumont and Fletcher.
compliment of Theseus to one of the Queens, that Her-
cules
"He tumbled down upon his Nemean hide,
And swore his sinews thaw'd "*
at sight of her beauty, is in a bolder and more masculine
vein than Fletcher usually aimed at. Again, the sup-
plicating address of the distressed Queen to Hippolita—
"Lend us a knee;
But touch the ground for us no longer time
Than a dove's motion when the head's pluck'd off”†—
is certainly in the manner of Shakspeare, with his sub-
tlety and strength of illustration. But, on the other
hand, in what immediately follows, relating to their
husbands left dead in the field of battle:
"Tell him, if he i' th' blood-siz'd field lay swoln,
Showing the sun his teeth, grinning at the moon,
What you would do."I
I think we perceive the extravagance of Beaumont
and Fletcher, not contented with truth or strength of
description, but hurried away by the love of violent
excitement into an image of disgust and horror, not
called for, and not at all proper in the mouth into
which it is put. There is a studied exaggeration of the
sentiment, and an evident imitation of the parenthetical
interruptions and breaks in the line, corresponding to
what we sometimes meet in Shakspeare, as in the
speeches of Leontes in the Winter's Tale; but the senti-
ment is overdone, and the style merely mechanical.
Thus Hippolita declares, on her lord's going to the
wars:
"We have been soldiers, and we cannot weep,
When our friends don their helms, or put to sea,
* [Act i. sc. 1.]
† [Ibid.]
‡ [Ibid.]
Beaumont and Fletcher.
121
Or tell of babes broach'd on the lance, or women
That have sod their infants in (and after eat them)
The brine they wept at killing 'em; then if
You stay to see of us such spinsters, we
Should hold you here for ever."*
One might apply to this sort of poetry what Marvell
ays of some sort of passions, that it is
Tearing our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life."
It is not in the true spirit of Shakspeare who was
born only heir to all humanity," whose horrors were
ot gratuitous, and who did not harrow up the feelings
or the sake of making mere bravura speeches. There
re also in this first act several repetitions of Shak-
peare's phraseology; a thing that seldom er never
ccurs in his own works. For instance :
"Past slightly
His careless execution."
"The very lees of such, millions of rates
Exceed the wine of others".
"Let the event
That never-erring arbitrator, tell us
Like old importment's bastard."
""
There are also words that are never used by Shak-
speare in a similar sense :
"All our surgeons
Convent in their behoof”-
"We convent nought else but woes."
In short, it appears to me that the first part of this
play was written in imitation of Shakspeare's manner;
but I see no reason to suppose that it was his, but
* [Act i. sc. 2.]
122
Beaumont and Fletcher.
the common tradition, which is however by no mean
well established. The subsequent acts are confessed]
Fletcher's, and the imitations of Shakspeare whic
occur there (not of Shakspeare's manner as differin
from his, but as it was congenial to his own spir
and feeling of nature) are glorious in themselves, an
exalt our idea of the great original which could giv
birth to such magnificent conceptions in another. Th
conversation of Palamon and Arcite in prison is of th
description: the outline is evidently taken from that
Guiderius, Arviragus, and Bellarius in Cymbeline, bu
filled up with a rich profusion of graces that make
his own again :
"Pal. How do you, noble cousin?
Arc.
How do you, sir?
Pal. Why, strong enough to laugh at misery,
And bear the chance of war yet. We are prisoners,
I fear for ever, cousin.
I believe it;
Arc.
And to that destiny have patiently
Laid up my hour to come.
Pal.
O, cousin Arcite,
Where is Thebes now? where is our noble country?
Where are our friends and kindreds?
Never more
Must we behold those comforts; never see
The hardy youths strive for the games of honour,
Hung with the painted favours of their ladies,
Like tall ships under sail: then start amongst 'em,
And as an east wind, leave 'em all behind us
Like lazy clouds, whilst Palamon and Arcite,
Even in the wagging of a wanton leg,
Outstript the people's praises, won the garlands,
Ere they have time to wish 'em ours. O, never
Shall we two exercise, like twins of honour,
Our arms again, and feel our fiery horses,
Like proud seas under us! Our good swords now
(Better the red-eyed god of war ne'er wore)
Ravish'd our sides, like age, must run to rust,
And deck the temples of those gods that hate us:
These hands shall never draw 'em out like lightning,
To blast whole armies, more!

Beaumont and Fletcher.
123
Arc.
No, Palamon,
hose hopes are prisoners with us: here we are,
nd here the graces of our youth must wither,
ike a too-timely spring: here age must find us,
nd which is heaviest, Palamon, unmarried;
he sweet embraces of a loving wife
oaden with kisses, arm'd with thousand Cupids,
hall never clasp our necks! No issue know us,
o figures of ourselves shall we e’er see,
o glad our age, and like young eaglets teach 'em
oldly to gaze against bright arms, and say,
emember what your fathers were, and conquer !
he fair-eyed maids shall weep our banishments,
nd in their songs curse ever-blinded fortune,
ill she for shame see what a wrong she has done
o youth and nature. This is all our world :
e shall know nothing here, but one another;
ear nothing but the clock that tells our woes;
he vine shall grow, but we shall never see it;
ummer shall come, and with her all delights,
fut dead cold winter must inhabit here still.
Pal. 'Tis too true, Arcite. To our Theban hounds,
hat shook the aged forest with their echoes,
To more now must we halloo; no more shake
Our pointed javelins, while the angry swine
lies like a Parthian quiver from our rages,
tuck with our well-steel'd darts! All valiant uses
The food and nourishment of noble minds)
us two here shall perish: we shall die
Which is the curse of honour) lastly;
Children of grief and ignorance.
Arc.
Yet, cousin,
Even from the bottom of these miseries,
From all that fortune can inflict upon us,
see two comforts rising, two mere blessings,
If the gods please to hold here;-a brave patience,
And the enjoying of our griefs together.
Whilst Palamon is with me, let me perish,
If I think this our prison!
Pal.
Certainly,
Tis a main goodness, cousin, that our fortunes
Were twin'd together; 'tis most true, two souls
Put in two noble bodies, let 'em suffer
The gall of hazard, so they grow together,
124
Beaumont and Fletcher.
Will never sink; they must not; say they could,
A willing man dies sleeping, and all's done.
Arc. Shall we make worthy use of this place,
That all men hate so much?
Pal.
How, gentle cousin?
Arc. Let's think this prison a holy sanctuary
To keep us from corruption of worse men!
We're young, and yet desire the ways of honour:
That liberty and common conversation,
The poison of pure spirits might, like women,
Woo us to wander from. What worthy blessing
Can be, but our imaginations
May make it ours? And here, being thus together,
We are an endless mine to one another;
We're one another's wife, ever begetting
New births of love; we're father, friends, acquaintance;
We are, in one another, families;
I am your heir, and you are mine; this place
Is our inheritance; no hard oppressor
Dare take this from us; here, with a little patience,
We shall live long, and loving; no surfeits seek us :
The hand of war hurts none here, nor the seas
Swallow their youth. Were we at liberty,
A wife might part us lawfully, or business;
Quarrels consume us; envy of ill men
Grave our acquaintance; I might sicken, cousin,
Where you should never know it, and so perish
Without your noble hand to close mine eyes,
Or prayers to the gods; a thousand chances,
Were we from hence, would sever us.
Pal.
You've made me
(I thank you, cousin Arcite) almost wanton
With my captivity; what a misery
It is to live abroad, and every where ;
'Tis like a beast, methinks! I find the court here,
I'm sure, a more content; and all those pleasures,
That woo the wills of man to vanity,
I see thro' now and am sufficient
To tell the world 'tis but a gaudy shadow
That old time, as he passes by, takes with him.
What had we been, old in the court of Creon,
Where sin is justice, lust and ignorance
The virtues of the great ones? Cousin Arcite,
Had not the loving gods found this place for us,

Beaumont and Fletcher.
125
We had died as they do, ill old men, unwept,
nd had their epitaphs, the people's curses.
hall I say more?
Arc.
Pal.
I'd hear you still.
Ye shall.
there record of any two that lov'd
etter than we do, Arcite?
Arc.
Sure there cannot.
Pal. I do not think it possible our friendship
hould ever leave us.
Arc.
Till our deaths it cannot."*
Thus they "sing their bondage freely:" but just then
hters Emilia, who parts all this friendship between
hem, and turns them to deadliest foes.
The jailor's daughter, who falls in love with Palamon,
and goes mad, is a wretched interpolation in the story,
and a fantastic copy of Ophelia. But they readily
vailed themselves of all the dramatic common-places
to be found in Shakspeare, love, madness, processions,
sports, imprisonment, &c., and copied him too often in
earnest, to have a right to parody him, as they some-
imes did, in jest. The story of the Two Noble Kins-
nen is taken from Chaucer's Palamon and Arcite;†
out the latter part, which in Chaucer is full of dramatic
power and interest, degenerates in the play into a mere
arrative of the principal events, and possesses little
alue or effect. It is not improbable that Beaumont
nd Fletcher, having dramatised this story, put Dryden
pon modernising it.
I cannot go through all Beaumont and Fletcher's
Iramas (fifty-two in number), but I have mentioned
ome of the principal, and the excellences and defects
f the rest may be judged of from these. The Bloody
Brother, A Wife for a Month, Bonduca, Thierry and
* [Act ii. sc. 1.]
+ Which is again, from the Theseide of Boccaccio.—ED.

126
Beaumont and Fletcher.
Theodoret, are among the best of their tragedies: amon
the comedies, the Night Walker, the Little French Lawyer
and Monsieur Thomas, come perhaps next to the Chances
The Wild Goose Chase, and Rule a Wife and Have a Wife
Philaster, or Love Lies a Bleeding, is one of the most ad
mirable productions of these authors (the last I shall
mention); and the patience of Euphrasia, disguised a
Bellario, the tenderness of Arethusa, and the jealous
of Philaster, are beyond all praise. The passages
extreme romantic beauty and high-wrought passion tha
I might quote, are out of number. One only must suff
fice-the account of the commencement of Euphrasia:
love to Philaster:
(6
Sitting in my window,
Printing my thoughts in lawn, I saw a god,
I thought (but it was you) enter our gates;
My blood flew out, and back again, as fast
As I had puffed it forth and suck'd it in
Like breath; then was I called away in haste
To entertain you. Never was a man
Heav'd from a sheep-cote to a sceptre, rais'd
So high in thoughts as I: you left a kiss
Upon these lips then, which I mean to keep
From you for ever. I did hear you talk
Far above singing !”*
And so it is our poets themselves write,
"far above
singing." I am loth to part with them, and wande
down, as we now must,
"Into a lower world, to theirs obscure
And wild to breathe in other air
:
Less pure, accustomed to immortal fruits.”
* [Act v. sc. 5.]
† Euphrasia as the Page, just before speaking of her life, whicl
Philaster threatens to take from her, says:
""Tis not a life;
"Tis but a piece of childhood thrown away."
What exquisite beauty and delicacy!
Ben Jonson.
127
Ben Jonson's serious productions are, in my opinion,
uperior to his comic ones. What he does, is the result
f strong sense and painful industry; but sense and in-
ustry agree better with the grave and severe, than
ith the light and gay productions of the Muse. "His
ays were works,” as some one said of them, “while
hers' works were plays." The observation had less
compliment than of truth in it. He may be said to
ine his way into a subject, like a mole, and throws up
prodigious quantity of matter on the surface, so that
he richer the soil in which he labours, the less dross
nd rubbish we have. His fault is, that he sets himself
o much to his subject, and cannot let go his hold of
n idea, after the insisting on it becomes tiresome or
ainful to others. But his tenaciousness of what is
rand and lofty is more praiseworthy than his delight
n what is low and disagreeable. His pedantry accords
etter with didactic pomp than with illiterate and vul-
car gabble; his learning, engrafted on romantic tradition
r classical history, looks like genius:
(
'Miraturque novas frondes et non sua poma.”
He was equal, by an effort, to the highest things, and
ook the same, and even more successful pains to grovel
o the lowest. He raised himself up or let himself down
o the level of his subject, by ponderous machinery.
by dint of application, and a certain strength of nerve,
e could do justice to Tacitus and Sallust no less than
o mine Host of the New Inn. His tragedy of the Fall
f Sejanus, in particular, is an admirable piece of ancient
1osaic. The principal character gives one the idea of a
ofty column of solid granite, nodding to its base from
is pernicious height, and dashed in pieces by a breath
f air, a word of its creator-feared, not pitied, scorned,
nwept, and forgotten. The depth of knowledge and
ravity of expression sustain one another throughout :

128
Ben Jonson.
the poet has worked out the historian's outline, so tha
the vices and passions, the ambition and servility d
public men in the heated and poisoned atmosphere o
a luxurious and despotic court, were never describe
in fuller or more glowing colours. I am half afraid
give any extracts, lest they should be tortured into a
application to other times and characters than thos
referred to by the poet. Some of the sounds, indeed
may bear (for what I know) an awkward construction
some of the objects may look double to squint-eyed sus
picion. But that is not my fault. It only proves, tha
the characters of prophet and poet are implied in eac]
other; that he who describes human nature well once
describes it for good and all, as it was, is, and, I begiļı
to fear, will ever be. Truth always was, and mus
always remain a libel to the tyrant and the slave
Thus Satrius Secundus and Pinnarius Natta, two publi
informers in those days, are described as
"Two of Sejanus' blood-hounds, whom he breeds
With human flesh, to bay at citizens."
But Rufus, another of the same well-bred gang, debating
the point of his own character with two senators whon
he has entrapped, boldly asserts, in a more, courtly
strain :
"To be a spy on traitors,
Is honourable vigilance."
This sentiment of the respectability of the employ
ment of a government spy, which had slept in Tacitu
for near two thousand years, has not been without it:
modern patrons. The effects of such “honourable vigi
lance" are very finely exposed in the following high
spirited dialogue between Lepidus and Arruntius, tw
noble Romans, who loved their country, but were no
fashionable enough to confound their country with it
oppressors, and the extinguishers of its liberty :

Ben Jonson.
129
"Arr. What are thy arts, good patriot, teach them me.
That have preserv'd thy hairs to this white dye,
And kept so reverend and so dear a head
Safe on his comely shoulders?
Lep. Arts, Arruntius !
None but the plain and passive fortitude
To suffer and be silent; never stretch
These arms against the torrent; live at home,
With my own thoughts and innocence about me,
Not tempting the wolves' jaws these are my arts.
Arr. I would begin to study 'em, if I thought
They would secure me. May I pray to Jove
In secret, and be safe? aye, or aloud?
With open wishes? so I do not mention
Tiberius or Sejanus? Yes, I must,
If I speak out. 'Tis hard that. May I think,
And not be rack'd? What danger is't to dream?
Talk in one's sleep, or cough? Who knows the law?
May I shake my head without a comment? Say
It rains, or it holds up, and not be thrown
Upon the Gemonies? These now are things,
Whereon men's fortune, yea, their fate depends:
Nothing hath privilege 'gainst the violent ear.
No place, no day, no hour, we see, is free,
Not our religious and most sacred times,
From some one kind of cruelty; all matter,
Nay all occasion, pleaseth. Madmen's rage,
The idleness of drunkards, women's nothing,
Jester's simplicity, all, all is good
That can be catch'd at."*
"Tis a pretty picture; and the duplicates of it, though
nultiplied without end, are seldom out of request.
The following portrait of a prince besieged by flat-
erers (taken from Tiberius) has unrivalled force and
beauty, with historic truth:
"If this man
Had but a mind allied unto his words,
How blest a fate were it to us and Rome?
Men are deceived, who think there can be thrall
* [Act iv. sc. 5.]
K

130
Ben Jonson.
Under a virtuous prince. Wish'd liberty
Ne'er lovelier looks than under such a crown.
But when his grace is merely but lip-good,
And that, no longer than he airs himself
Abroad in public, there to seem to shun
The strokes and stripes of flatterers, which within
Are lechery unto him, and so feed
His brutish sense with their afflicting sound,
As (dead to virtue) he permits himself
Be carried like a pitcher by the ears
To every act of vice; this is a case
Deserves our fear, and both presage the nigh
And close approach of bloody tyranny.
Flattery is midwife unto princes' rage:
And nothing sooner doth help forth a tyrant
Than that, and whisperers' grace, that have the time,
The place, the power, to make all men offenders ?”
The only part of this play in which Ben Jonson
has completely forgotten himself (or rather seems no
to have done so), is in the conversations betwee
Livia and Eudemus, about a wash for her face, her
called a fucus, to appear before Sejanus. Catiline's Con
spiracy* does not furnish by any means an equa
number of striking passages, and is spun out to a
excessive length with Cicero's artificial and affecte
orations against Catiline, and in praise of himsel
His apologies for his own eloquence, and declaration
that in all his art he uses no art at all, put one i
mind of Polonius's circuitous way of coming to th
point. Both these tragedies, it might be observed
are constructed on the exact principles of a Frenc
historical picture, where every head and figure is bo
rowed from the antique; but somehow, the pre
cious materials of old Roman history and characte
are better preserved in Jonson's page than on David
canvas.
Two of the most poetical passages in Ben Jonson
* Printed in 1611, 4to.-ED.
Jonson-Massinger and Ford.
131
are the description of Echo in Cynthia's Revels,* and the
fine comparison of the mind to a temple, in the New
Inn,† a play which, on the whole, however, I can read
with no patience.

>"
I must hasten to conclude this Lecture with some ac-
count of Massinger and Ford, who wrote in the time of
Charles I. I am sorry I cannot do it con amore. The
writers of whom I have chiefly had to speak were true
poets, impassioned, fanciful, "musical as is Apollo's
ute;
but Massinger is harsh and crabbed, Ford finical
and fastidious. I find little in the works of these two
dramatists but a display of great strength or subtlety
of understanding, inveteracy of purpose, and perversity
of will. This is not exactly what we look for in poetry,
which, according to the most approved recipes, should
combine pleasure with profit, and not owe all its fascina-
tion over the mind to its power of shocking or perplex-
ing us. The Muses should attract by grace or dignity
of mien. Massinger makes an impression by hardness
and repulsiveness of manner.
In the intellectual pro-
cesses which he delights to describe, "reason panders
will;" he fixes arbitrarily on some object which there
is no motive to pursue, or every motive combined
against it, and then by screwing up his heroes or hero-
ines to the deliberate and blind accomplishment of this,
thinks to arrive at "the true pathos and sublime of
human life." That is not the way.
That is not the way. He seldom touches
the heart or kindles the fancy. It is in vain to hope to
excite much sympathy with convulsive efforts of the
will, or intricate contrivances of the understanding, to
* Printed in 1601, 4to.-ED.
+ Printed in 1631, 8vo. This was the play, of the faulty per-
formance of which Jonson so bitterly and loudly complained.—ED.
Massinger and Ford belong to the reign of James I. as well as
hat of his successor. Massinger published his Virgin Martyr in
1621, and Ford, his Fame's Memoriall and Honour Triumphant, in
1606.-ED.

132
Massinger and Ford.
obtain that which is better left alone, and where the
interest arises principally from the conflict between the
absurdity of the passion and the obstinacy with which
it is persisted in. For the most part, his villains are a
sort of lusus naturæ ; his impassioned characters are like
drunkards or madmen. Their conduct is extreme and
outrageous, their motives unaccountable and weak; their
misfortunes are without necessity, and their crimes
without temptation, to ordinary apprehensions. I do
not say that this is invariably the case in all Massinger's
scenes, but I think it will be found that a principle of
playing at cross-purposes is the ruling passion through
out most of them. This is the case in the tragedy of
the Unnatural Combat, in the Picture, the Duke of Milan,
A New Way to Pay Old Debts, and even in the Bondman,
and the Virgin Martyr, &c. In the Picture, Matthias
nearly loses his wife's affections, by resorting to the far-
fetched and unnecessary device of procuring a magical
portrait to read the slightest variation in her thoughts.
In the same play, Honoria risks her reputation and her
life to gain a clandestine interview with Matthias,
merely to shake his fidelity to his wife, and when she
has gained her object, tells the king, her husband, in
pure caprice and fickleness of purpose.
The Virgin
Martyr is nothing but a tissue of instantaneous conver-
sions to and from Paganism and Christianity. The
only scenes of any real beauty and tenderness in this
play, are those between Dorothea and Angelo, her
supposed friendless beggar-boy, but her guardian angel
in disguise, which are understood to be by Decker.
The interest of the Bondman turns upon two different
acts of penance and self-denial, in the persons of
the hero and heroine, Pisander and Cleora. In the
Duke of Milan (the most poetical of Massinger's produc-
tions), Sforza's resolution to destroy his wife, rather
than bear the thought of her surviving him, is as much
}
Massinger and Ford.
133
out of the verge of nature and probability, as it is un-
xpected and revolting, from the want of any circum
stances of palliation leading to it. It stands out alone,
pure piece of voluntary atrocity, which seems not
the dictate of passion, but a start of phrensy; as cold-
blooded in the execution as it is extravagant in the
conception.
Again, Francesco, in this play, is a person whose
ctions we are at a loss to explain till the conclusion of
he piece, when the attempt to account for them from
motives originally amiable and generous, only produces
a double sense of incongruity, and instead of satisfying
the mind, renders it totally incredulous. He endeavours
to seduce the wife of his benefactor; he then (failing)
attempts her death, slanders her foully, and wantonly
causes her to be slain by the hand of her husband, and
has him poisoned by a nefarious stratagem, and all this
to appease a high sense of injured honour, that “felt a
stain like a wound," and from the tender overflowings of
fraternal affection, his sister having, it appears, been
formerly betrothed to, and afterwards deserted by, the
Duke of Milan. Sir Giles Overreach is the most suc-
cessful and striking effort of Massinger's pen, and the
best known to the reader, but it will hardly be thought
to form an exception to the tenor of the above re-
marks.* The same spirit of caprice and sullenness sur-
* The following criticism on this play has appeared in another
publication [A View of the English Stage], but may be not impro-
perly inserted here :
"A New Way to Pay Old Debts is certainly a very admirable
play, and highly characteristic of the genius of its author, which
vas hard and forcible, and calculated rather to produce a strong
mpression than a pleasing one. There is considerable unity of design
and a progressive interest in the fable, though the artifice by which
the catastrophe is brought about (the double assumption of the
character of favoured lovers by Wellborn and Lovell) is somewhat
mprobable, and out of date; and the moral is peculiarly striking,

134
Massinger and Ford.
vives in Rowe's Fair Penitent, taken from this author's
Fatal Dowry.
because its whole weight falls upon one who all along prides himself
in setting every principle of justice and all fear of consequences at
defiance.
"The character of Sir Giles Overreach (the most prominent
feature of the play, whether in the perusal, or as it is acted) in
terests us less by exciting our sympathy than our indignation. W
hate him very heartily, and yet not enough; for he has strong
robust points about him that repel the impertinence of censure, and
he sometimes succeeds in making us stagger in our opinion of his
conduct, by throwing off any idle doubts or scruples that might
hang upon it in his own mind, 'like dew-drops from the lion's
mane.' His steadiness of purpose scarcely stands in need of support
from the common sanctions of morality, which he intrepidly breaks
through, and he almost conquers our prejudices by the consistent
and determined manner in which he braves them. Self-interest is
his idol, and he makes no secret of his idolatry: he is only a more
devoted and unblushing worshipper at this shrine than other men.
Self-will is the only rule of his conduct, to which he makes every
other feeling bend: or rather, from the nature of his constitution, he
has no sickly, sentimental obstacles to interrupt him in his head-
strong career. He is a character of obdurate self-will, without fan-
ciful notions or natural affections; one who has no regard to the
feelings of others, and who professes an equal disregard to their
opinions. He minds nothing but his own ends, and takes the
shortest and surest way to them. His understanding is clear-
sighted, and his passions strong-nerved. Sir Giles, is no flincher,
and no hypocrite; and he gains almost as much by the hardihood
with which he avows his impudent and sordid designs as others do
by their caution in concealing them. He is the demon of selfish-
ness personified; and carves out his way to the objects of his un-
principled avarice and ambition with an arm of steel, that strikes
but does not feel the blow it inflicts. The character of calculating,
systematic self-love, as the master-key to all his actions, is pre-
served with great truth of keeping and in the most trifling circum-
stances. Thus ruminating to himself, he says, 'I'll walk, to get
me an appetite: 'tis but a mile; and exercise will keep me from
being pursy! Yet to show the absurdity and impossibility of
a man's being governed by any such pretended exclusive regard
to his own interest, this very Sir Giles, who laughs at conscience,
and scorns opinion, who ridicules every thing as fantastical but

Massinger and Ford.
135
Ford is not so great a favourite with me as with some
thers, from whose judgment I dissent with diffidence.
ealth, solid, substantial wealth, and boasts of himself as having
een the founder of his own fortune, by his contempt for every
ther consideration is ready to sacrifice the whole of his enor-
ous possessions to what?-to a title, a sound, to make his
aughter right honourable,' the wife of a lord whose name he
nnot repeat without loathing, and in the end he becomes the
pe of, and falls a victim to, that very opinion of the world which
e despises !
The character of Sir Giles Overreach has been found fault with
as unnatural; and it may, perhaps, in the present refinement of our
manners, have become in a great measure obsolete. But we doubt
vhether even still, in remote and insulated parts of the country,
sufficient traces of the same character of wilful selfishness, mistak-
ng the inveteracy of its purposes for their rectitude, and boldly
ppealing to power as justifying the abuses of power, may not be
found to warrant this an undoubted original-probably a fac-simile
of some individual of the poet's actual acquaintance. In less
advanced periods of society than that in which we live, if we
except rank, which can neither be an object of common pursuit nor
mmediate attainment, money is the only acknowledged passport to
respect. It is not merely valuable as a security from want, but it is
he only defence against the insolence of power. Avarice is
harpened by pride and necessity. There are then few of the arts,
he amusements, and accomplishments that soften and sweeten life,
hat raise or refine it: the only way in which any one can be of
service to himself or another, is by his command over the gross
commodities of life; and a man is worth just so much as he has.
Where he who is not 'lord of acres' is looked upon as a slave and
beggar, the soul becomes wedded to the soil by which its worth is
neasured, and takes root in it in proportion to its own strength and
tubbornness of character. The example of Wellborn may be cited
n illustration of these remarks. The loss of his land makes all
the difference between young master Wellborn' and 'rogue
Wellborn; and the treatment he meets with in this latter capacity
s the best apology for the character of Sir Giles. Of the two it is
better to be the oppressor than the oppressed.
Massinger, it is true, dealt generally in extreme characters, as
vell as in very repulsive ones. The passion is with him wound up
o its height at first, and he never lets it down afterwards. It does
not gradually arise out of previous circumstances, nor is it modified

136
Massinger and Ford.
It has been lamented that the play of his which ha
been most admired ('Tis Pity She's a Whore) had not
less exceptionable subject. I do not know, but I sus
pect that the exceptionableness of the subject is tha
which constitutes the chief merit of the play. The re
by other passions. This gives an appearance of abruptness
violence, and extravagance to all his plays. Shakspeare's characte
act from mixed motives, and are made what they are by variou
circumstances. Massinger's characters act from single motives, an
become what they are, and remain so, by a pure effort of the wi
in spite of circumstances. This last author endeavoured to embod
an abstract principle; labours hard to bring out the same in
dividual trait in its most exaggerated state; and the force of hi
impassioned characters arises, for the most part, from the obstinac
with which they exclude every other feeling. Their vices look o
a gigantic stature from their standing alone. Their actions/seer
extravagant from their having always the same fixed aim-th
same incorrigible purpose. The fault of Sir Giles Overreach, i
this respect, is less in the excess to which he pushes a favourit
propensity, than in the circumstance of its being unmixed with an
other virtue or vice.
1

"We may find the same simplicity of dramatic conception in th
comic as in the tragic characters of the author. Justice Greed
has but one idea or subject in his head throughout. He is alway
eating, or talking of eating. His belly is always in his mouth, an
we know nothing of him but his appetite; he is as sharpset a
travellers from off a journey. His land of promise touches on th
borders of the wilderness: his thoughts are constantly in apprehen
sion of feasting or famishing. A fat turkey floats before his imagin
ation in royal state, and his hunger sees visions of chines of bee
venison pasties, and Norfolk dumplings, as if it were seized with
calenture. He is a very amusing personage; and in what relates t
eating and drinking, as peremptory as Sir Giles himself. Marra
is another instance of confined comic humour, whose ideas neve
wander beyond the ambition of being the implicit drudge of ar
other's knavery or good fortune. He sticks to his stewardship, an
resists the favour of a salute from a fine lady as not entered in h
accounts. The humour of this character is less striking in th
The other character
play than in Munden's personification of it.
do not require any particular analysis. They are very insipid, goo
sort of people."

Massinger and Ford.
137
pulsiveness of the story is what gives it its critical in-
terest; for it is a studiously prosaic statement of facts,
and naked declaration of passions. It was not the least
of Shakspeare's praise, that he never tampered with
unfair subjects. His genius was above it; his taste kept
aloof from it. I do not deny the power of simple paint-
ing and polished style in this tragedy in general, and of
a great deal more in some few of the scenes, particularly
in the quarrel between Annabella and her husband,
which is wrought up to a pitch of demoniac scorn and
phrensy with consummate art and knowledge; but I do
not find much other power in the author (generally
speaking) than that of playing with edged tools, and
knowing the use of poisoned weapons. And what con-
firms me in this opinion is the comparative inefficiency
of his other plays. Except the last scene of the Broken
Heart (which I think extravagant-others may think it
sublime, and be right) they are merely exercises of style
and effusions of wire-drawn sentiment. Where they
have not the sting of illicit passion, they are quite point-
less, and seem painted on gauze, or spun of cobwebs.
The affected brevity and division of some of the lines
into hemistichs, &c., so as to make in one case a mathe-
matical staircase of the words and answers given to
different speakers,* is an instance of frigid and ridicu-
lous pedantry. An artificial elaborateness is the general
characteristic of Ford's style. In this respect his plays
resemble Miss Baillie's more than any others I am
* "Ithocles. Soft peace enrich this room.
Orgilus.
How fares the lady?
Philema. Dead!
Christalla.
Dead!
Philema.
Starv'd!
Christalla.
Stary'd!
Ithocles.
Me miserable !"
[This is not so printed in the original 4to of 1633; the modern
editors are responsible for the "mathematical staircase."-ED.]

138
Massinger and Ford.
acquainted with, and are quite distinct from the ex-
uberance and unstudied force which characterised his
immediate predecessors. There is too much of scholastic
subtlety, an innate perversity of understanding or pre-
dominance of will, which either seeks the irritation of
inadmissible subjects, or to stimulate its own faculties
by taking the most barren, and making something out
of nothing, in a spirit of contradiction. He does not
draw along with the reader: he does not work upon our
sympathy, but on our antipathy or our indifference;
and there is as little of the social or gregarious principle
in his productions as there appears to have been in his
personal habits, if we are to believe Sir John Suckling,
who says of him in the Sessions of the Poets:
"In the dumps John Ford alone by himself sat
With folded arms and melancholy hat."
I do not remember without considerable effort the
plot or persons of most of his plays: Perkin Warbeck,
The Lover's Melancholy, Love's Sacrifice, and the rest.
There is little character, except of the most evanescent
or extravagant kind (to which last class we may refer
that of the sister of Calantha in the Broken Heart)—
little imagery or fancy, and no action. It is but fair,
however, to give a scene or two, in illustration of these
remarks (or in confutation of them, if they are wrong),
and I shall take the concluding one of the Broken Heart,
which is held up as the author's masterpiece:
"Scene II. A Room in the Palace. Loud Music.
Enter Groneas and Hemophil, leading Euphranea: Christalla and
Philema, leading Prophilus: Nearchus supporting Calantha,
Crotolon, and Amelus; cease loud music: all make a stand.
Cal. We miss our servants, Ithocles and Orgilus; on whom at-
tend they?
Crot. My son, gracious princess,
Whisper'd some new device, to which these revels

Ford's "Broken Heart.”
139
hould be but usher: wherein I conceive
Lord Ithocles and he himself are actors.
Cal. A fair excuse for absence. As for Bassanes,
Delights to him are troublesome. Armostes
s with the king?
Crot.
Cal.
He is.
On to the dance!
Dear cousin, hand you with the bride: the bridegroom must be
Entrusted to my courtship. Be not jealous,
Euphranea; I shall scarcely prove a temptress.
Fall to our dance!
[Music. Nearchus dances with Euphranea, Prophilus
with Calantha, &c., Dance the first change, during
which enter Armostes.]
Arm. [In Calantha's ear.] The king your father's dead.
Cal. To the other change.

Arm.
Is't possible?
Dance again: Enter Bassanes.
Bass. [In a whisper to Calantha.] O Madam,
Penthea, poor Penthea's starv'd.
Cal. Beshrew thee!
Lead to the next!
Bass. Amazement dulls my senses.
Dance again: Enter Orgilus.
Org. Brave Ithocles is murder'd, murder'd cruelly.
[Aside to Calantha.
Cal. How dull this music sounds! Strike up more sprightly :
Our footings are not active like our heart,*
Which treads the nimbler measure.
Org. I am thunderstruck.
Last change: Cease music.
Cal. So; let us breathe awhile.
Hath not this motion
Rais'd fresher colours on your cheeks?
Near. Sweet princess,
A perfect purity of blood enamels
The beauty of your white.
Cal. We all look cheerfully:
And, cousin, 'tis, methinks, a rare presumption
In any who prefers our lawful pleasures
High as our heart."-Sec passage from the Malcontent.
140
Ford's "Broken Heart.”
Before their own sour censure, to interrupt
The custom of this ceremony bluntly.
Near. None dares, lady.
Cal. Yes, yes; some hollow voice deliver'd to me
How that the king was dead.
Arm. The king is dead," &c. &c.*
This, I confess, appears to me to be tragedy in mas-
querade. Nor is it, I think, accounted for, though it
may be in part redeemed by her solemn address at the
altar to the dead body of her husband:
"Cal. Forgive me. Now I turn to thee, thou shadow
Of my contracted lord! Bear witness all,
I put my mother's wedding-ring upon
His finger; 'twas my father's last bequest :

[Places a ring on the finger of Ithocles.†
Thus I new marry him, whose wife I am:
Death shall not separate us. O my lords,
I but deceiv'd your eyes with antic gesture,
When one news straight came huddling on another
Of death, and death, and death: still I danc'd forward;
But it struck home and here, and in an instant.
Be such mere women who, with shrieks and outcries
Can vow a present end to all their sorrows,
Yet live to vow new pleasures, and outlive them.
They are the silent griefs which cut the heartstrings :
Let me die smiling.
Near. "Tis a truth too ominous.
Cal. One kiss on these cold lips-my last : crack, crack:
Argos, now Sparta's king, command the voices
Which wait at th' altar, now to sing the song
I fitted for my end."
And then, after the song, she dies.
This is the true false gallop of sentiment: any thing
more artificial and mechanical I cannot conceive. The
boldness of the attempt, however, the very extravagance,
might argue the reliance of the author on the truth of
* [Sigs. I 4 and K, edit. 1633.]
† [Not in the old copy.]
[Sig. K 3, edit. 1633.]

Ford compared with Marston.
14:
feeling prompting him to hazard it; but the whole scene
s a forced transposition of that already alluded to in
Marston's Malcontent. Even the form of the stage direc-
tions is the same:
Enter Mendozo supporting the Duchess; Guerrino; the Ladies that
are on the stage rise. Ferrardo ushers in the Duchess; then takes
a Lady to tread a measure.
Aurelia. We will dance: music: we will dance.
Aur. Music, music!
Enter Prepasso.
Pre. Who saw the Duke? the Duke ?
Aurelia. Music.
Enter Equato.
Prepasso. The Duke? is the Duke returned?
Aurelia. Music.
Enter Celso.
The Duke is quite invisible, or else is not.
Aurelia. We are not pleased with your intrusion upon our private
retirement; we are not pleased: you have forgot yourselves.
Enter a Page.
Celso. Boy, thy master? where's the Duke?
Page. Alas, I left him burying the earth with his spread joyless
limbs; he told me he was heavy, would sleep: bid me walk off, for
the strength of fantasy oft made him talk in his dreams: I straight
obeyed, nor ever saw him since; but wheresoe'er he is, he's sad.
Aurelia. Music, sound high, as is our heart, sound high.
Enter Malevole and her Husband, disguised like a Hermit.
Malevole. The Duke, peace! the Duke is dead.
Aurelia. Music !"*
The passage in Ford appears to me an ill-judged copy
from this. That a woman should call for music, and
dance on in spite of the death of her husband whom she
hates, without regard to common decency, is but too
possible that she should dance on with the same heroic
:
* [Marston's Works, 1856, ii. 260-1 (Act iv. sc. 2 and 3).]

142
John Ford, &c.
perseverance in spite of the death of her husband, of her
father, and of every one else whom she loves, from re-
gard to common courtesy or appearance, is not surely
natural. The passions may silence the voice of hu
manity, but it is, I think, equally against probability
and decorum to make both the passions and the voice of
humanity give way (as in the example of Calantha) to
a mere form of outward behaviour. Such a suppression
of the strongest and most uncontrollable feelings can
only be justified from necessity, for some great purpose!
which is not the case in Ford's play; or it must be done
for the effect and éclat of the thing, which is not fortit
tude, but affectation. Mr. Lamb in his impressive
eulogy on this passage in the Broken Heart has failed (as
far as I can judge) in establishing the parallel between
this uncalled-for exhibition of stoicism, and the story of
the Spartan Boy.
1
It may be proper to remark here, that most of the
great men of the period I have treated of (except the
greatest of all, and one other) were men of classical
education. They were learned men in an unlettered
age; not self-taught men in a literary and critical age.
This circumstance should be taken into the account in
a theory of the dramatic genius of that age. Except
Shakspeare, nearly all of them, indeed, came up from
Oxford or Cambridge, and immediately began to write
for the stage. No wonder. The first coming up to
London in those days must have had a singular effect
upon a young man of genius, almost like visiting Baby-
lon or Susa, or a journey to the other world. The stage
(even as it then was), after the recluseness and austerity
of a college life, must have appeared like Armida's en-
chanted palace, and its gay votaries like
Fairy elves beyond the Indian mount,
Whose midnight revels, by a forest-side
Or fountain, some belated peasant sees,

John Ford, &c.
143
Or dreams he sees; while overhead the moon
Sits arbitress, and nearer to the earth
Wheels her pale course: they on their mirth and dance
Intent, with jocund music charm his ear:
At once with joy and fear his heart rebounds."
So our young novices must have felt when they first
saw the magic of the scene, and heard its siren sounds
with rustic wonder, and the scholar's pride: and the
joy that streamed from their eyes at that fantastic vision,
at that gaudy shadow of life, of all its business and all
its pleasures, and kindled their enthusiasm to join the
mimic throng, still has left a long lingering glory behind
t; and though now" deaf the praised ear, and mute the
tuneful tongue," lives in their eloquent page, "informed
with music, sentiment, and thought, never to die!”
}

( 144 )
LECTURE V.
"THE
ON SINGLE PLAYS, POEMS, ETC.; THE FOUR P'S;"
RETURN FROM PARNASSUS;' GAMMER GURTON'S NEEDLE
AND OTHER WORKS.
1
99 66
I SHALL, in this Lecture, turn back to give some ad-
count of single plays, poems, &c.; the authors of which
are either not known or not very eminent, and the pro
ductions themselves, in general, more remarkable for
their singularity, or as specimens of the style and man
ners of the age, than for their intrinsic merit or poética.
excellence. There are many more works of this kind
however, remaining, than I can pretend to give an ac
count of; and what I shall chiefly aim at will be to ex
cite the curiosity of the reader, rather than to satisfy it.
The Four P's is an interlude, or comic dialogue, ir
verse, between a Palmer, a Pardoner, an Apothecary
and a Pedlar, in which each exposes the tricks of his
own and his neighbours' profession, with much humou
and shrewdness. It was written by John Heywood the
Epigrammatist, who flourished chiefly in the reign o
Henry VIII., was the intimate friend of Sir Thomas
More, with whom he seems to have had a congenia
spirit, and died abroad, in consequence of his devotion
to the Roman Catholic cause, about the year 1580.*
His zeal, however, on this head, does not seem to have
* The author incorrectly, but according to the general opinio
current fifty years ago, wrote "1565;" but it is now known tha
Heywood was living, at all events, in 1576. See Mr. Collier's Biblic
graphical Catalogue, 1865, i. 370-1.-—ED.
John Heywood.
145
blinded his judgment, or to have prevented him from
using the utmost freedom and severity in lashing the
abuses of Popery, at which he seems to have looked
"with the malice of a friend." The Four P's bears the
date of 1547.* It is very curious, as an evidence both
of the wit, the manners, and opinions of the time. Each
of the parties in the dialogue gives an account of the
boasted advantages of his own particular calling, that is,
of the frauds which he practises on credulity and igno-
rance, and is laughed at by the others in turn. In fact,
they all of them strive to outbrave each other, till the
contest becomes a jest, and it ends in a wager who shall
tell the greatest lie; when the prize is adjudged to him
who says, that he had found a patient woman.† The
common superstitions (here recorded) in civil and re-
ligious matters, are almost incredible; and the chopped
logic, which was the fashion of the time, and which
comes in aid of the author's shrewd and pleasant sallies
to expose them, is highly entertaining. Thus the
Pardoner, scorning the Palmer's long pilgrimages and
circuitous road to heaven, flouts him to his face, and
vaunts his own superior pretensions :
"Pard. By the first part of this last tale,
It seemeth ye came of late from the ale:
For reason on your side so far doth fail,
That you leave reasoning, and begin to rail.
Wherein you forget your own part clearly,
For you be as untrue as I
:
But in one point ye are beyond me,
For you may lie by authority,
And all that have wandered so far,
That no man can be their controller.
And where you esteem your labour so much,
* The first edition bears no date at all, nor does the second; but
the former is supposed to have appeared about the period named in
the text. There is one old impression dated 1569.—ED.
† Or never known one otherwise than patient.
L
Un

146
John Heywood.
I say yet again, my pardons are such,
That if there were a thousand souls on a heap,
I would bring them all to heaven as good sheep,
As ye have brought yourself on pilgrimage,
In the last quarter of your voyage,
Which is far a this side heaven, by God:
There your labour and pardon is odd.
With small cost without any pain,
These pardons bring them to heaven plain;
Give me but a penny or two pence,
And as soon as the soul departeth hence,
In half an hour, or three quarters at the most,
The soul is in heaven with the Holy Ghost.”*
The Poticary does not approve of this arrogance of
the Friar, and undertakes, in mood and figure, to prove
them both “false knaves." It is he, he says, who sends
most souls to heaven, and who ought, therefore, to have
the credit of it:
"No soul, ye know, entereth heaven gate,
"Till from the body he be separate:
And whom have ye known die honestly,
Without help of the apothecary?
Nay, all that cometh to our handling,
Except ye hap to come to hanging.
Since of our souls the multitude
I send to heaven, when all is view'd
Who should but I then altogether
•

Have thank of all their coming thither ?"
The Pardoner here interrupts him captiously:
"If ye kill'd a thousand in an hour's space,
When come they to heaven, dying out of grace?"‡
But the Poticary, not so baffled, retorts:
"If a thousand pardons about your necks were tied;
When come they to heaven, if they never died?
*
* [Reprint of Middleton's edit. apud Ancient British Drama,
1810, i. 8-9.]
† [Ibid. p. 9.]
‡ [Ibid.]
Heywood's "Four P's."
147
But when ye feel your conscience ready,
I can send you to heaven very quickly." *
The Pedlar finds out the weak side of his new com-
anions, and tells them very bluntly, on their referring
heir dispute to him, a piece of his mind:

now have I found one mastery,
That ye can do indifferently;
And it is neither selling nor buying,
But even only very lying."
At this game of imposture, the cunning dealer in pins
nd laces undertakes to judge their merits; and they
ccordingly set to work like regular graduates. The
ardoner takes the lead, with an account of the virtues
f his relics; and here we may find a plentiful mixture
f Popish superstition and indecency. The bigotry of
ny age is by no means a test of its piety, or even sin-
erity. Men seemed to make themselves amends for the
hormity of their faith by levity of feeling, as well as
y laxity of principle; and in the indifference or ridi-
le with which they treated the wilful absurdities and
xtravagances to which they hoodwinked their under-
tandings, almost resembled children playing at blind-
Jan's buff, who grope their way in the dark, and make
Lunders on purpose to laugh at their own idleness and
lly. The sort of mummery at which Popish bigotry
sed to play at the time when this old comedy was
ritten, was not quite so harmless as blind-man's buff:
hat was sport to her, was death to others. She
ughed at her own mockeries of common sense and true
ligion, and murdered while she laughed. The tragic
rce was no longer to be borne, and it was partly put
1 end to. At present, though her eyes are blind-
* Reprint of Middleton's edit. apud Ancient British Drama,
10, i. 9–12.
Up
148
Heywood's "Four P's.”

folded, her hands are tied fast behind her, like the false
Duessa's. The sturdy genius of modern philosophy has
got her in much the same situation that Count Fathom
has the old woman that he lashes before him from the
robbers' cave in the forest. In the following dialogue
of this lively satire, the most sacred mysteries of the
Catholic faith are mixed up with its idlest legends by
old Heywood, who was a martyr to his religious zeal,
without the slightest sense of impropriety. The Par-
doner cries out in one place (like a lusty Friar John, or
a trusty Friar Onion):
!!
Lo, here be pardons half a dozen,
For ghostly riches they have no cousin ;
And moreover, to me they bring
Sufficient succour for my living.
And here be relics of such a kind,
As in this world no man can find.
Kneel down all three, and when ye leave kissing,
Who list to offer shall have my blissing.
Friends, here shall ye see even anon
Of All-Hallows the blessed jaw-bone.
Mark well this, this relic here is a whipper;
My friends unfeigned, here is a slipper
Of one of the seven sleepers, be sure.—
Here is an eye-tooth of the great Turk:
Whose eyes be once set on this piece of work,
May happily lose part of his eye-sight,
But not all till he be blind outright.
Pot. This kiss shall bring us much promotion:
Fogh, by St. Saviour I never kiss'd a worse.
*
*
For by All-Hallows, yet methinketh,
That All-Hallows' breath stinketh.
Palm. Ye judge All-Hallows, breath unknown:
If any breath stink, it is your own.
Pot. I know mine own breath from All-Hallows,
Or else it were time to kiss the gallows.
Pard. Nay, sirs, behold, here may ye see
The great toe of the Trinity;
Who to this toe any money voweth,
And once may roll it in his mouth,
Heywood's "Four P's."
149
All his life after, I undertake,
He shall never be vex'd with the tooth-ache.
Pot. I pray you turn that relic about;
Either the Trinity had the gout ;
Or else, because it is three toes in one,
God made it as much as three toes alone.
Pard. Well, let that pass, and look upon this :
Here is a relic that doth not miss
To help the least as well as the most:
This is a buttock-bone of Pentecost.
*
Here is a box full of humble bees,
That stung Eve as she sat on her knees
Tasting the fruit to her forbidden:
Who kisseth the bees within this hidden,
Shall have as much pardon of right,
•
As for any relic he kiss'd this night.
Good friends, I have yet here in this glass,
Which on the drink at the wedding was
Of Adam and Eve undoubtedly:
If ye honour this relic devoutly,
Although ye thirst no whit the less,
Yet shall ye drink the more, doubtless.
After which drinking, ye shall be as meet
To stand on your head as on your feet."*
X
The same sort of significant irony runs through the
pothecary's knavish enumeration of miraculous cures
n his possession:
"For this medicine helpeth one and other,
And bringeth them in case that they need no other.
Here is a syrapus de Byzansis,
A little thing is enough of this;
For even the weight of one scrippal †
Shall make you as strong as a cripple.
These be the things that break all strife
Between man's sickness and his life.
From all pain these shall you deliver,
And set you even at rest for ever.
Here is a medicine no more like the same,
Which commonly is called thus by name.
* [Ubi suprà, p. 14.]
† i.e. scruple.
150
Heywood's "Four P's."
Not one thing here particularly,
But worketh universally ;
For it doth me as much good when I sell it,
As all the buyers that taste it, or smell it.
If any reward may entreat ye,
I beseech your mastership be good to me,
And ye shall have a box of marmalade,
So fine that you may dig it with a spade."*
After these quaint but pointed examples of it, Swift's
boast with respect to the invention of irony—
"Which I was born to introduce,
Refin❜d it first, and show'd its use
can be allowed to be true only in part.
The controversy between them being undecided, the
Apothecary, to clench his pretensions "as a liar of the
first magnitude," by a coup-de-grace, says to the Pedlar,
“ You are an honest man," but this home-thrust is somet
how ingeniously parried. The Apothecary and Pardoner
fall to their narrative vein again; and the latter tells &
story of fetching a young woman from the lower world,
from which I shall only give one specimen more as an
instance of ludicrous and fantastic exaggeration. By
the help of a passport from Lucifer, "given in the fur-
nace of our palace," he obtains a safe conduct from one
of the subordinate imps to his master's presence :
"This devil and I walked arm in arm
So far, 'till he had brought me thither,
Where all the devils of hell together
Stood in array in such apparel,
As for that day there meetly fell.
Their horns well gilt, their claws full clean,
Their tails well kempt, and as I ween,
With sothery butter their bodies anointed;
I never saw devils so well appointed.
The master-devil sat in his jacket,
And all the souls were playing at racket.
* [Ubi suprà, p. 15.]
Heywood's "Four P's.”
151
None other rackets they had in hand,
Save every soul a good fire-brand;
Wherewith they play'd so prettily,
That Lucifer laugh'd merrily,
And all the residue of the fiends
Did laugh thereat full well like friends.
But of my friend I saw no whit,
Nor durst not ask for her as yet.
Anon all this rout was brought in silence,
And I by an usher brought to presence
Of Lucifer; then low, as well [as] I could,
I kneeled, which he so well allow'd
That thus he beck'd, and by St. Antony
He smiled on me well-favour'dly,
Bending his brows as broad as barn-doors;
Shaking his ears as rugged as burrs;
Rolling his eyes as round as two bushels;
Flashing the fire out of his nostrils ;
Gnashing his teeth so vain-gloriously,
That methought time to fall to flattery,
Wherewith I told, as I shall tell:
O pleasant picture! O prince of hell!" &c.*

The piece concludes with some good wholesome ad-
vice from the Pedlar, who here, as well as in the poem
of the Excursion, performs the part of Old Morality;
but he does not seem, as in the latter case, to be ac-
quainted with the "mighty stream of Tendency." He
is more "full of wise saws than modern instances;" as
prosing, but less paradoxical:
"But where ye doubt, the truth not knowing,
Believing the best, good may be growing.
In judging the best, no harm at the least:
In judging the worst, no good at the best.
But best in these things it seemeth to me,
To make no judgment upon ye;
But as the church does judge or take them,
So do ye receive or forsake them.
And so be you sure you cannot err,
But may be a fruitful follower."
* [Ubi suprà, p. 18.]

152
"The Return from Parnassus."
Nothing can be clearer than this.
The Return from Parnassus was "first publicly acted,”
as the title-page imports, "by the Students in St.
John's College, in Cambridge.” * It is a very singular,
a very ingenious, and, as I think, a very interesting
performance. It contains criticisms on contemporary
authors, strictures on living manners, and the earliest
denunciation (I know of) of the miseries and unprofit-
ableness of a scholar's life. The only part I object to in
our author's criticism is his abuse of Marston; and that,
not because he says what is severe, but because he says
what is not true of him. Anger may sharpen our in-
sight into men's defects; but nothing should make us
blind to their excellences. The whole passage is, how-
ever, so curious in itself (like the Edinburgh Review
lately published for the year 1755) that I cannot forbear
quoting a great part of it. We find in the list of candi-
dates for praise many a name
"That like a trumpet, makes the spirits dance"
there are others that have long since sunk to the bottom
of the stream of time, and no Humane Society of Anti-
quarians and Critics is ever likely to fish them up again :
"Read the names,' says Judicio.
'Ingenioso. So I will, if thou wilt help me to censure them :
Edmund Spenser, Henry Constable, Thomas Lodge, Samuel Daniel,
Thomas Watson, Michael Drayton, John Davis,† John Marston,
Kit. Marlowe, William Shakspeare;' and one Churchyard [who is
consigned to an untimely grave]. Good men and true, stand to-
gether, hear your censure: what's thy judgment of Spenser?
Jud. A sweeter swan than ever sung in Po:
* In the lifetime of Queen Elizabeth; but it was not printed till
1606, when it was printed twice. It is to be found in the third
volume of Hawkins' "Origin of the English Drama, 1773."-Ed.
† John Davies, of Hereford.-ED.
"The Return from Parnassus.'
153
""
A shriller nightingale than ever blest
The prouder groves of self-admiring Rome.
Blithe was each valley, and each shepherd proud,
While he did chaunt his rural minstrelsy.
Attentive was full many a dainty ear:
Nay, hearers hung upon his melting tongue,
While sweetly of his Faëry Queen he sung;
While to the water's fall he tuned her fame,
And in each bark engrav'd Eliza's name.
{And yet for all, this unregarding soil
Unlaced the line of his desired life,
Denying maintenance for his dear relief;
Careless even to prevent his exequy,
Scarce deigning to shut up his dying eye.
Ing. Pity it is that gentler wits should breed,
Where thick-skinn'd chuffs laugh at a scholar's need.
But softly may our honour'd ashes rest,
That lie by merry Chaucer's noble chest.

But I pray thee proceed briefly in thy censure, that I may be
proud of myself, as in the first, so in the last, my censure may jump
with thine. Henry Constable, Samuel Daniel, Thomas Lodge,
Thomas Watson.
Jud. Sweet Constable doth take the wondering ear,
And lays it up in willing prisonment:
Sweet honey-dropping Daniel doth wage
War with the proudest big Italian,
That melts his heart in sugar'd sonnetting.
Only let him more sparingly make use
Of others' wit, and use his own the more,
That well may scorn base imitation.
For Lodge and Watson, men of some desert,
Yet subject to a critic's marginal:
Lodge for his oar in every paper boat,
He that turns over Galen every day,
To sit and simper Euphues' legacy.
Ing. Michael Drayton.

Jud. Drayton's sweet Muse is like a sanguine dye,
Able to ravish the rash gazer's eye.
Ing. However, he wants one true note of a poet of our times;
and that is this, he cannot swagger in a tavern, nor domineer in a
hot-house. John Davis-
Jud. Acute John Davis, I affect thy rhymes,
That jerk in hidden charms these looser times:
Thy plainer verse, thy unaffected vein,
154
"The Return from Parnassus."
Is graced with a fair and sweeping train.
John Marston-
•
Jud. What, Monsieur Kinsayder, put up, man, put up for shame!
Methinks he is a ruffian in his style,
Withouten bands or garters' ornament.
He quaffs a cup of Frenchman's helicon,
Then royster doyster in his oily terms
Cuts, thrusts, and foins at whomsoe'er he meets,
And strews about Ram-alley meditations.
Tut, what cares he for modest close-couch'd terms,
Cleanly to gird our looser liberties?
Give him plain naked words stript from their shirts,
That might beseem plain-dealing Aretine.
Ing. Christopher Marlowe-
Jud. Marlowe was happy in his buskin'd Muse;
Alas! unhappy in his life and end.
Pity it is that wit so ill should dwell,
Wit lent from heav'n, but vices sent from hell.
Ing. Our theatre hath lost, Pluto hath got
A tragic penman for a dreary plot.

Benjamin Jonson-
Jud. The wittiest fellow of a bricklayer in England.
Ing. A mere empiric, one that gets what he hath by observation,
and makes only nature privy to what he indites: so slow an inventor,
that he were better betake himself to his old trade of bricklaying, a
blood whoreson, as confident now in making of a book, as he was in
times past in laying of a brick. William Shakspeare-
Jud. Who loves Adonis' love, or Lucrece' rape,
His sweeter verse contains heart-robbing life,
Could but a graver subject him content,
Without love's foolish, lazy anguishment."*
This passage might seem to ascertain the date of the
piece, as it must be supposed to have been written be-
fore Shakspeare had become known as a dramatic poet.
Yet he afterwards introduces Kempe the actor talking
with Burbage, and saying, "Few (of the University)
pen plays well: they smell too much of that writer
Ovid, and of that writer Metamorphosis, and talk too
much of Proserpina and Jupiter. Why here's our fel-
* [Act i. sc. 2.]
"The Return from Parnassus."
155
{
low Shakspeare puts them all down; aye, and Ben
Jonson too."* There is a good deal of discontent in
all this; but the author complains of want of success in
a former attempt, and appears not to have been on good
terms with fortune. The miseries of a poet's life förm
one of the favourite topics of The Return from Par-
nassus, and are treated as if by some one who had "felt
them knowingly." Thus Philomusus and Studioso chaunt
their griefs in concert:
“Phil. Bann'd be those hours, when 'mongst the learned throng,
By Granta's muddy bank we whilom sung.
Stud. Bann'd be that hill which learned wits adore,
Where erst we spent our stock and little store.
Phil. Bann'd be those musty mews, where we have spent
Our youthful days in paled languishment.
Stud. Bann'd be those cozening arts that wrought our woe,
Making us wandering pilgrims to and fro.

• •
Phil. Curst be our thoughts whene'er they dream of hope;
Bann'd be those haps that henceforth flatter us,
When mischief dogs us still, and still for aye,
From our first birth until our burying day.
In our first gamesome age, our doting sires
Carked and car'd to have us lettered:
Sent us to Cambridge, where our oil is spent:
Us our kind college from the tea did tent,
And forced us walk before we weaned were.
From that time since wandered have we still
In the wide world, urg'd by our forced will;
Nor have we happy fortune tried;
Then why should hope with our rent state abide ?"†
"Out of our proof we speak." This sorry matter-of-
fact retrospect of the evils of a college life is very
different from the hypothetical aspirations after its
incommunicable blessings expressed by a living writer
of true genius and a lover of true learning, who does
not seem to have been cured of the old-fashioned preju-
dice in favour of classic lore, two hundred years after its
* [Act iv. sc. 3.]
† [Act ii. sc. 1, and Act iii. sc. 5.7
:
156
"The Return from Parnassus.”
vanity and vexation of spirit had been denounced in the
Return from Parnassus :
"I was not train'd in Academic bowers;
And to those learned streams I nothing owe,
Which copious from those fair twin founts do flow :
Mine have been any thing but studious hours.
Yet can I fancy, wandering 'mid thy towers,
Myself a nurseling, Granta, of thy lap.
My brow seems tightening with the doctor's cap;
And I walk gowned; feel unusual powers.
Strange forms of logic clothe my admiring speech;
Old Ramus' ghost is busy at my brain,
And my skull teems with notions infinite:
Be still, ye reeds of Camus, while I teach
Truths which transcend the searching schoolmen's vein
And half had stagger'd that stout stagyrite."*
Thus it is that our treasure always lies, where our
knowledge does not; and fortunately enough perhaps;
for the empire of imagination is wider and more prolific
than that of experience.
The author of the old play, whoever he was, appears
to have belonged to that class of mortals, who, as
Fielding has it, feed upon their own hearts; who are
egotists the wrong way, "made desperate by too quick
a sense of constant infelicity;" and have the same in-
tense uneasy consciousness of their own defects that
most men have self-complacency in their supposed ad-
vantages. Thus venting the driblets of his spleen still
upon himself, he prompts the Page to say,
"A mere
scholar is a creature that can strike fire in the morning
at his tinder-box, put on a pair of lined slippers, sit
reuming till dinner, and then go to his meat when the
bell rings; one that hath a peculiar gift in a cough, and
a licence to spit: or if you will have him defined by
negatives, he is one that cannot make a good leg,
one that cannot eat a mess of broth cleanly, one that
* Sonnet to Cambridge, by Charles Lamb.

"The Return from Parnassus."
157
cannot ride a horse without spur-galling, one that
cannot salute a woman, and look on her directly, one
that cannot
""
If I was not afraid of being tedious, I might here give
the examination of Signor Immerito, a raw ignorant
clown (whose father has purchased him a living) by Sir
Roderick and the Recorder, which throws considerable
light on the state of wit and humour, as well as of eccle-
siastical patronage in the reign of Elizabeth. It is to
be recollected, that one of the titles of this play is A
Scourge for Simony :

•
"Rec. For as much as Nature has done her part in making you a
handsome likely man . . . in the next place some art is re-
quisite for the perfection of Nature: for the trial whereof, at the
request of my worshipful friend, I will in some sort propound ques-
tions it to be resolved by one of your profession. Say, what is a
person that was never at the university?
Im. A person that was never in the university is a living creature
that can eat a tithe pig.
Rec. Very well answered; but you should have added—and must
be officious to his patron. Write down that answer, to show his
learning in logic.
Sir Rad. Yea, boy, write that down: very learnedly, in good faith.
I pray now let me ask you one question that I remember, whether is
the masculine gender or the feminine more worthy?
Im. The feminine, Sir.
Sir Rad. The right answer, the right answer. In good faith, I
have been of that mind always: write, boy, that to show he is a
grammarian.
Rec. What university are you of?
Im. Of none.
Sir Rad. He tells truth: to tell truth is an excellent virtue: boy,
make two heads, one for his learning, another for his virtues; and
refer this to the head of his virtues, not of his learning.
Now, Master Recorder, if it please you, I will examine him in an
author that will sound him to the depth; a book of astronomy,
otherwise called an almanack.
Rec. Very good, Sir Roderick: it were to be wished there were no
other book of humanity; then there would not be such busy state-
prying fellows as are now-a-days. Proceed, good sir.
Sir Rad. What is the dominical letter?
158
"The Return from Parnassus."
Im. C, sir, and please your worship.
Sir Rad. A very good answer, a very good answer, the very answer
of the book. Write down that, and refer it to his skill in philosophy.
How many days hath September?
Im. Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November,
February hath twenty-eight alone, and all the rest hath thirty and

one.
Sir Rad. Very learnedly, in good faith: he hath also a smack in
poetry. Write down that, boy, to show his learning in poetry. How
many miles from Waltham to London?
Im. Twelve, sir.
Sir Rad. How many from New Market to Grantham?
Im. Ten, sir.
Page. Without doubt, he hath been some carrier's horse. [Aside.
Sir Rad. How call you him that is cunning in 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and the
cipher ?
Im. A good arithmetician.
Sir Rad. Write down that answer of his, to show his learning
in arithmetic.
Page. He must needs be a good arithmetician that counted money
so lately.
Sir Rad. When is the new moon?
!
[Aside.
Im. The last quarter, the 5th day, at two of the clock, and thirty-
eight minutes in the morning.
Sir Rad. Write that down. How call you him that is weather-
wise?
Rec. A good astronomer.
Sir Rad. Sirrah, boy, write him down for a good astronomer.
Page. As colit astra.
[Aside.
Sir Rad. What day of the month lights the queen's day on?
Im. The 17th of November.
Sir Rad. Boy, refer this to his virtues, and write him down a good
subject.
Page. Faith, he were an excellent subject for two or three good
wits he would make a fine ass for an ape to ride upon. [Aside.
Sir Rad. And these shall suffice for the parts of his learning.
Now it remains to try, whether you be a man of a good utterance,
that is, whether you can ask for the strayed heifer with the white
face, as also chide the boys in the belfry, and bid the sexton whip
out the dogs: let me hear your voice.
Im. If any man or woman-
Sir Rad. That's too high.
Im. If any mau or woman—
Sir Rad. That's too low.
"Gammer Gurton's Needle."
159
Im. If any man or woman can tell any tidings of a horse with
ur feet, two ears, that did stray about the seventh hour, three
Inutes in the forenoon, the fifth day—
Page. I took off a horse just as it were the eclipse of the moon. [Aside.
Sir Rad. Boy, write him down for a good utterance. Master Re-
der, I think he hath been examined sufficiently.
Rec. Aye, Sir Roderick, 'tis so: we have tried him very tho-
ghly.
Page. Aye, we have taken an inventory of his good parts, and
zed them accordingly.
Sir Rad. Signor Immerito, forasmuch as we have made a double
1 of thee, the one of your learning, the other of your erudition: it
xpedient, also, in the next place, to give you a few exhortations,
sidering the greatest clerks are not the wisest men: this is there-
, first, to exhort you to abstain from controversies: secondly, not to
at men of worship, such as myself, but to use yourself discreetly:
rdly, not to speak when any man or woman coughs: do so, and in
doing, I will persevere to be your worshipful friend and loving
tron. . . . . Lead Immerito in to my son, and let him dispatch
m, and remember my tithes to be reserved, paying twelve pence
year."*
Gammer Gurton's Needle † is a still older and more
rious relic; and is a regular comedy in five acts, built
the circumstance of an old woman having lost her
edle, which throws the whole village into confusion,
1 it is at last providentially found sticking in an un-
cky part of Hodge's dress. This must evidently have
ppened at a time when the manufactures of Sheffield
d Birmingham had not reached the height of perfec-
on which they have at present done. Suppose that
ere is only one sewing-needle in a parish, that the
ner, a diligent notable old dame, loses it, that a
schief-making wag sets it about that another old
>man has stolen this valuable instrument of household

[Act iii. sc. 1.]
The name of Still has been assigned as the author of this sin-
ar production, with the date of 1566 [as the period of its original
formance. But the authorship of Still, who was afterwards a bishop,
very questionable. The drama was printed in 1575, 4to; it is re-
›lished by Hawkins, and in the last edition of Dodsley.—ED.]
160
"Gammer Gurton's Needle."
industry, that strict search is made everywhere in
doors for it in vain, and that then the incensed partie
sally forth to scold it out in the open air, till words en
in blows, and the affair is referred over to the highe
authorities, and we shall have an exact idea (thoug
perhaps not so lively a one) of what passes in th
authentic document between Gammer Gurton and h
Gossip Dame Chat, Dickon the Bedlam (the causer
these harms), Hodge, Gammer Gurton's servant, T
her maid, Cocke, her 'prentice boy, Doll, Scapethri
Master Baillie his master, Doctor Rat, the Curate, a
Gib the Cat, who may be fairly reckoned one of t
dramatis personce, and performs no mean part:
"Cocke. Gog's crosse, Gammer, if ye will laugh, look in but
the door,
And see how Hodge lieth tumbling and tossing amidst the floor.
Raking there, some fire to find among the ashes dead
[That is, to light a candle to look for the lost needle
Where there is not one spark so big as a pin's head :
At last in a dark corner two sparks he thought he sees,
Which were indeed nought else but Gib our cat's two eyés.
Puff, quoth Hodge; thinking thereby to have fire without doubt:
With that Gib shut her two eyes, and so the fire was/out;
And by and by them open'd, even as they were before,
With that the sparks appeared, even as they had done of yore:
And even as Hodge blew the fire, as he did think
Gib as he felt the blast, straightway began to wink:
Till Hodge fell of swearing, as came best to his turn;
The fire was sure bewitch'd, and therefore would not burn.
At last Gib up the stairs, among old posts and pins,
And Hodge he hied him after, till broke were both his shins;
Cursing and swearing oaths, were never of his making,
That Gib would fire the house, if that she were not taken."*
Dickon, the strolling beggar (or Bedlam, as he
called) steals a piece of bacon from behind Gamm
Gurton's door, and in answer to Hodge's complaint
being dreadfully pinched for hunger, asks:
* [Act i. sc. 5 (Dodsley's Old Plays, 1825, ii. 18-19).]


"Gammer Gurton's Needle."
161
Why Hodge, was there none at home thy dinner for to set?
Hodge. Gog's bread, Dickon, I came too late, was nothing there to
get:
Gib (a foul fiend might on her light) lick'd the milk-pan so clean :
See Dickon, 'twas not so well wash'd this seven year, I ween.
A pestilence light on all ill luck, chad thought yet for all this,
Of a morsel of bacon behind the door, at worst should not miss :
But when ich sought a slip to cut, as ich was won't to do,
Gog's souls, Dickon, Gib our cat had eat the bacon too."*
Hodge's difficulty in making Dickon understand what
the needle is which his dame has lost, shows his
superior acquaintance with the conveniences and
modes of abridging labour in more civilised life, of
which the other had no idea :
Hodge. Has she not gone, trowest now, thou, and lost her neele?
Dic. Her eel, Hodge! Who fished of late? That was a dainty
dish.
Hodge. Tush, tush, her neele, her neele, her neele, man, 'tis neither
flesh nor fish:
A little thing with a hole in the end, as bright as any siller;
Small, long, sharp at the point, and straight as any pillar.
Dic. I know not what a devil thou meanest, thou bring'st me more
in doubt.
Hodge. Know'st not with what Tom tailor's man sits broching
through a clout?
A neele, a neele, a neele, my Gammer's neele is gone."†
The rogue Dickon threatens to show Hodge a spirit;
but though Hodge runs away through pure fear before
it has time to appear, he does not fail, in the true spirit
of credulity, to give a faithful and alarming account of
what he did not see to his mistress, concluding with a
hit at the Popish clergy:
"By the mass, ich saw him of late call up a great black devil.
O, the knave cried, ho, ho: he roared and he thundered;
And ye❜ad been there, I am sure you'ld murrainly ha' wonder'd.
Gam. Wast not thou afraid, Hodge, to see him in this place?
* [Act i. sc. 5 (Dodsley's Old Plays, 1825, ii. 25-6).]
† Ibid. pp. 26-7.]
M

162
"Gammer Gurton's Needle."
Hodge. No, and chad come to me, could have laid him on the face
Chould have promised him.
Gam. But, Hodge, had he no horns to push ?
Hodge. As long as your two arms. Saw ye never Friar Rush,
Painted on a cloth, with a fine long cow's tail,
And crooked cloven feet, and many a hooked nail?
For all the world (if I should judge), chould reckon him his brother
Look even what face Friar Rush had, the devil had such another.'
He then adds (quite apocryphally) while he is in fo
it, that "the devil said plainly that Dame Chat had go
the needle," which makes all the disturbance.
The
same play contains the well-known good old song be
ginning and ending-
"Back and side, go bare, go bare,†
Both foot and hand go cold :
But belly, God send thee good ale enough,
Whether it be new or old.
I cannot eat but little meat,
My stomach is not good;
But sure I think, that I can drink
With him that wears a hood:
Though I go bare, take ye no care;
I am nothing a-cold:
I stuff my skin so full within
Of jolly good ale and old.
Back and side go bare, &c.
I love no roast, but a nut-brown toast,
And a crab laid in the fire:
A little bread shall do me stead,
Much bread I not desire.
No frost nor snow, no wind, I trow,
Can hurt me if I wolde,
I am so wrapt and thoroughly lapt
Of jolly good ale and old.
Back and side go bare, &c.
* [Act i. sc. 5 (Dodsley's Old Plays, 1825, ii. 45).]
†This song is older than the play in which it is inserted. The
late Mr. Dyce, in his edition of Skelton, 1843, has printed an earlie:
copy of it from a MS.-ED.
"Gammer Gurton's Needle."
163
And Tib, my wife, that as her life
Loveth well good ale to seek;
Full oft drinks she, till ye may see
The tears run down her cheek:
Then doth she troll to me the bowl,
Even as a malt-worm sholde :
And saith, sweetheart, I took my part
Of this jolly good ale and old.
Back and side go bare, go bare,
Both foot and hand grow cold:
But belly, God send thee good ale enough,
Whether it be new or old."*
Such was the wit, such was the mirth of our ances-
tors: homely, but hearty; coarse perhaps, but kindly.
Let no man despise it, for "Evil to him that evil
thinks." To think it poor and beneath notice because
it is not just like ours, is the same sort of hypercriticism
that was exercised by the person who refused to read
some old books, because they were "such very poor
spelling." The meagreness of their literary, or their
bodily fare, was at least relished by themselves; and
this is better than a surfeit or an indigestion. It is
refreshing to look out of ourselves sometimes, not to be
always holding the glass to our own peerless perfec-
tions: and as there is a dead wall which always in-
tercepts the prospect of the future from our view (all
that we can see beyond it is the heavens), it is as well
to direct our eyes now and then without scorn to the
page of history, and repulsed in our attempts to pene-
trate the secrets of the next six thousand years, not to
turn our backs on old long syne.
The other detached plays of nearly the same period
of which I proposed to give a cursory account, are
Green's Tu Quoque, Microcosmus, Lingua, The Merry
Devil of Edmonton, The Pinner of Wakefield, and the
Spanish Tragedy. Of the spurious plays attributed to
*
[Ubi suprà, pp. 21-3.]

164
Green's "Tu Quoque."
2
Shakspeare, and to be found in the editions of his works
such as the Yorkshire Tragedy, Sir John Oldcastle, The
Widow of Watling Street, &c., I shall say nothing here
because I suppose the reader to be already acquainted
with them, and because I have given a general account
of them in another work.
Green's Tu Quoque, by John * Cook, a contemporary of
Shakspeare, is so called from [Thomas] Green the actor,
who played the part of Bubble in this very lively and
elegant comedy, with the cant phrase of Tu Quoque per-
petually in his mouth. The double change of situation
between this fellow and his master, Staines, each
passing from poverty to wealth, and from wealth t
poverty again, is equally well imagined and executed.
A gay and gallant spirit pervades the whole of it; wit
poetry, and morality, each take their turn in it. /The
characters of the two sisters, Joyce and Gertrude, are
very skilfully contrasted, and the manner in which they
mutually betray one another into the hands of thei
lovers, first in the spirit of mischief, and afterwards o
retaliation, is quite dramatic. "If you cannot find in
your heart to tell him you love him, I'll sigh it out fo
you. Come, we little creatures must help one another,
says the Madcap to the Madonna.
As to style an
matter, this play has a number of pigeon-holes ful
of wit and epigrams which are flying out in almos
every sentence. I could give twenty pointed conceit
wrapped up in good set terms. Let one or two at th
utmost suffice. A bad hand at cards is thus describeċ
Will Rash says to Scattergood,
"Thou hast a wil
hand indeed: thy small cards show like a troop
rebels, and the knave of clubs their chief leader
Bubble expresses a truism very gaily on finding himse
*Not George, as the author wrote it. This drama was first print
in 1614, 4to; it is republished in Dodsley's Old Plays, ed. 1825, v
vii.-ED.

Nabbes's "Microcosmus.”
165
equipped like a gallant: "How apparel makes a man
espected! The very children in the street do adore
ne." We find here the first mention of Sir John Suck-
ing's "melancholy hat," as a common article of wear—
the same which he chose to clap on Ford's head, and the
irst instance of the theatrical double entendre which
has been repeated ever since of an actor's ironically
busing himself in his feigned character :
"Gervase. They say Green's a good clown.
Bubble. (Played by Green, says) Green! Green's an ass.
Scattergood. Wherefore do you say so?
Bub. Indeed, I ha' no reason; for they say he's as like me as ever
He can look."
The following description of the dissipation of a
fortune in the hands of a spendthrift is ingenious and
beautiful:
"Know that which made him gracious in your eyes,
And gilded o'er his imperfections,
Is wasted and consumed even like ice,
Which by the vehemence of heat dissolves,
And glides to many rivers: so his wealth,
That felt a prodigal hand, hot in expence,
Melted within his gripe, and from his coffers
Ran like a violent stream to other men's."
Microcosmus, by Thomas Nabbes,* is a dramatic mask
or allegory, in which the Senses, the Soul, a Good and
a Bad Genius, Conscience, &c. contend for the dominion
of a man; and notwithstanding the awkwardness of the
machinery, is not without poetry, elegance, and origin-
ality. Take the description of morning as a proof:
"What do I see? Blush, gray-eyed morn, and spread
Thy purple shame upon the mountain tops:
Or pale thyself with envy, since here comes
A brighter Venus than the dull-eyed star
That lights thee up."†
* Printed in 1637, 4to.-ED.
† Act iv. sig. E 2.—Ed.

166
Nabbes's "Microcosmus."
But what are we to think of a play, of which the
following is a literal list of the dramatis personæ ?*
Nature, a fair woman, in a white robe, wrought with birds, beasts,
fruits, flowers, clouds, stars, &c.; on her head a wreath of flowers
interwoven with stars.
Janus, a man with two faces, signifying Providence, in a yellow
robe, wrought with snakes, as he is Deus anni: on his head a
He is Nature's husband.
crown.
Fire, a fierce-countenanc'd young man, in a flame-colour'd robe.
wrought with gleams of fire; his hair red, and on his head a
crown of flames. His creature a Vulcan.
Air, a young man of a variable countenance. In a blue robe
wrought with divers-coloured clouds. His hair blue; and on his
head a wreath of clouds. His creature a Giant or Silvan.
Water, a young woman in a sea-green robe, wrought with waves
Her hair a sea-green, and on her head a wreath of sedge bound
about with waves. Her creature a Siren.
Earth, a young woman of a sad countenance, in a grass-green robe
wrought with sundry fruits and flowers. Her hair black, and or
her head a chaplet of flowers. Her creature a Pigmy.
Love, a Cupid in a flame-coloured habit; bow and quiver, a crown
of flaming hearts, &c.
Physander, a perfect grown man, in a long white robe, and on his
head a garland of white lilies and roses mixed. His name àñò
τῆς φύσεως καὶ τοῦ ἀνδρος.
Choler, a Fencer. His clothes red.
Blood, a dancer in a watchet-coloured suit.
Phlegm, a Physician.
trunk hose.
An old man; his doublet white and black;
Melancholy, a Musician. His complexion, hair, and clothes black ;
a lute in his hand. He is likewise an amorist.
Bellamina, a lovely woman, in a long white robe on her head a
wreath of white flowers. She signifies the soul.
Bonus Genius, an Angel, in a like white robe: wings and wreath
white.
Malus Genius, a devil, in a black robe: hair, wreath, and wings
black.
The five Senses. Seeing, a chambermaid; Hearing, the usher of
the hall; Smelling, a Huntsman or Gardener; Tasting, a Cook;
Touching, a Gentleman usher.
*They are styled in the old copy" The persons figur'd."-ED.

-1
"Lingua."
167
Sensuality, a wanton woman, richly habited, but lasciviously dressed,
&c.
Temperance, a lovely woman of a modest countenance: her garments
plain, but decent, &c.
A Philosopher,
A Hermit,
all properly habited.
A Ploughman,
A Shepherd,
Three Furies as they are commonly fancied.
Fear, the Crier of the Court, with a tipstaff.
Conscience, the Judge of the Court.
Hope and Despair, an advocate and a lawyer.
The other three Virtues, as they are frequently expressed by
painters.
The Heroes, in bright antique habits, &c.
The Front. Of a workmanship, proper to the fancy of the rest.
adorned with brass figures of Angels and Devils, with several
inscriptions: the title is an escutcheon, supported by an Angel
and a Devil. Within the arch a continuing perspective of ruins,
which is drawn still before the other scenes, whilst they are
varied.
Hinc gloria.
Appetitus boni.
THE INSCRIPTIONS.
Hinc pœna.
Appetitus mali.”
Antony Brewer's* Lingua [1607] is of the same cast.
It is much longer as well as older than Microcosmus.
It is also an allegory celebrating the contention of the
Five Senses for the crown of superiority, and the pre-
tensions of Lingua or the Tongue to be admitted as a
sixth sense. It is full of child's play, and old wives'
tales; but is not unadorned with passages displaying
strong good sense, and powers of fantastic description.
Mr. Lamb has quoted two passages from it—the
admirable enumeration of the characteristics of different
languages, "The Chaldee wise, the Arabian physical,"
&c.; and the striking description of the ornaments and
uses of tragedy and comedy. The dialogue between
* The authorship of this drama cannot be very confidently given
to Brewer; it is usually regarded as an anonymous production.-ED.

168
"Lingua."
Memory, Common Sense, and Phantastes, is curious and
worth considering:
"Common Sense. Why, good father, why are you so late now-a-
days?
Memory. Thus 'tis; the most customers I remember myself to
have, are, as your lordship knows, scholars, and now-a-days the
most of them are become critics, bringing me home such paltry
things to lay up for them, that I can hardly find them again.
Phantastes. Jupiter, Jupiter, I had thought these flies had bit
none but myself: do critics tickle you, i'faith?
Mem. Very familiarly: for they must know of me, forsooth, how
every idle word is written in all the musty moth-eaten manuscripts.
kept in all the old libraries in every city, betwixt England and
Peru.
Common Sense. Indeed I have noted these times to affect antiqui
ties more than is requisite.
Mem. I remember in the age of Assaracus and Ninus, and about
the wars of Thebes, and the siege of Troy, there were few things
committed to my charge, but those that were well worthy the pre-
serving; but now every trifle must be wrapp'd up in the volume of
eternity. A rich pudding-wife, or a cobbler, cannot die but I must
immortalise his name with an epitaph; a dog cannot water in a
nobleman's shoe, but it must be sprinkled into the chronicles;´so
that I never could remember my treasure more full, and never
emptier of honourable and true heroical actions."
And, again, Mendacio puts in his claim with great
success to many works of uncommon merit:
"Appe. Thou, boy! how is this possible? Thou art but a child,
and there were sects of philosophy before thou wert born.
Men. Appetitus, thou mistakest me; I tell thee, three thousand
years ago was Mendacio born in Greece, nursed in Crete, and ever
since honoured everywhere: I'll be sworn I held old Homer's pen
when he writ his Iliads and his Odysseys.
Appe. Thou hadst need, for I hear say he was blind.
Men. I helped Herodotus to pen some part of his Muses; lent
Pliny ink to write his history; rounded Rabelais in the ear when
he historified Pantagruel; as for Lucian, I was his genius. O, those
two books, De Vera Historia, however they go under his name, I'll
be sworn I writ them every tittle.
Appe. Sure as I am hungry, thou'lt have it for lying. But hast
thou rusted this latter time for want of exercise?
"The Merry Devil of Edmonton."
169
Men. Nothing less. I must confess I would fain have jogged
Stow and great Holinshed on their elbows, when they were about
their chronicles; and, as I remember, Sir John Mandeville's travels,
and a great part of the Decads, were of my doing: but for the
Mirror of Knighthood, Bevis of Southampton, Palmerin of England,
Amadis of Gaul, Huon de Bourdeaux, Sir Guy of Warwick, Martin
Marprelate, Robin Hood, Garagantua, Gerilion, and a thousand
such exquisite monuments as these, no doubt but they breathe in
my breath up and down."*
The Merry Devil of Edmonton [1608], which has been
sometimes attributed to Shakspeare, is assuredly not un-
worthy of him. It is more likely, however, both from the
style and subject-matter, to have been Heywood's than any
other person's. It is perhaps the first example of senti-
mental comedy we have-romantic, sweet, tender, it
expresses the feeling of honour, of love, and friendship
in their utmost delicacy, enthusiasm, and purity. The
names alone, Raymond Mounchersey, Frank Jerning-
ham, Clare, Millisent, "sound silver sweet, like lovers'
tongues by night." It sets out with a sort of story of
Doctor Faustus, but this is dropped as jarring on the
tender chords of the rest of the piece. The wit of the
Merry Devil of Edmonton is as genuine as the poetry.
Mine Host of the George is as good a fellow as Boniface,
and the deer-stealing scenes in the forest between him,
Sir John the curate, Smug the smith, and Banks the
miller, are very honest knaveries," as Sir Hugh Evans
has it. The air is delicate, and the deer, shot by their
cross-bows, fall without a groan! Frank Jerningham
says to Clare :
66
"The way lies right: hark, the clock strikes at Enfield; what's
the hour?
Young Clare. Ten, the bell says.
*There were several later editions, and in 1632 a prose tract on
the same story appeared. Warton, in his History of English Poetry,
notices a very early poem entitled Fabyl's Ghost, published in 1533;
this Fabyl, it seems, was the original Merry Devil.—ED.
170
"The Pinder of Wakefield."
Jern. It was but eight when we set out from Cheston; Sir John
and his sexton are at their ale to-night, the clock runs at random.
Y. Clare. Nay, as sure as thou livest, the villainous vicar is
abroad in the chase. The priest steals more venison than half the
country.
Jern. Millisent, how dost thou ?
Mil. Sir, very well.
I would to God we were at Brian's lodge."
A volume might be written to prove this last answer
Shakspeare's, in which the tongue says one thing in one
line, and the heart contradicts it in the next; but there
were other writers living in the time of Shakspeare
who knew these subtle windings of the passions besides
him,—though none so well as he!
*
George a Green, or the Pinder of Wakefield [1599] is
a pleasant interlude, of an early date, and the author
unknown, in which kings and cobblers, outlaws and maid
Marians are "hail-fellow well met," and in which the
features of the antique world are made smiling and
amiable enough. Jenkin, George a Greene's servant, is
Here is one of his pretended pranks
a notorious wag.
"Jenkin. He comes to me, and takes me by the bosom; you
whoreson slave, said he, hold my horse, and look he takes no cold
in his fect. No, marry shall he, sir, quoth I. I'll lay my cloak
underneath him. I took my cloak, spread it all along, and [set] his
horse on the midst of it.
George. Thou clown, did'st thou set his horse upon thy cloak
Jenk. Ay, but mark how I served him. Madge and he was no
sooner gone down into the ditch but I plucked out my knife, cut
four holes in my cloak, and made his horse stand on the bare
ground."+
* This is included in Dyce's editions of the works of Robert
Greene, 1831 and 1861, on what appears to be very slender authority.
It is curious that of the prose history of the Pinder, which in
all probability existed prior to the play, we possess no printed
edition anterior to that of 1632. I have not yet personally ex-
amined the Sion College MS. of this romance; it may be earlier
than the old quarto just mentioned.-ED.
† [Dyce's 2nd edition of Greene's Works, 1861, p. 258.]
Kyd's "Jeronymo.”
171
The First Part of Jeronymo * is an indifferent piece of
work, and the Second, or the Spanish Tragedy † by Kyd,
is like unto it, except the interpolations idly ‡ said to
have been added by Ben Jonson, relating to Jeronymo's
phrensy, "which have all the melancholy madness of
poetry, if not the inspiration."
* No earlier edition than that of 1605 is at present known.—Ed.
† The earliest known impression is undated; the oldest with a
date, which has been hitherto met with, is that of 1599.-Ed.
Scarcely so; both Jonson and Middleton were paid at different
times by Henslowe to make alterations and additions to this per-
formance.-ED.
( 172 )
LECTURE VI.
ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS; F. BEAUMONT, P. FLETCHER,
DRAYTON, DANIEL, ETC.; SIR P. SIDNEY'S "ARCADIA," AND
OTHER WORKS.
I SHALL in the present Lecture attempt to give some
idea of the lighter productions of the Muse in the
period before us, in order to show that grace and
elegance are not confined entirely to later times, and
shall conclude with some remarks on Sir Philip Sidney's
Arcadia.
I have already made mention of the lyrical pieces of
Beaumont and Fletcher. It appears from his poems,
that many of these were composed by Francis Beaumont,
particularly the very beautiful ones in the tragedy of
the False One, the Praise of Love in that of Valentinian,
and another in the Nice Valour, or Passionate Madman,
an address to Melancholy, which is the perfection of this
kind of writing:
"Hence, all you vain delights;
As short as are the nights
Wherein you spend your folly :
There's nought in this life sweet,
If man were wise to see't,
But only melancholy,
Oh, sweetest melancholy.
Welcome folded arms and fixed eyes,
A sight that piercing mortifies ;
A look that's fasten'd to the ground,
A tongue chain'd up without a sound.
Fountain heads, and pathless groves,
Places which pale passion loves:
On Miscellaneous Poems, &c.
173
Moonlight walks, when all the fowls
Are warmly hous'd, save bats and owls;
A midnight bell, a passing groan,
These are the sounds we feed upon :
Then stretch our bones in a still, gloomy valley;
Nothing so dainty sweet as lovely melancholy."
It has been supposed (and not without every appear-
ance of good reason) that this pensive strain, “most
musical, most melancholy," gave the first suggestion of
the spirited introduction to Milton's Il Penseroso :
Hence, vain deluding joys,
The brood of folly without father bred! .
But hail, thou goddess, sage and holy,
Hail, divinest melancholy,
Whose saintly visage is too bright
To hit the sense of human sight," &c.
•
The same writer thus moralises on the life of man,
in a set of similes, as apposite as they are light and
elegant :
"Like to the falling of a star,
Or as the flights of eagles are,
Or like the fresh spring's gaudy hue,
Or silver drops of morning dew,
Or like a wind that chafes the flood,
Or bubbles which on water stood:
Even such is man, whose borrow'd light
Is straight call'd in and paid to night :
The wind blows out, the bubble dies;
The spring intomb'd in autumn lies;
The dew's dried up, the star is shot,
The flight is past, and man forgot."
"The silver foam which the wind severs from the
parted wave" is not more light or sparkling than this: the
dove's downy pinion is not softer and smoother than the
verse. We are too ready to conceive of the poetry of
that day, as altogether old-fashioned, meagre, squalid,
deformed, withered and wild in its attire, or as a sort of
[Dyce's Beaumont and Fletcher, x. 335–6.]
174
On Miscellaneous Poems, &c.
uncouth monster, like "grim-visaged comfortless des-
pair," mounted on a lumbering, unmanageable Pegasus,
dragon-winged and leaden-hoofed; but it as often wore
a sylph-like form with Attic vest, with faëry feet, and
the butterfly's gaudy wings. The bees were said to
have come, and built their hive in the mouth of Plato
when a child; and the fable might be transferred to the
sweeter accents of Beaumont and Fletcher! Beaumont
died at the age of five-and-twenty. One of these
writers makes Bellario the Page say to Philaster, who
threatens to take his life:
""Tis not a life;
'Tis but a piece of childhood thrown away."
But here was youth, genius, aspiring hope, growing
reputation, cut off like a flower in its summer pride, or
like "the lily on its stalk green," which makes us re-
pine at fortune and almost at nature, that seem to set so
little store by their greatest favourites. The life of
poets is or ought to be (judging of it from the light it
lends to ours) a golden dream, full of brightness and
sweetness, "lapt in Elysium;" and it gives one a re-
luctant pang to see the splendid vision, by which they
are attended in their path of glory, fade like a vapour,
and their sacred heads laid low in ashes, before the
sand of common mortals has run out. Fletcher too was
prematurely cut off by the plague. Raphael died at
four-and-thirty, and Correggio at forty.
wishing that they had lived to the age of Michael
Angelo and Titian? Shakspeare might have lived
another half century, enjoying fame and repose, now
that his task was smoothly done,” listening to the music
of his name, and, better still, of his own thoughts,
without minding Rymer's abuse of "the tragedies of
the last age."
His native stream of Avon would then
have flowed with softer murmurs to the ear, and his
Who can help
CC

On Miscellaneous Poems, &c.
175
pleasant birth-place, Stratford, would in that case have
worn even a more gladsome smile than it does to the
eye of fancy! Poets however have a sort of privileged
after-life, which does not fall to the common lot: the
rich and mighty are nothing but while they are living,
their power ceases with them: but "the sons of memory,
the great heirs of fame," leave the best part of what was
theirs, their thoughts, their verse, what they most de-
lighted and prided themselves in, behind them-im-
perishable, incorruptible, immortal! Sir John Beau-
nont (the brother of our dramatist), whose loyal and
religious effusions are not worth much, very feelingly
aments his brother's untimely death in an epitaph
upon him:
"Thou should'st have followed me, but death to blame
Miscounted years, and measured age by fame:
So dearly hast thou bought thy precious lines,
Their praise grew swiftly; so thy life declines.
Thy Muse, the hearer's Queen, the reader's Love,
All ears, all hearts (but Death's) could please and move.”
Beaumont's verses addressed to Ben Jonson at the
Mermaid, are a pleasing record of their friendship, and
of the way in which they "fleeted the time carelessly"
as well as studiously" in the golden age" of our poetry:
[Lines sent from the Country with two unfinished Comedies, which de-
ferred their merry meetings at the Mermaid.]
"The sun (which doth the greatest comfort bring
To absent friends, because the self-same thing
They know they see, however absent) is,
Here our best hay-maker (forgive me this,
It is our country's style); in this warm shine
I lie and dream of your full Mermaid wine.
Oh, we have water mixt with claret lees,
Drink apt to bring in drier heresies
Than beer, good only for the sonnet's strain,
With fustian metaphors to stuff the brain; .
I think with one draught man's invention fades,
Two cups had quite spoil'd Homer's Iliads.

176
On Miscellaneous Poems, &c.
'Tis liquor that will find out Sutcliffe's wit,
Lie where he will, and make him write worse yet :
Fill'd with such moisture, in most grievous qualms,*
Did Robert Wisdom write his singing psalms:
And so must I do this and yet I think
It is a potion sent us down to drink
By special Providence: keeps us from fights,
Make us not laugh, when we make legs to knights;
'Tis this that keeps our minds fit for our states,
A medicine to obey our magistrates.
*
Methinks the little wit I had is lost
Since I saw you, for wit is like a rest
Held up at tennis, which men do the best
With the best gamesters.
*
What things have we seen
Done at the Mermaid Hard words that have been
So nimble, and so full of subtile flame,
As if that every one from whence they came
Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,
And had resolv'd to live a fool the rest
Of his dull life; then when there hath been thrown
Wit able enough to justify the town
For three days past: wit that might warrant be
For the whole city to talk foolishly,
Till that were cancell'd: and when that was gone,
We left an air behind us, which alone
Was able to make the two next companies
(Right witty, though but downright fools) more wise."†
I shall not in this place repeat Marlowe's celebrated
song, Come live with me and be my love," nor Sir
Walter Raleigh's no less celebrated answer to it (they
may both be found in Walton's Complete Angler, accom
panied with scenery and remarks worthy of them); but
I may quote, as a specimen of the high and romantic
tone in which the poets of this age thought and spoke
of each other, the "Vision upon the conceit of the Fairy
Queen," understood to be by Sir Walter Raleigh:
* So in Rochester's Epigram:
"Sternhold and Hopkins had great qualms,
When they translated David's Psalms."
† [Ibid. xi. 500-2.]
Drummond of Hawthornden.
177

"Methought I saw the grave where Laura lay,
Within that temple, where the vestal flame
Was wont to burn, and passing by that way
To see that buried dust of living fame,
Whose tomb fair Love, and fairer Virtue kept.
All suddenly I saw the Faëry Queen:
At whose approach the soul of Petrarch wept;
And from thenceforth those Graces were not seen,
For they this queen attended; in whose stead
Oblivion laid him down on Laura's hearse.
Hereat the hardest stones were seen to bleed,
And groans of buried ghosts the heav'ns did pierce,
Where Homer's spright did tremble all for grief,
And curs'd th' access of that celestial thief."*
A higher strain of compliment cannot well be con-
eived than this, which raises your idea even of that
hich it disparages in the comparison, and makes you
el that nothing could have torn the writer from his
dolatrous enthusiasm for Petrarch and his Laura's
comb, but Spenser's magic verses and diviner Faëry
Queen—the one lifted above mortality, the other brought
rom the skies!
The name of Drummond of Hawthornden is in a
nanner entwined in cipher with that of Ben Jonson.
He has not done himself or Jonson any credit by his
dcount of their conversation; but his sonnets are in
he highest degree elegant, harmonious, and striking.
tappears to me that they are more in the manner of
Petrarch than any others that we have, with a certain
ntenseness in the sentiment, an occasional glitter of
hought, and uniform terseness of expression. The
eader may judge for himself from a few examples:
"I know that all beneath the moon decays,
And what by mortals in this world is brought
In Time's great periods shall return to nought;
That fairest states have fatal nights and days.
I know how all the Muse's heavenly lays,
* [Raleigh's Works, edit. 1829, viii. 718.]
N
178
Drummond of Hawthornden.
With toil of spright which are so dearly bought,
As idle sounds, of few or none are sought;
And that nought lighter is than airy praise.
I know frail beauty's like the purple flow'r,
To which one morn oft birth and death affords :
That love a jarring is of minds' accords,
Where sense and will invassal reason's pow'r.
Another :
Know what I list, this all cannot me move,
But that, O me! I both must write and love."
"Fair moon, who with thy cold and silver shine
Mak'st sweet the horror of the dreadful night,
Delighting the weak eye with smiles divine,
Which Phoebus dazzles with his too much light;
Bright queen of the first Heav'n, if in thy shrine
By turning oft, and Heaven's eternal might,
Thou hast not yet that once sweet fire of thine,
Endymion forgot, and lover's plight:
If cause like thine may pity breed in thee,
And pity somewhat else to it obtain,

Since thou hast power of dreams as well as he
Who paints strange figures in the slumb'ring brain;
Now while she sleeps,* in doleful guise her show,
These tears, and the black map of all my woe."†
!
This is the eleventh sonnet: the twelfth is full
vile and forced conceits, without any sentiment at al
such as calling the sun "the goldsmith of the stars
"the enameller of the moon," and "the Apelles of t
flowers." This is as bad as Cowley or Sir Philip Si
ney. Here is one that is worth a million of such quai
devices :
["To the Nightingale.]
Dear quirister, who from those shadows sends,‡
Ere that the blushing morn dare show her light,
Such sad lamenting strains, that night attends
(Become all ear §) stars stay to hear thy plight.
* His mistress.
+ Drummond's Works, ed. Turnbull, 1856, pp. 4, 8.
‡ Scotch for send'st.
§ "I was all ear," see Milton's Comus.
:
Drummond of Hawthornden.
179
If one whose grief even reach of thought transcends,
Who ne'er (not in a dream) did taste delight,
May thee importune who like case pretends,
And seem'st to joy in woe, in woe's despite:
Tell me (so may thou milder fortune try,
*
And long, long sing!) for what thou thus complains,
Since, winter gone, the sun in dappled sky
Now smiles on meadows, mountains, woods and plains?
The bird, as if my questions did her move,
With trembling wings sigh'd forth, 'I love, I love.””
Or if a mixture of the Della Cruscan style be allowed
o enshrine the true spirit of love and poetry, we have
ft in the following address to the river Forth, on which
his mistress had embarked:
"Slide soft, fair Forth, and make a crystal plain,
Cut your white locks, and on your foamy face
Let not a wrinkle be, when you embrace
The boat that earth's perfections doth contain.
Winds, wonder, and through wondering hold your peace;
Or if that you your hearts cannot restrain
From sending sighs, mov'd by a lover's case,
Sigh, and in her fair hair yourselves enchain.
Or take these sighs, which absence makes arise
From mine oppressed breast, and wave the sails,
Or some sweet breath now brought from Paradise.
Floods seem to smile, love o'er the winds prevails
And yet huge waves arise; the cause is this.
The ocean strives with Forth the boat to kiss."+
This to the English reader will express the very soul
of Petrarch, the molten breath of sentiment converted
into the glassy essence of a set of glittering but still
graceful conceits.
"The fly that sips treacle is lost in the sweets,” and
the critic that tastes poetry, "his ruin meets." His feet
are clogged with its honey, and his eyes blinded with
its beauties; and he forgets his proper vocation, which
is to buzz and sting. I am afraid of losing my way in
* Scotch for complain'st.
+ [Drummond's Works, ed. Turnbull, 1856, p. 26.]
‡ [Ibid. p. 35.]
180
Drummond of Hawthornden.
Drummond's "sugar'd sonnetting;" and have deter-
mined more than once to break off abruptly; but
another and another tempts the rash hand and curious
eye, which I am loth not to give, and I give it accord-
ingly: for if I did not write these Lectures to please
myself, I am at least sure I should please nobody else.
In fact, I conceive that what I have undertaken to do
in this and former cases, is merely to read over a set of
authors with the audience, as I would do with a friend,
to point out a favourite passage, to explain an objec-
tion; or if a remark or a theory occurs, to state it in
illustration of the subject, but neither to tire him nor
puzzle myself with pedantic rules and pragmatical
formulas of criticism that can do no good to anybody,
I do not come to the task with a pair of compasses or a
ruler in my pocket, to see whether a poem is round
jor
square, or to measure its mechanical dimensions, like a
meter and alnager of poetry: it is not in my bond to
look after excisable articles or contraband wares, or to
exact severe penalties and forfeitures for trifling over-
sights, or to give formal notice of violent breaches of
the three unities, of geography and chronology; or to
distribute printed stamps and poetical licenses (with
blanks to be filled up) on Mount Parnassus. I do not
come armed from top to toe with colons and semicolons,
with glossaries and indexes, to adjust the spelling or
reform the metre, or to prove by everlasting contradic
tion and querulous impatience, that former commenta-
tors did not know the meaning of their author, any more
than I do, who am angry at them, only because I am out
of humour with myself-as if the genius of poetry lay
buried under the rubbish of the press; and the critic
was the dwarf-enchanter who was to release its airy
form from being stuck through with blundering points
and misplaced commas; or to prevent its vital powers
from being worm-eaten and consumed, letter by letter,
Drummond of Hawthornden.
181
in musty manuscripts and black-letter print. I do not
think that is the way to learn "the gentle craft" of
poesy or to teach it to others to imbibe or to com-
municate its spirit; which if it does not disentangle
itself and soar above the obscure and trivial researches of
antiquarianism, is no longer itself, "a Phoenix gazed by
all." At least, so it appeared to me (it is for others to
Judge whether I was right or wrong). In a word, I
have endeavoured to feel what was good, and to “give a
reason for the faith that was in me
" when necessary,
and when in my power. This is what I have done, and
what I must continue to do.
To return to Drummond. I cannot but think that
his sonnets come as near as almost any others to the
perfection of this kind of writing, which should embody
a sentiment and every shade of a sentiment, as it varies
with time and place and humour, with the extravagance
or lightness of a momentary impression, and should,
when lengthened out into a series, form a history of the
wayward moods of the poet's mind, the turns of his
fate; and imprint the smile or frown of his mistress in
indelible characters on the scattered leaves. I will give
the two following, and have done with this author:
"In vain I haunt the cold and silver springs,
To quench the fever burning in my veins :
In vain (love's pilgrim) mountains, dales, and plains
I overrun; vain help long absence brings:
In vain, my friends, your counsel me constrains
To fly, and place my thoughts on other things.
Ah, like the bird that fired hath her wings,
The more I move, the greater are my pains.
Desire, alas! Desire, a Zeuxis new,
From Indies borrowing gold, from western skies
Most bright cynoper, sets before my eyes
In every place her hair, sweet look, and hue;
That fly, run, rest I, all doth prove but vain ;
My life lies in those looks which have me slain.'

* [Drummond's Works, ed. Turnbull, 1856, p. 23.]
182
Ben Jonson's Detached Pieces.
The other is a direct imitation of Petrarch's descrip-
tion of the bower where he first saw Laura:
:
Alexis, here she stay'd; among these pines,
Sweet hermitress, she did alone repair :
Here did she spread the treasure of her hair,
More rich than that brought from the Colchian mines;
Here sat she by these musked eglantines;
The happy place the print seems yet to bear:
Her voice did sweeten here thy sugar'd lines,
To which winds, trees, beasts, birds, did lend their ear.
Me here she first perceiv'd, and here a morn
Of bright carnations did o'erspread her face :
Here did she sigh, here first my hopes were born,
And I first got a pledge of promised grace:
But ah! what serv'd it to be happy so,
Sith passed pleasures double but new woe !"*
I should, on the whole, prefer Drummond's sonnets
to Spenser's; and they leave Sidney's, picking their way
through verbal intricacies and "thorny queaches," at
an immeasurable distance behind. Drummond's other
poems have great, though not equal merit; and he may
be fairly set down as one of our old English classics.
Ben Jonson's detached poetry I like much, as indeed
I do all about him, except when he degraded himself by
“the laborious foolery" of some of his farcical charac-
ters, which he could not deal with sportively, and only
made stupid and pedantic. I have been blamed for what
I have said, more than once, in disparagement of Ben
Jonson's comic humour; but I think he was himself
aware of his infirmity, and has (not improbably) al-
luded to it in the following speech of Crites in Cynthia's
Revels:
"O, how despised and base a thing is man,
If he not strive t' erect his grovelling thoughts
Above the strain of flesh! but how more cheap,
* [Drummond's Works, ed. Turnbull, 1856, p. 41.]
† Chapman's Hymn to Pan.
Ben Jonson's Detached Pieces.
183
When, ev'n his best and understanding part,
The crown and strength of all his faculties,
Floats, like a dead-drown'd body on the stream
Of vulgar humour, mixt with common'st dregs:
I suffer for their guilt now; and my soul,
Like one that looks on ill-affected eyes,
Is hurt with mere intention on their follies.
Why will I view them then? my sense might ask me :
Or is't a rarity or some new object
That strains my strict observance to this point?
But such is the perverseness of our nature,
That if we once but fancy levity,
How antic and ridiculous soever
It suit with us, yet will our muffled thought
Chuse rather not to see it than avoid it, &c."
•
Ben Jonson had self-knowledge and self-reflection
enough to apply this to himself. His tenaciousness on
the score of critical objections does not prove that he
was not conscious of them himself, but the contrary.
The greatest egotists are those whom it is impossible
to offend, because they are wholly and incurably blind
to their own defects; or if they could be made to see
them, would instantly convert them into so many beauty-
spots and ornamental graces. Ben Jonson's fugitive and
lighter pieces are not devoid of the characteristic merits
of that class of composition; but still often in the hap-
piest of them, there is a specific gravity in the author's
pen, that sinks him to the bottom of his subject, though
buoyed up for a time with art and painted plumes, and
produces a strange mixture of the mechanical and fan-
ciful, of poetry and prose, in his songs and odes. For
instance, one of his most airy effusions is the Triumph
of his Mistress: yet there are some lines in it that seem
inserted almost by way of burlesque. It is, however,
well worth repeating:
"See the chariot at hand here of love,
Wherein my Lady rideth!
Each that draws it is a swan or a dove;
184
Ben Jonson's Detached Pieces.
And well the car Love guideth.
As she goes, all hearts do duty
Unto her beauty:
And enamour'd, do wish so they might
But enjoy such a sight,
That they still were to run by her side,
Through swords, through seas, whither she would ride.
Do but look on her eyes, they do light
All that Love's world compriseth!
Do but look on her eyes, they do light
All that Love's world compriseth!
Do but look on her hair, it is bright
As love's star when it riseth!
Do but mark, her forehead's smoother
Than words that soothe her:
And from her arch'd brows, such a grace
Sheds itself through the face,
As alone there triumphs to the life
All the gain, all the good of the elements' strife.
Have you seen but a bright lily grow,
Before rude hands have touch'd it?
Have you mark'd but the fall of the snow
Before the soil hath smutch'd it?
Have you felt the wool of the beaver?
Or swan's down ever?
Or have smelt o' the bud o' the briar?
Or the nard in the fire?
Or have tasted the bag of the bee?
O so white! O so soft! O so sweet is she !"
His Discourse with Cupid, which follows, is infinitely
delicate and piquant, and without one single blemish.
It is a perfect "nest of spicery":
"Noblest Charis, you that are
Both my fortune and my star!
And do govern more my blood,
Than the various moon the flood!
Hear, what late discourse of you
Love and I have had; and true.
'Mongst my Muses finding me,
Where he chanc't your name to see
Set, and to this softer strain :
'Sure,' said he, 'if I have brain,
Jonson's Poems.
185
This here sung can be no other
By description but my mother!
So hath Homer prais'd her hair;
So Anacreon drawn the air
Of her face, and made to rise,
Just about her sparkling eyes,
Both her brows bent like my bow.
By her looks I do her know,
Which you call my shafts. And see!
Such my mother's blushes be,
As the bath your verse discloses
In her cheeks, of milk and roses;
Such as oft I wanton in.
And above her even chin
Have you plac'd the bank of kisses,
Where you say men gather blisses,
Ripen'd with a breath more sweet,
Than when flowers and west-winds meet.
Nay, her white and polish'd neck,
With the lace that doth it deck,
Is my mother's! hearts of slain
Lovers made into a chain!
And between each rising breast
Lies the valley call'd my nest,
Where I sit and proyne my wings
After flight; and put new stings
To my shafts: her very name
With my mother's is the same.'
'I confess all,' I replied,
'And the glass hangs by her side,
And the girdle 'bout her waist,
All is Venus: save unchaste.
But, alas! thou seest the least
Of her good, who is the best
Of her sex but could'st thou, Love,
Call to mind the forms that strove
For the apple, and those three
Make in one, the same were she.
For this beauty yet doth hide
Something more than thou hast spied.
Outward grace weak love beguiles:
She is Venus when she smiles,
But she's Juno when she walks,
And Minerva when she talks.'”
186
Jonson's Poems.
In one of the songs in Cynthia's Revels, we find, amids
some very pleasing imagery, the origin of a celebrated
line in modern poetry :
"Drip, drip, drip, drip, drip," &c.
This has not even the merit of originality, which i;
hard upon it. Ben Jonson had said two hundred years
before:
"Oh, I could still
(Like melting snow upon some craggy hill)
Drop, drop, drop, drop,
Since Nature's pride is now a wither'd daffodil.”
His Ode to the Memory of Sir Lucius Cary and Sir
H. Morrison, has been much admired, but I cannot
but think it one of his most fantastical and perverse
performances.
I cannot, for instance, reconcile myself to such stanzas
as these:
"Of which we priests and poets say
Such truths as we expect for happy men,
And there he lives with memory; and Ben.
THE STAND.
Jonson, who sung this of him, ere he went
Himself to rest,
Or taste a part of that full joy he meant
To have exprest,
In this bright asterism !—
Where it were friendship's schism,
Were not his Lucius long with us to tarry,
To separate these twi-
Lights, the Dioscori;
And keep the one half from his Harry.
But fate doth so alternate the design,
While that in Heaven, this light on earth doth shine."
This seems as if, because he cannot without difficulty
write smoothly, he becomes rough and crabbed in a
spirit of defiance, like those persons who cannot behave
well in company, and affect rudeness to show their con-
tempt for the opinions of others.

Jonson's Poems.
187
His Epistles are particularly good, equally full of
strong sense and sound feeling. They show that he was
not without friends, whom he esteemed, and by whom
he was deservedly esteemed in return. The controversy
started about his character is an idle one, carried on in
the mere spirit of contradiction, as if he were either
made up entirely of gall, or dipped in "the milk of
human kindness." There is no necessity or ground to
suppose either.
He was no doubt a sturdy, plain-
spoken, honest, well-disposed man, inclining more to the
severe than the amiable side of things; but his good
qualities, learning, talents, and convivial habits, pre-
ponderated over his defects of temper or manners; and
in a course of friendship some difference of character,
even a little roughness or acidity, may relish to the
palate; and olives may be served up with effect as well
as sweetmeats. Ben Jonson, even by his quarrels and
jealousies, does not seem to have been curst with the
last and damning disqualification for friendship—heart-
less indifference. He was also what is understood by a
good fellow, fond of good cheer and good company and
the first step for others to enjoy your society, is for you
to enjoy theirs. If any one can do without the world,
it is certain that the world can do quite as well without
him. His "verses inviting a friend to supper," give us as
familiar an idea of his private habits and character as his
Epistle to Michael Drayton, that to Selden, &c., his lines
to the memory of Shakspeare, and his noble prose eulogy
on Lord Bacon in his disgrace, do a favourable one.
Among the best of these (perhaps the very best) is
the address to Sir Robert Wroth, which, besides its
manly moral sentiments, conveys a strikingly picturesque
description of rural sports and manners at this interest-
ing period :
"How blest art thou, canst love the country, Wroth,
Whether by choice, or fate, or both!
188
Jonson's Poems.
And though so near the city and the court,
Art ta'en with neither's vice nor sport:
That at great times, art no ambitious guest
Of sheriff's dinner, or of mayor's feast.
Nor com'st to view the better cloth of state;
The richer hangings, or crown-plate;
Nor throng'st (when masquing is) to have a sight
Of the short bravery of the night;
To view the jewels, stuffs, the pains, the wit
There wasted, some not paid for yet!
But canst at home in thy securer rest,
Live with unbought provision blest;
Free from proud porches or the gilded roofs,
'Mongst lowing herds and solid hoofs:
Along the curled woods and painted meads,
Through which a serpent river leads
To some cool courteous shade, which he calls his,
And makes sleep softer than it is!
Or if thou list the night in watch to break,
A-bed canst hear the loud stag speak,
In spring oft roused for thy master's sport,
Who for it makes thy house his court;
Or with thy friends, the heart of all the year,
Divid'st upon the lesser deer;
In autumn at the partrich mak'st a flight,
And giv'st thy gladder guests the sight;
And in the winter hunt'st the flying hare,
More for thy exercise than fare;
While all that follows, their glad ears apply
To the full greatness of the cry:
Or hawking at the river or the bush,
Or shooting at the greedy thrush,
Thou dost with some delight the day out-wear,
Although the coldest of the year!
The whil'st the several seasons thou hast seen
Of flow'ry fields, of copses green,
The mowed meadows, with the fleeced sheep
And feasts that either shearers keep;
The ripened ears yet humble in their height
And furrows laden with their weight;
The apple-harvest that doth longer last;
The hogs return'd home fat from mast;
The trees cut out in log; and those boughs made
A fire now, that lent a shade!
Jonson's Poems.
189
Thus Pan and Sylvan having had their rites,
Comus puts in for new delights;
And fills thy open hall with mirth and cheer,
As if in Saturn's reign it were;
Apollo's harp and Hermes' lyre resound,
Nor are the Muses strangers found:
The rout of rural folk come thronging in,
(Their rudeness then is thought no sin)
Thy noblest spouse affords them welcome grace!
And the great heroes of her race
Sit mixt with loss of state or reverence.
Freedom doth with degree dispense.
The jolly wassall walks the often round,
And in their cups their cares are drown'd:
They think not then which side the cause shall leese,*
Nor how to get the lawyer fees.
Such and no other was that age of old,
Which boasts t' have had the head of gold.
And such, since thou canst make thine own content,
Strive, Wroth, to live long innocent.
Let others watch in guilty arms, and stand
The fury of a rash command,
Go enter breaches, meet the cannon's rage,
That they may sleep with scars in age,
And show their feathers shot and colours torn.
And brag that they were therefore born.
Let this man sweat, and wrangle at the bar
For every price in every jar,
And change possessions oftener with his breath.
Than either money, war, or death:
Let him than hardest sires more disinherit,
And each where boast it as his merit,
To blow up orphans, widows, and their states;
And think his power doth equal Fate's.
Let that go heap a mass of wretched wealth,
Purchas'd by rapine, worse than stealth,
And brooding o'er it sit with broadest eyes,
Not doing good scarce when he dies.
Let thousands more go flatter vice, and win
By being organs to great sin :
Get place and honour, and be glad to keep
The secrets that shall break their sleep:
* [i.e. loose.]

190
Samuel Daniel.
And so they ride in purple, eat in plate,
Though poison, think it a great fate.
But thou, my Wroth, if I can truth apply,
Shalt neither that, nor this envy:
Thy peace is made; and, when man's state is well,
'Tis better, if he there can dwell.
God wisheth none should wreck on a strange shelf;
To him man 's dearer than t' himself.
And, howsoever we may think things sweet,
He alwayes gives what he knows meet;
Which who can use is happy: such be thou.
Thy morning's and thy evening's vow
Be thanks to him, and earnest prayer, to find
A body sound, with sounder mind;
To do thy country service, thy self right;
That neither want do thee affright,
Nor death; but when thy latest sand is spent,
Thou may'st think life a thing but lent.”
Of all the poetical Epistles of this period, however,
that of Daniel to the Countess of Cumberland, for weight
of thought and depth of feeling, bears the palm. / The
reader will not peruse this effusion with less interest
or pleasure, from knowing that it is a favourite with
Mr. Wordsworth:
"He that of such a height hath built his mind,
And rear'd the dwelling of his thoughts so strong,
As neither fear nor hope can shake the frame
Of his resolved pow'rs; nor all the wind
Of vanity or malice pierce to wrong
His settled peace, or to disturb the same:
What a fair seat hath he, from whence he may
The boundless wastes and wilds of man survey!
And with how free an eye doth he look down
Upon these lower regions of turmoil,
Where all the storms of passions mainly beat
On flesh and blood: where honour, pow'r, renown,
Are only gay afflictions, golden toil;
Where greatness stands upon as feeble feet,
* This and the preceding extracts from Jonson's Works have
now been collated with Procter's edition, 1838, 870.-ED.
Samuel Daniel.
191
As frailty doth; and only great doth seem
To little minds, who do it so esteem.
He looks upon the mightiest monarch's wars
But only as on stately robberies;
Where evermore the fortune that prevails
Must be the right: the ill-succeeding mars
The fairest and the best-fac'd enterprise.
Great pirate Pompey lesser pirates quails :
Justice, he sees (as if seduced) still
Conspires with pow'r, whose cause must not be ill.
He sees the face of right t' appear as manifold
As are the passions of uncertain man.
Who puts it in all colours, all attires,
To serve his ends, and make his courses hold.
He sees, that let deceit work what it can,
Plot and contrive base ways to high desires;
That the all-guiding Providence doth yet
All disappoint, and mocks this smoke of wit.
Nor is he mov'd with all the thunder-cracks
Of tyrants' threats, or with the surly brow
Of pow'r, that proudly sits on others' crimes:
Charg'd with more crying sins than those he checks.
The storms of sad confusion, that may grow
Up in the present for the coming times,
Appal not him; that hath no side at all,
But of himself, and knows the worst can fall.
Although his heart (so near ally'd to earth)
Cannot but pity the perplexed state
Of troublous and distress'd mortality,
That thus make way unto the ugly birth
Of their own sorrows, and do still beget
Affliction upon imbecility:
Yet seeing thus the course of things must run,
He looks thereon not strange, but as fore-done.
And whilst distraught ambition compasses,
And is encompass'd; whilst as craft deceives,
And is deceiv'd; whilst man doth ransack man,
And builds on blood, and rises by distress;
And th' inheritance of desolation leaves
To great-expecting hopes: he looks thereon,
As from the shore of peace, with unwet eye,
And bears no venture in impiety." "'*
* [The Works of Mr. Samuel Daniel, 1718, ii. 352-3.]

192
Drayton, Phineas Fletcher, Carew, &c.
Michael Drayton's Poly-Olbion is a work of great
length and of unabated freshness and vigour in itself,
though the monotony of the subject tires the reader.
He describes each place with the accuracy of a topo-
grapher, and the enthusiasm of a poet, as if his Muse
were the very genius loci. His Heroical Epistles † are
also excellent. He has a few lighter pieces, but none
of exquisite beauty or grace. His mind is a rich marly
soil that produces an abundant harvest, and repays the
husbandman's toil, but few flaunting flowers, the garden's
pride, grow in it, nor any poisonous weeds.
P. Fletcher's Purple Island is nothing but a long
enigma, describing the body of a man, with the heart
and veins, and the blood circulating in them, under the
fantastic designation of the Purple Island.
The other poets whom I shall mention, and who pro-
perly belong to the age immediately following, were
William Browne, Carew, [R.] Crashaw, Herrick, and
Marvell. Browne was a pastoral poet, with much
natural tenderness and sweetness, and a good deal of
allegorical quaintness and prolixity. Carew was an
elegant court trifler. Herrick was an amorist, with
perhaps more fancy than feeling, though he has been
called by some the English Anacreon. Crashaw was
a hectic enthusiast in religion and in poetry, and erro-
neous in both. Marvell deserves to be remembered as
a true poet as well as patriot, not in the best of times.
I will, however, give short specimens from each of these
writers, that the reader may judge for himself; and be
led by his own curiosity, rather than my recommen-
dation, to consult the originals. Here is one by T.
Carew:
* The first edition, containing only Books I.-XVIII., appeared
in 1613; and the poem was not completed till 1622.—ED.
+ First printed in 1597.—ED.
Herrick.
193
"Ask me no more where Jove bestows,
When June is past, the fading rose:
For in your beauties orient deep
These flow'rs, as in their causes, sleep.
Ask me no more, whither do stray
The golden atoms of the day;
For in pure love Heaven did prepare
Those powders to enrich your hair.
Ask me no more, whither doth baste
The nightingale, when May is past;
For in your sweet dividing throat
She winters, and keeps warm her note.
Ask me no more, where those stars light,
That downwards fall in dead of night;
For in your eyes they sit, and there
Fixed become, as in their sphere.
Ask me no more, if East or West
The phoenix builds her spicy nest;
For unto you at last she flies,
And in your fragrant bosom dies."*
The Hue and Cry of Love, the Epitaphs on Lady Mary
Villiers, and the Friendly Reproof to Ben Jonson for his
angry farewell to the stage, are in the author's best
manner. We may perceive, however, a frequent mix-
ture of the superficial and common-place, with far-
fetched and improbable conceits.
Herrick is a writer who does not answer the expecta-
tions I had formed of him. He is in a manner a modern
liscovery, and so far has the freshness of antiquity about
him. He is not trite and threadbare. But neither is
he likely to become so. He is a writer of epigrams, not.
of lyrics. He has point and ingenuity, but I think little
of the spirit of love or wine. From his frequent allusion
o pearls and rubies, one might take him for a lapidary
Instead of a poet. One of his pieces is entitled
* [Carew's Poems, ed. 1772, p. 171.]


194
Herrick.
66
The Rock of Rubies and the Quarry of Pearls.
Some ask'd me where the rubies grew;
And nothing I did say ;
But with my finger pointed to
The lips of Julia.
Some ask'd how pearls did grow, and where;
Then spoke I to my girl
To part her lips, and show them there
The quarrelets of pearl."*
Now this is making a petrifaction both of love and
poetry.
His poems, from their number and size, are
"like the
motes that play in the sun's beams;" that glitter to
the eye of fancy, but leave no distinct impression on
the memory.
The two best are a translation of Anja-
creon, and a successful and spirited imitation of him :
"The Wounded Cupid.
Cupid, as he lay among
Roses, by a bee was stung.
Whereupon, in anger flying
To his mother said thus, crying,
Help, O help, your boy's a dying!
And why, my pretty lad? said she.
Then, blubbering, replied he,
A winged snake has bitten me,
Which country-people call a bee.
At which she smiled; then with her hairs
And kisses drying up his tears,
Alas, said she, my wag! if this
Such a pernicious torment is;
Come, tell me then, how great's the smart
Of those thou woundest with thy dart ?"+
The Captiv'd Bee, or The Little Filcher, is his own :
"As Julia once a slumb'ring lay,
It chanced a bee did fly that way,
* [Herrick's Works, ed. Hazlitt, i. 22.]
† [Ibid. p. 50.]
Andrew Marvell.
195
After a dew or dew-like show'r,
To tipple freely in a flow'r.
For some rich flow'r he took the lip
Of Julia, and began to sip :
But when he felt he suck'd from thence
Honey, and in the quintessence;
He drank so much he scarce could stir;
So Julia took the pilferer.
And thus surpris'd, as filchers use,
He thus began himself t' excuse:
Sweet lady-flow'r! I never brought
Hither the least one thieving thought;
But taking those rare lips of your's
For some fresh, fragrant, luscious flow'rs,
I thought I might there take a taste,
Where so much syrup ran at waste:
Besides, know this, I never sting
The flow'r that gives me nourishing;
But with a kiss, or thanks, do pay
For honey that I bear away.
This said, he laid his little scrip
Of honey 'fore her ladyship:
And told her as some tears did fall,
That that he took, and that was all.
At which she smil'd, and bade him go,
And take his bag, but thus much know,
When next he came a pilfering so,
He should from her full lips derive
Honey enough to fill his hive."*
Of Marvell I have spoken with such praise, as ap-
pears to me his due, on another occasion: but the public
are deaf, except to proof or to their own prejudices, and
I will therefore give an example of the sweetness and
power of his verse:
"To his Coy Mistress.
Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, Lady, were no crime.
We would sit down, and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love's day.
* [Herrick's Works, ed. Hazlitt, i. 73.]
196
Andrew Marvell.
**
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Should'st rubies find: I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the flood;
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires and more slow
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast;
But thirty thousand to the rest.
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, Lady, you deserve this state:
Nor would I love at lower rate.
But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near:
And yonder all before us lye
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found;
Nor in thy marble vault shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long preserved virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust;
And into ashes all my lust.
The grave's a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.
Now, therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may;
And now, like am'rous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour,
Than languish in his slow-chap'd pow'r.
Let us roll all our strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one ball;
And tear our pleasures with rough strife,
Thorough the iron gates of life.
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.”*
* [Marvell's Works, ed. 1776, iii. 240-1.]

William Browne.
197
In Browne's Pastorals, notwithstanding the weakness
and prolixity of his general plan, there are repeated ex-
amples of single lines and passages of extreme beauty
and delicacy, both of sentiment and description, such as
the following Picture of Night:
"Clamour grew dumb, unheard was shepherd's song,
And silence girt the woods: no warbling tongue
Talk'd to the echo; satyrs broke their dance,
And all the upper world lay in a trance.
Only the curled streams soft chidings kept;
And little gales that from the green leaf swept
Dry summer's dust, in fearful whisp'rings stirr'd,
As loth to waken any singing bird."
Poetical beauties of this sort are scattered, not spar-
ingly, over the green lap of Nature through almost every
page of our author's writings. His description of the
squirrel hunted by mischievous boys, of the flowers stuck
in the windows like the hues of the rainbow, and innu-
merable others, might be quoted.
His Philarete (the fourth song of the Shepherd's Pipe)
has been said to be the origin of Lycidas: but there is
no resemblance, except that both are pastoral elegies
for the loss of a friend. The Inner Temple Mask [1615]
has also been made the foundation of Comus, with as
little reason. But so it is: if an author is once detected
in borrowing, he will be suspected of plagiarism ever
after: and every writer that finds an ingenious or par-
tial editor, will be made to set up his claim of originality
against him. A more serious charge of this kind has
been urged against the principal character in Paradise
Lost (that of Satan), which is said to have been taken
from Marino, an Italian poet. Of this, we may be able
to form some judgment by a comparison with Crashaw's
translation of Marino's Sospetto d'Herode. The de-
scription of Satan alluded to is given in the following
stanzas:
198
Richard Crashaw.
"Below the bottom of the great abyss,
There, where one centre reconciles all things,
The world's profound heart pants; there placed is
Mischief's old master; close about him clings
A curl'd knot of embracing snakes, that kiss
His correspondent cheeks; these loathsome strings
Hold the perverse prince in eternal ties
Fast bound, since first he forfeited the skies.
The judge of torments, and the king of tears,
He fills a burnish'd throne of quenchless fire;
And for his old fair robes of light, he wears
A gloomy mantle of dark flames; the tire
That crowns his hated head, on high appears:
Where seven tall horns (his empire's pride) aspire ·
And to make up hell's majesty, each horn
Seven crested hydras horribly adorn.
His eyes the sullen dens of death and night,
Startle the dull air with a dismal red;
Such his fell glances as the fatal light
Of staring comets, that look kingdoms dead.
From his black nostrils and blue lips, in spite
Of hell's own stink, a worser stench is spread.
His breath hell's lightning is; and each deep groan
Disdains to think that heav'n thunders alone.
His flaming eyes' dire exhalation
Unto a dreadful pile gives fiery breath;
Whose unconsum'd consumption preys upon
The never-dying life of a long death.
In this sad house of slow destruction
(His shop of flames) he fries himself, beneath
A mass of woes; his teeth for torment gnash,
While his steel sides sound with his tail's strong lash."*
This portrait of monkish superstition does not equal
the grandeur of Milton's description:
"His form had not yet lost
All her original brightness, nor appear'd
Less than archangel ruin'd and the excess
Of glory obscured."
* [Crashaw's Works, ed. Turnbull, pp. 43-4.]

Richard Crashaw.
199
Milton has got rid of the horns and tail, the vulgar
and physical insignia of the devil, and clothed him with
other greater and intellectual terrors, reconciling beauty
and sublimity, and converting the grotesque and de-
formed into the ideal and classical. Certainly Milton's
mind rose superior to all others in this respect, on the
utstretched wings of philosophic contemplation, in not
confounding the depravity of the will with physical dis-
tortion, or supposing that the distinctions of good and
evil were only to be subjected to the gross ordeal of the
senses. In the subsequent stanzas, we however find
the traces of some of Milton's boldest imagery, though
its effect is injured by the incongruous mixture above
stated:
"Struck with these great concurrences of things,*
Symptoms so deadly unto death aud him ;
Fain would he have forgot what fatal strings
Eternally bind each rebellious limb.
He shook himself, and spread his spacious wings,
Which, like two bosom'd sails† embrace the dim
Air with a dismal shade: but all in vain;
Of sturdy adamant is his strong chain.
While thus Heaven's highest counsels, by the low
Footsteps of their effects, he traced too well,
He tost his troubled eyes, embers that glow
Now with new rage, and wax too hot for hell.
With his foul claws he fenced his furrow'd brow,
And gave a ghastly shriek, whose horrid yell
Ran trembling through the hollow vaults of night."
The poet adds:
"The while his twisted tail he gnaw'd for spite."
There is no keeping in this. This action of meanness
and mere vulgar spite, common to the most contemptible
* Alluding to the fulfilment of the prophecies and the birth of the
Messiah.
† "He spreads his sail-broad vans."-Par. Lost, B. II. 1. 927.
[Works, p. 47.]

200
Richard Crashaw.
creatures, takes away from the terror and power just
ascribed to the prince of Hell, and implied in the nature
of the consequences attributed to his every movement
of mind or body. Satan's soliloquy to himself is more
beautiful and more in character at the same time:
Art thou not Lucifer? he to whom the droves
Of stars that gild the morn in charge were given?
The nimblest of the lightning-winged loves?
The fairest and the first-born smile of Heav'n?
Look in what pomp the mistress planet moves,
Reverently circled by the lesser seven :
Such and so rich the flames that from thine eyes
Opprest the common people of the skies?
Ah! wretch! what boots it to cast back thine eyes
Where dawning hope no beam of comfort shows?" &c.*
This is true beauty and true sublimity; it is also
true pathos and morality: for it interests the mind, and
affects it powerfully with the idea of glory tarnished,
and happiness forfeited with the loss of virtue: but from
the horns and tail of the brute-demon, imagination can-
not reascend to the son of the morning, nor be dejected
by the transition from weal to woe, which it cannot,
without a violent effort, picture to itself.
In our author's account of Cruelty, the chief minister
of Satan, there is also a considerable approach to Mil-
ton's description of Death and Sin, the portress of hell-
gates:
"Thrice howl'd the caves of night, and thrice the sound,
Thund'ring upon the banks of those black lakes,
Rung through the hollow vaults of hell profound:
At last her listening ears, the noise o’ertakes;
She lifts her sooty lamps, and, looking round,
A general hiss,† from the whole tire of snakes
Rebounding through hell's inmost caverns came,
In answer to her formidable name.
* [Works, p. 50.]
+ See Satan's reception on his return to Pandemonium, in Book X.
of Paradise Lost.

Sir Philip Sidney.
201
'Mongst all the palaces in hell's command,
No one so merciless as this of hers,
The adamantine doors for ever stand
Impenetrable both to prayers and tears.
The walls' inexorable steel no hand
Of Time or teeth of hungry Ruin fears.'
On the whole, this poem, though Milton has un-
doubtedly availed himself of many ideas and passages in
it, raises instead of lowering our conception of him, by
showing how much more he added to it than he has
taken from it.
Crashaw's translation of Strada's description of the
contention between a nightingale and a musician, is
elaborate and spirited, but not equal to Ford's version
of the same story in his Lover's Melancholy. One line
may serve as a specimen of delicate quaintness, and of
Crashaw's style in general:
"And with a quavering coyness tastes the strings."
Sir Philip Sidney is a writer for whom I cannot
acquire a taste. As Mr. Burke said, "he could not
love the French Republic"-so I may say, that I can-
not love the Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia, with all
my good-will to it. It will not do for me, however, to
imitate the summary petulance of the epigrammatist :
"I do not love thee, Dr. Fell;
The reason why I cannot tell,
But this alone I know full well:
I do not love thee, Dr. Fell.”
I must give my reasons, "on compulsion," for not
speaking well of a person like Sir Philip Sidney :
"The soldier's, scholar's, courtier's eye, tongue, sword,
The glass of fashion, and the mould of form":
the splendour of whose personal accomplishments, and
of whose wide-spread fame, was, in his lifetime:
* [Works, p. 53.]

202
Sir Philip Sidney.
"Like a gate of steel,
Fronting the sun, that renders back
His figure and his heat":
a writer, too, who was universally read and enthusias-
tically admired for a century after his death, and who
has been admired with scarce less enthusiastic, but
with a more distant homage, for another century, after
ceasing to be read.
We have lost the art of reading, or the privilege
of writing, voluminously, since the days of Addison.
Learning no longer weaves the interminable page with
patient drudgery, nor ignorance pores over it with im-
plicit faith. As authors multiply in number, books
diminish in size; we cannot now, as formerly, swallow
libraries whole in a single folio: solid quarto has given
place to slender duodecimo, and the dingy letter-press
contracts its dimensions, and retreats before the white,
unsullied, faultless margin. Modern authorship is be-
come a species of stenography: we contrive even to
read by proxy. We skim the cream of prose without
any trouble; we get at the quintessence of poetry with-
out loss of time. The staple commodity, the coarse,
heavy, dirty, unwieldy bullion of books, is driven out of
the market of learning, and the intercourse of the lite-
rary world is carried on, and the credit of the great
capitalists sustained, by the flimsy circulating medium of
magazines and reviews. Those who are chiefly con-
cerned in catering for the taste of others, and serving
up critical opinions in a compendious, elegant, and
portable form, are not forgetful of themselves: they are
not scrupulously solicitous, idly inquisitive about the
real merits, the bonâ fide contents of the works they are
deputed to appraise and value, any more than the read-
ing public who employ them. They look no farther for
the contents of the work than the title-page, and pro-
nounce a peremptory decision on its merits or defects by

Sir Philip Sidney.
203
glance at the name and party of the writer. This
tate of polite letters seems to admit of improvement in
only one respect, which is to go a step farther, and
write for the amusement and edification of the world,
accounts of works that were never either written or
read at all, and to cry up or abuse the authors by name,
though they have no existence but in the critic's inven-
tion. This would save a great deal of labour in vain :
anonymous critics might pounce upon the defenceless
heads of fictitious candidates for fame and bread; re-
views, from being novels founded upon facts, would
aspire to be pure romances; and we should arrive at
the beau ideal of a commonwealth of letters, at the
euthanasia of thought and millennium of criticism !
At the time that Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia was
written, those middle men, the critics, were not known.
The author and reader came into immediate contact,
and seemed never tired of each other's company. We
are more fastidious and dissipated: the effeminacy of
modern taste would, I am afraid, shrink back affrighted
at the formidable sight of this once popular work,
which is about as long (horresco referens!) as all
Walter Scott's novels put together; but besides its size
and appearance, it has, I think, other defects of a more
intrinsic and insuperable nature. It is to me one of
the greatest monuments of the abuse of intellectual
power upon record. It puts one in mind of the court
dresses and preposterous fashions of the time, which are
grown obsolete and disgusting. It is not romantic, but
scholastic; not poetry, but casuistry; not nature, but
art, and the worst sort of art, which thinks it can do
better than nature. Of the number of fine things that
are constantly passing through the author's mind, there
is hardly one that he has not contrived to spoil, and to
spoil purposely and maliciously, in order to aggrandise
our idea of himself. Out of five hundred folio pages,

204
Sir Philip Sidney.
there are hardly, I conceive, half-a-dozen sentences ex
pressed simply and directly, with the sincere desire to
convey the image implied, and without a systematic in
terpolation of the wit, learning, ingenuity, wisdom, and
everlasting impertinence of the writer, so as to disguise
the object, instead of displaying it in its true colours
and real proportions. Every page is "with centric and
eccentric scribbled o'er;" his muse is tattooed and
tricked out like an Indian goddess. He writes a court
hand, with flourishes like a schoolmaster; his figures are
wrought in chain-stitch. All his thoughts are forced
and painful births, and may be said to be delivered by
the Cæsarean operation. At last, they become distorted
and rickety in themselves; and before they have beer
cramped and twisted and swaddled into lifelessness and
deformity. Imagine a writer to have great natural
talents, great powers of memory and invention, an eye
for nature, a knowledge of the passions, much learning,
and equal industry; but that he is so full of a con-
sciousness of all this, and so determined to make the
reader conscious of it at every step, that he becomes a
complete intellectual coxcomb, or nearly so;—that he
never lets a casual observation pass without perplexing
it with an endless running commentary, that he never
states a feeling without so many circumambages, without
so many interlineations and parenthetical remarks on all
that can be said for it, and anticipations of all that can
be said against it, and that he never mentions a fact
without giving so many circumstances and conjuring up
so many things that it is like or not like, that you lose
the main clue of the story in its infinite ramifications
and intersections;—and we may form some faint idea of
the Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia, which is spun with
great labour out of the author's brains, and hangs like
a huge cobweb over the face of Nature! This is not, as
far as I can judge, an exaggerated description: but as

Sidney's "Arcadia."
205
near the truth as I can make it. The proofs are not far
to seek. Take the first sentence, or open the volume
anywhere and read. I will, however, take one of the
most beautiful passages near the beginning, to show
how the subject-matter, of which the noblest use might
have been made, is disfigured by the affectation of the
style, and the importunate and vain activity of the
writer's mind. The passage I allude to, is the cele-
brated description of Arcadia:
"So that the third day after, in the time that the morning
did strew roses and violets in the heavenly floor against the coming
of the sun, the nightingales (striving one with the other which could
in most dainty variety recount their wrong-caused sorrow) made
them put off their sleep, and rising from under a tree (which that
night had been their pavilion) they went on their journey, which by-
and-by welcomed Musidorus' eyes (wearied with the wasted soil of
Laconia) with delightful prospects. There were hills which gar-
nished their proud heights with stately trees: humble valleys whose
balse estate seemed comforted with the refreshing of silver rivers;
meadows enamelled with all sorts of eye-pleasing flowers; thickets
which, being lined with most pleasant shade, were witnessed so, too,
by the cheerful disposition of many well-tuned birds; each pasture
stored with sheep feeding with sober security, while the pretty lambs
with bleating oratory craved the dam's comfort: here a shepherd's
boy piping, as though he should never be old; there a young shep-
herdess knitting, and withal singing, and it seemed that her voice
comforted her hands to work, and her hands kept time to her voice-
music. As for the houses of the country (for many houses came
under their eye) they were all scattered, no two being one by the
other, and yet not so far off, as that it barred mutual succour; a
show, as it were, of an accompaniable solitariness, and of a civil wild-
ness. I pray you, said Musidorus (then first unsealing his long-
silent lips), what countries be these we pass through, which are so
divers in show, the one wanting no store, the other having no store
but of want. The country, answered Claius, where you were cast
ashore, and now are past through, is Laconia..
country (where you now set your foot) is Arcadia.
•
""*
But this
One would think the very name might have lulled
his senses to delightful repose in some still, lonely
* [Sidney's Works, ed. 1725, i. 10-11.]

206
Sidney's "Arcadia."
valley, and have laid the restless spirit of Gothic
quaintness, witticism, and conceit, in the lap of classic
elegance and pastoral simplicity. Here are images, too,
of touching beauty and everlasting truth, that needed
nothing but to be simply and nakedly expressed to have
made a picture equal (nay superior) to the allegorical
representation of the Four Seasons of Life by Giorgione.
But no! He cannot let his imagination or that of the
reader dwell for a moment on the beauty or power of
the real object. He thinks nothing is done, unless it is
his doing. He must officiously and gratuitously inter-
pose between you and the subject as the cicerone of
Nature, distracting the eye and the mind by continual
uncalled-for interruptions, analysing, dissecting, dis-
jointing, murdering everything, and reading a prag-
matical, self-sufficient lecture over the dead body of
Nature. The moving spring of his mind is not sensibility
or imagination, but dry, literal, unceasing craving after
intellectual excitement, which is indifferent to pleasure
or pain, to beauty or deformity, and likes to owe every-
thing to its own perverse efforts rather than the sense
of power in other things. It constantly interferes to
perplex and neutralise. It never leaves the mind in a
wise passiveness. In the infancy of taste, the froward
pupils of art took Nature to pieces, as spoiled children
do a watch, to see what was in it. After taking it to
pieces, they could not, with all their cunning, put it
together again, so as to restore circulation to the heart,
or its living hue to the face! The quaint and pedantic
style here objected to was not, however, the natural
growth of untutored fancy, but an artificial excrescence
transferred from logic and rhetoric to poetry. It was
not owing to the excess of imagination, but of the want
of it, that is, to the predominance of the mere under-
standing or dialectic faculty over the imaginative and
the sensitive.
It is in fact poetry degenerating at
Sidney's "Arcadia."
207
every step into prose, sentiment entangling itself in a
controversy, from the habitual leaven of polemics.
and casuistry in the writer's mind. The poet insists
upon matters of fact from the beauty or grandeur that
accompanies them; our prose poet insists upon them
because they are matters of fact, and buries the beauty
and grandeur in a heap of common rubbish, "like two
grains of wheat in a bushel of chaff." The true poet
illustrates for ornament or use the fantastic pretender,
only because he is not easy till he can translate every thing
out of itself into something else. Imagination consists
in enriching one idea by another, which has the same
feeling or set of associations belonging to it in a higher
or more striking degree; the quaint or scholastic style
consists in comparing one thing to another by the mere
process of abstraction, and the more forced and naked
the comparison, the less of harmony or congruity there
is in it, the more wire-drawn and ambiguous the link of
generalisation by which objects are brought together,
the greater is the triumph of the false and fanciful style.
There was a marked instance of the difference in some
lines from Ben Jonson which I have above quoted, and
which, as they are alternate examples of the extremes
of both in the same author and in the same short poem,
there can be nothing invidious in giving. In con-
veying an idea of female softness and sweetness, he
asks:
"Have you felt the wool of the beaver,
Or swan's down ever?
Or have smelt o' the bud of the briar,
Or the nard in the fire?”
Now "the swan's down" is a striking and beautifui
image of the most delicate and yielding softness; but
we have no associations of a pleasing sort with the
wool of the beaver. The comparison is dry, hard, and
barren of effect. It may establish the matter of fact, but
208
Sidney's "Arcadia."
detracts from and impairs the sentiment. The smell of
"the bud of the briar" is a double-distilled essence of
sweetness: besides, there are all the other concomitant
ideas of youth, beauty, and blushing modesty, which
blend with and heighten the immediate feeling; but the
poetical reader was not bound to know even what nard
is (it is merely a learned substance, a nonentity to the
imagination), nor whether it has a fragrant or disagreé-
able scent when thrown into the fire, till Ben Jonson
went out of his way to give him this pedantic piece of
information. It is a mere matter of fact or of experi-
ment; and while the experiment is making in reality.
or fancy, the sentiment stands still; or, even taking it
for granted in the literal and scientific sense, we are
where we were; it does not enhance the passion to be
expressed: we have no love for the smell of nard in the
fire, but we have an old, a long-cherished one, from
infancy, for the bud of the briar. Sentiment, as Mr.
Burke said of nobility, is a thing of inveterate preju-
dice, and cannot be created, as some people (learned and
unlearned) are inclined to suppose, out of fancy or out of
any thing by the wit of man. The artificial and natural
style do not alternate in this way in the Arcadia; the
ɔne is but the helot, the eyeless drudge of the other.
Thus even in the above passage, which is comparatively
beautiful and simple in its general structure, we have
"the bleating oratory" of lambs, as if any thing could be
more unlike oratory than the bleating of lambs; we
have a young shepherdess knitting, whose hands keep
time not to her voice, but to her " voice-music," which
introduces a foreign and questionable distinction, merely
to perplex the subject; we have meadows enamelled with
all sorts of "eye-pleasing flowers," as if it were necessary
to inform the reader that flowers pleased the eye, or as
if they did not please any other sense; we have valleys
refreshed" with silver streams," an epithet that has
Sidney's "Arcadia."
209
nothing to do with the refreshment here spoken of; we
have "
an accompaniable solitariness and a civil wild-
ness," which are a pair of very laboured antitheses; in
fine, we have “want of store, and store of want."
Again, the passage describing the shipwreck of
Pyrochles, has been much and deservedly admired; yet
it is not free from the same inherent faults:
"
"But a little way off they saw the mast (of the vessel) whose
proud height now lay along, like a widow having lost her mate, of
whom she held her honour" [this needed explanation]; "but upon
the mast they saw a young man (at least if it were a man) bearing
show of about eighteen years of age, who sat (as on horseback)
having nothing upon him but his shirt, which being wrought with
blue silk and gold, had a kind of resemblance to the sea [this is
sort of alliteration in natural history], " on which the sun (then
near his western home) did shoot some of his beams. His hair
(which the young men of Greece used to wear very long) was
stirred up and down with the wind, which seemed to have a sport
to play with it, as the sea had to kiss his feet; himself full of
admirable beauty, set forth by the strangeness both of his seat and
gesture; for holding his head up full of unmoved majesty, he held
a sword aloft with his fair arm, which often he waved about his
crown, as though he would threaten the world in that extremity."
If the original sin of alliteration, antithesis, and meta-
physical conceit could be weeded out of this passage,
there is hardly a more heroic one to be found in prose or
poetry.
Here is one more passage marred in the making. A
shepherd is supposed to say of his mistress:
66 Certainly, as her eyelids are more pleasant to behold than two
white kids climbing up a fair tree and browsing on his tenderest
branches, and yet are nothing compared to the day-shining stars
contained in them; and as her breath is more sweet than a gentle
south-west wind, which comes creeping over flowery fields and
shadowed waters in the extreme heat of summer; and yet is nothing
compared to the honey-flowing speech that breath doth carry; no
nore all that our eyes can see of her (though when they have seen
her, what else they shall ever see is but dry stubble after clover
grass) is to be matched with the flock of unspeakable virtues, laid
up delightfully in that best-builded fold.”
Р
21.0
Sidney's "Arcadia.”
Now here are images of singular beauty and of
Eastern originality and daring, followed up with enig-
matical or unmeaning common-places, because he never
knows when to leave off, and thinks he can never be
too wise or too dull for his reader. He loads his prose
Pegasus, like a pack-horse, with all that comes, and
with a number of little trifling circumstances, that fall
off, and you are obliged to stop to pick them up by the
way. He cannot give his imagination a moment's pause,
thinks nothing done, while anything remains to do,
and exhausts nearly all that can be said upon a subject,
whether good, bad, or indifferent. The above passages.
are taken from the beginning of the Arcadia, when the/
author's style was hardly yet formed. The following is
a less favourable, but fairer specimen of the work. It is
the model of a love-letter, and is only longer than that
of Adriano de Armada, in Love's Labour's Lost:
"Most blessed paper, which shalt kiss that hand, whereto all
blessedness is in nature a servant, do not yet disdain to carry with
thee the woeful words of a miser now despairing: neither be afraid
to appear before her, bearing the base title of the sender.
For no
sooner shall that divine hand touch thee, but that thy baseness
shall be turned to most high preferment. Therefore mourn boldly
my ink: for while she looks upon you, your blackness will shine:
cry out boldly my lamentation, for while she reads you, your cries
will be music. Say then (O happy messenger of a most unhappy
message) that the too soon born and too late dying creature, which
dares not speak, no, not look, no, not scarcely think (as from his
miserable self unto her heavenly highness), only presumes to desire
thee (in the time that her eyes and voice do exalt thee) to say, and in
this manner to say, not from him--oh no, that were not fit—but of
him, thus much unto her sacred judgment. O you, the only honour
to women, to men the only admiration, you that, being armed by
love, defy him that armed you, in this high estate wherein you
have placed me" [i.e. the letter], "yet let me remember him to
whom I am bound for bringing me to your presence: and let me
remember him who (since he is yours, how mean soever he be) it is
reason you have an account of him. The wretch (yet your wretch),
though with languishing steps, runs fast to his grave; and will you
suffer a temple (how poorly built soever, but yet a temple of your
Sidney's "Arcadia.”
211
deity) to be rased? But he dieth: it is most true, he dieth: and
he in whom you live, to obey you, dieth. Whereof, though he plain,
he doth not complain: for it is a harm, but no wrong, which he hath
received. He dies, because in woeful language all his senses tell
him, that such is your pleasure; for if you will not that he live,
alas, alas, what followeth, what followeth of the most ruined Dorus,
but his end? End, then, evil-destined Dorus, end; and end thou,
woeful letter, end: for it sufficeth her wisdom to know that her
heavenly will shall be accomplished.”*
This style relishes neither of the lover nor the poet.
Nine-tenths of the work are written in this manner.
It is in the very manner of those books of gallantry and
chivalry, which, with the labyrinths of their style, and
"the reason of their unreasonableness," turned the fine
intellects of the Knight of La Mancha. In a word
(and not to speak it profanely), the Arcadia is a riddle,
a rebus, an acrostic in folio: it contains about four
thousand far-fetched similes, and six thousand impracti-
cable dilemmas, about ten thousand reasons for doing
nothing at all, and as many more against it; numberless
alliterations, puns, questions, and commands, and other
figures of rhetoric; about a score good passages, that
one may turn to with pleasure, and the most involved,
irksome, improgressive, and heteroclite subject that
ever was chosen to exercise the pen or patience of man.
It no longer adorns the toilette or lies upon the pillow
of maids of honour and peeresses in their own right
(the Pamelas and Philocleas of a later age), but re-
mains upon the shelves of the libraries of the curious
in long works and great names, a monument to show
that the author was one of the ablest men and worst
writers of the age of Elizabeth.
His sonnets, inlaid in the Arcadia, are jejune, far-
fetched, and frigid. I shall select only one that has been
much commended. It is to the Highway where his
* [Works, ed. 1725, i. 203–4.]
212
Sir Philip Sidney.
mistress had passed; a strange subject, but not unsuit-
able to the author's genius :
Highway, since you my chief Parnassus be,
And that my Muse (to some ears not unsweet)
Tempers her words to trampling horses' feet
More oft than to a chamber melody;
Now blessed you bear onward blessed me
To her, where I my heart safe left shall meet;
My Muse, and I must you of duty greet
With thanks and wishes, wishing thankfully.
Be you still fair, honour'd by public heed,
By no encroachment wrong'd, nor time forgot;
Nor blamed for blood, nor shamed for sinful deed;
And that you know, I envy you no lot
Of highest wish, I wish you so much bliss,
Hundreds of years you Stella's feet may kiss."
The answer of the Highway has not been preserved,
but the sincerity of this appeal must no doubt have
moved the stocks and stones to rise and sympathise.
His Apology for Poetry [1595] is his most readable per-
formance; there he is quite at home, in a sort of special
pleader's office, where his ingenuity, scholastic subtlety,
and tenaciousness in argument stand him in good stead;
and he brings off poetry with flying colours; for he was
a man of wit, of sense, and learning, though not a poet
of true taste or unsophisticated genius.
1

( 213 )
LECTURE VII.
*
CHARACTER OF BACON'S WORKS- COMPARED AS TO STYLE
WITH SIR THOMAS BROWNE AND JEREMY TAYLOR.
،،
66
BACON has been called (and justly) one of the wisest of
mankind. The word wisdom characterises him more
than any other.
other. It was not that he did so much him-
self to advance the knowledge of man or nature, as that
he saw what others had done to advance it, and what
was still wanting to its full accomplishment. He stood
upon the high vantage ground of genius and learning;
and traced,
as in a map the voyager his course," the
long devious march of human intellect, its elevations
and depressions, its windings and its errors. He had a
large discourse of reason, looking before and after."
He had made an exact and extensive survey of human
acquirements: he took the gauge and meter, the depths
and soundings of the human capacity. He was master
of the comparative anatomy of the mind of man, of the
balance of power among the different faculties. He had
thoroughly investigated and carefully registered the
steps and processes of his own thoughts, with their
irregularities and failures, their liabilities to wrong
conclusions, either from the difficulties of the subject,
or from moral causes, from prejudice, indolence, vanity,
from conscious strength or weakness; and he applied
this self-knowledge on a mighty scale to the general
* I have permitted myself so much liberty as to strike out the
word Lord before Bacon's name, wherever it occurred, since as-
suredly Bacon cannot, except by a gross solecism, be described as
Lord Bacon, a title with which he was never invested.--ED.

Character of Bacon's Works.
advances or retrograde movements of the aggregate in-
tellect of the world. He knew well what the goal and
crown of moral and intellectual power was, how far
men had fallen short of it, and how they came to miss it,
He had an instantaneous perception of the quantity o
truth or good in any given system: and of the analogy
of any given result or principle to others of the same
kind scattered through nature or history. His observa-
tions take in a larger range, have more profundity from
the fineness of his tact, and more comprehension from
the extent of his knowledge, along the line of which his
imagination ran with equal celerity and certainty, than
any other persons whose writings I know. He how-
ever seized upon these results, rather by intuition than
by inference he knew them in their mixed modes and
combined effects rather than by abstraction or analysis,
as he explains them to others, not by resolving them
into their component parts and elementary principles,
so much as by illustrations drawn from other things
operating in like manner, and producing similar re-
sults; or as he himself has finely expressed it, "by the
same footsteps of Nature treading or printing upon seve-
ral subjects or matters." He had great sagacity of ob-
servation, solidity of judgment, and scope of fancy; in
this resembling Plato and Burke, that he was a popular
philosopher and a philosophical declaimer. His writings
have the gravity of prose with the fervour and vividness
of poetry. His sayings have the effect of axioms, are at
once striking and self-evident. He views objects from
the greatest height, and his reflections require a sub-
limity in proportion to their profundity, as in deep
wells of water we see the sparkling of the highest
fixed stars. The chain of thought reaches to the centre,
and ascends the brightest heaven of invention. Reason
in him works like an instinct: and his slightest sugges-
tions carry the force of conviction. His opinions are
Character of Bacon's Works.
215
judicial. His induction of particulars is alike wonderful
for learning and vivacity, for curiosity and dignity, and
an all-pervading intellect binds the whole together in a
graceful and pleasing form. His style is equally sharp
and sweet, flowing and pithy, condensed and expansive,
expressing volumes in a sentence, or amplifying a single
thought into pages of rich, glowing, and delightful elo-
quence. He had great liberality from seeing the various
aspects of things (there was nothing bigoted or intole-
rant or exclusive about him), and yet he had firmness
and decision from feeling their weight and consequences.
His character was then an amazing insight into the
limits of human knowledge and acquaintance with the
landmarks of human intellect, so as to trace its past his-
tory or point out the path to future inquirers, but when
he quits the ground of contemplation of what others
have done or left undone to project himself into future
discoveries, he becomes quaint and fantastic, instead of
original. His strength was in reflection, not in produc-
tion: he was the surveyor, not the builder, of the fabric
of science. He had not strictly the constructive faculty.
He was the principal pioneer in the march of modern
philosophy, and has completed the education and dis-
cipline of the mind for the acquisition of truth, by
explaining all the impediments or furtherances that
can be applied to it or cleared out of its way. In a
word, he was one of the greatest men this country has
to boast, and his name deserves to stand, where it is
generally placed, by the side of those of our greatest
writers, whether we consider the variety, the strength,
or splendour of his faculties, for ornament or use.
His Advancement of Learning is his greatest work; and.
next to that, I like the Essays: for the Novum Organum
is more laboured and less effectual than it might be. I
shall give a few instances from the first of these chiefly
to explain the scope of the above remarks.
216
Character of Bacon's Works.
The Advancement of Learning is dedicated to James I.,
and he there observes, with a mixture of truth and
flattery, which looks very much like a bold irony:
"For I am well assured that this which I shall say is no am-
plification at all, but a positive and measured truth; which is,
that there hath not been since Christ's time any king or temporal
monarch, which hath been so learned in all literature and erudition,
divine and human. For let a man seriously and diligently revolve
and peruse the succession of the Emperors of Rome, of which Cæsar
the Dictator, who lived some years before Christ, and Marcus An-
toninus were the best learned; and so descend to the Emperors of
Grecia, or of the West, and then to the lines of France, Spain,
England, Scotland, and the rest, and he shall find this judgment
is truly made. For it seemeth much in a king, if by the com-
pendious extractions of other men's wits and labour, he can take
hold of any superficial ornaments and shows of learning, or if he
countenance and prefer learning and learned men; but to drink
indeed of the true fountain of learning, nay, to have such a fountain
of learning in himself, in a king, and in a king born, is almost a
miracle."*
To any one less wrapped up in self-sufficiency than
James, the rule would have been more staggering than
the exception could have been gratifying. But Bacon
was a sort of prose-laureate to the reigning prince, and
his loyalty had never been suspected.
In recommending learned men as fit counsellors in a
state, he thus points out the deficiencies of the mere
empiric or man of business in not being provided against
uncommon emergencies. Neither," he says,
66 can the
experience of one man's life furnish examples and prece-
dents for the events of one man's life. For as it hap-
peneth sometimes, that the grandchild, or other de-
scendant, resembleth the ancestor more than the son:
so many times occurrences of present times may sort
better with ancient examples, than with those of the
latter or immediate times; and lastly, the wit of one
* [Bacon's Works, ed. 1857, iii. 263.]
Character of Bacon's Works.
217
:
man can no more countervail learning, than one man's
means can hold way with a common purse." This is
finely put. It might be added, on the other hand, by
way of caution, that neither can the wit or opinion
of one learned man set itself up, as it sometimes does,
in opposition to the common sense or experience of
mankind.
When he goes on to vindicate the superiority of the
scholar over the mere politician in disinterestedness and
inflexibility of principle, by arguing ingeniously enough :
"The corrupter sort of mere politiques, that have not
their thoughts established by learning in the love and
apprehension of duty, nor never look abroad into uni-
versality, do refer all things to themselves, and thrust
themselves into the centre of the world, as if all times
should meet in them and their fortunes, never caring in
all tempests what becomes of the ship of estates, so they
may save themselves in the cockboat of their own for-
tune, whereas men that feel the weight of duty, and
know the limits of self-love, use to make good their
places and duties, though with peril"-I can only wish
that the practice were as constant as the theory is plau-
sible, or that the time gave evidence of as much sta-
bility and sincerity of principle in well-educated minds
as it does of versatility and gross egotism in self-taught
men. I need not give the instances; "they will receive"
(in our author's phrase) "an open allowance : but I am
afraid that neither habits of abstraction nor the want of
them will entirely exempt men from a bias to their own
interest; that it is neither learning nor ignorance that
thrusts us into the centre of our own little world, but
that it is Nature that has put a man there!
His character of the schoolmen is perhaps the finest.
philosophical sketch that ever was drawn. After ob-
serving that there are "two marks and badges of sus-
pected and falsified science; the one, the novelty or
218
Character of Bacon's Works.
strangeness of terms, the other the strictness of posi-
tions, which of necessity doth induce oppositions, and
so questions and altercations," he proceeds: "Surely
like as many substances in nature which are solid do
putrefy and corrupt into worms, so it is the property of
good and sound knowledge to putrefy and dissolve into
a number of subtle, idle, unwholesome, and (as I may
term them) vermiculate questions; which have indeed a
kind of quickness and life of spirit, but no soundness
of matter or goodness of quality. This kind of degene-
rate learning did chiefly reign amongst the schoolmen,
who, having strong and sharp wits, and abundance of
leisure, and small variety of reading, but their wits
being shut up in the cells of a few authors (chiefly
Aristotle their dictator) as their persons were shut up
in the cells of monasteries and colleges, and knowing
little history, either of nature or time, did out of no
great quantity of matter, and infinite agitation of wit,
spin out unto us those laborious webs of learning,
which are extant in their books. For the wit and
mind of man, if it work upon matter, which is the con-
templation of the creatures of God, worketh according
to the stuff, and is limited thereby but if it work upon
itself, as the spider worketh his web, then it is endless,
and brings forth indeed cobwebs of learning, admir-
able for the fineness of thread and work, but of no
substance or profit."
And a little farther on he adds: "Notwithstanding,
certain it is, that if those schoolmen, to their great
thirst of truth and unwearied travail of wit had joined
variety and universality of reading and contemplation,
they had proved excellent lights, to the great advance-
ment of all learning and knowledge. But as they are,
they are great undertakers indeed, and fierce with dark
keeping; but as in the inquiry of the divine truth their
pride inclined to leave the oracle of God's word, and to
Character of Bacon's Works.
219
varnish in the mixture of their own inventions, so in
the inquisition of nature they ever left the oracle of
God's works, and adored the deceiving and deformed
images, which the unequal mirror of their own minds
or a few received authors or principles did represent
unto them
""*
One of his acutest (I might have said profoundest)
remarks relates to the near connection between deceiv-
ing and being deceived. Volumes might be written
in explanation of it.
This vice therefore," he says,
“brancheth itself into two sorts; delight in deceiving,
and aptness to be deceived, imposture and credulity;
which, although they appear to be of a diverse nature,
the one seeming to proceed of cunning, and the other
of simplicity, yet certainly they do for the most part
concur. For as the verse noteth—
"Percontatorem fugito, nam garrulus idem est”-
an inquisitive man is a prattler: so upon the like rea-
son, a credulous man is a deceiver; as we see it in
fame, that he that will easily believe rumours, will as
easily augment rumours, and add somewhat to them
of his own, which Tacitus wisely noteth, when he
saith, Fingunt simul creduntque-so great an affinity hath
fiction and belief."†
I proceed to his account of the causes of error, and
directions for the conduct of the understanding, which
are admirable both for their speculative ingenuity and
practical use.
"The first of these," says Bacon, "is the extreme affecting of
two extremities; the one Antiquity, the other Novelty: wherein
it seemeth the children of time do take after the nature and malice
of the father. For as he devoureth his children, so one of them
* [Bacon's Works, ed. 1857, iii. 287.]
† [Ibid. pp. 287-8.]
A reference to the myth of Saturn or Chronos.—ED.
220
Character of Bacon's Works.
seeketh to devour and suppress the other; while antiquity envieth
there should be new additions, and novelty cannot be content to
add, but it must deface. Surely, the advice of the prophet is the
true direction in this respect: State super vias antiquas, et videte
quænam sit via recta et bona, et ambulate in ea.' Antiquity de-
serveth that reverence, that men should make a stand thereupon,
and discover what is the best way, but when the discovery is well
taken, then to make progression. And to speak truly, he adds,
Antiquitas seculi juventus mundi.' These times are the ancient
times when the world is ancient; and not those which we count
ancient ordine retrogrado, by a computation backward from our-
selves.
"Another error induced by the former, is a distrust that any-
thing should be now to be found out, which the world should have
missed and passed over so long time, as if the same objection were
to be made to time that Lucian makes to Jupiter and other the
heathen gods, of which he wondereth that they begot so many
children in old age, and begot none in his time, and asketh whether
they were become septuagenary, or whether the law Pappia, made
against old men's marriages, had restrained them. So it seemeth
men doubt lest time was become past children and generation:
wherein, contrariwise, we see commonly the levity and unconstancy
of men's judgments which, till a matter be done, wonder that it
can be done, and as soon as it is done, wonder again that it was no
sooner done, as we see in the expedition of Alexander into Asia,
which at first was prejudged as a vast and impossible enterprise,
and yet afterwards it pleaseth Livy to make no more of it than this,
nil aliud quàm bene ausus vana contemnere. And the same hap-
pened to Columbus in his western navigation. But in intellectual
matters, it is much more common; as may be seen in most of the
propositions in Euclid, which till they be demonstrate, they seem
strange to our assent, but being demonstrate, our mind accepteth
of them by a kind of relation (as the lawyers speak) as if we had
known them before.
•
"Another is an impatience of doubt and haste to assertion without
due and mature suspension of judgment. For the two ways of con-
templation are not unlike the two ways of action, commonly spoken
of by the ancients: the one plain and smooth in the beginning,
and in the end impassable; the other rough and troublesome in
the entrance, but after a while fair and even. So it is in contem-
plation : if a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts;
but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in
certainties.
"Another error is in the manner of the tradition and delivery of
Character of Bacon's Works.
221
knowledge, which is for the most part magistral and peremptory,
and not ingenuous and faithful; in a sort as may be soonest be-
lieved, and not easiliest examined. It is true that in compendious
treatises for practice that form is not to be disallowed. But in the
true handling of knowledge, men ought not to fall either on the
one side into the vein of Velleius the Epicurean, nil tam metuens
quàm ne dubitare aliqua de re videretur: nor on the other side, into
Socrates his ironical doubting of all things, but to propound things
sincerely, with more or less asseveration; as they stand in a man's
own judgment, proved more or less.”*
Bacon in this part declares, “that it is not his pur-
pose to enter into a laudative of learning or to make a
Hymn to the Muses," yet he has gone near to do this
in the following observations on the dignity of know-
He says, after speaking of rulers and con-
ledge.
querors:
"But yet the commandment of knowledge is yet higher than the
commandment over the will; for it is a commandment over the
reason, belief, and understanding of man, which is the highest part
of the mind, and giveth law to the will itself. For there is no
power on earth which setteth a throne or chair of estate in the
spirits and souls of men, and in their cogitations, imaginations,
opinions, and beliefs, but knowledge and learning. And therefore
we see the detestable and extreme pleasure that arch-heretics and
false prophets and impostors are transported with, when they once
find in themselves that they have a superiority in the faith and
conscience of men: so great, that if they have once tasted of it, it
is seldom seen that any torture or persecution can make them
relinquish or abandon it. But as this is that which the author of
the Revelation calleth the depth or profoundness of Satan; so by
argument of contraries, the just and lawful sovereignty over men's
understanding, by force of truth rightly interpreted, is that which
approacheth nearest to the similitude of the divine rule. . . .
Let us conclude with the dignity and excellency of knowledge and
learning in that whereunto man's nature doth most aspire, which
is immortality or continuance: for to this tendeth generation, and
raising of houses and families; to this buildings, foundations, and
monuments; to this tendeth the desire of memory, fame, and cele-
bration; and in effect, the strength of all other humane desires.
[Works, iii. 290-3.]
222
Character of Sir T. Browne as a Writer.
We see then how far the monuments of wit and learning are more
durable than the monuments of power or of the hands. For have
not the verses of Homer continued twenty-five hundred years and
more, without the loss of a syllable or letter; during which time
infinite palaces, temples, castles, cities, have been decayed and
demolished? It is not possible to have the true pictures or statues
of Cyrus, Alexander, Cæsar, no, nor of the kings or great per-
sonages of much later years; for the originals cannot last; and the
copies cannot but lose of the life and truth. But the images of
men's wits and knowledges remain in books, exempted from the
wrong of time, and capable of perpetual renovation. Neither are
they fitly to be called images, because they generate still, and cast
their seeds in the minds of others, provoking and causing infinite
actions and opinions in succeeding ages. So that, if the invention
of the ship was thought so noble, which carrieth riches and com-
modities from place to place, and consociateth the most remote
regions in participation of their fruits, how much more are letters
to be magnified which, as ships, pass through the vast seas of
time, and make ages so distant to participate of the wisdom, illu-
minations, and inventions, the one of the other ?"*
Passages of equal force and beauty might be quoted
from almost every page of this work and of the Essays.
Sir Thomas Browne and Bishop Taylor were two
prose-writers in the succeeding age, who, for pomp
and copiousness of style, might be compared to Bacon.
In all other respects they were opposed to him and to
one another. As Bacon seemed to bend all his thoughts
to the practice of life, and to bring home the light of
science to "the bosoms and businesses of men," Sir
Thomas Browne seemed to be of opinion that the only
business of life, was to think, and that the proper ob-
ject of speculation was, by darkening knowledge, to
breed more speculation, and "find no end in wandering
mazes lost." He chose the incomprehensible and im-
practicable as almost the only subjects fit for a lofty and
lasting contemplation, or for the exercise of a solid faith.
He cried out for an oh altitudo beyond the heights of
revelation, and posed himself with apocryphal mysteries,
[Works, pp. 316-18.]
Character of Sir T. Browne as a Writer. 223
as the pastime of his leisure hours. He pushes a ques-
tion to the utmost verge of conjecture, that he may re-
pose on the certainty of doubt; and he removes an
object to the greatest distance from him, that he may
take a high and abstracted interest in it, consider it in
its relation to the sum of things, not to himself, and
bewilder his understanding in the universality of its
nature and the inscrutableness of its origin. His is the
sublime of indifference; a passion for the abstruse and
imaginary. He turns the world round for his amuse-
ment, as if it was a globe of pasteboard. He looks
down on sublunary affairs as if he had taken his station
in one of the planets. The antipodes are next-door
neighbours to him, and doomsday is not far off. With
a thought he embraces both the poles; the march of his
pen is over the great divisions of geography and chrono-
logy. Nothing touches him nearer than humanity. He
feels that he is mortal only in the decay of nature, and
the dust of long-forgotten tombs. The finite is lost in
the infinite. The orbits of the heavenly bodies or the
history of empires are to him but a point in time or a
speck in the universe. The great Platonic year revolves
in one of his periods. Nature is too little for the grasp
of his style. He scoops an antithesis out of fabulous
antiquity, and rakes up an epithet from the sweepings
of chaos. It is as if his books had dropped from the
clouds, or as if Friar Bacon's head could speak. He
stands on the edge of the world of sense and reason, and
gains a vertigo by looking down at impossibilities and
chimeras. Or he busies himself with the mysteries of
the Cabala, or the enclosed secrets of the heavenly
quincunxes, as children are amused with tales of the
nursery. The passion of curiosity (the only passion of
childhood) had in him survived to old age, and had
superannuated his other faculties. He moralises and
grows pathetic on a mere idle fancy of his own, as if
224 Character of Sir T. Browne as a Writer.
thought and being were the same, or as if "all this world
were one glorious lie." For a thing to have ever had a
name is sufficient warrant to entitle it to respectful be-
lief, and to invest it with all the rights of a subject and
its predicates. He is superstitious, but not bigoted:
to him all religions are much the same, and he says that
he should not like to have lived in the time of Christ
and the Apostles, as it would have rendered his faith too
gross and palpable. His gossiping egotism and per-
sonal character have been preferred unjustly to Mon-
taigne's. He had no personal character at all but the
peculiarity of resolving all the other elements of his
being into thought, and of trying experiments on his
own nature in an exhausted receiver of idle and unsatis-
factory speculations. All that he "differences himself
by," to use his own expression, is this moral and physical
indifference. In describing himself, he deals only in
negatives. He says he has neither prejudices nor an-
tipathies to manners, habits, climate, food, to persons or
things; they were alike acceptable to him as they afforded
new topics for reflection; and he even professes that he
could never bring himself heartily to hate the Devil.
He owns in one place of the Religio Medici, that “he
could be content if the species were continued like
trees," and yet he declares that this was from no aver-
sion to love, or beauty, or harmony; and the reasons he
assigns to prove the orthodoxy of his taste in this
respect, is, that he was an admirer of the music of the
spheres! He tells us that he often composed a comedy
in his sleep. It would be curious to know the subject
or the texture of the plot. It must have been some-
thing like Nabbes's Mask of Microcosmus, of which the
dramatis personæ have been already given; or else
a misnomer, like Dante's Divine Comedy of Heaven,
Hell, and Purgatory. He was twice married, as if to
show his disregard even for his own theory; and he had
Character of Sir T. Browne as a Writer. 225
a hand in the execution of some old women for witch-
craft, I suppose, to keep a decorum in absurdity, and to
indulge an agreeable horror at his own fantastical reve-
ries on the occasion. In a word, his mind seemed to
converse chiefly with the inte ligible forms, the spectral
apparitions of things; he delighted in the preternatural
and visionary, and he only existed at the circumference
of his nature. He had the most intense consciousness
of contradictions and nonentities, and he decks them
out in the pride and pedantry of words as if they were
the attire of his proper person: the categories hang
about his neck like the golden chain of knighthood, and
he "walks gowned" in the intricate folds and sweeping
drapery of dark sayings and impenetrable riddles !
I will give one gorgeous passage to illustrate all this
from his Urn-burial, or Hydriotaphia.* He digs up the
urns of some ancient Druids with the same ceremony
and devotion as if they had contained the hallowed
relics of his dearest friends; and certainly we feel (as it
has been said) the freshness of the mould, and the breath
of mortality, in the spirit and force of his style. The
conclusion of this singular and unparalleled performance
is as follows:
"What song the sirens sang, or what name Achilles assumed
when he hid himself among women, though puzzling questions,
are not beyond all conjecture. What time the persons of these
ossuaries entered the famous nations of the dead, and slept with
princes and counsellors, might admit a wide solution. But who
were the proprietaries of these bones, or what bodies these ashes
made up, were a question above antiquarianism: not to be resolved
by man, nor easily perhaps by spirits, except we consult the pro-
vincial guardians, or tutelary observators. Had they made as
good provision for their names, as they have done for their reliques,
they had not so grossly erred in the art of perpetuation. But to
subsist in bones, and be but pyramidally extant, is a fallacy in
* First printed in 1658, 8vo, accompanied by a plate of the
sepulchral urns. The Garden of Cyrus is annexed.—ED.
W
226 Character of Sir T. Browne as a Writer.
duration. Vain ashes which, in the oblivion of names, persons,
times and sexes have found unto themselves a fruitless continuation,
and only arise unto late posterity, as emblems of mortal vanities;
antidotes against pride, vain glory, and madding vices. Pagan
vain glories, which thought the world might last for ever, had
encouragement for ambition, and finding no Atropos unto the im-
mortality of their names, were never dampt with the necessity of
oblivion. Even old ambitions had the advantage of ours in the
attempts of their vain glories, who, acting early and before the
probable meridian of time, have, by this time, found great accom-
plishment of their designs, whereby the ancient heroes have already
outlasted their monuments and mechanical preservations. But in
this latter scene of time we cannot expect such mummies unto
our memories, when ambition may fear, the prophecy of Elias,
and Charles V. can never hope to live within two Methuselahs of
Hector.
"And therefore restless inquietude for the diuturnity of our
memories unto present considerations seems a vanity almost out of
date, and superannuated piece of folly. We cannot hope to live so
long in our names as some have done in their persons. One face of
Janus holds no proportion unto the other. 'Tis too late to be am-
bitious. The great mutations of the world are acted, or time may
be too short for our designs. To extend our memories by monu-
ments, whose death we daily pray for, and whose duration we
cannot hope without injury to our expectations in the advent of the
last day, were a contradiction to our beliefs. We whose generations
are ordained in his setting part of time, are providentially taken off
from such imaginations. And being necessitated to eye the remain-
ing particle of futurity, are naturally constituted unto thoughts of
the next world, and cannot excusably decline the consideration of
that duration, which maketh pyramids pillars of snow, and all that's
past a moment.
"Circles and right lines limit and close all bodies, and the mortal
right-lined circle must conclude and shut up all. There is no anti-
dote against the opium of time, which temporally considereth all
things; our fathers find their graves in our short memories, and
sadly tell us how we may be buried in our survivors. Gravestones
tell truth scarce forty years: generations pass while some trees stand,
and old families last not three oaks. To be read by bare inscriptions
like many in Gruter,* to hope for eternity by enigmatical epithets or
first letters of our names, to be studied by antiquaries, who we were,
* Gruteri Inscriptiones Antiquæ. Note in ed. 1836 of Browne's
Works, iii. 491.-ED.
"
Character of Sir T. Browne as a Writer.
227
and have new names given us like many of the mummies, are cold
consolations unto the students of perpetuity, even by everlasting
languages.
"To be content that times to come should only know there was
such a man, not caring whether they knew more of him, was a frigid
ambition in Cardan: disparaging his horoscopal inclination and
judgment of himself. Who cares to subsist like Hippocrates'
patients, or Achilles' horses in Homer, under naked nominations,
without deserts and noble acts which are the balsam of our memories,
the entelechia and soul of our subsistences? To be nameless in
worthy deeds exceeds an infamous history. The Canaanitish
woman lives more happily without a name, than Herodias with one.
And who had not rather have been the good thief than Pilate?
"But the iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and
deals with the memory of men without distinction to merit of per-
petuity. Who can but pity the founder of the pyramids? Hero-
stratus lives that burnt the temple of Diana: he is almost lost that
built it. Time hath spared the epitaph of Adrian's horse, con-
founded that of himself. In vain we compute our felicities by the
advantage of our good names, since bad have equal durations: and
Thersites is like to live as long as Agamemnon. Who knows
whether the best of men be known? or whether there be not more re-
markable persons forgot, than any that stand remembered in the
known account of time? Without the favour of the everlasting
register, the first man had been as unknown as the last, and
Methuselah's long life had been his only chronicle.
"Oblivion is not to be hired. The greater part must be content to
be as though they had not been, to be found in the register of God,
not in the record of man. Twenty-seven names make up the first
story before the flood, and the recorded names ever since contain not
one living century. The number of the dead long exceedeth all who
shall live. The night of time far surpasseth the day, and who
knows when was the equinox? Every hour adds unto that current
arithmetic, which scarce stands one moment. And since death must
be the Lucina of life, and even Pagans could doubt, whether thus
to live were to die: since our longest sun sets at right descensions,
and makes but winter arches, and therefore it cannot be long before
we lie down in darkness, and have our light in ashes: since the
brother of death daily haunts us with dying mementos, and time
that grows old itself bids us hope no long duration : diuturnity is a
dream and folly of expectation.
"Darkness and light divide the course of time, and oblivion shares
with memory a great part even of our living beings; we slightly re-
member our felicities, and the smartest strokes of affliction leave but
228
Character of Sir T. Browne as a Writer.
short smart upon us.
Sense endureth no extremities, and sorrows
destroy us or themselves. To weep into stones are fables. Afflic-
tions induce callosities; miseries are slippery, or fall like snow
upon us, which notwithstanding is no unhappy stupidity. To be
ignorant of evils to come, and forgetful of evils past, is a merciful
provision in nature, whereby we digest the mixture of our few and
evil days, and our delivered senses not relapsing into cutting re-
membrances, our sorrows are not kept raw by the edge of repetitions.
A great part of antiquity contented their hopes of subsistency with
a transmigration of their souls-a good way to continue their memo-
ries, while, having the advantage of plural successions, they could
not but act something remarkable in such variety of beings, and en-
joying the fame of their passed selves, make accumulation of glory
unto their last durations. Others, rather than be lost in the un-
comfortable night of nothing, were content to recede into the common
being, and make one particle of the public soul of all things, which
was no more than to return into their unknown and divine original
again. Egyptian ingenuity was more unsatisfied, conserving their
bodies in sweet consistences, to attend the return of their souls. But
all was vanity, feeding the wind, and folly. The Egyptian mummies,
which Cambyses or time hath spared, avarice now consumeth,
Mummy is become merchandise, Mizraim cures wounds, and Pha-
raoh is sold for balsams.
"In vain do individuals hope for immortality, or any patent from
oblivion, in preservations below the moon: men have been deceived
even in their flatteries above the sun, and studied conceits to per-
petuate their names in heaven. The various cosmography of that
part hath already varied the names of contrived constellations;
Nimrod is lost in Orion, and Osiris in the Dog-star. While we look
for incorruption in the heavens, we find they are but like the earth;
durable in their main bodies, alterable in their parts: whereof,
beside comets and new stars, perspectives begin to tell tales; and the
spots that wander about the sun, with Phaeton's favour, would make
clear conviction.
"There is nothing immortal but immortality. Whatever hath no
beginning may be confident of no end: which is the peculiar of that
necessary essence that cannot destroy itself; and the highest strain
of omnipotency, to be so powerfully constituted, as not to suffer even
from the power of itself: all others have a dependent being, and
within the reach of destruction. But the sufficiency of Christian
immortality frustrates all earthly glory, and the quality of either
state after death makes a folly of posthumous memory. God, who
can only destroy our souls, and hath assured our resurrection, either
of our bodies or names hath directly promised no duration. Wherein
Character of Sir T. Browne as a Writer.
229
there is so much of chance, that the boldest expectants have found
unhappy frustration; and to hold long subsistence, seems but a
scape in oblivion. But man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes,
and pompous in the grave, solemnizing nativities and deaths with
equal lustre, nor omitting ceremonies of bravery in the infamy of his
nature.
"Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible sun within us.
A small fire sufficeth for life, great flames seemed too little after
death, while men vainly affected precious pyres, and to burn like
Sardanapalus; but the wisdom of funeral laws found the folly of
prodigal blazes, and reduced undoing fires unto the rule of sober
obsequies, wherein few could be so mean as not to provide wood,
pitch, a mourner and an urn.
"Five languages secured not the epitaph of Gordianus. The
man of God lives longer without a tomb than any by one, invisibly
interred by angels, and adjudged to obscurity, though not without
some marks directing human discovery. Enoch and Elias, without
either tomb or burial, in an anomalous state of being, are the great
examples of perpetuity, in their long and living memory, in strict
account being still on this side death, and having a late part yet to
act on this stage of earth. If in the decretory term of the world we
shall not all die, but be changed, according to received translation,
the last day will make but few graves; at least quick resurrections
will anticipate lasting sepultures. Some graves will be opened
before they be quite closed, and Lazarus be no wonder. When
many that feared to die shall groan that they can die but once, the
dismal state is the second and living death, when life puts despair
on the damned; when men shall wish the coverings of mountains,
not of monuments, and annihilation shall be courted.
"While some have studied monuments, others have studiously
declined them: and some have been so vainly boisterous, that they
durst not acknowledge their graves; wherein Alaricus seems most
subtle, who had a river turned to hide his bones at the bottom.
Even Sylla, that thought himself safe in his urn, could not prevent
revenging tongues, and stones thrown at his monument. Happy are
they whom privacy makes innocent, who deal so with men in this
world, that they are not afraid to meet them in the next: who, when
they die, make no commotion among the dead, and are not touched
with that poetical taunt of Isaiah!
"Pyramids, arches, obelisks, were but the irregularities of vain
glory, and wild enormities of ancient magnanimity. But the most
magnanimous resolution rests in the Christian religion, which
trampleth upon pride, and sits on the neck of ambition, humbly
pursuing that infallible perpetuity, unto which all others must
230 Character of Sir T. Browne as a Writer.
diminish their diameters, and be poorly seen in angles of contin-
gency.
"Pious spirits who passed their days in raptures of futurity, made
little more of this world than the world that was before it, while
they lay obscure in the chaos of pre-ordination, and night of their
fore-beings. And if any have been so happy as truly to understand
Christian annihilation, ecstasies, exolution, liquefaction, transforma-
tion, the kiss of the spouse, gustation of God, and ingression into the
divine shadow, they have already had a handsome anticipation of
heaven; the glory of the world is surely over, and the earth in ashes
unto them.
“To subsist in lasting monuments, to live in their productions, to
exist in their names and predicament of chimeras, was large satis-
faction unto old expectations, and made one part of their elysiums.
But all this is nothing in the metaphysics of true belief. To live
indeed is to be again ourselves, which being not only an hope but an
evidence in noble believers, 'tis all one to lie in St. Innocent's
churchyard, as in the sands of Egypt. Ready to be anything, in
the ecstasy of being ever, and as content with six foot as the moles
of Adrianus."*
I subjoin the following account of this extraordinary
writer's style, said to be written in a blank leaf of his
works by Mr. Coleridge :†
"Sir Thomas Browne is among my first favourites, rich in various
knowledge, exuberant in conceptions and conceits, contemplative,
imaginative, often truly great and magnificent in his style and
diction, though, doubtless, too often big, stiff, and hyperlatinistic:
thus I might, without admixture of falsehood, describe Sir T.
Browne; and my description would have only this fault, that it
would be equally, or almost equally, applicable to half a dozen
other writers, from the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth to the
end of Charles II. He is indeed all this; and what he has
more than all this peculiar to himself, I seem to convey to my own
mind in some measure by saying, that he is a quiet and sublime
enthusiast, with a strong tinge of the fantast-the humorist con-
stantly mingling with, and flashing across the philosopher, as the
* [Works, ut suprà, iii. 490–6.]
It was a copy of the old folio (of 1686, I think), which Charles
Lamb bought for Coleridge in 1809, and which the latter after
wards presented to some friend, writing on a flyleaf what succeeds.
-ED.
Character of Sir T. Browne as a Writer.
231
larting colours in shot silk play upon the main dye. In short, he
las brains in his head, which is all the more interesting for a little
wist in the brains. He sometimes reminds the reader of Mon-
aigne; but from no other than the general circumstances of an
egotism common to both, which in Montaigne is too often a mere
musing gossip, a chit-chat story of whims and peculiarities that
lead to nothing-but which, in Sir Thomas Browne, is always the
result of a feeling heart. conjoined with a mind of active curiosity-
the natural and becoming egotism of a man who, loving other men
is himself, gains the habit and the privilege of talking about him-
self as familiarly as about other men. Fond of the curious, and
a hunter of oddities and strangenesses, while he conceived him-
self with quaint and humorous gravity a useful inquirer into
physical truths and fundamental science, he loved to contemplate
and discuss his own thoughts and feelings, because he found by
comparison with other men's, that they, too, were curiosities; and
so, with a perfectly graceful and interesting ease, he put them, too,
into his museum and cabinet of rarities. In very truth, he was
not mistaken-so completely does he see every thing in a light of
his own; reading Nature neither by sun, moon, nor candle-light,
but by the light of the faëry glory around his own head; so that
you might say, that Nature had granted to him in perpetuity a
patent and monopoly for all his thoughts. Read his Hydriotaphia
above all, and in addition to the peculiarity, the exclusive Sir
Thomas Browness, of all the fancies and modes of illustration,
wonder at and admire his entireness in every subject which is be-
fore him. He is totus in illo, he follows it, he never wanders from
it, and he has no occasion to wander; for whatever happens to be
nis subject, he metamorphoses all nature into it. In that Hydrio-
taphia, or treatise on some urns dug up in Norfolk-how earthy,
now redolent of graves and sepulchres is every line! You have
now dark mould; now a thigh-bone; now a skull; then a bit of
mouldered coffin; a fragment of an old tombstone, with moss in its
hic jacet; a ghost or a winding-sheet; or the echo of a funeral
psalm wafted on a November wind: and the gayest thing you
shall meet with, shall be a silver nail or gilt Anno Domini from a
perished coffin-top. The very same remark applies in the same
force, to the interesting, though the far less interesting, Treatise on
he Quincuncial Plantations of the Ancients. There is the same
ittention to oddities, to the remoteness and minutiæ of vegetable
.erms—the same entireness of subject! You have quincunxes in
jeaven above; quincunxes in earth below; and quincunxes in the
water under the earth: quincunxes in deity; quincunxes in the mind
›f man; quincunxes in bones, in the optic nerves, in roots of trees, in
1
232
Character of Jeremy Taylor.
leaves, in petals, in everything! In short, just turn to the las
leaf of this volume, and read out aloud to yourself the seven las
paragraphs of Chapter V., beginning with the word 'More con
siderables.' But it is time for me to be in bed. In the words o
Sir Thomas (which will serve you as a fine specimen of his manner]
But the quincunx of Heaven (the Hyades, or five stars above th
horizon, at midnight at that time) runs low, and 'tis time we clos
the five parts of knowledge; we are unwilling to spin out ou
waking thoughts into the phantasms of sleep, which often con
tinueth precogitations, making cables of cobwebs, and wildernesse
of handsome groves. To keep our eyes open longer, were to ac
our antipodes ! The huntsmen are up in America; and they hav
already passed their first sleep in Persia.' Think you, my dea
friend, that there ever was such a reason given before for going t
bed at midnight; to wit, that if we did not, we should be acting
the part of our antipodes! And then, 'THE HUNTSMEN ARE UP I
AMERICA,'—what life, what fancy! Does the whimsical knigh
give us thus the essence of gunpowder tea, and call it an opiate ?”*
Jeremy Taylor was a writer as different from Si
Thomas Browne as it was possible for one writer to be
from another. He was a dignitary of the church, and
except in matters of casuistry and controverted points,
could not be supposed to enter upon speculative doubts,
* [Notes, Theological, Political, and Miscellaneous, by Samuel Taylor
Coleridge, 1853, pp. 288-92.] I do not think his account of the
Urn-burial very happy. Sir Thomas can be said to be "wholly in
his subject," only because he is wholly out of it. There is not a
word in the Hydriotaphia about “a thigh-bone, or a skull, or a bit
of moulded coffin, or a tombstone, or a ghost, or a winding-sheet, or
an echo," nor is " a silver nail or a gilt Anno Domini the gayest
thing you shall meet with.” You do not meet with them at all in
the text; nor is it possible, either from the nature of the subject,
or of Sir T. Browne's mind, that you should! He chose the subject
of Urn-burial, because it was "one of no mark or likelihood,'
totally free from the romantic prettiness and pleasing poetical com-
mon-places with which Mr. Coleridge has adorned it, and because,
being "without form and void," it gave unlimited scope to his
high-raised and shadowy imagination. The motto of this author's
compositions might be " De apparentibus et non existentibus eade
est ratio." He created his own materials; or, to speak of him in h
own language," he saw Nature in his elements of its chaos, an
discerned his favourite notions in the great obscurity of nothing!
Character of Jeremy Taylor.
233
66
or give a loose to a sort of dogmatical scepticism. He
had less thought, less "stuff of the conscience," less "to
give us pause," in his impetuous oratory, but he had
equal fancy-not the same vastness and profundity, but
more richness and beauty, more warmth and tenderness.
He is as rapid, as flowing and endless, as the other is
stately, abrupt, and concentrated. The eloquence of
the one is like a river, that of the other is more like an
aqueduct. The one is as sanguine as the other is
saturnine in the temper of his mind. Jeremy Taylor
took obvious and admitted truths for granted, and illus-
trated them with an inexhaustible display of new and
enchanting imagery. Sir Thomas Browne talks in sum-
totals: Jeremy Taylor enumerates all the particulars of
a subject. He gives every aspect it will bear, and never
cloys with sameness.” His characteristic is enthusi-
astic and delightful amplification. Sir Thomas Browne
gives the beginning and end of things, that you may
judge of their place and magnitude: Jeremy Taylor
describes their qualities and texture, and enters into all
the items of the debtor and creditor account between
life and death, grace and nature, faith and good works.
He puts his heart into his fancy. He does not pretend
to annihilate the passions and pursuits of mankind in
the pride of philosophic indifference, but treats them as
serious and momentous things, warring with conscience
and the soul's health, or furnishing the means of grace
and hopes of glory. In his writings, the frail stalk of
human life reclines on the bosom of eternity. His
Holy Living and Dying is a divine pastoral. He writes
to the faithful followers of Christ, as the shepherd pipes
to his flock. He introduces touching and heartfelt ap-
peals to familiar life; condescends to men of low estate;
and his pious page blushes with modesty and beauty.
His style is prismatic. It unfolds the colours of the
rainbow; it floats like the bubble through the air; it is
231
Character of Jeremy Taylor.
like innumerable dew-drops that glitter on the face of
morning, and tremble as they glitter. He does not dig
his way underground, but slides upon ice, borne on the
winged car of fancy. The dancing light he throws upon
objects is like an Aurora Borealis, playing betwixt
heaven and earth:
"Where pure Niemi's faëry banks arise,
And fringed with roses Tenglio rolls its stream."
""
His exhortations to piety and virtue are a gay me
mento mori. He mixes up death's-heads and amaranthine
flowers; makes life a procession to the grave, but crowns
it with gaudy garlands, and "rains sacrificial roses on
its path. In a word, his writings are more like fine
poetry than any other prose whatever; they are a choral
song in praise of virtue, and a hymn to the Spirit of the
Universe. I shall give a few passages, to show how
feeble and inefficient this praise is.
The Holy Dying begins in this manner :
A man is a bubble. . . . . He is born in vanity and sin; he
comes into the world like morning mushrooms, soon thrusting up
their heads into the air, and conversing with their kindred of the
same production, and as soon they turn into dust and forgetfulness;
some of them without any other interest in the affairs of the world,
but that they made their parents a little glad, and very sorrowful.
Others ride longer in the storm; it may be until seven years of
vanity be expired; and then peradventure the sun shines hot upon
their heads, and they fall into the shades below, into the cover of
death and darkness of the grave to hide them. But if the bubble
stands the shock of a bigger drop, and outlives the chances of a
child, of a careless nurse, of drowning in a pail of water, of being
overlaid by a sleepy servant, or such little accidents, then the
young man dances like a bubble empty and gay, and shines like a
dove's neck, or the image of a rainbow, which hath no substance,
and whose very imagery and colours are fantastical; and so he
dances out the gaiety of his youth, and is all the while in a storm,
and endures, only because he is not knocked on the head by a drop
of bigger rain, or crushed by the pressure of a load of indigested
meat, or quenched by the disorder of an ill-placed humour; and to
preserve a man alive in the midst of so many chances and hostilities,
}
Character of Jeremy Taylor.
235
is as great a miracle as to create him; to preserve him from rushing
into nothing, and at first to draw him up from nothing, were equally
the issues of an Almighty power.”*
Another instance of the same rich continuity of feeling
and transparent brilliancy in working out an idea, is to
be found in his description of the dawn and progress of
reason:
"Some are called at age at fourteen, some at one-and-twenty,
some never; but all men late enough; for the life of a man comes
upon him slowly and insensibly. But as when the sun approaches
towards the gates of the morning, he first opens a little eye of
heaven, and sends away the spirits of darkness, and gives light to
a cock, and calls up the lark to matins, and by-and-by gilds the
fringes of a cloud, and peeps over the eastern hills, thrusting out
his golden horns, like those which decked the brows of Moses, when
he was forced to wear a veil, because himself had seen the face of
God;
and still, while a man tells the story, the sun gets up higher,
till he shows a fair face and a full light, and then he shines one
whole day under a cloud often, and sometimes weeping great and
little showers, and sets quickly: so is a man's reason and his
life."
This passage puts one in mind of the rising dawn
and kindling skies in one of Claude's landscapes. Sir
Thomas Browne has nothing of this rich finishing and
exact gradation. The genius of the two men differed,
as that of the painter from the mathematician. The one
measures objects, the other copies them.
The one
shows that things are nothing out of themselves, or in
relation to the whole: the other, what they are in them-
selves, and in relation to us. Or the one may be said
mind to distant bodies;
to apply the telescope of the
the other looks at Nature in its infinite minuteness and
glossy splendour through a solar microscope.
In speaking of Death, our author's style assumes the
port and withering smile of the King of Terrors. The
following are scattered passages on this subject :
[Taylor's Works, ea. Heber, iv. 335–6.]
·
236
Character of Jeremy Taylor.
"It is the same harmless thing that a poor shepherd suffered
yesterday or a maid-servant to-day; and at the same time in which
you die, in that very night a thousand creatures die with you, some
wise men, and many fools; and the wisdom of the first will not
quit him, and the folly of the latter does not make him unable to
die."
•
"I have read of a fair young German gentleman who, while
living, often refused to be pictured, but put off the importunity of
his friends' desire by giving way that, after a few days' burial, they
might send a painter to his vault, and if they saw cause for it, draw
the image of his death unto the life. They did so, and found his
face half-eaten, and his midriff and back-bone full of serpents; and
so he stands pictured among his armed ancestors.”*
"It is a mighty change that is made by the death of every per-
son, and it is visible to us who are alive. Reckon but from the
sprightfulness of youth and the fair cheeks and full eyes of child-
hood, from the vigorousness and strong flexure of the joints of five-
and-twenty, to the hollowness and dead paleness, to the loathsome-
ness and horror of a three days' burial, and we shall perceive the
distance to be very great and very strange. But so have I seen a
rose newly springing from the clefts of its hood, and at first it was
fair as the morning, and full with the dew of heaven, as a lamb's
fleece; but when a ruder breath had forced open its virgin modesty,
and dismantled its too youthful and unripe retirements, it began to
put on darkness, and to decline to softness and the symptoms of a
sickly age; it bowed the head and broke the stalk, and at night,
having lost some of its leaves and all its beauty, it fell into the por-
tion of weeds and outworn faces.
So does the fairest beauty
change, and it will be as bad with you and me; and then what
servants shall we have to wait upon us in the grave? What friends
to visit us? What officious people to cleanse away the moist and
unwholesome cloud reflected upon our faces from the sides of the
weeping vaults, which are the longest weepers for our funerals ?Ӡ
•
"A man may read a sermon, the best and most passionate that
ever man preached, if he shall but enter into the sepulchres of
kings. In the same Escurial where the Spanish princes live in
greatness and power, and decree war or peace, they have wisely
placed a cemetery where their ashes and their glory shall sleep till
time shall be no more: and where our kings have been crowned,
their ancestors lie interred, and they must walk over their grand-
sire's head to take his crown. There is an acre sown with royal
* [Works, iv. 342.
† [Ibid. pp. 342-3.]
Character of Jeremy Taylor.
237
seed, the copy of the greatest change from rich to naked, from ceiled
roofs to arched coffins, from living like gods to die like men.
There is enough to cool the flames of lust, to abate the heights of
pride, to appease the itch of covetous desires, to sully and dash out
the dissembling colours of a lustful, artificial, and imaginary beauty.
There the warlike and the peaceful, the fortunate and the miserable,
the beloved and the despised princes mingle their dust, and pay
down their symbol of mortality, and tell all the world that when we
die, our ashes shall be equal to kings, and our accounts easier, and
our pains for our crimes shall be less. To my apprehension, it is a
sad record which is left by Athenæus concerning Ninus, the great
Assyrian monarch, whose life and death is summed up in these
words: "Ninus the Assyrian had an ocean of gold, and other riches
more than the sand in the Caspian sea; he never saw the stars, and
perhaps he never desired it; he never stirred up the holy fire among
the Magi; nor touched his God with the sacred rod according to the
laws: he never offered sacrifice, nor worshipped the deity, nor ad-
ministered justice, nor spake to his people; nor numbered them:
but he was most valiant to eat and drink, and having mingled his
*The above passage is an inimitably fine paraphrase of some
lines on the tombs in Westminster Abbey, by F. Beaumont. It
shows how near Jeremy Taylor's style was to poetry, and how well
it weaves in with it :
Mortality, behold, and fear,
What a charge of flesh is here!
Think how many royal bones
Sleep within this heap of stones:
Here they lie had realms and lands,
Who now want strength to stir their hands.
Where from their pulpits, soil'd with dust,
They preach 'In greatness is no trust.'
Here's an acre sown indeed
With the richest, royal'st seed
That the earth did e'er suck in,
Since the first man died for sin.
Here the bones of birth have cried,
Though gods they were, as men they died.'
Here are sands, ignoble things,
Dropt from the ruin'd sides of kings.
Here's a world of pomp and state
Buried in dust, once dead by fate."
1 [Dyce's Beaumont and Fletcher, xi. 497.]
238
Character of Jeremy Taylor.
wines, he threw the rest upon the stones. This man is dead: behold
his sepulchre, and now hear where Ninus is. Sometimes I was
Ninus, and drew the breath of a living man, but now am nothing
but clay. I have nothing but what I did eat, and what I served to
myself in lust, that was and is all my portion. The wealth with
which I was esteemed blessed, my enemies meeting together shall
carry away, as the mad Thyades carry a raw goat. I am gone to
hell: and when I went thither, I neither carried gold, nor horse, nor
silver chariot. I that wore a mitre, am now a little heap of dust."*
He who wrote in this manner also wore a mitre, and
is now a heap of dust;† but when the name of Jeremy
Taylor is no longer remembered with reverence, genius
I will have become a mockery, and virtue an empty
shade!
* [Taylor's Works, iv. pp. 343–4.]
† He died in August, 1667, Bishop of Down and Connor.-ED.
LECTURES
ON THE
【TERATURE OF THE AGE OF ELIZABETH, AND
CHARACTERS OF SHAKESPEAR'S PLAYS.
( 239 )
LECTURE VIII.
ON THE SPIRIT OF ANCIENT AND MODERN LITERATURE-
ON THE GERMAN DRAMA, CONTRASTED WITH THAT OF
THE AGE OF ELIZABETH.
BEFORE I proceed to the more immediate subject of
the present Lecture, I wish to say a few words of one
or two writers in our own time, who have imbibed the
spirit and imitated the language of our elder dramatists.
Among these I may reckon the ingenious author of the
Apostate and Evadne, who in the last-mentioned play,
in particular, has availed himself with much judgment
and spirit of the tragedy of the Traitor † by old Shirley.
It would be curious to hear the opinion of a professed
admirer of the Ancients, and captious deposer of the
Moderns, with respect to this production, before he
knew it was a copy of an old play. Shirley himself
lived in the time of Charles I., and died in the beginning
of Charles II.;‡ but he had formed his style on that of
the preceding age, and had written the greatest number
* T. Sheil. Evadne was performed at Covent Garden, Feb. 10,
1819; Geneste (Acc. of the English Stage, viii. 700) states that the
plot was largely taken from the Traitor, a drama by Shirley, of
which an alteration was afterwards made by T. Rivers, a Jesuit.
See Dyce's Memoir of Shirley (Works, 1833, i. xv.).—Ed.
By the same author, was brought out at the same house, May 3,
1817. See Geneste (Ibid. p. 611), who does not give a very favour-
able account of either performance.—ED.
He and his wife both died from fright, occasioned by the great fire
of London in 1665 [1666], and lie buried in St. Giles's churchyard.
[But they survived till October, 1666, at all events. See Shirley's
Works, 1833, i. lvii.-ix.]
240. On Ancient and Modern Literature.
of his plays in conjunction with Jonson, Decker, and
Massinger. He was "the last of those fair clouds that
on the bosom of bright honour sailed in long procession,
calm and beautiful." The name of Mr. Tobin is fami-
liar to every lover of the drama. His Honeymoon is
evidently founded on The Taming of a Shrew, and Duke
Aranza has been pronounced by a polite critic to be “ an
elegant Petruchio." The plot is taken from Shakspeare;
but the language and sentiments, both of this play and
of The Curfew, bear a more direct resemblance to the
flowery tenderness of Beaumont and Fletcher, who
were, I believe, the favourite study of our author. Mr.
Lamb's John Woodvil may be considered as a dramatic
fragment, intended for the closet rather than the stage.
It would sound oddly in the lobbies of either theatre,
amidst the noise and glare and bustle of resort; but
"there where we have treasured up our hearts," in
silence and in solitude, it may claim and find a place for
itself. It might be read with advantage in the still re-
treats of Sherwood Forest, where it would throw a new-
born light on the green sunny glades; the tenderest
flower might seem to drink of the poet's spirit, and “the
tall deer, that paints a dancing shadow of his horns in
the swift brook," might seem to do so in mockery of the
poet's thought. Mr. Lamb, with a modesty often at-
tendant on fine feeling, has loitered too long in the
humbler avenues leading to the temple of ancient
genius, instead of marching boldly up to the sanctuary,
as many with half his pretensions would have done:
"but fools rush in, where angels fear to tread." The
defective or objectionable parts of this production are
imitations of the defects of the old writers: its beauties
are his own, though in their manner. The touches of
thought and passion are often as pure and delicate as
they are profound; and the character of his heroine
Margaret is perhaps the finest and most genuine female
On Ancient and Modern Literature.
241
character out of Shakspeare. This tragedy was not
critic-proof: it had its cracks and flaws and breaches,
through which the enemy marched in triumphant. The
station which he had chosen was not indeed a walled
town, but a straggling village, which the experienced
engineers proceeded to lay waste; and he is pinned
down in more than one review of the day, as an exem-
plary warning to indiscreet writers, who venture beyond
the pale of periodical taste and conventional criticism.
Mr. Lamb was thus hindered by the taste of the polite
yulgar from writing as he wished; his own taste would
not allow him to write like them: and he (perhaps
wisely) turned critic and prose-writer in his own de-
fence. To say that he has written better about Shak-
speare and about Hogarth than anybody else, is saying
little in his praise. A gentleman of the name of Corn-
wall, who has lately published a volume of Dramatic
Scenes, has met with a very different reception, but I
cannot say that he has deserved it. He has made no
sacrifice at the shrine of fashionable affectation or false
glitter. There is nothing common-place in his style to
soothe the complacency of dulness, nothing extravagant
to startle the grossness of ignorance. He writes with
simplicity, delicacy, and fervour; continues a scene from
Shakspeare or works out a hint from Boccaccio in the
spirit of his originals, and though he bows with rever-
ence to the altar of those great masters, he keeps an eye
curiously intent on nature, and a mind awake to the
admonitions of his own heart. As he has begun, so let
him proceed. Any one who will turn to the glowing
and richly-coloured conclusion of the Falcon, will, I
think, agree with me in this wish!
*
There are four sorts or schools of tragedy with which
I am acquainted. The first is the antique or classical.
* Barry Cornwall, i.e. B. W. Procter, Esq. Mr. Procter is still
living (1869).—Ed.
R
242 On Ancient and Modern Literature.
This consisted, I apprehend, in the introduction of per-
sons on the stage, speaking, feeling, and acting according
to nature, that is, according to the impression of given
circumstances on the passions and mind of man in those
circumstances, but limited by the physical conditions of
time and place, as to its external form, and to a certain
dignity of attitude and expression, selection in the
figures, and unity in their grouping, as in a statue or
bas-relief. The second is the Gothic or romantic, or, as
it might be called, the historical or poetical tragedy, and
differs from the former only in having a larger scope in
the design and boldness in the execution; that is, it is
the dramatic representation of nature and passion eman-
cipated from the precise imitation of an actual event in
place and time, from the same fastidiousness in the
choice of the materials, and with the license of the epic
and fanciful form added to it in the range of the subject
and the decorations of language. This is particularly
the style or school of Shakspeare and of the best writers.
of the age of Elizabeth, and the one immediately follow-
ing. Of this class, or genus, the tragedie bourgeoise is a
variety, and the antithesis of the classical form. The
third sort is the French or common-place rhetorical
style, which is founded on the antique as to its form and
subject-matter; but instead of individual nature, real
passion or imagination growing out of real passion
and the circumstances of the speaker, it deals only
in vague, imposing, and laboured declamations, or de-
scriptions of nature, dissertations on the passions, and
pompous flourishes, which never entered any head but
the author's, have no existence in nature which they
pretend to identify, and are not dramatic at all, but
purely didactic. The fourth and last is the German or'
paradoxical style, which differs from the others in re-
presenting men as acting not from the impulse of feel-
ing, or as debating common-place questions of morality,
1
On Ancient and Modern Literature.
243
but as the organs and mouth-pieces (that is, as acting,
speaking, and thinking, under the sole influence) of
certain extravagant speculative opinions, abstracted from
all existing customs, prejudices, and institutions. It is
my present business to speak chiefly of the first and last
of these.
Sophocles differs from Shakspeare as a Doric portico.
does from Westminster Abbey. The principle of the
one is simplicity and harmony, of the other richness
and power. The one relies on form or proportion, the
other on quantity and variety and prominence of parts.
The one owes its charm to a certain union and regu-
larity of feeling, the other adds to its effect from com-
plexity and the combination of the greatest extremes.
The classical appeals to sense and habit; the Gothic or
romantic strikes from novelty, strangeness, and contrast.
Both are founded in essential and indestructible prin-
ciples of human nature. We may prefer the one to the
other, as we choose, but to set up an arbitrary and
bigoted standard of excellence in consequence of this
preference, and to exclude either one or the other from
poetry or art, is to deny the existence of the first prin-
ciples of the human mind, and to war with nature,
which is the height of weakness and arrogance at once.
There are some observations on this subject in a late
number of the Edinburgh Review, from which I shall here
make a pretty long extract:
"The most obvious distinction between the two
styles, the classical and the romantic, is, that the one is
conversant with objects that are grand or beautiful in
themselves, or in consequence of obvious and universal
associations; the other with those that are interesting
only by the force of circumstances and imagination.
Grecian temple, for instance, is a classical object: it is
beautiful in itself, and excites immediate admiration.
But the ruins of a Gothic castle have no beauty or
À
214 On Ancient and Modern Literature.
symmetry to attract the eye; and yet they excite a
more powerful and romantic interest, from the ideas
with which they are habitually associated. If, in ad-
dition to this, we are told that this is Macbeth's castle,
the scene of the murder of Duncan, the interest will be
instantly heightened to a sort of pleasing horror. The
classical idea or form of any thing, it may also be ob-
served, remains always the same, and suggests nearly the
same impressions; but the associations of ideas be-
longing to the romantic character may vary infinitely,
and take in the whole range of nature and accident.
Antigone, in Sophocles, waiting near the grove of the
furies—Electra, in Eschylus, offering sacrifice at the
tomb of Agamemnon—are classical subjects, because the
circumstances and, the characters have a corresponding
dignity, and an immediate interest, from their mere
designation. Florimel, in Spenser, where she is de-
scribed sitting on the ground in the witch's hut, is not
classical, though in the highest degree poetical and ro-
mantic for the incidents and situation are in them-
selves mean and disagreeable, till they are redeemed by
the genius of the poet, and converted, by the very con-
trast, into a source of the utmost pathos and elevation
of sentiment. Othello's handkerchief is not classical,
though there was a magic in the web' it is only a
powerful instrument of passion and imagination. Even
Lear is not classical; for he is a poor crazy old man,
who has nothing sublime about him but his afflictions,
and who dies of a broken heart.
'Schlegel somewhere compares the furies of Eschy-
lus to the witches of Shakspeare-we think without
much reason. Perhaps Shakspeare has surrounded the
weird sisters with associations as terrible, and even
more mysterious, strange, and fantastic, than the furies
of Eschylus; but the traditionary beings themselves
are not so petrific. These are of marble, their look alone
On Ancient and Modern Literature.
245
must blast the beholder; those are of air, bubbles; and
though 'so withered and so wild in their attire,' it is
their spells alone which are fatal. They owe their
power to metaphysical aid: but the others contain all
that is dreadful in their corporal figures. In this we
see the distinct spirit of the classical and the romantic
mythology. The serpents that twine round the head of
the furies are not to be trifled with, though they im-
plied no preternatural power. The bearded witches in
Macbeth are in themselves grotesque and ludicrous,
except as this strange deviation from nature staggers
our imagination, and leads us to expect and to believe in
all incredible things. They appal the faculties by what
they say or do; the others are intolerable, even to sight.
"Our author is right in affirming, that the true way
to understand the plays of Sophocles and Eschylus is
to study them before the groups of the Niobe or the
Laocoon. If we can succeed in explaining this analogy,
we shall have solved nearly the whole difficulty. For
it is certain, that there are exactly the same powers of
mind displayed in the poetry of the Greeks as in their
statues. Their poetry is exactly what their sculptors
might have written. Both are exquisite imitations of
nature; the one in marble, the other in words. It is
evident, that the Greek poets had the same perfect idea
of the subjects they described as the Greek sculptors
had of the objects they represented; and they give as
much of this absolute truth of imitation as can be
given by words. But in this direct and simple imita-
tion of nature, as in describing the form of a beautiful
woman, the poet is greatly inferior to the sculptor; it
is in the power of illustration, in comparing it to other
things, and suggesting other ideas of beauty or love,
that he has an entirely new source of imagination
opened to him; and of this power, the moderns have
made at least a bolder and more frequent use than the
246 On Ancient and Modern Literature.
ancients. The description of Helen in Homer is a de-
scription of what might have happened and been seen,
as 'that she moved with grace, and that the old men
rose up with reverence as she passed;' the description
of Belphœbe in Spenser is a description of what was
only visible to the eye of the poet:
"Upon her eyelids many graces sat,
Under the shadow of her even brows.'
The description of the soldiers going to battle in
Shakspeare, 'all plumed like estriches, like eagles
newly baited, wanton as goats, wild as young bulls,' is
too bold, figurative, and profuse of dazzling images for
the mild, equable tone of classical poetry, which never
loses sight of the object in the illustration. The ideas
of the ancients were too exact and definite, too much
attached to the material form or vehicle by which they
were conveyed, to admit of those rapid combinations,
those unrestrained flights of fancy, which, glancing from
heaven to earth, unite the most opposite extremes, and
draw the happiest illustrations from things the most
remote. The two principles of imitation and imagina-
tion, indeed, are not only distinct, but almost opposite.
“The great difference, then, which we find between
the classical and the romantic style, between ancient
and modern poetry, is, that the one more frequently
describes things as they are interesting in themselves,
the other for the sake of the associations of ideas con-
nected with them; that the one dwells more on the
immediate impressions of objects on the senses, the
other on the ideas which they suggest to the imagina-
tion. The one is the poetry of form, the other of effect.
The one gives only what is necessarily implied in the
subject, the other all that can possibly arise out of it.
The one seeks to identify the imitation with the external
object, clings to it, is inseparable from it, is either that
On Ancient and Modern Literature.
247
or nothing; the other seeks to identify the original
impression with whatever else, within the range, of
thought or feeling, can strengthen, relieve, adorn, or
elevate it. Hence the severity and simplicity of the
Greek tragedy, which excluded every thing foreign or
unnecessary to the subject. Hence the unities: for, in
order to identify the imitation as much as possible with
the reality, and leave nothing to mere imagination, it
was necessary to give the same coherence and con-
sistency to the different parts of a story as to the
different limbs of a statue. Hence the beauty and
grandeur of their materials; for, deriving their power
over the mind from the truth of the imitation, it was
necessary that the subject which they made choice of,
and from which they could not depart, should be in
itself grand and beautiful. Hence the perfection of
their execution; which consisted in giving the utmost
harmony, delicacy, and refinement to the details of a
given subject. Now, the characteristic excellence of
the moderns is the reverse of all this. As, according to
our author, the poetry of the Greeks is the same as their
sculpture; so, he says, our own more nearly resembles
painting, where the artist can relieve and throw back
his figures at pleasure, use a greater variety of con-
trasts, and where light and shade, like the colours of
fancy, are reflected on the different objects. The Muse
of classical poetry should be represented as a beautiful
naked figure: the Muse of modern poetry should be
represented clothed, and with wings. The first has
the advantage in the point of form; the last in colour
and motion.
66
Perhaps we may trace this difference to something
analogous in physical organisation, situation, religion,
and manners. First, the physical organisation of the
Greeks seems to have been more perfect, more sus-
ceptible of external impressions, and more in harmony
248
On Ancient and Modern Literature.
with external nature, than ours, who have not the same
advantages of climate and constitution. Born of a
beautiful and vigorous race, with quick senses and a
clear understanding, and placed under a mild heaven,
they gave the fullest development to their external
faculties; and where all is perceived easily, every thing
is perceived in harmony and proportion. It is the
stern genius of the north which drives men back upon
their own resources, which makes them slow to per-
ceive, and averse to feel, and which, by rendering them
insensible to the single, successive impressions of things,
requires their collective and combined force to rouse the
imagination violently and unequally. It should be
remarked, however, that the early poetry of some of
the eastern nations has even more of that irregularity,
wild enthusiasm, and disproportioned grandeur, which
has been considered as the distinguishing character of
the northern nations.
'Again, a good deal may be attributed to the state of
manners and political institutions. The ancient Greeks
were warlike tribes encamped in cities. They had no
other country than that which was enclosed within the
walls of the town in which they lived. Each individual
belonged, in the first instance, to the state; and his
relations to it were so close, as to take away, in a great
measure, all personal independence and free-will.
Every one was mortised to his place in society, and had
his station assigned him as part of the political machine,
which could only subsist by strict subordination and
regularity. Every man was, as it were, perpetually on
duty, and his faculties kept constant watch and ward.
Energy of purpose and intensity of observation became
the necessary characteristics of such a state of society;
and the general principle communicated itself from
this ruling concern for the public, to' morals, to art,
to language, to every thing. The tragic poets of Greece
On Ancient and Modern Literature.
249
were among her best soldiers; and it is no wonder that
they were as severe in their poetry as in their disci-
pline. Their swords and their styles carved out their
way with equal sharpness. After all, however, the
tragedies of Sophocles, which are the perfection of the
classical style, are hardly tragedies in our sense of the
word.*
They do not exhibit the extremity of human
passion and suffering. The object of modern tragedy
is to represent the soul utterly subdued, as it were, or
at least convulsed and overthrown by passion or mis-
fortune. That of the ancients was to show how the
greatest crimes could be perpetrated with the least re-
morse, and the greatest calamities borne with the least
emotion. Firmness of purpose and calmness of senti-
ment are their leading characteristics. Their heroes
and heroines act and suffer as if they were always in
the presence of a higher power, or as if human life
itself were a religious ceremony, performed in honour of
the gods and of the state. The mind is not shaken to
its centre; the whole being is not crushed or broken
down. Contradictory motives are not accumulated ;
the utmost force of imagination and passion is not ex-
hausted to overcome the repugnance of the will to
crime;
the contrast and combination of outward acci-
dents are not called in to overwhelm the mind with the
whole weight of unexpected calamity. The dire con-
flict of the feelings, the desperate struggle with fortune,
are seldom there. All is conducted with a fatal com-
posure; prepared and submitted to with inflexible con-
stancy, as if nature were only an instrument in the
hands of fate.
“This state of things was afterwards continued under
the Roman empire. In the ages of chivalry and romance,
which, after a considerable interval, succeeded its dis-
*The difference in the tone of moral sentiment is the greatest
of all others.
250 On Ancient and Modern Literature.
solution, and which have stamped their character on
modern genius and literature, all was reversed. Society
was again resolved into its component parts; and the
world was, in a manner, to begin anew. The ties which
bound the citizen and the soldier to the state being
loosened, each person was thrown back into the circle of
the domestic affections, or left to pursue his doubtful
way to fame and fortune alone. This interval of time
might be accordingly supposed to give birth to all that
was constant in attachment, adventurous in action,
strange, wild, and extravagant in invention. Human
life took the shape of a busy, voluptuous dream, where
the imagination was now lost amidst antres vast and
deserts idle;' or suddenly transported to stately palaces,
echoing with dance and song. In this uncertainty of
events, this fluctuation of hopes and fears, all objects.
became dim, confused, and vague. Magicians, dwarfs,
giants, followed in the train of romance; and Orlando's
enchanted sword, the horn which he carried with him,
and which he blew thrice at Roncesvalles, and Rogero's
winged horse, were not sufficient to protect them in their
unheard-of encounters, or deliver them from their inex-
tricable difficulties. It was a return to the period of the
early heroic ages; but tempered by the difference of
domestic manners, and the spirit of religion. The
marked difference in the relation of the sexes arose from
the freedom of choice in women; which, from being the
slaves of the will and passions of men, converted them
into the arbiters of their fate, which introduced the
modern system of gallantry, and first made love a feeling
of the heart, founded on mutual affection and esteem.
The leading virtues of the Christian religion, self-denial
and generosity, assisted in producing the same effect.
Hence the spirit of chivalry, of romantic love and
honour!
"The mythology of the romantic poetry differed from
On Ancient and Modern Literature. 251
}
the received religion: both differed essentially from the
classical. The religion or mythology of the Greeks was
› nearly allied to their poetry: it was material and de-
finite. The Pagan system reduced the gods to the
human form, and elevated the powers of inanimate
nature to the same standard. Statues carved out of
the finest marble represented the objects of their reli-
gious worship in airy porticos, in solemn temples, and
consecrated groves. Mercury was seen 'new-lighted on
some heaven-kissing hill;' and the Naiad or Dryad came
gracefully forth as the personified genius of the stream
or wood. All was subjected to the senses. The Christian
religion, on the contrary, is essentially spiritual and
abstracted; it is the evidence of things unseen.' In
the heathen mythology, form is everywhere predomi-
nant; in the Christian, we find only unlimited, unde-
fined power.
The imagination alone ‘broods over the
immense abyss, and makes it pregnant.' There is, in
the habitual belief of an universal, invisible principle of
all things, a vastness and obscurity which confounds
our perceptions while it exalts our piety. A myste-
rious awe surrounds the doctrines of the Christian faith :
the infinite is everywhere before us, whether we turn
to reflect on what is revealed to us of the divine nature
or our own.
(6
History, as well as religion, has contributed to en-
large the bounds of imagination: and both together, by
showing past and future objects at an interminable dis-
tance, have accustomed the mind to contemplate and
take an interest in the obscure and shadowy. The
ancients were more circumscribed within 'the ignorant
present time,' spoke only their own language, were
conversant only with their own customs, were
quainted only with the events of their own history.
The mere lapse of time then, aided by the art of print-
ing, has served to accumulate an endless mass of mixed
ac-
252
On Ancient and Modern Literature.
and contradictory materials; and, by extending our
knowledge to a greater number of things, has made our
particular ideas less perfect and distinct. The constant
reference to a former state of manners and literature is
a marked feature in modern poetry. We are always
talking of the Greeks and Romans;-they never said
any thing of us. This circumstance has tended to give
a certain abstract elevation and ethereal refinement to
the mind, without strengthening it. We are lost in
wonder at what has been done, and dare not think of
emulating it. The earliest modern poets, accordingly,
may be conceived to hail the glories of the antique
world, dawning through the dark abyss of time; while
revelation, on the other hand, opened its path to the
skies. So Dante represents himself as conducted by
Virgil to the shades below; while Beatrice welcomes
him to the abodes of the blest."
The French are the only people in modern Europe
who have professedly imitated the ancients; but from
their being utterly unlike the Greeks or Romans, have
produced a dramatic style of their own, which is neither
classical nor romantic. The same article contains the
following censure of this style:
"The true poet identifies the reader with the char-
acters he represents; the French poet only identifies
him with himself. There is scarcely a single page of
their tragedy which fairly throws nature open to you.
It is tragedy in masquerade. We never get beyond
conjecture and reasoning-beyond the general impres-
sion of the situation of the persons-beyond general
reflections on their passions-beyond general descrip-
tions of objects. We never get at that something more,
which is what we are in search of, namely, what we our-
selves should feel in the same situations. The true poet
transports you to the scene-you see and hear what is
passing-you catch, from the lips of the persons con-
Un Ancient and Modern Literature. 253
cerned, what lies nearest to their hearts;-the French
poet takes you into his closet, and reads you a lecture
upon it.
The chefs-d'œuvre of their stage, then, are, at .
best, only ingenious paraphrases of nature. The dia-
logue is a tissue of common-places, of laboured declama-
tions on human life, of learned casuistry on the passions,
on virtue and vice, which any one else might make just
as well as the person speaking; and yet, what the persons
themselves would say, is all we want to know, and all
for which the poet puts them into those situations.”
After the Restoration, that is, after the return of the
exiled family of the Stuarts from France, our writers
transplanted this artificial, monotonous, and imposing
common-place style into England, by imitations and
translations, where it could not be expected to take
deep root, and produce wholesome fruits, and where it has
indeed given rise to little but turgidity and rant in men of
original force of genius, and to insipidity and formality
in feebler copyists. Otway is the only writer of this
school, who, in the lapse of a century and a half, has
produced a tragedy (upon the classic or regular model)
of indisputable excellence and lasting interest. The
merit of Venice Preserved is not confined to its effect on
the stage, or to the opportunity it affords for the dis-
play of the powers of the actors in it-of a Jaffier, a
Pierre, a Belvidera: it reads as well in the closet, and
loses little or none of its power of riveting breathless
attention, and stirring the deepest yearnings of affection.
It has passages of great beauty in themselves (detached
from the fable), touches of true nature and pathos, though
none equal, or indeed comparable, to what we meet with
in Shakspeare and other writers of that day; but the
awful suspense of the situations, the conflict of duties
and passions, the intimate bonds that unite the char-
acters together, and that are violently rent asunder
like the parting of soul and body, the solemn march of
254 On Ancient and Modern Literature.
the tragical events to the fatal catastrophe that winds
up and closes over all, give to this production of Otway's
Muse a charm and power that bind it like a spell on the
public mind, and have made it a proud and inseparable
adjunct of the English stage. Thomson has given it
due honour in his feeling verse, when he exclaims :
แ See o'er the stage the Ghost of Hamlet stalks,
Othello rages, poor Monimia mourns,
And Belvidera pours her soul in love.”
There is a mixture of effeminacy, of luxurious and
cowardly indulgence of his wayward sensibility, in
Jaffier's character, which is, however, finely relieved.
by the bold intrepid villainy and contemptuous irony
of Pierre, while it is excused by the difficulties of his
situation, and the loveliness of Belvidera: but in the
Orphan there is little else but this voluptuous effeminacy
of sentiment and mawkish distress, which strikes directly
at the root of that mental fortitude and heroic cast of
thought which alone makes tragedy endurable — that
renders its sufferings pathetic, or its struggles sublime.
Yet there are lines and passages in it of extreme tender-
ness and beauty; and few persons, I conceive (judging
from my own experience), will read it at a certain time
of life without shedding tears over it as fast as the
"Arabian trees their medicinal gum." Otway always
touched the reader, for he had himself a heart.
may be sure that he blotted his page often with his
tears, on which so many drops have since fallen from
glistening eyes, "that sacred pity had engendered
there." He had susceptibility of feeling and warmth
of genius; but he had not equal depth of thought or
loftiness of imagination, and indulged his mere sensibility
too much, yielding to the immediate impression or emo-
tion excited in his own mind, and not placing himself
enough in the minds and situations of others, or follow-
We
On Ancient and Modern Literature. 255
ing the workings of nature sufficiently with keenness of
eye and strength of will into its heights and depths, its
strongholds as well as its weak sides. The Orphan was
attempted to be revived some time since with the ad-
vantage of Miss O'Neill playing the part of Monimia.
It, however, did not entirely succeed (as it appeared at
the time) from the plot turning all on one circumstance,
and that hardly of a nature to be obtruded on the public
notice. The incidents and characters are taken almost
literally from an old play by Robert Tailor, called The
Hog hath Lost his Pearl [1614].
Addison's Cato, in spite of Dennis's criticism, still
retains possession of the stage with all its unities. My
love and admiration for Addison is as great as any per-
son's, let that other person be who he will; but it is
not founded on his Cato, in extolling which Whigs and
Tories contended in loud applause. The interest of this
play (bating that shadowy regret that always clings to
and flickers round the form of free antiquity) is con-
fined to the declamation, which is feeble in itself, and
not heard on the stage. I have seen Mr. Kemble in
this part repeat the Soliloquy on Death without a line
being distinctly heard; nothing was observable but the
thoughtful motion of his lips, and the occasional exten-
sion of his hand in sign of doubts suggested or resolved;
yet this beautiful and expressive dumb-show, with the
propriety of his costume, and the elegance of his atti-
tude and figure, excited the most lively interest, and
kept attention even more on the stretch, to catch every
imperfect syllable or speaking gesture. There is nothing,
however, in the play to excite ridicule, or shock by ab
surdity, except the love-scenes, which are passed over as
what the spectator has no proper concern with: and
however feeble or languid the interest produced by
a dramatic exhibition, unless there is some positive
stumbling-block thrown in the way, or gross offence
256 On Ancient and Modern Literature.
given to an audience, it is generally suffered to linger
on to a euthanasia, instead of dying a violent and pre-
mature death. If an author (particularly an author of
high reputation) can contrive to preserve a uniform de-
gree of insipidity, he is nearly sure of impunity. It is
the mixture of great faults with splendid passages
(the more striking from the contrast) that is inevitable
damnation. Every one must have seen the audience tired
out and watching for an opportunity to wreak their
vengeance on the author, and yet not able to accom-
plish their wish, because no one part seemed more tire-
some or worthless than another. The philosophic
mantle of Addison's Cato, when it no longer spreads
its graceful folds on the shoulders of John Kemble, will,
I fear, fall to the ground; nor do I think Mr. Kean
likely to pick it up again, with dauntless ambition or
stoic pride, like that of Coriolanus. He could not play
Cato (at least I think not) for the same reason that he
will play Coriolanus. He can always play a living
man; he cannot play a lifeless statue.
Dryden's plays have not come down to us, except in
the collection of his printed works. The last of them
that was on the list of regular acting plays was Don
Sebastian. The Mask of Arthur and Emmeline was
the other day revived at one of our theatres, with-
out much success.* Alexander the Great is by Lee,
who wrote some things in conjunction with Dryden,
and who had far more power and passion of an irregular
and turbulent kind, bordering upon constitutional mor-
bidity, and who might have done better things (as we
see from his Edipus) had not his genius been per-
verted and rendered worse than abortive by carrying
the vicious manner of his age to the greatest excess.
Dryden's plays are perhaps the fairest specimen of
what this manner was. I do not know how to describe
* October 26, 1819, at Covent Garden.-ED.
On Ancient and Modern Literature.
257
it better than by saying that it is one continued and
exaggerated common-place. All the characters are put
into a swaggering attitude of dignity, and tricked out
in the pomp of ostentatious drapery. The images are
extravagant, though not far-fetched; yet are outrageous
caricatures of obvious thoughts: the language oscillates
between bombast and bathos: the characters are noisy
pretenders to virtue, and shallow boasters in vice; the
versification is laboured and monotonous, quite unlike
the admirably free and flowing rhyme of his satires, in
which he felt the true inspiration of his subject, and
could find modulated sounds to express it. Dryden had
no dramatic genius either in tragedy or comedy. In
his plays he mistakes blasphemy for sublimity, and
ribaldry for wit. He had so little notion of his own
powers, that he has put Milton's Paradise Lost into
dramatic rhyme to make Adam look like a fine gentle-
man, and has added a double love-plot to the Tem-
pest, to "relieve the killing languor and over-laboured
lassitude" of that solitude of the imagination, in which
Shakspeare had let the inhabitants of his Enchanted
Island. I will give two passages out of Don Sebastian
in illustration of what I have said above of this mock-
heroic style.
Almeyda, advising Sebastian to fly from the power of
Muley-Moluch, addresses him thus:
"Leave then the luggage of your fate behind;
To make your flight more easy, leave Almeyda.
Nor think me left a base, ignoble prey,
Exposed to this inhuman tyrant's lust.
My virtue is a guard beyond my strength;
And death my last defence within my call."
+
Sebastian answers very gravely:
"Death may be called in vain, and cannot come:
Tyrants can tie him up from your relief:
Nor has a Christian privilege to die.
S
258
On Ancient and Modern Literature.
Alas, thou art too young in thy new faith:
Brutus and Cato might discharge their souls,
And give them furloughs for another world:
But we, like sentries, are obliged to stand,
In starless nights, and wait the appointed hour."
Sebastian then urging her to prevent the tyrant's
designs by an instant marriage, she says:
"'Tis late to join, when we must part so soon.
Sebastian. Nay, rather let us haste it, ere we part:
Our souls for want of that acquaintance here
May wander in the starry walks above,
And, forced on worse companions, miss ourselves."*
In the scene with Muley-Moluch where she makes
intercession for Sebastian's life, she
says:
"My father's, mother's, brother's death I pardon:
That's somewhat, sure, a mighty sum of murder,
Of innocent and kindred blood, struck off.
My prayers and penance shall discount for these,
And beg of Heaven to charge the bill on me:
Behold what price I offer, and how dear
To buy Sebastian's life.
Emperom. Let after-reckonings trouble fearful fools:
I'll stand the trial of those trivial crimes:
But since thou begg'st me to prescribe my terms,
The only I can offer are thy love;
And this one day of respite to resolve.
Grant or deny, for thy next word is fate;
And fate is deaf to prayer.
Almeyda. May heav'n be so,
At thy last breath, to thine! I curse thee not:
For who can better curse the
Thau to be what they are?
plague or devil
That curse be thine.
Now do not speak, Sebastian, for you need not,
But die, for I resign your life. Look, heav'n,
Almeyda dooms her dear Sebastian's death!
But is there heaven? for I begin to doubt;
The skies are hush'd; no grumbling thunders roll:
Now take your swing, ye impious: sin, unpunish'd.
* [Dryden's Works, ed. 1808, vii. 445-6.]
[Rising up.
On Ancient and Modern Literature.
259
Eternal Providence seems over-watch'd,
And with a slumbering nod assents to murder. . .
Farewell, my lost Sebastian !
I do not beg, I challenge Justice now:
O Powers, if Kings be your peculiar care,
Why plays this wretch with your prerogative?
Now flash him dead, now crumble him to ashes:
Or henceforth live confined in your own palace;
And look not idly out upon a world
That is no longer yours.
""*
These passages, with many like them, will be found
in the first scene of the third act.
The occasional striking expressions, such as that of
souls at the resurrection "fumbling for their limbs,"
are the language of strong satire and habitual disdain,
not proper to tragic or serious poetry.
After Dryden there is no writer that has acquired
much reputation as a tragic poet for the next hundred
years. In the hands of his successors, the Smiths, the
Hughes', the Hills, the Murphys, the Dr. Johnsons, of
the reigns of George I. and II., tragedy seemed almost
afraid to know itself, and certainly did not stand where
it had done a hundred and fifty years before. It had
degenerated by regular and studied gradations into the
most frigid, insipid, and insignificant of all things. It
faded to a shade, it tapered to a point, "fine by degrees,
and beautifully less." I do not believe there is a single
play of this period which could be read with any degree
of interest or even patience, by a modern reader of
poetry, if we except the productions of Southern,
Lillo, and Moore, the authors of the Gamester, Oroonoko,
and Fatal Curiosity, and who, instead of mounting on
classic stilts and making rhetorical flourishes, went out
of the established road to seek for truth and nature and
effect in the commonest life and lowest situations. In
short, the only tragedy of this period is that to which
[Dryden's Works, ed. 1808, vii. 362-3.]
260 On Ancient and Modern Literature.
their productions gave a name, and which has been
called in contradistinction by the French, and with an
express provision for its merits and defects, the tragedie
bourgeoise. An anecdote is told of the first of these
writers by Gray, in one of his Letters, dated from
Horace Walpole's country-seat, about the year 1740
[Sept. 1737], who says: "We have old Mr. Southern
at a gentleman's house a little way off, who often comes
to see us; he is now seventy-seven years old, and has
almost wholly lost his memory, but is as agreeable as
an old man can be, at least I persuade myself so, when
I look at him, and think of Isabella and Oroonoko.”
It is pleasant to see these traits of attachment and
gratitude kept up in successive generations of poets to
one another, and also to find that the same works of
genius that have "sent us weeping to our beds,” and
made us "rise sadder and wiser on the morrow morn,
have excited just the same fondness of affection in
others before we were born; and, it is to be hoped, will
do so after we are dead. Our best feelings, and those,
on which we pride ourselves most, and with most
reason, are perhaps the commonest of all others.
""
Up to the present reign, and during the best part of
it (with another solitary exception, Douglas, which, with
all its feebleness and extravagance, has in its style and
sentiments a good deal of poetical and romantic beauty),
tragedy wore the face of the Goddess of Dulness in the
Dunciad, serene, torpid, sickly, lethargic, and affected,
till it was roused from its trance by the blast of the
French Revolution, and by the loud trampling of the
German Pegasus on the English stage, which now ap-
peared as pawing to get free from its ancient trammels,
and, rampant, shook off the incumbrance of all former
examples, opinions, prejudices, and principles. If we
have not been alive and well since this period, at least
* [Gray's Works, ed. Mitford, ii. 22.]
On the German Drama.
261
we have been alive, and it is better to be alive than
dead. The German tragedy (and our own, which is
only a branch of it) aims at effect, and produces it often
in the highest degree; and it does this by going all the
lengths not only of instinctive feeling, but of speculative
opinion, and startling the hearer by overturning all the
established maxims of society, and setting at nought all
the received rules of composition. It cannot be said of
this style that in it "decorum is the principal thing."
It is the violation of decorum that is its first and last
principle, the beginning, middle, and end. It is an
insult and defiance to Aristotle's definition of tragedy.
The action is not grave, but extravagant; the fable is
not probable, but improbable: the favourite characters.
not only low, but vicious: the sentiments are such as do
not become the person into whose mouth they are put,
nor that of any other person: the language is a mixture
of metaphysical jargon and flaring prose: the moral is
immortality. In spite of all this, a German tragedy is a
good thing. It is a fine hallucination: it is a noble
madness; and as there is a pleasure in madness, which
none but madmen know, so there is a pleasure in read-
ing a German play to be found in no other. The world
have thought so: they go to see the Stranger, they go
to see Lovers' Vows, and Pizarro, they have their eyes
wide open all the time, and almost cry them out before
they come away, and therefore they go again. There is
something in the style that hits the temper of men's
minds; that, if it does not hold the mirror up to nature,
yet “shows the very age and body of the time its form
and pressure." It embodies, it sets off and aggrandises
in all the pomp of action, in all the vehemence of hyper-
bolical declamation, in scenery, in dress, in music, in
the glare of the senses, and the glow of sympathy, the
extreme opinions which are floating in our time, and
which have struck their roots deep and wide below the
262
On the German Drama.
surface of the public mind. We are no longer, as formerly,
heroes in warlike enterprise, martyrs to religious faith ;
but we are all the partisans of a political system, and
devotees to some theory of moral sentiments. The
modern style of tragedy is not assuredly made up of
pompous common-place, but it is a tissue of philoso-
phical, political, and moral paradoxes. I am not saying
whether these paradoxes are true or false: all that I
mean to state is, that they are utterly at variance with
old opinions, with established rules and existing insti-
tutions; that it is this tug of war between the inert
prejudice and the startling novelty which is to batter it
down (first on the stage of the theatre, and afterwards
on the stage of the world) that gives the excitement
and the zest. We see the natural always pitted against
the social man; and the majority who are not of the
privileged classes, take part with the former. The hero
is a sort of metaphysical Orson, armed not with teeth
and a club, but with hard sayings and unanswerable
sentences, ticketed and labelled with extracts and
mottoes from the modern philosophy. This common
representative of mankind is a natural son of some
feudal lord or wealthy baron: and he comes to claim, as
a matter of course and simple equity, the rich reversion
of the title and estates to which he has a right by the
bounty of Nature and the privilege of his birth. This
produces a very edifying scene, and the proud, unfeel-
ing, unprincipled baron is hooted from the stage.
young woman, a sempstress, or a waiting-maid of much
beauty and accomplishment, who would not think of
matching with a fellow of low birth or fortune for the
world, falls in love with the heir of an immense estate
out of pure regard to his mind and person, and thinks it
strange that rank and opulence do not follow as natural
appendages in the train of sentiment. A lady of fashion,
wit, and beauty, forfeits the sanctity of her marriage-
A
On the German Drama.
263
vow, but preserves the inviolability of her sentiments
and character,
"Pure in the last recesses of the mind,"
and triuraphs over false opinion and prejudice, like gold
out of the fire, the brighter for the ordeal. A young
man turns robber and captain of a band of banditti;
and the wonder is to see the heroic ardour of his senti-
ments, his aspirations after the most godlike goodness
and unsullied reputation, working their way through
the repulsiveness of his situation, and making use of
fortune only as a foil to nature. The principle of con-
trast and contradiction is here made use of, and no other.
All qualities are here reversed: virtue is always at odds
with vice, “which shall be which:" the internal char-
acter and external situation, the actions and the senti-
ments, are never in accord: you are to judge of every
thing by contraries: those that exalt themselves are
abased, and those that should be humbled are exalted:
the high places and strongholds of power and greatness.
are crumbled in the dust; opinions totter, feelings are
brought into question, and the world is turned upside.
down, with all things in it!"There is some soul of
goodness in things evil"—and there is some soul of
goodness in all this. The world and every thing in it
is not just what it ought to be, or what it pretends to
be; or such extravagant and prodigious paradoxes would
be driven from the stage-would meet with sympathy
in no human breast, high or low, young or old. There's
something rotten in the state of Denmark. Opinion is not
truth: appearance is not reality: power is not bene-
ficence: rank is not wisdom: nobility is not the only
virtue: riches are not happiness: desert and success
are different things: actions do not always speak the
character any more than words. We feel this, and do
justice to the romantic extravagance of the German
Muse.
264
On the German Drama.
:
In Germany, where this outre style of treating every
thing established and adventitious was carried to its
height, there were, as we learn from the Sorrows of
Werter, seven-and-twenty ranks in society, each raised
above the other, and of which the one above did not
speak to the one below it. Is it wonderful that the poets
and philosophers of Germany, the discontented men
of talent, who thought and mourned for themselves and
their fellows, the Goethes, the Lessings, the Schillers,
the Kotzebues, felt a sudden and irresistible impulse by
a convulsive effort to tear aside this factitious drapery of
society, and to throw off that load of bloated prejudice,
of maddening pride and superannuated folly, that pressed
down every energy of their nature and stifled the breath
of liberty, of truth, and genius in their bosoms? These
Titans of our day tried to throw off the dead weight
that encumbered them, and in so doing, warred not
against heaven, but against earth. The same writers
(as far as I have seen) have made the only incorrigible
Jacobins, and their school of poetry is the only real
school of radical reform.
In reasoning, truth and soberness may prevail, on
which side soever they meet: but in works of imagina-
tion novelty has the advantage over prejudice; that
which is striking and unheard-of, over that which is
trite and known before, and that which gives unlimited
scope to the indulgence of the feelings and the passions
(whether erroneous or not) over that which imposes a
restraint upon them.
I have half-trifled with this subject; and I believe I
have done so, because I despaired of finding language
for some old rooted feelings I have about it, which a
theory could neither give nor can it take away. The
Robbers was the first play I ever read: and the effect
it produced upon me was the greatest. It stunned me
like a blow, and I have not recovered enough from it
On the German Drama.
265
to describe how it was. There are impressions which
neither time nor circumstances can efface. Were I to
live much longer than I have any chance of doing, the
books which I read when I was young I can never
forget. Five-and-twenty years have elapsed since I
first read the translation of The Robbers, but they have
not blotted the impression from my mind: it is here
still, an old dweller in the chamber of the brain. The
scene in particular in which Moor looks through his
tears at the evening sun from the mountain's brow, and
says in his despair-"It was my wish like him to live,
like him to die; it was an idle thought, a boy's con-
ceit,”—took fast hold of my imagination, and that sun
has to me never set! The last interview in Don Carlos
between the two lovers, in which the injured bride
struggles to burst the prison-house of her destiny, in
which her hopes and youth lie coffined, and buried, as
it were, alive, under the oppression of unspeakable an-
guish, I remember gave me a deep sense of suffering
and a strong desire after good, which has haunted me
ever since. I do not like Schiller's later style so well.
His Wallenstein, which is admirably and almost lite-
rally translated by Mr. Coleridge, is stately, thoughtful,
and imaginative: but where is the enthusiasm, the throb-
bing of hope and fear, the mortal struggle between the
passions; as if all the happiness or misery of a life
were crowded into a moment, and the die was to be
cast that instant? Kotzebue's best work I read first in
Cumberland's imitation of it in the Wheel of Fortune;
and I confess that the style of sentiment which seems
to make of life itself a long-drawn, endless sigh, has
something in it that pleases me, in spite of rules and
criticism. Goethe's tragedies are (those that I have
seen of them—his Count Egmont, Stella, &c.) constructed
upon the second or inverted manner of the German
stage, with a liberal design to avoid all possible effect
T
266
On the German Drama.
and interest, and this object is completely accomplished.
He is however spoken of with enthusiasm almost amount-
ing to idolatry by his countrymen, and those among our-
selves who import heavy German criticism into this
country in shallow, flat-bottomed, unwieldy intellects.
Madame De Staël speaks of one passage in his Iphigenia,
where he introduces a fragment of an old song, which
the furies are supposed to sing to Tantalus in hell,
reproaching him with the times when he sat with the
gods at their golden tables, and with his after-crimes
that hurled him from heaven, at which he turns his
eyes from his children and hangs his head in mournful
silence. This is the true sublime. Of all his works I
like his Werter best, nor would I part with it at a
venture, even for the Memoirs of Anastasius the Greek,
whoever is the author; nor ever cease to think of the
times, "when in the fine summer evenings they saw
the frank, noble-minded enthusiast coming up from the
valley," nor of "the high grass that by the light of the
departing sun waved in the breeze over his grave.”
But I have said enough to give an idea of this modern
style, compared with our own early dramatic litera-
ture, of which I had to treat. I have done: and if I
have done no better, the fault has been in me, not in
the subject. My liking to this grew with my know-
ledge of it: but so did my anxiety to do it justice. I
somehow felt it as a point of honour not to make my
hearers think less highly of some of these old writers
than I myself did of them. If I have praised an author,
it was because I liked him: if I have quoted a passage,
it was because it pleased me in the reading: if I have
spoken contemptuously of any one, it has been reluc-
tantly. It is no easy task, that a writer, even in so
humble a class as myself, takes upon him; he is scouted
and ridiculed if he fails; and if he succeeds, the enmity
and cavils and malice with which he is assailed, are
On the German Drama.
267
just in proportion to his success. The coldness and
jealousy of his friends not unfrequently keep pace with
the rancour of his enemies. They do not like you a
bit the better for fulfilling the good opinion they al-
ways entertained of you. They would wish you to be
, always promising a great deal, and doing nothing, that
they may answer for the performance. That shows
their sagacity and does not hurt their vanity. An
author wastes his time in painful study and obscure
researches, to gain a little breath of popularity, and
meets with nothing but vexation and disappointment in
ninety-nine instances out of a hundred; or when he
thinks to grasp the luckless prize, finds it not worth
the trouble-the perfume of a minute, fleeting as a
shadow, hollow as a sound; " as often got without merit
as lost without deserving." He thinks that the attain-
ment of acknowledged excellence will secure him the
expression of those feelings in others, which the image
and hope of it had excited in his own breast, but instead
of that, he meets with nothing (or scarcely nothing) but
squint-eyed suspicion, idiot wonder, and grinning scorn.
It seems hardly worth while to have taken all the pains
he has been at for this!
In youth we borrow patience from our future years:
the spring of hope gives us courage to act and suffer.
A cloud is upon our onward path, and we fancy that all
is sunshine beyond it. The prospect seems endless, be-
cause we do not know the end of it. We think that life
is long, because art is so, and that, because we have
much to do, it is well worth doing: or that no exer-
tions can be too great, no sacrifices too painful, to over
come the difficulties we have to encounter. Life is a
continued struggle to be what we are not, and to do
what we cannot. But as we approach the goal, we
draw in the reins; the impulse is less, as we have not
so far to go as we see objects nearer, we become less
·
268
On the German Drama.
sanguine in the pursuit: it is not the despair of not at-
taining, so much as knowing that there is nothing worth
obtaining, and the fear of having nothing left even to
wish for, that damps our ardour and relaxes our efforts;
and if the mechanical habit did not increase the facility,
would, I believe, take away all inclination or power to
do any thing. We stagger on the few remaining paces
to the end of our journey; make perhaps one final effort;
and are glad when our task is done!
LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET
AND CHARING CROSS.
CHARACTERS
OF
SHAKESPEAR'S PLAYS.
BY
WILLIAM HAZLITT,
Author of " Table Talk;" Lectures "On the English Poets;" "On the
English Comic Writers;" "On the Literature of the
Age of Elizabeth," &c. &c.
A NEW EDITION,
EDITED BY
WILLIAM CAREW HAZLITT.
LONDON:
BELL & DALDY, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.
-
1873.
LONDON:
PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS,
STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.
TO
CHARLES LAMB, Esq.,
THIS VOLUME IS INSCRIBED, AS A MARK OF
OLD FRIENDSHIP
AND LASTING ESTEEM,
BY THE AUTHOR.
1
PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION.
THE 'Characters of Shakespear's Plays' first appeared in
1817, and were favourably received. In the following
year was published the second English and (at Boston,
N. E.) the first American edition. Since that time the
volume has been a favourite both here and in the United
States.
For the present republication all the extracts have been
collated with the late Mr. Dyce's revised and final text of
1868. In all the former editions these quotations were
corrupt beyond measure. A few Notes have also been
added.
Kensington,
Sept. 1, 1869.
W. C. H.
}
1.
1

CONTENTS.
FAGE
PREFACE
CYMBELINE
MACBETH
JULIUS CESAR .
OTHELLO.
TIMON OF ATHENS
CORIOLANUS
TROILUS AND CRESSIDA
ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA
ix
1
11
7
23
30
•
14
49
•
59
68
HAMLET
·
73
THE TEMPEST
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM
ROMEO AND JULIET
81
89
•
95
LEAR
108
RICHARD II.
126
HENRY IV., PART I. AND II.
133
HENRY V.
143
HENRY VI., IN THREE PARTS
152
RICHARD III.
160
HENRY VIII.
167
KING JOHN
171

viii
Contents.
1
PAGE
TWELFTH NIGHT; OR,
OR, V
YOU WILL
180
THE TWO GENTLEMEN O
ERONA
187
THE MERCHANT OF VENICE
189
THE WINTER'S TALE
196
·
ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL
LOVE'S LABOUR's Lost
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING
AS YOU LIKE IT
202
•
206
210
•
214
THE TAMING OF THE SHREW
219
MEASURE FOR MEASURE
THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR
THE COMEDY OF ERRORS
DOUBTFUL PLAYS OF SHAKESPEAR
POEMS AND SONNETS
224
229
232
•
234
243
PREFACE.
Ir is observed by Mr. Pope, that "If ever any author
deserved the name of an original, it was Shakespear.
Homer himself drew not his art so immediately from the
fountains of nature: it proceeded through Ægyptian
strainers and channels, and came to him not without
some tincture of the learning, or some cast of the models,
of those before him. The poetry of Shakespear was
inspiration indeed, he is not so much an imitator as an
instrument of nature; and it is not so just to say that he
speaks from her, as that she speaks through him.
"His characters are so much nature herself, that it is a
sort of injury to call them by so distant a name as copies
of her. Those of other poets have a constant resem-
blance, which shows that they received them from one
another, and were but multipliers of the same image:
each picture, like a mock-rainbow, is but the reflection of
a reflection. But every single character in Shakespear is
as much an individual as those in life itself; it is as
impossible to find any two alike; and such as from their
relation or affinity in any respect appear most to be twins,
will upon comparison be found remarkably distinct. To
this life and variety of character, we must add the
wonderful preservation of it; which is such throughout
his plays, that had all the speeches been printed without
X
Preface.
the very names of the persons, I believe one might have
applied them with certainty to every speaker."
The object of the volume here offered to the public, is
to illustrate these remarks in a more particular manner
by a reference to each play. A gentleman of the name
of Mason,¹ the author of a Treatise on Ornamental
Gardening' (not Mason the poet), began a work of a
similar kind about forty years ago, but he only lived to
finish a parallel between the characters of Macbeth and
Richard III., which is an exceedingly ingenious piece of
analytical criticism. Richardson's 'Essays' include but
a few of Shakespear's principal characters.
The only
work which seemed to supersede the necessity of an
attempt like the present was Schlegel's very admirable
'Lectures on the Drama,' which give by far the best
account of the plays of Shakespear that has hitherto
appeared. The only circumstances in which it was
thought not impossible to improve on the manner in
which the German critic has executed this part of his
design, were in avoiding an appearance of mysticism in
his style, not very attractive to the English reader, and
in bringing illustrations from particular passages of the
plays themselves, of which Schlegel's work, from the
extensiveness of his plan, did not admit. We will at the
same time confess that some little jealousy of the cha-
racter of the national understanding was not without its
share in producing the following undertaking, for "we
were piqued" that it should be reserved for a foreign
2
1 The author was not Mason, but Thomas Whately, and the work
was entitled 'Remarks on some of the Characters of Shakespear,'
Lond., 1785, 8vo. There was a third edition by the late Archbishop
Whately in 1838.-ED.
2 The title of this excellent work, which has not yet been super-
seded, is 'Course of Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature,`
translated from the German by John Black, Lond., 1815, 8vo., 2 vols.
There are two later editions.-ED.
Preface.
xi
(C
critic to give reasons for the faith which we English
have in Shakespear." Certainly no writer among our-
selves has shown either the same enthusiastic admiration
of his genius, or the same philosophical acuteness in
pointing out his characteristic excellences. As we have
pretty well exhausted all we had to say upon this subject
in the body of the work, we shall here transcribe Schlegel's
general account of Shakespear, which is in the following
words:-
"Never, perhaps, was there so comprehensive a talent.
for the delineation of character as Shakespear's. It not
only grasps the diversities of rank, sex, and age, down to
the dawnings of infancy; not only do the king and the
beggar, the hero and the pickpocket, the sage and the
idiot speak and act with equal truth; not only does he
transport himself to distant ages and foreign nations, and
portray in the most accurate manner, with only a few
apparent violations of costume, the spirit of the ancient
Romans, of the French in their wars with the English, of
the English themselves during a great part of their
history, of the Southern Europeans (in the serious part of
many comedies), the cultivated society of that time, and
the former rude and barbarous state of the North; his
human characters have not only such depth and precision
that they cannot be arranged under classes, and are
inexhaustible, even in conception: no, this Prometheus
not merely forms men, he opens the gates of the magical
world of spirits; calls up the midnight ghost; exhibits
before us his witches amidst their unhallowed mysteries;
peoples the air with sportive fairies and sylphs and
these beings, existing only in imagination, possess such
truth and consistency, that even when deformed monsters
like Caliban, he extorts the conviction that if there should
be such beings they would so conduct themselves. In a
word, as he carries with him the most fruitful and daring
:
xii
Preface.
fancy into the kingdom of nature; on the other hand, he
carries nature into the regions of fancy, lying beyond the
confines of reality. We are lost in astonishment at seeing
the extraordinary, the wonderful, and the unheard of, in
such intimate nearness.
"If Shakespear deserves our admiration for his charac-
ters, he is equally deserving of it for his exhibition of
passion, taking this word in its widest signification, ast
including every mental condition, every tone from in-
difference or familiar mirth to the wildest rage and
despair. He gives us the history of minds; he lays open
to us, in a single word, a whole series of preceding con-
ditions. His passions do not at first stand displayed to
us in all their height, as is the case with so many tragic
poets who, in the language of Lessing, are thorough
masters of the legal style of love. He paints, in a most
inimitable manner, the gradual progress from the first
origin. He gives,' as Lessing says, 'a living picture of
all the most minute and secret artifices by which a feeling
steals into our souls; of all the imperceptible advantages
which it there gains, of all the stratagems by which every
other passion is made subservient to it, till it becomes
the sole tyrant of our desires and our aversions.' Of
all poets, perhaps, he alone has portrayed the mental
diseases-melancholy, delirium, lunacy-with such in-
expressible, and in every respect definite truth, that the
physician may enrich his observations from them in the
same manner as from real cases.
“And yet Johnson has objected to Shakespear, that his
pathos is not always natural and free from affectation.
There are, it is true, passages, though comparatively
speaking very few, where his poetry exceeds the bounds
of true dialogue, where a too soaring imagination, a too
luxuriant wit, rendered the complete dramatic forgetful-
ness of himself impossible. With this exception, the
Preface.
xiii
censure originates only in a fanciless way of thinking, to
which everything appears unnatural that does not suit its
own tame insipidity. Hence, an idea has been formed of
simple and natural pathos, which consists in exclamations
destitute of imagery, and nowise elevated above every-day
life. But energetical passions electrify the whole of the
mental powers, and will, consequently, in highly favoured
natures, express themselves in an ingenious and figurative
manner. It has been often remarked that indignation
gives wit; and, as despair occasionally breaks out into
laughter, it may sometimes also give vent to itself in
antithetical comparisons.
"Besides, the rights of the poetical form have not been
duly weighed. Shakespear, who was always sure of his
object, to move in a sufficiently powerful manner when he
wished to do so, has occasionally, by indulging in a freer
play, purposely moderated the impressions when too
painful, and immediately introduced a musical alleviation
of our sympathy. He had not those rude ideas of his art
which many moderns seem to have, as if the poet, like the
clown in the proverb, must strike twice on the same place.
An ancient rhetorician delivered a caution against
dwelling too long on the excitation of pity; for nothing,
he said, dries so soon as tears; and Shakespear acted con-
formably to this ingenious maxim without knowing it.
"The objection, that Shakespear wounds our feelings
by the open display of the most disgusting moral odious-
ness, harrows up the mind unmercifully, and tortures
even our senses by the exhibition of the most insupport-
able and hateful spectacles, is one of much greater im-
portance. He has never, in fact, varnished over wild and
bloodthirsty passions with a pleasing exterior: never
clothed crime and want of principle with a false show of
greatness of soul, and in that respect he is every way
deserving of praise. Twice he has portrayed downright
xiv
Preface.
[
villains; and the masterly way in which he has contrived
to elude impressions of too painful a nature may be seen
in Iago and Richard III. The constant reference to
a petty and puny race must cripple the boldness of the
poet. Fortunately for his art, Shakespear lived in an age
extremely susceptible of noble and tender impressions, but
which had still enough of the firmness inherited from a
vigorous olden time not to shrink back with dismay from
every strong and violent picture. We have lived to see
tragedies of which the catastrophe consists in the swoon
of an enamoured princess. If Shakespear falls occa-
sionally into the opposite extreme, it is a noble error,
originating in the fulness of a gigantic strength and yet
this tragical Titan, who storms the heavens, and threatens
to tear the world from off its hinges; who, more terrible
than Eschylus, makes our hair stand on end, and con-
geals our blood with horror, possessed, at the same time,
the insinuating loveliness of the sweetest poetry. He
plays with love like a child, and his songs are breathed
out like melting sighs. He unites in his genius the
utmost elevation and the utmost depth; and the most
foreign, and even apparently irreconcileable properties
subsist in him peaceably together. The world of spirits
and nature have laid all their treasures at his feet. In
strength a demigod, in profundity of view a prophet, in
all-seeing wisdom a protecting spirit of a higher order, he
lowers himself to mortals, as if unconscious of his supe-
riority: and is as open and unassuming as a child.
"Shakespear's comic talent is equally wonderful with
that which he has shown in the pathetic and tragic: it
stands on an equal elevation, and possesses equal extent
and profundity. All that I before wished was, not to
admit that the former preponderated. He is highly in-
ventive in comic situations and motives. It will be
hardly possible to show whence he has taken any of them;
Preface.
XV
whereas, in the serious part of his drama, he has generally
laid hold of something already known. His comic
characters are equally true, various, and profound, with
his serious. So little is he disposed to caricature, that we
may rather say many of his traits are almost too nice and
delicate for the stage, that they can only be properly
seized by a great actor, and fully understood by a very
acute audience. Not only has he delineated many kinds
of folly; he has also contrived to exhibit mere stupidity
in a most diverting and entertaining manner."
We have the rather availed ourselves of this testimony
of a foreign critic in behalf of Shakespear, because our
own countryman, Dr. Johnson, has not been so favourable
to him. It may be said of Shakespear, that "those who
are not for him are against him :" for indifference is here
the height of injustice. We may sometimes, in order "to
do a great right, do a little wrong." An overstrained
enthusiasm is more pardonable with respect to Shakespear,
than the want of it; for our admiration cannot easily
surpass his genius. We have a high respect for Dr. John-
son's character and understanding, mixed with something
like personal attachment: but he was neither a poet nor a
judge of poetry. He might in one sense be a judge of
poetry as it falls within the limits and rules of prose, but
not as it is poetry. Least of all was he qualified to be a
judge of Shakespear, who "alone is high fantastical."
Let those who have a prejudice against Johnson read
Boswell's Life of him: as those whom he has prejudiced
against Shakespear should read his 'Irene.' We do
not say that a man to be a critic must necessarily be a
poet: but to be a good critic, he ought not to be a bad
poet. Such poetry as a man deliberately writes, such,
and such only will he like. Dr. Johnson's Preface to his
edition of Shakespear looks like a laborious attempt to
1 Vol. ii., p. 145.
xvi
Preface.
bury the characteristic merits of his author under a load
of cumbrous phraseology, and to weigh his excellences
and defects in equal scales, stuffed full of "swelling
figures and sonorous epithets.'' Nor could it well be
otherwise; Dr. Johnson's general powers of reasoning
overlaid his critical susceptibility. All his ideas were
cast in a given mould, in a set form: they were made out
by rule and system, by climax, inference, and antithesis:
-Shakespear's were the reverse. Johnson's understanding
dealt only in round numbers: the fractions were lost upon
him. He reduced everything to the common standard of
conventional propriety; and the most exquisite refinement
or sublimity produced an effect on his mind only as they
could be translated into the language of measured prose.
To him an excess of beauty was a fault; for it appeared
to him like an excrescence; and his imagination was
dazzled by the blaze of light. His writings neither
shone with the beams of native genius, nor reflected them.
The shifting shapes of fancy, the rainbow hues of things,
made no impression on him: he seized only on the per-
manent and tangible. He had no idea of natural objects
but "such as he could measure with a two-foot rule, or
tell upon ten fingers:" he judged of human nature in the
same way, by mood and figure: he saw only the definite,
the positive, and the practical, the average forms of
things, not their striking differences-their classes, not
their degrees. He was a man of strong common sense and
practical wisdom, rather than of genius or feeling. He
retained the regular, habitual impressions of actual objects,
but he could not follow the rapid flights of fancy, or the
strong movements of passion. That is, he was to the
poet what the painter of still life is to the painter of
history. Common sense sympathizes with the impres-
sions of things on ordinary minds in ordinary circum-
stances: genius catches the glancing combinations pre-
Preface.
xvii
sented to the eye of fancy, under the influence of passion.
It is the province of the didactic reasoner to take cog-
nizance of those results of human nature which are con-
stantly repeated and always the same, which follow one
another in regular succession, which are acted upon by
large classes of men, and embodied in received customs,
laws, language, and institutions; and it was in arranging,
comparing, and arguing on these kind of general results,
that Johnson's excellence lay. But he could not quit his
hold of the common-place and mechanical, and apply the
general rule to the particular exception, or show how the
nature of man was modified by the workings of passion,
or the infinite fluctuations of thought and accident.
Hence he could judge neither of the heights nor depths of
poetry. Nor is this all; for, being conscious of great
powers in himself, and those powers of an adverse ten-
dency to those of his author, he would be for setting up a
foreign jurisdiction over poetry, and making criticism a
kind of Procrustes' bed of genius, where he might cut
down imagination to matter-of-fact, regulate the passions
according to reason, and translate the whole into logical
diagrams and rhetorical declamation. Thus he says of
Shakespear's characters, in contradiction to what Pope
had observed, and to what every one else feels, that each
character is a species, instead of being an individual. He
in fact found the general species or didactic form in
Shakespear's characters, which was all he sought or cared
for; he did not find the individual traits, or the dramatic
distinctions which Shakespear has engrafted on this
general nature, because he felt no interest in them.
Shakespear's bold and happy flights of imagination were
equally thrown away upon our author. He was not only
without any particular fineness of organic sensibility,
alive to all the "mighty world of ear and eye," which is
necessary to the painter or musician, but without that
b
xviii
Preface.
C
intenseness of passion, which, seeking to exaggerate what
ever excites the feelings of pleasure or power in the mind,
and moulding the impressions of natural objects according
to the impulses of imagination, produces a genius and a
taste for poetry. According to Dr. Johnson, a mountain
is sublime, or a rose is beautiful; for that their name and
definition imply. But he would no more be able to give
the description of Dover cliff in Lear,' or the descrip-
tion of flowers in 'The Winter's Tale,' than to describe
the objects of a sixth sense; nor do we think he would
have any very profound feeling of the beauty of the
passages here referred to. A stately commonplace, such
as Congreve's description of a ruin in the 'Mourning
Bride,' would have answered Johnson's purpose just as
well, or better than the first; and an indiscriminate pro-
fusion of scents and hues would have interfered less with
the ordinary routine of his imagination than Perdita's
lines,' which seem enamoured of their own sweetness—
Daffodils,
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty; violets dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes,
Or Cytherea's breath."-2
No one who does not feel the passion which these
objects inspire can go along with the imagination which
seeks to express that passion and the uneasy sense of
delight accompanying it by something still more beau-
tiful, and no one can feel this passionate love of nature
without quick natural sensibility. To a mere literal and
formal apprehension, the inimitably characteristic epi-
¹ This and all the following extracts from the plays and poems of
Shakespear have now been carefully collated with Mr. Dyce's second
edition of the 'Works,' 1868, 9 vols., 8vo. This process has purged
the present edition from many grievous misprints (in the quotations)
which were in all its predecessors.—ED.
The Winter's Tale,' iv., 3.--ED.
Preface.
xix
thet, "violets dim," must seem to imply a defect, rather
than a beauty; and to any one, not feeling the full force
of that epithet, which suggests an image like “the sleepy
eye of love," the allusion to "the lids of Juno's eyes
must appear extravagant and unmeaning. Shakespear's
fancy lent words and images to the most refined sensi-
bility to nature, struggling for expression: his descriptions
are identical with the things themselves, seen through the
fine medium of passion: strip them of that connection,
and try them by ordinary conceptions and ordinary rules,
and they are as grotesque and barbarous as you please!
By thus lowering Shakespear's genius to the standard of
commonplace invention, it was easy to show that his
faults were as great as his beauties; for the excellence
which consists merely in a conformity to rules, is counter-
balanced by the technical violation of them. Another
circumstance which led to Dr. Johnson's indiscriminate
praise or censure of Shakespear, is the very structure of
his style. Johnson wrote a kind of rhyming prose, in
which he was as much compelled to finish the different
clauses of his sentences, and to balance one period against
one another, as the writer of heroic verse is to keep to
lines of ten syllables with similar terminations. He no
sooner acknowledges the merits of his author in one line
than the periodical revolution of his style carries the
weight of his opinion completely over to the side of
objection, thus keeping up a perpetual alternation of per-
fections and absurdities. We do not otherwise know how
to account for such assertions as the following:- "In his
tragic scenes, there is always something wanting, but his
comedy often surpasses expectation or desire. His comedy
pleases by the thoughts and the language, and his tragedy,
for the greater part, by incident and action. His tragedy
seems to be skill, his comedy to be instinct." Yet after
saying that "his tragedy was skill,” he affirms in the next
XX
Preface.
page, "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 oppor-
tunities 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." Poor Shakespear!
Between the charges here brought against him, of want of
nature in the first instance, and of want of skill in the
second, he could hardly escape being condemned. And
again, But the admirers of this great poet have most
reason to complain when he approaches nearest to his
highest excellence, and seems fully resolved to sink them
in dejection, or mollify them with tender emotions by the
fall of greatness, the danger of innocence, or the crosses
of love. What he does best, he soon ceases to do. He
no sooner begins to move than he counteracts himself;
and terror and pity, as they are rising in the mind, are
checked and blasted by sudden frigidity." In all this
our critic seems more bent on maintaining the equilibrium
of his style than the consistency or truth of his opinions.
If Dr. Johnson's opinion was right, the following obser-
vations on Shakespear's Plays must be greatly exaggerated;
if not ridiculous. If he was wrong, what has been said,
may perhaps account for his being so, without detracting
from his ability and judgment in other things.
It is proper to add that the account of the 'Midsummer
Night's Dream' has appeared in another work.'
1 ['The Round Table,' 1817, i., 202–9.] A few alterations and
corrections have been inserted in the present [second] edition
[1818].
April 15, 1817.
CHARACTERS
OF
SHAKESPEAR'S PLAYS.
CYMBELINE.¹
CYMBELINE is one of the most delightful of Shakespear's
historical plays. It may be considered as a dramatic
romance, in which the most striking parts of the story are
thrown into the form of a dialogue, and the intermediate
circumstances are explained by the different speakers, as
occasion renders it necessary. The action is less concen-
trated in consequence; but the interest becomes more
aërial and refined from the principle of perspective
introduced into the subject by the imaginary changes of
scene, as well as by the length of time it occupies. The
reading of this play is like going a journey with some
uncertain object at the end of it, and in which the
suspense is kept up and heightened by the long intervals
between each action. Though the events are scattered
C
1 "First printed in the folio of 1623. Malone is probably not far
from the truth when he conjectures that Cymbeline' was written in
1609."-DYCE. This drama appears to have been one of the poet's
latest performances. No English work extant in Shakespear's day
has yet been found to which he is likely to have been indebted for
his materials. Mr. Dyce, in common with Steevens and Malone,
was unaware that Westward for Smelts' was not licensed for the
press till 1619.-ED.
B
2
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
over such an extent of surface, and relate to such a variety
of characters, yet the links which bind the different
interests of the story together are never entirely broken.
The most straggling and seemingly casual incidents are
contrived in such a manner as to lead at last to the most
complete development of the catastrophe. The ease and
conscious unconcern with which this is effected only
makes the skill more wonderful. The business of the
plot evidently thickens in the last act: the story moves
forward with increasing rapidity at every step; its various
ramifications are drawn from the most distant points to
the same centre; the principal characters are brought
together, and placed in very critical situations; and the
fate of almost every person in the drama is made to
depend on the solution of a single circumstance: the
answer of Iachimo to the question of Imogen respecting
the obtaining of the ring from Posthumus. Dr. Johnson
is of opinion that Shakespear was generally inattentive to
the winding-up of his plots. We think the contrary is
true and we might cite in proof of this remark not only
the present play, but the conclusion of Lear, of Romeo and
Juliet, of Macbeth, of Othello, even of Hamlet, and of other
plays of less moment, in which the last act is crowded
with decisive events brought about by natural and striking
means.
The pathos in CYMBELINE is not violent or tragical, but
of the most pleasing and amiable kind. A certain tender
gloom overspreads the whole. Posthumus is the ostensible
hero of the piece, but its greatest charm is the character
of Imogen. Posthumus is only interesting from the
interest she takes in him; and she is only interesting
herself from her tenderness and constancy to her husband.
It is the peculiar excellence of Shakespear's heroines, that
they seem to exist only in their attachment to others.
They are pure abstractions of the affections. We think
as little of their persons as they do themselves, because
Cymbeline.
3
we are let into the secrets of their hearts, which are more
important. We are too much interested in their affairs to
stop to look at their faces, except by stealth and at
intervals. No one ever hit the true perfection of the
female character, the sense of weakness leaning on the
strength of its affections for support, so well as Shakespear:
no one ever so well painted natural tenderness free from
affectation and disguise: no one else ever so well showed
how delicacy and timidity, when driven to extremity,
grow romantic and extravagant; for the romance of his
heroines (in which they abound) is only an excess of the
habitual prejudices of their sex, scrupulous of being false
to their vows, truant to their affections, and taught by the
force of feeling when to forego the forms of propriety for
the essence of it. His women were in this respect
exquisite logicians; for there is nothing so logical as
passion. They knew their own minds exactly; and only
followed up a favourite purpose, which they had sworn to
with their tongues, and which was engraven on their
hearts, into its untoward consequences. They were the
prettiest little set of martyrs and confessors on record.
Cibber, in speaking of the early English stage, accounts
for the want of prominence and theatrical display in
Shakespear's female characters from the circumstance,
that women in those days were not allowed to play the
parts of women, which made it necessary to keep them a
good deal in the background. Does not this state of
manners itself, which prevented their exhibiting them-
selves in public, and confined them to the relations and
charities of domestic life, afford a truer explanation of the
matter? His women are certainly very unlike stage-
heroines, the reverse of tragedy-queens.
We have almost as great an affection for Imogen as she
had for Posthumus; and she deserves it better. Of all
Shakespear's women she is perhaps the most tender and
the most artless. Her incredulity in the opening scene
4
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
with Iachimo, as to her husband's infidelity, is much the
same as Desdemona's backwardness to believe Othello's
jealousy. Her answer to the most distressing part of the
picture is only, "My lord, I fear, has forgot Britain."
Her readiness to pardon Iachimo's false imputations and
his designs against herself, is a good lesson to prudes;
and may show that where there is a real attachment to
virtue, it has no need to bolster itself up with an out-
rageous or affected antipathy to vice. The scene² in
which Pisanio gives Imogen his master's letter, accusing
her of incontinency on the treacherous suggestions of
Iachimo, is as touching as it is possible for anything to
be:-
"Pisanio. What cheer, Madam?
Imogen. False to his bed! What is it to be false?
To lie in watch there, and to think on him?
To weep 'twixt clock and clock? If sleep charge nature,
To break it with a fearful dream of him,
And cry myself awake? That's false to's bed, is it?
Pisanio. Alas, good lady!
Imogen. I false? thy conscience witness :-Iachimo,
Thou didst accuse him of incontinency,
Thou then look'dst like a villain: now, methinks,
Thy favour's good enough. Some jay of Italy,
Whose mother was her painting, hath betray'd him:
Poor I am stale, a garment out of fashion,
And, for I'm richer than to hang by th' walls,
I must be ript:-to pieces with me! O,
Men's vows are women's traitors. All good seeming,
By thy revolt, O husband, shall be thought
Put on for villainy: not born where't grows,
But worn a bait for ladies.
Pisanio. Good Madam, hear me-
Imogen. Talk thy tongue weary: speak;
I've heard I am a strumpet, and mine ear,
Therein false struck, can take no greater wound,
Nor tent, to bottom that.'
""
When Pisanio, who had been charged to kill his
mistress, puts her in a way to live, she says,
[¹ Act i, sc. 6.]
[² Act iii., sc. 4.]
Cymbeline.
5
LO
"Why, good fellow,
What shall I do the while? Where bide? How live?
Or in my life what comfort, when I am
Dead to my husband?
Yet when he advises her to disguise herself in boy's
clothes, and suggests "a course pretty and full of view,"
by which she may "haply be near the residence of
Posthumus," she exclaims:
"O, for such means!
Though peril to my modesty, not death on't,
I would adventure."
And when Pisanio, enlarging on the consequences, tells
her she must change
"Fear and niceness,
The handmaids of all women, or more truly,
Woman its pretty self into a waggish courage,
Ready in gibes, quick-answer'd, saucy, and
As quarrellous as the weasel”.
1
she interrupts him hastily '—
Nay, be brief;
I see into thy end, and am almost
A man already."
In her journey thus disguised to Milford Haven, she
loses her guide and her way; and unbosoming her com-
plaints, says beautifully-
"My dear lord,
Thou'rt one o' the false ones; now I think on thee,
My hunger's gone; but even before I was
At point to sink for food." 2
She afterwards finds, as she thinks, the dead body of
Posthumus, and engages herself as a footboy to serve a
Roman officer, when she has done all due obsequies to
him whom she calls her former master.
¹ Scarcely so; for he speaks six lines after this, before she breaks
in.-ED.
[2 Act iii., sc. 6.]
6
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
"And when
With wild wood-leaves and weeds I ha' strew'd his grave,
And on it said a century of prayers,
Such as I can, twice o'er, I'll weep and sigh,
And leaving so his service, follow you,
So please you entertain me.'
19 1
Now this is the very religion of love. She all along
relies little on her personal charms, which she fears may
have been eclipsed by some painted jay of Italy; she
relies on her merit, and her merit is in the depth of her
love, her truth and constancy. Our admiration of her
beauty is excited with as little consciousness as possible
on her part. There are two delicious descriptions given
of her, one when she is asleep, and one when she is
supposed dead. Arviragus thus addresses her-
"With fairest flowers,
Whilst summer lasts, and I live here, Fidele,
I'll sweeten thy sad grave; thou shalt not lack
The flow'r that's like thy face, pale primrose; nor
The azur'd harebell, like thy veins; no, nor
The leaf of eglantine, which not to slander,
Out-sweeten'd not thy breath." 2
The yellow Iachimo gives another thus, when he steals
into her bedchamber :-
"Cytherea,
How bravely thou becom'st thy bed! Fresh lily!
And whiter than the sheets! That I might touch!
But kiss; one kiss! 'Tis her breathing that
Perfumes the chamber thus: the flame o' the taper
Bows toward her, and would under-peep her lids
To see th' enclosed lights now canopied
Under these windows, white and azure, laced
With blue of heaven's own tinct
On her left breast
A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops
13
I' the bottom of a cowslip." 3
There is a moral sense in the proud beauty of this last
[¹ Act iv., sc. 2.] [2 Ibid.] ♫³ Act ii., sc. 2.]
Cymbeline.
7
image, a rich surfeit of the fancy, as that well-known
passage beginning, "Me of my lawful pleasure she
restrained, and prayed me oft forbearance," sets a keener
edge upon it by the inimitable picture of modesty and
self-denial.
The character of Cloten, the conceited, booby lord, and
rejected lover of Imogen, though not very agreeable in
itself, and at present obsolete, is drawn with much humour
and quaint extravagance. The description which Imogen
gives of his unwelcome addresses to her: "Whose love-
suit hath been to me as fearful as a siege:" is enough to
cure the most ridiculous lover of his folly. It is remark-
able that though Cloten makes so poor a figure in love, he
is described as assuming an air of consequence as the
Queen's son in a council of state; and with all the
absurdity of his person and manners, he is not without
shrewdness in his observations. So true is it that folly is
as often owing to a want of proper sentiments as to a
want of understanding! The exclamation of the ancient
critic: "O, Menander and Nature, which of you copied
from the other!" would not be misapplied to Shakespear."
The other characters in this play are represented with
great truth and accuracy, and as it happens in most of
the author's works, there is not only the utmost keeping
in each separate character; but in the casting of the
different parts, and their relation to one another, there is
an affinity and harmony, like what we may observe in the
gradations of colour in a picture. The striking and
powerful contrasts in which Shakespear abounds could
not escape observation; but the use he makes of the
principle of analogy to reconcile the greatest diversities
[¹ Act ii., sc. 5.]
2 This is a question which at present we are scarcely com-
petent to decide, as the comic dramas of Menander have come
down to us, unfortunately, in a very imperfect, or rather fragmentary
shape. In his own day, and even so late as the time of Ovid, they
enjoyed, it seems, great popularity.-ED.
8
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
of character and to maintain a continuity of feeling
throughout, has not been sufficiently attended to. In
CYMBELINE, for instance, the principal interest arises out
of the unalterable fidelity of Imogen to her husband under
the most trying circumstances. Now the other parts of
the picture are filled up with subordinate examples of the
same feeling, variously modified by different situations,
and applied to the purposes of virtue or vice. The plot
is aided by the amorous importunities of Cloten, by the
persevering determination of lachimo to conceal the defeat
of his project by a daring imposture: the faithful attach-
ment of Pisanio to his mistress is an affecting accompani-
ment to the whole; the obstinate adherence to his purpose
in Bellarius, who keeps the fate of the young princes so
long a secret in resentment for the ungrateful return to
his former services, the incorrigible wickedness of the
Queen, and even the blind uxorious confidence of Cymbe-
line, are all so many lines of the same story, tending to
the same point. The effect of this coincidence is rather
felt than observed; and as the impression exists uncon-
sciously in the mind of the reader, so it probably arose in
the same manner in the mind of the author, not from
design, but from the force of natural association, a
particular train of thought suggesting different inflections.
of the same predominant feeling, melting into, and
strengthening one another, like chords in music.
The characters of Bellarius, Guiderius, and Arviragus,
and the romantic scenes in which they appear, are a fine
relief to the intrigues and artificial refinements of the
court from which they are banished. Nothing can
surpass the wildness and simplicity of the descriptions of
the mountain life they lead. They follow the business of
huntsmen, not of shepherds; and this is in keeping with
the spirit of adventure and uncertainty in the rest of the
story, and with the scenes in which they are afterwards
called on to act. How admirably the youthful fire and
Cymbeline.
9
impatience to emerge from their obscurity in the young
princes is opposed to the cooler calculations and prudent
resignation of their more experienced counsellor! How
well the disadvantages of knowledge and of ignorance, of
solitude and society, are placed against each other!
66
Guiderius. Out of your proof you speak: we, poor unfledg´d,
Have never wing'd from view o' the nest; nor know not
What air's from home. Haply this life is best,
If quiet life be best; sweeter to you
That have a sharper known; well corresponding
With your stiff age: but unto us it is
A cell of ignorance; travelling a-bed,
A prison for a debtor, that not dares
To stride a limit.
Arviragus. What should we speak of
When we are old as you? When we shall hear
The rain and wind beat dark December! How,
In this our pinching cave, shall we discourse
The freezing hours away? We have seen nothing.
We are beastly; subtle as the fox for prey,
Like warlike as the wolf for what we eat :
Our valour is to chase what flies; our cage
We make a quire, as doth the prison'd bird,
And sing our bondage freely."1
The answer of Bellarius to this expostulation is hardly
satisfactory; for nothing can be an answer to hope, or the
passion of the mind for unknown good, but experience.
The forest of Arden in As you like it can alone compare
with the mountain scenes in CYMBELINE: yet how different
the contemplative quiet of the one from the enterprising
boldness and precarious mode of subsistence in the other!
Shakespear not only lets us into the minds of his
characters, but gives a tone and colour to the scenes he
describes from the feelings of their supposed inhabitants
He at the same time preserves the utmost propriety of
action and passion, and gives all their local accompani-
If he was equal to the greatest things, he was not
above an attention to the smallest. Thus the gallant
[ Act iii., sc. 3.1
ments.
10
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
sportsmen in CYMBELINE have to encounter the abrupt
declivities of hill and valley: Touchstone and Audrey
jog along a level path. The deer in CYMBELINE are only
regarded as objects of prey, "The game's a-foot," &c.—
with Jacques they are fine subjects to moralize upon at
leisure, "under the shade of melancholy boughs."
We cannot take leave of this play, which is a favourite
with us, without noticing some occasional touches of
natural piety and morality. We may allude here to the
opening of the scene in which Bellarius instructs the
young princes to pay their orisons to heaven :
"Stoop, boys! this gate
Instructs you how t'adore the heavens; and bows you
To morning's holy office.
•
•
Guiderius. Hail, heaven!
Arviragus. Hail, heaven!
Bellarius. Now for our mountain-sport, up to yond hill."
What a grace and unaffected spirit of piety breathes in
this passage! In like manner, one of the brothers says
to the other, when about to perform the funeral rites to
Fidele,
Nay, Cadwal, we must lay his head to th' east; 2
My Father hath a reason for❜t"-3
-as if some allusion to the doctrines of the Christian
faith had been casually dropped in conversation by the
old man, and had been no farther inquired into.
Shakespear's morality is introduced in the same simple,
unobtrusive manner. Imogen will not let her companions
stay away from the chase to attend her when sick, and
gives her reason for it—
"Stick to your journal course; the breach of custom
Is breach of all." 4
When the Queen attempts to disguise her motives for
[¹ Act iii., sc. 3.]
2 See Popular Antiquities of Great Britain,' 1869, ii., 217, 18,
where this passage (among others) is quoted.-Ed.
[3 Act iv., sc. 2.]
[4 Ibid.]
Macbeth.
11
(6
procuring the poison from Cornelius, by saying she means
to try its effects on creatures as we count not worth the
hanging," his answer conveys at once a tacit reproof of
her hypocrisy, and a useful lesson of humanity—
"Your highness
Shall from this practice but make hard your heart"—¹
MACBETH.
"The poet's eye in a fine frenzy rolling
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shape, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.'
[Midsummer Night's Dream, v. 1.]
MACBETH and Lear, Othello and Hamlet, are usually reck-
oned Shakespear's four principal tragedies. Lear stands
first for the profound intensity of the passion; Macbeth for
the wildness of the imagination and the rapidity of the
action; Othello for the progressive interest and powerful
alternations of feeling; Hamlet for the refined develop-
ment of thought and sentiment. If the force of genius
shown in each of these works is astonishing, their variety
is not less so. They are like different creations of the
same mind, not one of which has the slightest reference
to the rest. This distinctness and originality is indeed
the necessary consequence of truth and nature. Shake-
spear's genius alone appeared to possess the resources of
nature. He is "your only tragedy-maker." His plays
[¹ Act i., sc. 6.]
2 First printed in the folio of 1623."-DYCE. Macbeth is sup-
posed to have been written in 1605, and represented in the following
year. Dr. Simon Forman saw it represented at the Globe in 1610..
The present paper may be compared with one in A View of the
English Stage, 1818, pp. 58-66.—Ed.
12
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
CC
have the force of things upon the mind. What he repre-
sents is brought home to the bosom as a part of our ex-
perience, implanted in the memory as if we had known
the places, persons, and things of which he treats. MACBETH
is like a record of a preternatural and tragical event. It
has the rugged severity of an old chronicle with all that
the imagination of the poet can engraft upon traditional
belief. The castle of Macbeth, round which "the air
smells wooingly," and where "the temple-haunting martlet
builds,” has a real subsistence in the mind; the Weird
Sisters meet us in person on "the blasted heath;" the
"air-drawn dagger" moves slowly before our eyes; the
gracious Duncan," the “blood-boltered Banquo
"I stand
before us all that passed through the mind of Macbeth
passes, without the loss of a tittle, through ours. All
that could actually take place, and all that is only possible
to be conceived, what was said and what was done, the
workings of passion, the spells of magic, are brought
before us with the same absolute truth and vividness.
Shakespear excelled in the openings of his plays: that
of MACBETH is the most striking of any. The wildness of
the scenery, the sudden shifting of the situations and
characters, the bustle, the expectations excited, are equally
extraordinary. From the first entrance of the Witches
and the description of them when they meet Macbeth,
"What are these
So wither'd, and so wild in their attire,
That look not like th' inhabitants o' th' earth
And yet are on`t ?” 2
the mind is prepared for all that follows.
This tragedy is alike distinguished for the lofty imagi-
nation it displays, and for the tumultuous vehemence of
the action; and the one is made the moving principle of
the other. The overwhelming pressure of preternatural
agency urges on the tide of human passion with redoubled
[¹ Act iv., sc. 1.]
[² Act i., sc. 3.]
Macbeth.
13
:
1
force. Macbeth himself appears driven along by the
violence of his fate like a vessel drifting before a storm :
he reels to and fro like a drunken man; he staggers
under the weight of his own purposes and the suggestions
of others; he stands at bay with his situation; and from
the superstitious awe and breathless suspense into which
the communications of the Weird Sisters throw him, is
hurried on with daring impatience to verify their predic-
tions, and with impious and bloody hand to tear aside the
veil which hides the uncertainty of the future. He is not
equal to the struggle with fate and conscience. He now
"bends up each corporal agent to this terrible feat;"¹ at
other times his heart misgives him, and he is cowed and
abashed by his success. "The attempt, and not the deed,
confounds us." His mind is assailed by the stings of
remorse, and full of "preternatural solicitings." His
speeches and soliloquies are dark riddles on human life,
baffling solution, and entangling him in their labyrinths.
In thought he is absent and perplexed, sudden and des-
perate in act, from a distrust of his own resolution. His
energy springs from the anxiety and agitation of his mind.
His blindly rushing forward on the objects of his ambi-
tion and revenge, or his recoiling from them, equally
betrays the harassed state of his feelings. This part of
his character is admirably set off by being brought in
connection with that of Lady Macbeth, whose obdurate
strength of will and masculine firmness give her the
ascendancy over her husband's faltering virtue. She at
once seizes on the opportunity that offers for the accom-
plishment of all their wished-for greatness, and never
flinches from her object till all is over. The magnitude
of her resolution almost covers the magnitude of her
guilt. She is a great bad woman, whom we hate, but
whom we fear more than we hate. She does not excite
our loathing and abhorrence like Regan and Goneril,
[¹ Act i., sc. 7.]
14
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
She is only wicked to gain a great end, and is perhaps
more distinguished by her commanding presence of mind.
and inexorable self-will, which do not suffer her to be
diverted from a bad purpose, when once formed, by weak
and womanly regrets, than by the hardness of her heart or
want of natural affections. The impression which her
lofty determination of character makes on the mind of
Macbeth is well described where he exclaims,
"Bring forth men-children only;
For thy undaunted mettle should compose
Nothing but males !"
Nor do the pains she is at to "screw his courage to the
sticking-place," the reproach to him, not to be "lost so
poorly in himself," the assurance that " a little water
clears them of this deed," show anything but her greater
consistency in depravity. Her strong-nerved ambition
furnishes ribs of steel to "the sides of his intent;" and
she is herself wound up to the execution of her baneful
project with the same unshrinking fortitude in crime,
that in other circumstances she would probably have
shown patience in suffering. The deliberate sacrifice of
all other considerations to the gaining "for their future
days and nights sole sovereign sway and masterdom," by
the murder of Duncan, is gorgeously expressed in her
invocation on hearing of "his fatal entrance under her|
battlements :"
“Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here:
And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full
Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood,
Stop up th' access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
Th' effect and it. Come to my woman's breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
[¹ Act i., sc. 7.]
Macbeth.
15
You wait on nature's mischief! Come, thick night!
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor heav'n peep through the blanket of the dark,
To cry, Hold, hold !—1
When she first hears that "the king [Duncan] comes
here to-night," she is so overcome by the news, which is
beyond her utmost expectations, that she answers the
messenger, "Thou'rt mad to say it :" and on receiving
her husband's account of the predictions of the Witches,
conscious of his instability of purpose, and that her pre-
sence is necessary to goad him on to the consummation
of his promised greatness, she exclaims-
"Hie thee hither,
That I may pour my spirits in thine ear,
And chastise with the valour of my tongue
All that impedes thee from the golden round,
Which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem
To have thee crown'd withal." 3
This swelling exultation and keen spirit of triumph, this
uncontrollable eagerness of anticipation, which seems to
dilate her form and take possession of all her faculties,
this solid, substantial flesh-and-blood display of pas-
sion, exhibit a striking contrast to the cold, abstracted,
gratuitous, servile malignity of the Witches, who are
equally instrumental in urging Macbeth to his fate for the
mere love of mischief, and from a disinterested delight in
deformity and cruelty. They are hags of mischief,
obscene panders to inquity, malicious from their im-
potence of enjoyment, enamoured of destruction, because
they are themselves unreal, abortive, half-existences: who
become sublime from their exemption from all human
sympathies and contempt for all human affairs, as Lady
Macbeth does by the force of passion! Her fault seems
to have been an excess of that strong principle of self-
interest and family aggrandisement, not amenable to the
[¹ Act i., sc. 5.
[2 Ibid.]
[³ Ibid.]
16
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
common feelings of compassion and justice, which is so
marked a feature in barbarous nations and times. A pass-
ing reflection of this kind, on the resemblance of the
sleeping king to her father, alone prevents her from
slaying Duncan with her own hand.
In speaking of the character of Lady Macbeth, we
ought not to pass over Mrs. Siddons's manner of acting
that part.¹ We can conceive of nothing grander. It was
something above nature. It seemed almost as if a being
of a superior order had dropped from a higher sphere to
awe the world with the majesty of her appearance.
Power was seated on her brow, passion emanated from
her breast as from a shrine; she was tragedy personified.
In coming on in the sleeping-scene, her eyes were open,
but their sense was shut. She was like a person bewil-
dered and unconscious of what she did. Her lips moved
involuntarily all her gestures were involuntary and
mechanical. She glided on and off the stage like an
apparition. To have seen her in that character was an
event in every one's life, not to be forgotten.
:
The dramatic beauty of the character of Duncan, which
excites the respect and pity even of his murderers, has
been often pointed out. It forms a picture of itself. An
instance of the author's power of giving a striking effect
to a common reflection, by the manner of introducing it,
occurs in a speech of Duncan, complaining of his having
been deceived in his opinion of the Thane of Cawdor, at
the very moment that he is expressing the most unbounded
confidence in the loyalty and services of Macbeth.
"There's no art
To find the mind's construction in the face:
He was a gentleman, on whom I built
An absolute trust
J Mrs. Siddons performed in this part at Covent Garden, June 7,
1817. See this part of the subject treated more at length in A View
of the English Stage, 1818, pp. 446-8.-ED.
Macbeth.
17
F
O worthiest cousin, (addressing himself to Macbeth)
The sin of my ingratitude even now
Was heavy upon me," &c.¹
Another passage to show that Shakespear lost sight of
nothing that could in any way give relief or heightening
to his subject, is the conversation which takes place
between Banquo and Fleance immediately before the
murder-scene of Duncan.
Banquo. How goes the night, boy?
Fleance. The moon is down: I have not heard the clock.
Banquo. And she goes down at twelve.
Fleance.
I take't, 'tis later, Sir.
Banquo. Hold, take my sword :-There's husbandry in heaven,
Their candles are all out: take thee that too:
A heavy summons lies like lead upon me,
And yet I would not sleep: Merciful Powers,
Restrain in me the cursed thoughts that nature
Gives way to in repose !"2
In like manner, a fine idea is given of the gloomy
coming on of evening, just as Banquo is going to be assas-
sinated.
"Light thickens and the crow
Makes wing to the rooky wood."
*
"Now spurs the lated traveller apace
To gain the timely inn."
"3
· Macbeth' (generally speaking) is done upon a stronger
and more systematic principle of contrast than any other
of Shakespear's plays. It moves upon the verge of an
abyss, and is a constant struggle between life and death.
The action is desperate and the reaction is dreadful. It
is a huddling together of fierce extremes, a war of opposite
natures which of them shall destroy the other. There is
'nothing but what has a violent end or violent beginnings.
The lights and shades are laid on with a determined
hand; the transitions from triumph to despair, from the
height of terror to the repose of death, are sudden and
[¹ Act i., sc. 4.] [2 Act ii., sc. 1.] [³ Act iii., sc. 2-3.]

18
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
startling; every passion brings in its-fellow-contrary, and
the thoughts pitch and jostle against each other as in the
dark. The whole play is an unruly chaos of strange and
forbidden things, where the ground rocks under our feet.
Shakespear's genius here took its full swing, and trod
upon the farthest bounds of nature and passion. This
circumstance will account for the abruptness and violent
antitheses of the style, the throes and labour which run
through the expression, and from defects will turn them
into beauties. "So fair and foul a day I have not seen," &c.
“Such welcome and unwelcome news together." "Good
men's lives expire before the flowers in their caps, dying
or e'er they sicken.' "Look like the innocent flower,
but be the serpent under 't." The scene before the
castle-gate follows the appearance of the Witches on the
heath, and is followed by a midnight murder. Duncan is
cut off betimes by treason leagued with witchcraft, and
Macduff is ripped untimely from his mother's womb to
avenge his death. Macbeth, after the death of Banquo,
wishes for his presence in extravagant terms, "To him
and all we thirst," and when his ghost appears, cries out,
"Avaunt and quit my sight," and being gone, he is "him-
self again." Macbeth resolves to get rid of Macduff, that
"he may sleep in spite of thunder;" and cheers his wife
on the doubtful intelligence of Banquo's taking-off with
the encouragement—
2
“Macbeth. Then be thou jocund: ere the bat hath flown
His cloister'd flight; ere to black Hecate's summons
The shard-borne beetle with his drowsy hums
Hath rung night's yawning peal, there shall be done
A deed of dreadful note-
"93
In Lady Macbeth's speech "Had he not resembled my
father as he slept, I had done 't," there is murder and
filial piety together; and in urging him to fulfil his
vengeance against the defenceless king, her thoughts spare
[¹ Act iv., sc. 3.] [² Act i., sc. 5.] [3 Act iii., sc. 2.]
Macbeth.
19
1
the blood neither of infants nor old age. The description
of the Witches is full of the same contradictory principle;
they "rejoice when good kings bleed," they are neither
of the earth nor the air, but both; "they should be
women, but their beards forbid it;" they take all the pains
possible to lead Macbeth on to the height of his ambition,
only to betray him "in deeper consequence," and after
showing him all the pomp of their art, discover their malig-
nant delight in his disappointed hopes, by that bitter
taunt, "Why stands Macbeth thus amazedly ?"
We
might multiply such instances everywhere.
The leading features in the character of Macbeth are
striking enough, and they form what may be thought at
first only a bold, rude, Gothic outline. By comparing it
with other characters of the same author we shall per-
ceive the absolute truth and identity which is observed in
the midst of the giddy whirl and rapid career of events.
Macbeth in Shakespear no more loses his identity of cha-
racter in the fluctuations of fortune or the storm of passion,
than Macbeth in himself would have lost the identity of
his person. Thus he is as distinct a being from Richard III.
as it is possible to imagine, though these two characters in
common hands, and indeed in the hands of any other poet,
would have been a repetition of the same general idea,
more or less exaggerated. For both are tyrants, usurpers,
murderers, both aspiring and ambitious, both courageous,
cruel, treacherous. But Richard is cruel from nature and
constitution. Macbeth becomes so from accidental cir-
cumstances. Richard is from his birth deformed in body
and mind, and naturally incapable of good. Macbeth is
full of "the milk of human kindness," is frank, sociable,
generous. Ile is tempted to the commission of guilt by
golden opportunities, by the instigations of his wife, and
by prophetic warnings. Fate and metaphysical aid con-
spire against his virtue and his loyalty. Richard on the
contrary needs no prompter, but wades through a series of

20
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
crimes to the height of his ambition from the ungovern-
able violence of his temper and a reckless love of mis-
chief. He is never gay but in the prospect or in the
success of his villainies: Macbeth is full of horror at the
thoughts of the murder of Duncan, which he is with
difficulty prevailed on to commit, and of remorse after its
perpetration. Richard has no mixture of common
humanity in his composition, no regard to kindred or
posterity, he owns no fellowship with others, he is "him-
self alone." Macbeth is not destitute of feelings of
sympathy, is accessible to pity, is even made in some
measure the dupe of his uxoriousness, ranks the loss of
friends, of the cordial love of his followers, and of his
good name, among the causes which have made him
weary of life, and regrets that he has ever seized the
crown by unjust means, since he cannot transmit it to his
posterity-¹
"For Banquo's issue have I fil'd my mind;
For them the gracious Duncan have I murder'd,. .
To make them kings, the seed of Banquo kings."
In the agitation of his mind, he envies those whom he
has sent to peace-
"Duncan is in his grave;
After life's fitful fever he sleeps well."2
It is true, he becomes more callous as he plunges deeper
in guilt.
“I have supp'd full with horrors;
Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts,
Cannot once start me 3
And he in the end anticipates his wife in the boldness and
bloodiness of his enterprises, while she for want of the
same stimulus of action, "is troubled with thick-coming
fancies that keep her from her rest," goes mad and dies.
Macbeth endeavours to escape from reflection on his crimes
by repelling their consequences, and banishes remorse for
Act iii., sc. 1.] [2 Act iii., sc. 2.] [³ Act v., sc. 5.] [4 Act v., sc. 3.]
3
Macbeth.
21
the past by the meditation of future mischief. This is not
the principle of Richard's cruelty, which displays the
wanton malice of a fiend as much as the frailty of human
passion. Macbeth is goaded on to acts of violence and
retaliation by necessity; to Richard, blood is a pastime.
There are other decisive differences inherent in the two
characters. Richard may be regarded as a man of the
world, a plotting, hardened knave, wholly regardless of
everything but his own ends, and the means to secure
them. Not so Macbeth. The superstitions of the age,
the rude state of society, the local scenery and customs, all
give a wildness and imaginary grandeur to his character.
From the strangeness of the events that surround him, he
is full of amazement and fear; and stands in doubt
between the world of reality and the world of fancy. He
sees sights not shown to mortal eye, and hears unearthly
music. All is tumult and disorder within and without his
mind; his purposes recoil upon himself, are broken and
disjointed; he is the double thrall of his passions and his
evil destiny.
Richard is not a character either of imagi-
There is no
nation or pathos, but of pure self-will.
conflict of opposite feelings in his breast. The appari-
tions which he sees only haunt him in his sleep; nor does
he live like Macbeth in a waking dream. Macbeth has
considerable energy and manliness of character; but then
he is "subject to all the skyey influences." He is sure of
nothing but the present moment. Richard in the busy
turbulence of his projects never loses his self-possession,
and makes use of every circumstance that happens as an
instrument of his long-reaching designs. In his last
extremity we can only regard him as a wild beast taken
in the toils: while we never entirely lose our concern for
Macbeth; and he calls back all our sympathy by that fine
close of thoughtful melancholy,
"My way of life
Is fallen into the sear, the yellow leaf;
22
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
And that which should accompany old age,
As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,
I must not look to have; but in their stead
Curses not loud but deep, mouth-honour, breath,
Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not.” 1
We can conceive a common actor to play Richard
tolerably well; we can conceive no one to play Macbeth
properly, or to look like a man that had encountered the
Weird Sisters. All the actors that we have ever seen,
appear as if they had encountered them on the boards of
Covent-garden or Drury-lane, but not on the heath at
Fores, and as if they did not believe what they had seen.
The Witches of Macbeth' indeed are ridiculous on the
modern stage, and we doubt if the Furies of Eschylus
would be more respected. The progress of manners and
knowledge has an influence on the stage, and will in time
perhaps destroy both tragedy and comedy. Filch's pick-
ing pockets in the 'Beggar's Opera' is not so good a jest
as it used to be: by the force of the police and of philo-
sophy, Lillo's murders and the ghosts in Shakespear will
become obsolete. At last, there will be nothing left,
good nor bad, to be desired or dreaded, on the theatre or in
real life. A question has been started with respect to
the originality of Shakespear's witches, which has been
well answered by Mr. Lamb in his notes to the 'Speci-
mens of the Early Dramatic Poets.'
'
Though some resemblance may be traced between the
charms in ‘Macbeth,' and the incantations in this play
(the 'Witch of Middleton'), which is supposed to have
preceded it, this coincidence will not detract much from
the originality of Shakespear. His Witches are distin-
guished from the Witches of Middleton by essential
differences. These are creatures to whom man or woman
plotting some dire mischief might resort for occasional
consultation. Those originate deeds of blood, and begin
[¹ Act v., sc. 3.]
1
Julius Cæsar.
23
bad impulses to men.
From the moment that their eyes
first meet with Macbeth's, he is spell-bound. That meet-
ing sways his destiny. He can never break the fascina-
tion. These Witches can hurt the body; those have
power over the soul. Hecate in Middleton has a son, a
low buffoon: the hags of Shakespear have neither child of
their own, nor seem to be descended from any parent.
They are foul anomalies, of whom we know not whence
they are sprung, nor whether they have beginning or
ending. As they are without human passions, so they
seem to be without human relations. They come with
thunder and lightning, and vanish to airy music. This is
all we know of them. Except Hecate, they have no
names, which heightens their mysteriousness. The
names, and some of the properties which Middleton has
given to his hags, excite smiles. The Weird Sisters are
serious things. Their presence cannot co-exist with
mirth. But, in a lesser degree, the Witches of Middleton
are fine creations. Their power too is, in some measure,
over the mind. They raise jars, jealousies, strifes, like a
thick scurf o'er life."
JULIUS CÆSAR.¹
JULIUS CÆSAR' was one of three principal plays by
different authors, pitched upon by the celebrated Earl of
Halifax to be brought out in a splendid manner by sub-
scription, in the year 1707. The other two were the
'King and No King' of [Beaumont and] Fletcher, and
Dryden's 'Maiden Queen.' There perhaps might be political
reasons for this selection, as far as regards our author.
Otherwise, Shakespear's Julius Cæsar' is not equal as a
C
1 Not printed, till was included in the collected volume of 1623;
but the drama is supposed to have been in existence in, if not
before, 1601. See Dyce's ed. 1868, vi., 613.-Ed.
24
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
whole, to either of his other plays taken from the Roman
history. It is inferior in interest to 'Coriolanus,' and both
in interest and power to 'Antony and Cleopatra.' It how-
ever abounds in admirable and affecting passages, and is
remarkable for the profound knowledge of character, in
which Shakespear could scarcely fail. If there is any
exception to this remark, it is in the hero of the piece
himself. We do not much admire the representation here
given of Julius Cæsar, nor do we think it answers to the
portrait given of him in his Commentaries. He makes
several vapouring and rather pedantic speeches, and does
nothing. Indeed, he has nothing to do. So far, the fault
of the character is the fault of the plot.
The spirit with which the poet has entered at once into
the manners of the common people, and the jealousies and
heart-burnings of the different factions, is shown in the
first scene, where Flavius and Marullus, tribunes of the
people, and some citizens of Rome, appear upon the
stage.


66
Flavius. Thou art a cobbler, art thou?
Sec. Cit. Truly, Sir, all that I live by, is the awl: I meddle with
no tradesman's matters, nor women's matters, but with awl.
I am
indeed, Sir, a surgeon to old shoes; when they are in great danger,
I re-cover them.
•
Flavius. But wherefore art not in thy shop to-day?
Why dost thou lead these men about the streets?
Sec. Cit. Truly, Sir, to wear out their shoes, to get myself into
more work. But indeed, Sir, we make holiday, to see Cæsar, and
to rejoice in his triumph." ¹
To this specimen of quaint low humour immediately
follows that unexpected and animated burst of indignant
eloquence, put into the mouth of one of the angry
tribunes.2
“Marullus. Wherefore rejoice! What conquest brings he home?
What tributaries follow him to Rome,
To grace in captive-bonds his chariot-wheels?
[¹ Act i., sc. 1.]
[2 Ibid.]
Julius Cæsar.
25
You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things!
O you hard hearts, you cruel men of Rome!
Knew you not Pompey? Many a time and oft
Have you climb'd up to walls and battlements,
To towers and windows, yea, to chimney-tops,
Your infants in your arms, and there have sat
The live-long day with patient expectation,
To see great Pompey pass the streets of Rome :
And when you saw his chariot but appear,
Have you not made an universal shout,
That Tiber trembled underneath her banks
To hear the replication of your sounds,
Made in her concave shores?
And do you now put on your best attire?
And do you now cull out an holiday?
And do you now strew flowers in his way
That comes in triumph over Pompey's blood?
Be gone!
Run to your houses, fall upon your knees,
Pray to the Gods to intermit the plague,
That needs must light on this ingratitude.”
The well-known dialogue between Brutus and Cassius,
in which the latter breaks the design of the conspiracy to
the former, and partly gains him over to it, is a noble
piece of high-minded declamation. Cassius's insisting on
the pretended effeminacy of Cæsar's character, and his
description of their swimming across the Tiber together,
once upon a raw and gusty day," are among the finest
strokes in it. But perhaps the whole is not equal to the
short scene which follows, when Cæsar enters with his
train :-
CC
"Brutus. The games are done, and Cæsar is returning.
Cassius. As they pass by, pluck Casca by the sleeve,
And he will, after his sour fashion, tell you
What has procceded worthy note to-day.
(Re-enter Cæsar and his train.)
Brutus. I will do so; but look you, Cassius,
The angry spot doth glow on Cæsar's brow,
And all the rest look like a chidden train.
Calphurnia's cheek is pale; and Cicero
Looks with such ferret and such fiery eyes,
26
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
As we have seen him in the Capitol,
Being cross'd in conference by some senator.
Cassius. Casca will tell us what the matter is.
Cæsar. Antonius-
Antony. Cæsar?
Cæsar. Let me have men about me that are fat,
Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o' nights:
Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look,
He thinks too much; such men are dangerous.
Antony. Fear him not, Cæsar; he's not dangerous:
He is a noble Roman, and well given.
Cæsar. Would he were fatter! but I fear him not:
Yet if my name were liable to fear,
I do not know the man I should avoid
So soon as that spare Cassius. He reads much;
He is a great observer, and he looks
Quite through the deeds of men; he loves no plays,
As thou dost, Antony; he hears no music:
Seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a sort,
As if he mock'd himself, and scorn'd his spirit,
That could be mov'd to smile at anything.
Such men as he be never at heart's ease,
Whilst they behold a greater than themselves;
And therefore are they very dangerous.
I rather tell thee what is to be fear'd
Than what I fear; for always I am Cæsar.
Come on my right hand, for this ear is deaf,
And tell me truly what thou think'st of him."1
We know hardly any passage more expressive of the
genius of Shakespear than this. It is as if he had been
actually present, had known the different characters and
what they thought of one another, and had taken down
what he heard and saw, their looks, words, and gestures,
just as they happened.
The character of Mark Antony is farther speculated
upon where the conspirators deliberate whether he shall
fall with Cæsar. Brutus is against it—
"And for Mark Antony, think not of him :
For he can do no more than Cæsar's arm,
L
Act i., sc. 2.]
Julius Cæsar.
27
When Cæsar's head is off.
Cassius.
Yet I fear him:
For in th' ingrafted love he bears to Cæsar-
Brutus. Alas, good Cassius, do not think of him :
If he love Cæsar, all that he can do
Is to himself, take thought, and die for Cæsar:
And that were much, he should; for he is given
To sports, to wildness, and much company.
Trebonius. There is no fear in him; let him not die :
For he will live, and laugh at this hereafter."1
They were in the wrong; and Cassius was right.

The honest manliness of Brutus is however sufficient to
find out the unfitness of Cicero to be included in their
enterprise, from his affected egotism and literary vanity.
O, name him not: let us not break with him;
For he will never follow anything
That other men begin."2
His [Cicero's] scepticism as to prodigies and his moral-
ising on the weather-" This disturbed sky is not to walk
in” are in the same spirit of refined imbecility.
Shakespear has in this play and elsewhere shown the
same penetration into political character and the springs
of public events as into those of every-day life. For
instance, the whole design of the conspirators to liberate
their country fails from the generous temper and over-
weening confidence of Brutus in the goodness of their
cause and the assistance of others. Thus it has always
been. Those who mean well themselves think well of
others, and fall a prey to their security. That humanity
and honesty which dispose men to resist injustice and
tyranny, render them unfit to cope with the cunning and
power of those who are opposed to them. The friends of
liberty trust to the professions of others, because they are
themselves sincere, and endeavour to reconcile the public
good with the least possible hurt to its enemies, who have
no regard to anything but their own unprincipled ends,
and stick at nothing to accomplish them. Cassius was
[¹ Act ii., sc. 1.]
[2 Ibid.]
28
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
better cut out for a conspirator. His heart prompted his
head. His watchful jealousy made him fear the worst
that might happen, and his irritability of temper added to
his inveteracy of purpose, and sharpened his patriotism.
The mixed nature of his motives made him fitter to con-
tend with bad men. The vices are never so well employed
as in combating one another. Tyranny and servility are
to be dealt with after their own fashion: otherwise, they
will triumph over those who spare them, and finally pro-
nounce their funeral panegyric, as Antony did that of
Brutus :
"All the conspirators, save only he,
Did that they did in envy of great Cæsar :
He only in a general honest thought
1
And common good to all, made one of them." ¹
The quarrel between Brutus and Cassius is managed in a
masterly way.
The dramatic fluctuation of passion, the
calmness of Brutus, the heat of Cassius, are admirably
described; and the exclamation of Cassius on hearing of
the death of Portia, which he does not learn till after their
reconciliation, "How 'scaped I killing when I cross'd you
so?" gives double force to all that has gone before. The
scene between Brutus and Portia, where she endeavours to
extort the secret of the conspiracy from him, is conceived
in the most heroical spirit, and the burst of tenderness in
Brutus-
"You are my true and honourable wife;
As dear to me as are the ruddy drops
That visit my sad heart "_3
is justified by her whole behaviour. Portia's breathless
impatience to learn the event of the conspiracy, in the
dialogue with Lucius, is full of passion. The interest
which Portia takes in Brutus and that which Calphurnia
takes in the fate of Cæsar are discriminated with the
nicest precision. Mark Antony's speech over the dead
[2 Act iv., sc. 3.] [³ Act ii., sc. 1.]
[¹ Act v., sc. 5.]
Julius Cæsar.
29
body of Cæsar has been justly admired for the mixture of
pathos and artifice in it: that of Brutus certainly is not
so good.
The entrance of the conspirators to the house of Brutus
at midnight is rendered very impressive. In the midst of
this scene, we meet with one of those careless and natural
digressions which occur so frequently and beautifully in
Shakespear. After Cassius has introduced his friends one
by one, Brutus says—
They are all welcome.
What watchful cares do interpose themselves
Betwixt your eyes and night?
Cassius. Shall I entreat a word?
(Brutus and Cassius whisper.)
Decius. Here lies the east: doth not the day break here?
Casca. No.
Cinna. O pardon, Sir, it doth; and yon gray lines,
That fret the clouds, are messengers of day.
Casca. You shall confess that you are both deceiv'd:
Here, as I point my sword, the sun arises;
Which is a great way growing on the south,
Weighing the youthful season of the year.
Some two months hence, up higher toward the north
He first presents his fire, and the high east
Stands, as the Capitol, directly here."1
We cannot help thinking this graceful familiarity better
than all the fustian in the world.-The truth of history in
'Julius Cæsar' is very ably worked up with dramatic effect.
The councils of generals, the doubtful turns of battles, are
represented to the life. The death of Brutus is worthy of
him: it has the dignity of the Roman senator with the
firmness of the Stoic philosopher. But what is perhaps
better than either, is the little incident of his boy, Lucius,
falling asleep over his instrument, as he is playing to his
master in his tent, the night before the battle. Nature
had played him the same forgetful trick once before, on
[¹ Act ii., sc. 1.]
30
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
the night of the conspiracy. The humanity of Brutus is
the same on both occasions.
"It is no matter:
Enjoy the heavy honey-dew of slumber.
Thou hast no figures nor no fantasies,
Which busy care draws in the brains of men.
Therefore thou sleep'st so sound." ¹
OTHELLO.2
IT has been said that tragedy purifies the affections by
terror and pity. That is, it substitutes imaginary sym-
pathy for mere selfishness. It gives us a high and
permanent interest, beyond ourselves, in humanity as
such. It raises the great, the remote, and the possible to
an equality with the real, the little, and the near. It
makes man a partaker with his kind. It subdues and
softens the stubbornness of his will. It teaches him that
there are and have been others like himself, by showing
him as in a glass what they have felt, thought, and done.
It opens the chambers of the human heart. It leaves
nothing indifferent to us that can affect our common
nature. It excites our sensibility by exhibiting the
passions wound up to the utmost pitch by the power of
imagination or the temptation of circumstances; and
corrects their fatal excesses in ourselves by pointing to
the greater extent of sufferings and of crimes to which
they have led others. Tragedy creates a balance of the
affections. It makes us thoughtful spectators in the lists
of life. It is the refiner of the species; a discipline of
humanity. The habitual study of poetry and works of
1 Act ii., sc. 1.]
2 First printed in 1622, but supposed to have been written in or
before 1600. The exact date, however, has yet to be ascertained, it
seems.-ED.
Othello.
31
imagination is one chief part of a well-grounded education.
A taste for liberal art is necessary to complete the
character of a gentleman. Science alone is hard and
mechanical. It exercises the understanding upon things
out of ourselves, while it leaves the affections unemployed,
or engrossed with our own immediate, narrow interests.
-'Othello' furnishes an illustration of these remarks. It
excites our sympathy in an extraordinary degree. The
moral it conveys has a closer application to the concerns
of human life than that of almost any other of Shakespear's
plays. "It comes directly home to the bosoms and
business of men." The pathos in Lear' is indeed more
dreadful and overpowering; but it is less natural, and
less of every day's occurrence. We have not the same
degree of sympathy with the passions described in
Macbeth.' The interest in 'Hamlet' is more remote and
reflex. That of Othello' is at once equally profound and
affecting.
<
The picturesque contrasts of character in this play are
almost as remarkable as the depth of the passion.¹ The
Moor Othello, the gentle Desdemona, the villain Iago, the
good-natured Cassio, the fool Roderigo, present a range
and variety of character as striking and palpable as that
produced by the opposition of costume in a picture.
Their distinguishing qualities stand out to the mind's
eye, so that even when we are not thinking of their
actions or sentiments, the idea of their persons is still as
present to us as ever. These characters and the images
they stamp upon the mind are the farthest asunder
possible, the distance between them is immense: yet the
compass of knowledge and invention which the poet has
1 This and what follows is stated a little differently, and more at
length, in a paper contributed to the 'Examiner' newspaper for 1816
'p. 299), by the present writer under the signature L. C. The
paper formed one of the 'Round Table' series, which was not re-
printed in the two little volumes published in 1817.—E».
32
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
shown in embodying these extreme creations of his genius
is only greater than the truth and felicity with which he
has identified each character with itself, or blended their
different qualities together in the same story. What a
contrast the character of Othello forms to that of Iago!
at the same time, the force of conception with which these
two figures are opposed to each other is rendered still
more intense by the complete consistency with which the
traits of each character are brought out in a state of the
highest finishing. The making one black and the other
white, the one unprincipled, the other unfortunate in the
extreme, would have answered the common purposes of
effect, and satisfied the ambition of an ordinary painter of
character. Shakespear has laboured the finer shades of
difference in both with as much care and skill as if he
had had to depend on the execution alone for the success
of his design. On the other hand, Desdemona and Æmilia
are not meant to be opposed with anything like strong
contrast to each other. Both are, to outward appearance,
characters of common life, not more distinguished than
women usually are, by difference of rank and situation.
The difference of their thoughts and sentiments is how-
ever laid open, their minds are separated from each other
by signs as plain and as little to be mistaken as the com-
plexions of their husbands.
The movement of the passion in Othello is exceedingly
different from that of Macbeth. In Macbeth there is a
violent struggle between opposite feelings, between am-
bition and the stings of conscience, almost from first to
last: in Othello, the doubtful conflict between contrary
passions, though dreadful, continues only for a short
time, and the chief interest is excited by the alternate
ascendency of different passions, by the entire and un-
foreseen change from the fondest love and most unbounded
confidence to the tortures of jealousy and the madness of
hatred. The revenge of Othello, after it has once taken
Othello.
33
thorough possession of his mind, never quits it, but grows
stronger and stronger at every moment of its delay. The
nature of the Moor is noble, confiding, tender, and gene-
rous; but his blood is of the most inflammable kind; and
being once roused by a sense of his wrongs, he is stopped
by no considerations of remorse or pity till he has given a
loose to all the dictates of his rage and his despair. It is
in working his noble nature up to this extremity through
rapid but gradual transitions, in raising passion to its
height from the smallest beginnings and in spite of all
obstacles, in painting the expiring conflict between love
and hatred, tenderness and resentment, jealousy and re-
morse, in unfolding the strength and the weakness of our
Lature, in uniting sublimity of thought with the anguish
of the keenest woe, in putting in motion the various
impulses that agitate this our mortal being, and at last
blending them in that noble tide of deep and sustained
passion, impetuous but majestic, that "flows on to the
Propontic, and knows no ebb," that Shakespear has shown
the mastery of his genius and of his power over the
human heart. The third act of 'OTHELLO' is his finest
display, not of knowledge or passion separately, but of
the two combined, of the knowledge of character with the
expression of passion, of consummate art in the keeping up
of appearances with the profound workings of nature, and
the convulsive movements of uncontrollable agony, of
the power of inflicting torture and of suffering it. Not
only is the tumult of passion in Othello's mind heaved up
from the very bottom of the soul, but every the slightest
undulation of feeling is seen on the surface, as it arises
from the impulses of imagination or the malicious sug-
gestions of Iago. The progressive preparation for the
catastrophe is wonderfully managed from the Moor's first
gallant recital of the story of his love, of "the spells and
witchcraft he had used," from his unlooked-for and ro-
mantic success, the fond satisfaction with which he dotes
D
34
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
on his own happiness, the unreserved tenderness of Des-
demona and her innocent importunities in favour of
Cassio, irritating the suspicions instilled into her hus-
band's mind by the perfidy of Iago, and rankling there to
poison, till he loses all command of himself, and his rage
can only be appeased by blood. She is introduced, just
before Iago begins to put his scheme in practice, pleading
for Cassio with all the thoughtless gaiety of friendship
and winning confidence in the love of Othello.
"What! Michael Cassio?
That came a wooing with you, and so many a time,
When I have spoke of you dispraisingly,
Hath ta'en your part, to have so much to do
•
•
•
To bring him in? Why this is not a boon :
'Tis as I should intreat you wear your gloves,
Or feed on nourishing dishes, or keep you warm;
Or sue to you to do peculiar profit
To your own person: nay, when I have a suit,
Wherein I mean to touch your love indeed,
It shall be full of poise and difficult weight,
And fearful to be granted."¹
Othello's confidence, at first only staggered by broken
hints and insinuations, recovers itself at sight of Des-
demona; and he exclaims
"If she be false, O, then Heaven mocks itself:
I'll not believe 't."
But presently after, on brooding over his suspicions by
himself, and yielding to his apprehensions of the worst,
his smothered jealousy breaks out into open fury, and he
returns to demand satisfaction of Iago like a wild beast
stung with the envenomed shaft of the hunters. "Look
where he comes," &c. In this state of exasperation and
violence, after the first paroxysms of his grief and ten-
derness have had their vent in that passionate apostrophe,
"I felt not Cassio's kisses on her lips," Iago, by false
aspersions, and by presenting the most revolting images
[¹ Act iii., sc. 3.}
Othello.
35
to his mind,' easily turns the storm of passion from
himself against Desdemona, and works him up into a
trembling agony of doubt and fear, in which he abandona
all his love and hopes in a breath.
"Now do I see 'tis true. Look here, Iago,
All my fond love thus do I blow to Heaven.
'Tis gone.-
Arise, black vengeance, from the hollow hell!
Yield up, O love, thy crown and hearted throne
To tyrannous hate! Swell, bosom, with thy fraught;
For 'tis of aspics' tongues."
From this time, his raging thoughts "ne'er look back,
ne'er ebb to humble love," till his revenge is sure of its
object, the painful regrets and involuntary recollections
of past circumstances which cross his mind amidst the
dim trances of passion, aggravating the sense of his
wrongs, but not shaking his purpose.
Once indeed,
where Iago shows him Cassio with the handkerchief in
his hand, and making sport (as he thinks) of his mis-
fortunes, the intolerable bitterness of his feelings, the
extreme sense of shame, makes him fall to praising her
accomplishments and relapse into a momentary fit of
weakness, "Yet, O the pity of it, Iago, the pity of it!"
This returning fondness however only serves, as it is
managed by Iago, to whet his revenge, and set his heart
more against her. In his conversations with Desdemona,
the persuasion of her guilt and the immediate proofs of
her duplicity seem to irritate his resentment and aversion
to her; but in the scene immediately preceding her
death, the recollection of his love returns upon him in all
its tenderness and force; and after her death, he all at
once forgets his wrongs in the sudden and irreparable
sense of his loss:
¹ See the passage, beginning-"It is impossible you should see
this, were they as prime as goats,' &c. [Act iii., sc. 3.]
[2 Ubi supra.]
36
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
My wife! My wife! What wife? I have no wife,
Oh insupportable! Oh heavy hour!”
This happens before he is assured of her innocence;
but afterwards his remorse is as dreadful as his revenge
has been, and yields only to fixed and death-like despair.
His farewell speech, before he kills himself, in which he
conveys his reasons to the senate for the murder of his
wife, is equal to the first speech in which he gave them
an account of his courtship of her, and "his whole
course of love." Such an ending was alone worthy of
such a commencement.
If anything could add to the force of our sympathy
with Othello, or compassion for his fate, it would be the
frankness and generosity of his nature, which so little
deserve it. When Iago first begins to practise upon his
unsuspecting friendship, he answers-
""Tis not to make me jealous,
To say my wife is fair, feeds well, loves company,
Is free of speech, sings, plays, and dances well;
Where virtue is, these are more virtuous.
Nor from my own weak merits will I draw
The smallest fear or doubt of her revolt,
For she had eyes and chose me-"1
This character is beautifully (and with affecting sim-
plicity) confirmed by what Desdemona herself says of
him to Æmilia after she has lost the handkerchief, the
first pledge of his love to her.
"Believe me, I had rather have lost my purse
Full of crusadoes; and, but my noble Moor
Is true of mind, and made of no such baseness,
As jealous creatures are, it were enough
To put him to ill thinking.
Emilia.
Is be not jealous?
Desdemona. Who, he? I think the sun where he was born
Drew all such humours from him,"
In a short speech of Emilia's, there occurs one of
those side-intimations of the fluctuations of passion which
[¹ Act iii., sc. 3.]
[2 Act iii.. sc. 4.]
Othello.
37
we seldom meet with but in Shakespear. After Othello
has resolved upon the death of his wife, and bids her
dismiss her attendant for the night, she answers,
"I will, my lord.
Emilia. How goes it now? He looks gentler than he did.”
Shakespear has here put into half a line what some
authors would have spun out into ten set speeches.
The character of Desdemona is inimitable both in
itself, and as it appears in contrast with Othello's ground-
less jealousy, and with the foul conspiracy of which she is
the innocent victim. Her beauty and external graces are
only indirectly glanced at: we see "her visage in her
mind;" her character everywhere predominates over her
person.
"A maiden never bold;
Of spirit so still and quiet, that her motion
Blush'd at herself." 1
There is one fine compliment paid to her by Cassio,
who exclaims triumphantly when she comes ashore at
Cyprus after the storm,
Tempests themselves, high seas, and howling winds,
The gutter'd rocks, and congregated sands,—
Traitors ensteep'd to clog the guiltless keel-
As having sense of beauty, do omit
Their mortal natures, letting go safely by
The divine Desdemona." 2
T
In general, as is the case with most of Shakespear's
females, we lose sight of her personal charms in her
attachment and devotedness to her husband.
"My heart's subdu'd
Even to the very quality of my lord.
*
And to his honours and his valiant parts
Did I my soul and fortunes consecrate."
I
The lady protests so much herself, and she is as good as
her word. The truth of conception, with which timidity
Γι
¹ Act i., sc. 3.] [² Act ii., sc. 1.] [³ Act i., sc. 3.]
38
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
and boldness are united in the same character, is marvel-
lous. The extravagance of her resolutions, the pertinacity
of her affections, may be said to arise out of the gentleness
of her nature. They imply an unreserved reliance on the
purity of her own intentions, an entire surrender of her
fears to her love, a knitting of herself (heart and soul) to
the fate of another. Bating the commencement of her
passion, which is a little fantastical and headstrong
(though even that may perhaps be consistently accounted
for from her inability to resist a rising inclination ¹),
her whole character consists in having no will of her
own, no prompter but her obedience. Her romantic turn
is only a consequence of the domestic and practical part
of her disposition; and instead of following Othello to
the wars, she would gladly have "remained at home a
moth of peace," if her husband could have stayed with her.
Her resignation and angelic sweetness of temper do not
desert her at the last. The scenes in which she laments
and tries to account for Othello's estrangement from her
are exquisitely beautiful. After he has struck her, and
called her names, she says,
“Alas, Iago,
What shall I do to win my lord again?
Good friend, go to him; for by this light of heaven,
I know not how I lost him. Here I kneel :-
If e'er my will did trespass 'gainst his love,
Either in discourse of thought, or actual deed,
Or that mine eyes, mine ears, or any sense,
Delignted them in any other form;
Or that I do not, and ever did,
And ever will-though he do shake me off
To beggarly divorcement-love him dearly,
Comfort forswear me! Unkindness may do much,
And his unkindness may defeat my life,
But never taint my love.
Iago. I pray you, be content: 'tis but his humour.
1 i Iago. Ay, too gentle.
Othello. Nay, that's certain." [Act iv., sc. 1.]
Othello.
39
The business of the state does him offence. .
Desdemona. If 'twere no other !"-1
The scene which follows with Æmilia and the song of
the Willow, are equally beautifu and show the author's
extreme power of varying the expression of passion, in all
its moods and in all circumstances.
“ Æmilia. I would you had never seen him.
Desdemona. So would not I: my love doth so approve him,
That even his stubbornness, his checks, his frowns-
Prythee unpin me-have grace and favour in them," &c. 2
Not the unjust suspicions of Othello, not Iago's un-
provoked treachery, place Desdemona in a more amiable
or interesting light than the conversation (half earnest,
half jest) between her and Æmilia on the common be-
haviour of women to their husbands. This dialogue
takes place just before the last fatal scene. If Othello
had overheard it, it would have prevented the whole
catastrophe; but then it would have spoiled the play.
The character of Iago is one of the supererogations of
Shakespear's genius. Some persons, more nice than wise,
have thought this whole character unnatural, because his
villainy is without a sufficient motive. Shakespear, who
was as good a philosopher as he was a poet, thought
otherwise. He knew that the love of power, which is
another name for the love of mischief, is natural to man.
He would know this as well or better than if it had been
demonstrated to him by a logical diagram, merely from
seeing children paddle in the dirt or kill flies for sport.
Iago in fact belongs to a class of character, common to
Shakespear and at the same time peculiar to him; whose
heads are as acute and active as their hearts are hard and
callous. Iago is to be sure an extreme instance of the
kind;
that is to say, of diseased intellectual activity,
with the most perfect indifference to moral good or evil,
or rather with a decided preference of the latter, because
[2 Act iv., sc. 3.]
[¹ Act iv., sc. 2.]
40
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
it falls more readily in with his favourite propensity,
gives greater zest to his thoughts and scope to his actions.
He is quite or nearly as indifferent to his own fate as to
that of others; he runs all risks for a trifling and doubt-
ful advantage; and is himself the dupe and victim of his
ruling passion-an insatiable craving after action of the
most difficult and dangerous kind. "Our ancient" is a
philosopher, who fancies that a lie that kills has more
point in it than an alliteration or an antithesis; who
thinks a fatal experiment on the peace of a family a better
thing than watching the palpitations in the heart of a flea
in a microscope; who plots the ruin of his friends as an
exercise for his ingenuity, and stabs men in the dark to
prevent ennui. His gaiety, such as it is, arises from the
success of his treachery; his ease from the torture he has
inflicted on others. He is an amateur of tragedy in real
life; and instead of employing his invention on imaginary
characters, or long-forgotten incidents, he takes the
bolder and more desperate course of getting up his plot
at home, casts the principal parts among his nearest
friends and connections, and rehearses it in downright
earnest, with steady nerves and unabated resolution. We
will just give an illustration or two.
One of his most characteristic speeches is that imme-
diately after the marriage of Othello.
Roderigo. What a full fortune does the thick-lips owe,
If he can carry 't thus!
Iago.
Call up her father:
Rouse him (Othello); make after him, poison his delight,
Proclaim him in the streets, incense her kinsmen,
And tho' he in a fertile climate dwell,
Plague him with flies: though that his joy be joy,
Yet throw such changes of vexation on 't,
As it may lose some colour." 1
In the next passage, his imagination runs riot in the
[¹ Act i., sc. 1.]
Othello.
41
mischief he is plotting, and breaks out into the wildness
and impetuosity of real enthusiasm.
Roderigo. Here is her father's house: I'll call aloud.
Iago. Do; with like timorous accent and dire yell
As when, by night and negligence, the fire
Is spied in populous cities.'
One of his most favourite topics, on which he is rich
indeed, and in descanting on which his spleen serves him
for a Muse, is the disproportionate match between Des-
demona and the Moor. This is a clue to the character of
the lady which he is by no means ready to part with. It
is brought forward in the first scene, and he recurs to it,
when in answer to his insinuations against Desdemona,
Roderigo says,
"I cannot believe that in her-she's full of most blest con-
ditions."1
Iago. Blessed fig's end! The wine she drinks is made of grapes.
If she had been blest, she would never have loved the Moor."
>> 2
And again with still more spirit and fatal effect after-
wards, when he turns this very suggestion arising in
Othello's own breast to her prejudice.
“Othello. And yet how nature erring from itself-
Lugo. Ay, there's the point;-as—to be bold with you—
Not to affect many proposed matches
Of her own clime, complexion, and degree," &c.³
This is probing to the quick. Iago here turns the
character of poor Desdemona, as it were, inside out. It is
certain that nothing but the genius of Shakespear could
have preserved the entire interest and delicacy of the
part, and have even drawn an additional elegance and
dignity from the peculiar circumstances in which she is
placed. The habitual licentiousness of Iago's conver-
sation is not to be traced to the pleasure he takes in gross
or lascivious images, but to his desire of finding out the
1
¹ Mr. Dyce reads "condition."—Ed.
[Act iii., sc. 3.]
[2 Act ii., sc. 1.]
42
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
worst side of everything, and of proving himself an over-
match for appearances. He has none of "the milk of
human kindness" in his composition. His imagination
rejects everything that has not a strong infusion of the
most unpalatable ingredients; his mind digests only
poisons. Virtue or goodness or whatever has the least
"relish of salvation in it," is, to his depraved appetite,
sickly and insipid: and he even resents the good opinion
entertained of his own integrity, as if it were an affront
cast on the masculine sense and spirit of his character.
Thus at the meeting between Othello and Desdemona, he
exclaims :
"O, you are well tun'd now!
But I'll set down the pegs that make this music,
As honest as I am "" 1
his character of bonhommie not sitting at all easy upon
him. In the scenes where he tries to work Othello to
his purpose, he is proportionably guarded, insidious,
dark, and deliberate. We believe nothing ever came up to
the profound dissimulation and dexterous artifice of the
well-known dialogue in the third act, where he first enters
upon the execution of his design.
"Iago. My noble lord.—
Othello.
What dost thou say, Iago?
Jago. Did Michael Cassio, when you woo'd my lady,
Know of your love?
Othello. He did from first to last. Why dost thou ask?
Iago. But for a satisfaction of my thought;
No further harm.
Othello.
Why of thy thought, Iago?
Iago. I did not think he had been acquainted with her.
Othello. O yes, and went between us very oft-
Iago. Indeed!
Othello. Indeed? Ay, indeed. Discern'st thou aught in that?
Is he not honest?
[¹ Act ii., sc. 1.]
Othello.
43
Iago. Honest, my lord?
Othello. Honest? Ay, honest.
Iago. My lord, for aught I know.
Othello. What dost thou think?
Iaga.
Othello.
By heaven, he echoes me,
Think, my lord!
Think, my lord!
As if there was some monster in his thought
Too hideous to be shown."-1
The stops and breaks, the deep workings of treachery
under the mask of love and honesty, the anxious watch-
fulness, the cool earnestness, and if we may so say, the
passion of hypocrisy, marked in every line, receive their
ast finishing in that inconceivable burst of pretended
indignation at Othello's doubts of his sincerity:
"O grace! O Heaven forgive me!
Are you a man? Have you a soul or sense?
God be wi' you! take mine office.-O wretched fool,
That liv'st to make thine honesty a vice!—
O monstrous world! Take note, take note, O world!
To be direct and honest is not safe.-
I thank you for this profit, and from hence
I'll love no friend, since love breeds such offence." 2
If Iago is detestable enough when he has business on
his hands and all his engines at work, he is still worse
when he has nothing to do, and we only see into the
hollowness of his heart. His indifference when Othello
falls into a swoon, is perfectly diabolical:

66
Iago. How is it, General? Have you not hurt your head?
Othello. Dost thou mock me?
Iago. I mock you! No, by Heaven," &c.³
The part indeed would hardly be tolerated, even as a
foil to the virtue and generosity of the other characters in
the play, but for its indefatigable industry and inex-
haustible resources, which divert the attention of the
spectator (as well as his own) from the end he has in
[² Ibid.] [3 Act iv., sc. 1.]
[¹ Act iii., sc. 3.]
•
44
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
view to the means by which it must be accomplished.
Edmund the Bastard in Lear' is something of the same
character, placed in less prominent circumstances. Zanga¹
is a vulgar caricature of it.
TIMON OF ATHENS."
TIMON OF ATHENS' always appeared to us to be written
with as intense a feeling of his subject as any one play
of Shakespear. It is one of the few in which he seems to
be in earnest throughout, never to trifle nor go out of his
way. He does not relax in his efforts, nor lose sight of
the unity of his design. It is the only play of our author
in which spleen is the predominant feeling of the mind.
It is as much a satire as a play: and contains some of the
finest pieces of invective possible to be conceived, both
in the snarling, captious answers of the cynic Apemantus,
and in the impassioned and more terrible imprecations of
Timon. The latter remind the classical reader of the
force and swelling impetuosity of the moral declamations
in Juvenal, while the former have all the keenness and
caustic severity of the old Stoic philosophers. The soul
of Diogenes appears to have been seated on the lips of
Apemantus. The churlish profession of misanthropy in
the cynic is contrasted with the profound feeling of it in
Timon, and also with the soldier-like and determined
resentment of Alcibiades against his countrymen, who
¹ The hero of The Revenge,' a tragedy by Edward Young, Lond.
1721, 8vo.-ED.
2 First printed in the folio of 1623. There is a second drama on
the same subject from an anonymous pen, of uncertain date, but
conjectured to have been written about 1590. One or two of the
incidents are similar to incidents in Shakespear's drama, the com-
position of which is assigned to 1610 or thereabout. The story
itself is in Painter's Palace of Pleasure,' 1566, and in North's
Plutarch,' 1579.—ED.

Timon of Athens.
45
have banished him, though this forms only an incidental
episode in the tragedy.
The fable consists of a single event;—of the transition
from the highest pomp and profusion of artificial refine-
ment to the most abject state of savage life, and privation
of all social intercourse. The change is as rapid as it is
complete; nor is the description of the rich and generous
Timon, banqueting in gilded palaces, pampered by every
luxury, prodigal of his hospitality, courted by crowds of
flatterers, poets, painters, lords, ladies, who-
"Follow his strides, his lobbies fill with tendance,
Rain sacrificial whisperings in his ear;
Make sacred even his stirrup, and through him
Drink the free air"
more striking than that of the sudden falling off of his
friends and fortune, and his naked exposure in a wild
forest digging roots from the earth for his sustenance,
with a lofty spirit of self-denial, and bitter scorn of the
world, which raise him higher in our esteem than the
dazzling gloss of prosperity could do. He grudges him-
elf the means of life, and is only busy in preparing his
grave. How forcibly is the difference between what he
was, and what he is, described in Apemantus's taunting
questions, when he comes to reproach him with the
hange in his way of life!


What, think'st
That the bleak air, thy boisterous chamberlain,
Will put thy shirt on warm? will these moss'd trees
That have outlived the eagle, page thy heels,
And skip where thou point'st out? will the cold brook,
Candied with ice, caudle thy morning taste
To cure thy o'er-night's surfeit? Call the creatures,
Whose naked natures live in all the spite
Of wreakful heaven, whose bare unhoused trunks,
To the conflicting elements expos'd,
Answer mere nature-bid them flatter thee." 2
The manners are everywhere preserved with distinct
[¹ Act i., sc. 1.]
[² Act iv., sc. 3.]
46
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
truth. The poet and painter are very skilfully played
off against one another, both affecting great attention to
the other, and each taken up with his own vanity, and
the superiority of his own art. Shakespear has put into
the mouth of the former a very lively description of the
genius of poetry and of his own in particular.
"A thing slipt idly from me.
Our poesy is as a gum, which oozes
From whence 'tis nourish'd. The fire i' th' flint
Shows not till it be struck: our gentle flame
Provokes itself, and like the current flies
Each bound it chafes."1
The hollow friendship and shuffling evasions of th
Athenian lords, their smooth professions and pitiful in
gratitude, are very satisfactorily exposed, as well as the
different disguises to which the meanness of self-love
resorts in such cases to hide a want of generosity an
good faith. The lurking selfishness of Apemantus doe
not pass undetected amidst the grossness of his sarcasm
and his contempt for the pretensions of others. Eve
the two courtezans who accompany Alcibiades to th
cave of Timon are very characteristically sketched; an
the thieves who come to visit him are also "true men i
their way.—An exception to this general picture of selfis
depravity is found in the old and honest steward Flaviu
to whom Timon pays a full tribute of tenderness. Shak
spear was unwilling to draw a picture "ugly all over wit
hypocrisy." He owed this character to the good-nature
solicitations of his Muse. His mind might well hav
been said to be the "sphere of humanity.”

""
The moral sententiousness of this play equals that d
Bacon's Treatise on the Wisdom of the Ancients, and is
indeed seasoned with greater variety. Every topic of
contempt or indignation is here exhausted; but while th
sordid licentiousness of Apemantus, which turns every

[¹ Act i., sc. 1.]
Timon of Athens.
47
thing to gall and bitterness, shows only the natural
virulence of his temper and antipathy to good or evil
alike, Timon does not utter an imprecation without be-
traying the extravagant workings of disappointed passion.
of love altered to hate. Apemantus sees nothing gooɑ
in any object, and exaggerates whatever is disgusting:
Timon is tormented with the perpetual contrast between
things and appearances, between the fresh, tempting out-
side and the rottenness within, and invokes mischiefs on
the heads of mankind proportioned to the sense of his
wrongs and of their treacheries. He impatiently cries
out, when he finds the gold,
"This yellow slave
Will knit and break religions; bless th' accursed;
Make the hoar leprosy ador'd; place thieves,
And give them title, knee, and approbation,
With senators on the bench; this is it,
That makes the wappen'd widow wed again;
She, whom the spital-house and ulcerous sores
Would cast the gorge at, this embalms and spices
To th' April day again."
" 1
One of his most dreadful imprecations is that which
joccurs immediately on his leaving Athens.
"Let me look back upon thee, O thou wall,
That girdlest in those wolves, dive in the earth,
And fence not Athens! Matrons, turn incontinent!
Obedience fail in children! slaves and fools
Pluck the grave wrinkled senate from the bench,
And minister in their steads !—to general filths
Convert o' th' instant green virginity!—
Do't in your parents' eyes! bankrupts, hold fast ;
Rather than render back, out with your knives,
And cut your trusters' throats! Bound servants, steal :
Large-handed robbers your grave masters are
And pill by law! Maid, to thy master's bed:
Thy mistress is o' th' brothel! Son of sixteen,
Pluck the lin❜d crutch from thy old limping sire,
With it beat out his brains! piety and fear,
[¹ Act iv., sc. 3.1
48
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
Religion to the Gods, peace, justice, truth,
Domestic awe, night-rest, and neighbourhood,
Instructions, manners, mysteries and trades,
Degrees, observances, customs and laws,
Decline to your confounding contraries;
And let confusion live!-Plagues, incident to men,
Your potent and infectious fevers heap
On Athens, ripe for stroke! Thou cold sciatica,
Cripple our senators, that their limbs may halt
As lamely as their manners! Lust and liberty
Creep in the minds and marrows of our youth,
That 'gainst the stream of virtue they may strive,
And drown themselves in riot! Itches, blains,
Sow all th' Athenian bosoms; and their crop
Be general leprosy! breath infect breath,
That their society (as their friendship) may
Be merely poison !" 1
Timon is here just as ideal in his passion for ill as he
had been before in his belief of good. Apemantus was
satisfied with the mischief existing in the world, and with
his own ill-nature. One of the most decisive intimations
of Timon's morbid jealousy of appearances is in his
answer to Apemantus, who asks him,
"What things in the world canst thou nearest compare to th
flatterers?
Timon. Women nearest: but men, men are the things themselves."2
Apemantus, it is said, "loved few things better than to
abhor himself." This is not the case with Timon, who
neither loves to abhor himself nor others. All his vehe-
ment misanthropy is forced, up-hill work. From the
slippery turns of fortune, from the turmoils of passion
and adversity, he wishes to sink into the quiet of the
grave. On that subject his thoughts are intent, on that
he finds time and place to grow romantic. He digs his
own grave by the sea-shore; contrives his funeral cere-
monies amidst the pomp of desolation, and builds his
mausoleum of the elements.
[¹ Act iv., sc. 1.]
[² Act iv., sc. 3.]
Coriolanus.
"Come not to me again; but say to Athens,
Timon hath made his everlasting mansion
Upon the beachèd verge of the salt flood;
Which once a-day with his embossèd froth
The turbulent surge shall cover.-Thither come,
And let my grave-stone be your oracle." 1
49
And again, Alcibiades, after reading his epitaph, says
of him,
"These well express in thee thy latter spirits:
Though thou abhorred'st in us our huma griefs,
Scorn'd'st our brains' flow, and those our roplets which
From niggard nature fall; yet rich cone it
Taught thee to make vast Neptune we p for aye
On thy low grave
""
2
thus making the winds his funeral dirge, his mourner
the murmuring ocean; and seeking in the everlasting
solemnities of nature oblivion of the transitory splendour
of his life-time.
CORIOLANUS.³
SHAKESPEAR has in this play shown himself well versed in
history and state affairs. 'Coriolanus' is a storehouse of
political commonplaces. Any one who studies it may
save himself the trouble of reading Burke's Reflections,
or Paine's Rights of Man, or the Debates in both Houses
of Parliament since the French Revolution or our own.
The arguments for and against aristocracy or democracy,
on the privileges of the few and the claims of the many,
on liberty and slavery, power and the abuse of it, peace
and war, are here very ably handled, with the spirit of a
[² Act v., sc. 4.]
[¹ Act v., sc. 1.]
3 "First printed in the folio of 1623. It is proved by the style to
have been one of the author's latest compositions: according to
Malone, it was written in 1610. North's Plutarch' (translated from
the French of Amiot) supplied Shakespear with the incidents, and
indeed with much of the wording, of this tragedy."-Dyce.-ED.
B
50
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
poet and the acuteness of a philosopher. Shakespear him-
self seems to have had a leaning to the arbitrary side of
the question, perhaps from some feeling of contempt for
his own origin; and to have spared no occasion of bating
the rabble. What he says of them is very true: what he
says of their betters is also very true, though he dwells
less upon it. The cause of the people is indeed but
little calculated as a subject for poetry: it admits of
rhetoric, which goes into argument and explanation, but
it presents no immediate or distinct images to the mind,
no jutty, frieze,
Buttress, nor coign of vantage 1
for poetry “to make its pendent bed and procreant cradle "
in. The language of poetry naturally falls in with the
language of power. The imagination is an exaggerating
and exclusive faculty: it takes from one thing to add to
another it accumulates circumstances together to give
the greatest possible effect to a favourite object. The
understanding is a dividing and measuring faculty: it
judges of things not according to their immediate impres-
sion on the mind, but according to their relations to one
another. The one is a monopolising faculty, which seeks
the greatest quantity of present excitement by inequality
and disproportion; the other is a distributive faculty,
which seeks the greatest quantity of ultimate good, by
justice and proportion. The one is an aristocratical, the
other a republican faculty. The principle of poetry is a
very anti-levelling principle. It aims at effect, it exists
by contrast. It admits of no medium. It is everything
by excess. It rises above the ordinary standard of suffer-
ings and crimes. It presents a dazzling appearance.
It shows its head turretted, crowned, and crested. Its
front is gilt and blood-stained. Before it "it carries
roise, and behind it leaves tears." It has its altars and
its victims, sacrifices, human sacrifices. Kings, priests,
[¹Macbeth,' act i., sc. 6.]
Coriolanus.
51
nobles, are its train-bearers, tyrants and slaves its execu-
tioners." Carnage is its daughter." Poetry is right-
royal. It puts the individual for the species, the one
above the infinite many, might before right. A lion
hunting a flock of sheep or a herd of wild asses is a more
poetical object than they; and we even take part with the
lordly beast, because our vanity or some other feeling
makes us disposed to place ourselves in the situation of
the strongest party. So we feel some concern for the poor
citizens of Rome when they meet together to compare
their wants and grievances, till Coriolanus comes in and
with blows and big words drives this set of " poor rats,"
this rascal scum, to their homes and beggary before him.
There is nothing heroical in a multitude of miserable
rogues not wishing to be starved, or complaining that
they are like to be so: but when a single man comes
forward to brave their cries and to make them submit to
the last indignities, from mere pride and self-will, our
admiration of his prowess is immediately converted into
contempt for their pusillanimity. The insolence of power
is stronger than the plea of necessity. The tame sub-
mission to usurped authority or even the natural resist-
ance to it, has nothing to excite or flatter the imagination :
it is the assumption of a right to insult or oppress others
that carries an imposing air of superiority with it. We
had rather be the oppressor than the oppressed. The
love of power in ourselves and the admiration of it in
others are both natural to man: the one makes him a
tyrant, the other a slave. Wrong dressed out in pride,
pomp, and circumstance, has more attraction than abstract
right. Coriolanus complains of the fickleness of the
people: yet, the instant he cannot gratify his pride and
obstinacy at their expense, he turns his arms against
his country. If his country was not worth defending,
why did he build his pride on its defence? He is a
conqueror and a hero; he conquers other countries, and
52
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
makes this a plea for enslaving his own; and when he is
prevented from doing so, he leagues with its enemies to
destroy his country. He rates the people " as if he were
a God to punish, and not a man of their infirmity." He
scoffs at one of their tribunes for maintaining their rights
and franchises: "Mark you his absolute shall ?" not
marking his own absolute will to take everything from
them, his impatience of the slightest opposition to his
own pretensions being in proportion to their arrogance
and absurdity. If the great and powerful had the bene-
ficence and wisdom of Gods, then all this would have
been well: if with a greater knowledge of what is good
for the people, they had as great a care for their interest
as they have themselves, if they were seated above the
world, sympathising with the welfare, but not feeling the
passions of men, receiving neither good nor hurt from
them, but bestowing their benefits as free gifts on them,
they might then rule over them like another Providence.
But this is not the case. Coriolanus is unwilling that
the senate should show their "cares" for the people,
lest their "cares" should be construed into "fears,” to
the subversion of all due authority; and he is no sooner
disappointed in his schemes to deprive the people not
only of the cares of the state, but of all power to redress
themselves, than Volumnia is made madly to exclaim,
"Now the red pestilence strike all trades in Rome,
And occupations perish." 1
This is but natural: it is but natural for a mother to
have more regard for her son than for a whole city; but
then the city should be left to take some care of itself.
The care of the state cannot, we here see, be safely
entrusted to maternal affection, or to the domestic charities
of high life. The great have private feelings of their
own, to which the interests of humanity and justice must
courtesy. Their interests are so far from being the same
[¹ Act iv., sc. 1.]
Coriolanus.
53
as those of the community, that they are in direct and
necessary opposition to them; their power is at the ex-
pense of our weakness; their riches of our poverty;
their pride of our degradation; their splendour of our
wretchedness; their tyranny of our servitude.
If they
had the superior knowledge ascribed to them (which they
have not) it would only render them so much more for-
midable; and from Gods would convert them into Devils.
The whole dramatic moral of 'Coriolanus' is that those
who have little shall have less, and that those who have
much shall take all that others have left. The people are
poor; therefore they ought to be starved. They are
slaves; therefore they ought to be beaten. They work
hard; therefore they ought to be treated like beasts of
burden. They are ignorant; therefore they ought not to
be allowed to feel that they want food, or clothing, or
rest that they are enslaved, oppressed, and miserable.
This is the logic of the imagination and the passions;
which seek to aggrandize what excites admiration and to
heap contempt on misery, to raise power into tyranny, and
to make tyranny absolute; to thrust down that which is
low still lower, and to make wretches desperate: to exalt
magistrates into kings, kings into gods; to degrade sub-
jects to the rank of slaves, and slaves to the condition of
brutes. The history of mankind is a romance, a mask, a
tragedy, constructed upon the principles of poetical justice;
it is a noble or royal hunt, in which what is sport to
the few is death to the many, and in which the spectators
halloo and encourage the strong to set upon the weak,
and cry havoc in the chase though they do not share in
the spoil. We may depend upon it that what men delight
to read in books, they will put in practice in reality.
One of the most natural traits in this play is the dif-
ference of the interest taken in the success of Coriolanus
by his wife and mother. The one is only anxious for his
honour; the other is fearful for his life.
54
Characters of Shakespear's Plays,
Volumnia. Methinks I hear hither your husband's drum:
I see him pluck Aufidius down by th' hair,
As children from a bear, the Volsces shunning him :
Methinks I see him stamp thus, and call thus-
Come on, you cowards; you were got in fear
Though you were born in Rome; his bloody brow
With his mail'd hand then wiping, forth he goes
Like to a harvest man, that's task'd to mow
Or all, or lose his hire.
Virgilia. His bloody brow! O Jupiter, no blood!
Volumnia. Away, you fool! it more becomes a man
Than gilt his trophy. The breast of Hecuba,
When she did suckle Hector, look'd not lovelier
Than Hector's forehead, when it spit forth blood
At Grecian swords, contemning."
When she hears the trumpets that proclaim her son's
return, she says, in the true spirit of a Roman matron,
"These are the ushers of Martius: before him
He carries noise, and behind him he leaves tears.
Death, that dark spirit, in's nervy arm doth lie,
Which, being advanc'd, declines, and then men die.” 2
Coriolanus himself is a complete character: his love
of reputation, his contempt of popular opinion, his pride
and modesty, are consequences of each other. His pride
consists in the inflexible sternness of his will; his love
of glory is a determined desire to bear down all opposi-
tion, and to extort the admiration both of friends and
foes. His contempt for popular favour, his unwillingness
to hear his own praises, spring from the same source.
He cannot contradict the praises that are bestowed upon
him; therefore he is impatient at hearing them. He
would enforce the good opinion of others by his actions,
but does not want their acknowledgments in words.
'Pray now, no more: my mother,
Who has a charter to extol her blood,
When she does praise me, grieves me."
His magnanimity is of the same kind. He admires in
[¹ Act i., sc. 3.]
[² Act ii., sc. 1.] [3 Act i., sc. 9.]
Coriolanus.
55
an enemy that courage which he honours in himself; he
places himself on the hearth of Aufidius with the same
confidence that he would have met him in the field, and
feels that by putting himself in his power, he takes from
him all temptation for using it against him.
In the title-page of 'Coriolanus,' it is said at the bottom
of the Dramatis Personæ, "The whole history exactly
followed, and many of the principal speeches copied from
the life of Coriolanus in Plutarch." It will be interest-
ing to our readers to see how far this is the case. Two
of the principal scenes, those between Coriolanus and
Aufidius and between Coriolanus and his mother, are
thus given in Sir Thomas North's Translation of Plutarch,
dedicated to Queen Elizabeth, 1579. The first is as
follows:
"It was even twilight when he entered the city of Antium, and
many people met him in the streets, but no man knew him. So he
went directly to Tullus Aufidius' house, and when he came thither,
he got him up straight to the chimney-hearth, and sat him down,
and spake not a word to any man, his face all muffled over. They
of the house spying him, wondered what he should be, and yet they
durst not bid him rise. For ill-favouredly muffled and disguised as
he was, yet there appeared a certain majesty in his countenance and
in his silence: whereupon they went to Tullus, who was at supper,
to tell him of the strange disguising of this man.
Tullus rose pre-
sently from the board, and coming towards him, asked him what he
was, and wherefore he came. Then Martius unmuffled himself, and
after he had paused awhile, making no answer, he said unto him, ‘If
'thou knowest me not yet, Tullus, and seeing me, dost not perhaps
'believe me to be the man I am indeed, I must of necessity betray
myself to be that I am. I am Caius Martius, who hath done to
thyself particularly, and to all the Volces generally, great hurt
and mischief, which I cannot deny for my surname of Coriolanus
that I bear. For I never had other benefit nor recompence of the
true and painful service I have done, and the extreme dangers
I have been in, but this only surname: a good memory and witness
' of the malice and displeasure thou shouldest bear me. Indeed the
' name only remaineth with me; for the rest, the envy and cruelty of
'the people of Rome have taken from me, by the sufferance of the
dastardly nobility and magistrates, who have forsaken me, and let
56
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
C
me be banished by the people. This extremity hath now driven
me to come as a poor suitor, to take thy chimney-hearth, not of
any hope I have to save my life thereby. For if I had feared
death, I would not have come hither to have put myself in hazard;
but pricked forward with desire to be revenged of them that thus
'have banished me, which now I do begin, in putting my person
' into the hands of their enemies. Wherefore if thou hast any heart
'to be wrecked of the injuries thy enemies have done thee, speed
thee now, and let my misery serve thy turn, and so use it as my
'service may be a benefit to the Volces: promising thee, that I will
fight with better good will for all you, than I did when I was
' against you, knowing that they fight more valiantly who know the
force of the enemy, than such as have never proved it. And if it
be so that thou dare not, and that thou art weary to prove fortune
'any more then am I also weary to live any longer. And it were
no wisdom in thee to save the life of him who hath been heretofore
thy mortal enemy, and whose service now can nothing help, nor
'pleasure thee.' Tullus hearing what he said, was a marvellous
glad man, and taking him by the hand, he said unto him: 'Stand
up, O Martius, and be of good cheer, for in proffering thyself unto
us, thou dost us great honour: and by this means thou mayest
hope also of greater things at all the Volces' hands.' So he feasted
him for that time, and entertained him in the honourablest manner
he could, talking with him of no other matters at that present: but
within few days after, they fell to consultation together in what sort
they should begin their wars.” 1
6
The meeting between Coriolanus and his mother is
also nearly the same as in the play:
2
"Now was Martius set then in his chair of state, with all the
honours of a general, and when he had spied the women coming
afar off, he marvelled what the matter meant: but afterwards
knowing his wife which came foremost, he determined at the first
to persist in his obstinate and inflexible rancour. But overcome in
the end with natural affection, and being altogether altered to see
them, his heart would not serve him to tarry their coming to his
chair, but coming down in haste, he went to meet them, and first
he kissed his mother, and embraced her a pretty while, then his
wife and little children. And nature so wrought with him, that
the tears fell from his eyes, and he could not keep himself from
¹ Plutarch's 'Lives,' translated by North, 1579, ed. 1603, pp. 232,
233.-ED.
2 Ibid., pp. 238, 239.-Ed.
Coriolanus.
57
6
making much of them, but yielded to the affection of his blood, as
if he had been violently carried with the fury of a most swift-
running stream. After he had thus lovingly received them, and
perceiving that his mother Volumnia would begin to speak to him,
he called the chiefest of the council of the Volces to hear what she
would say. Then she spake in this sort: 'If we held our peace,
my son, and determined not to speak, the state of our poor bodies,
' and present sight of our raiment, would easily betray to thee what
' life we have led at home, since thy exile and abode abroad; but
think now with thyself, how much more unfortunate than all the
women living, we are come hither, considering that the sight which
'should be most pleasant to all others to behold, spiteful fortune
'had made most fearful to us: making myself to see my son, and
my daughter here her husband, besieging the walls of his native
'country so as that which is the only comfort to all others in their
adversity and misery, to pray unto the Gods, and to call to them
for aid, is the only thing which plungeth us into most deep per-
plexity. For we cannot, alas, together pray, both for victory for
our country, and for safety of thy life also: but a world of grievous
curses, yea more than any mortal enemy can heap upon us, are
forcibly wrapped up in our prayers. For the bitter sop of most
hard choice is offered thy wife and children, to forego one of the
two: either to lose the person of thyself, or the nurse of their
'native country. For myself, iny son, I am determined not to tarry
till fortune in my lifetime do make an end of this war. For if I
'cannot persuade thee rather to do good unto both parties, than to
overthrow and destroy the one, preferring love and nature before
the malice and calamity of wars, thou shalt see, my son, and trust
"unto it, thou shalt no sooner march forward to assault thy country,
'but thy foot shall tread upon thy mother's womb, that brought
thee first into this world. And I may not defer to see the day,
· either that my son be led prisoner in triumph by his natural
countrymen, or that he himself do triumph of them, and of his
'natural country. For if it were so, that my request tended to
'save thy country, in destroying the Volces, I must confess, thou
'wouldest hardly and doubtfully resolve on that. For as to destroy
'thy natural country, it is altogether unmeet and unlawful, so were
' it not just and less honourable to betray those that put their trust
in thee. But my only demand consisteth, to make a goal delivery
' of all evils, which delivereth equal benefit and safety, both to the
'one and the other, but most honourable for the Volces. For it shall
appear, that having victory in their hands, they have of special
'favour granted us singular graces, peace and amity, albeit them-
• selves have no less part of both than we. Of which good, if so it
6
C
58
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
6
.
6
6
came to pass, thyself is the only author, and so hast thou the only
'honour. But if it fail, and fall out contrary, thyself alone de-
servedly shalt carry the shameful reproach and burthen of either
'party. So, though the end of war be uncertain, yet this notwith-
standing is most certain, that if it be thy chance to conquer, this
' benefit shalt thou reap of thy goodly conquest, to be chronicled
'the plague and destroyer of thy country. And if fortune also
' overthrow thee, then the world will say, that through desire to
revenge thy private injuries, thou hast for ever undone thy good
friends, who did most lovingly and courteously receive thee.'
Martius gave good ear unto his mother's words, without interrupting
her speech at all, and after she had said what she would, he held his
peace a pretty while, and answered not a word. Hereupon she
began again to speak unto him, and said: 'My son, why dost thou
'not answer me? Dost thou think it good altogether to give place
unto thy choler and desire of revenge, and thinkest thou it not
honesty for thee to grant thy mother's request in so weighty a
cause? Dost thou take it honourable for a noble man to remember
"the wrongs and injuries done him, and dost not in like case think
it an honest noble man's part to be thankful for the goodness that
parents do show to their children, acknowledging the duty and
reverence they ought to bear unto them? No man living is more
'bound to show himself thankful in all parts and respects than
thyself; who so unnaturally showest all ingratitude. Moreover,
my son, thou hast sorely taken of thy country, exacting grievous
payments upon them, in revenge of the injuries offered thee;
besides, thou hast not hitherto showed thy poor mother any
courtesy. And therefore, it is not only honest but due unto me,
that without compulsion I should obtain my so just and reasonable
request of thee. But since by reason I cannot persuade thee to
it, to what purpose do I defer my last hope?' And with these
words, herself, his wife and children, fell down upon their knees
before him: Martius seeing that, could refrain no longer, but went
straight and lifted her up, crying out, 'Oh mother, what have you
'done to me?' And holding her hard by the right hand, ‘Oh
mother,' said he, 'you have won a happy victory for your country,
· but mortal and unhappy for your son: for I see myself vanquished
'by you alone. These words being spoken openly, he spake a
little apart with his mother and wife, and then let them return
again to Rome, for so they did request him; and so remaining in
camp that night, the next morning he dislodged, and marched
homeward into the Volces' country again."
•
"
•
C
<
Shakespear has, in giving a dramatic form to this
Troilus and Cressida.
59
passage, adhered very closely and properly to the text.
He did not think it necessary to improve upon the truth
of nature. Several of the scenes in 'Julius Cæsar,' par-
ticularly Portia's appeal to the confidence of her husband
by showing him the wound she had given herself, and
the appearance of the ghost of Cæsar to Brutus, are in
like manner taken from the history.
TROILUS AND CRESSIDA.¹
THIS is one of the most loose and desultory of our author's
plays: it rambles on just as it happens, but it overtakes,
together with some indifferent matter, a prodigious num-
ber of fine things in its way. Troilus himself is no
character he is merely a common lover: but Cressida
and her uncle Pandarus are hit off with proverbial truth.
By the speeches given to the leaders of the Grecian host,
Nestor, Ulysses, Agamemnon, Achilles, Shakespear seems
to have known them as well as if he had been a spy sent
by the Trojans into the enemy's camp-to say nothing of
their affording very lofty examples of didactic eloquence.
The following is a very stately and spirited declamation :
Ulysses. Troy, yet upon his basis, had been down,
And the great Hector's sword had lack'd a master,
But for these instances.
The specialty of rule hath been neglected.
*
The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre,
Observe degree, priority, and place,
Insisture, course, proportion, season, form,
Office, and custom, in all line of order:
¹ Printed twice in 1609, and again in the folio of 1623. There
was an earlier drama on this subject by Thomas Decker and Henry
Chettle, mentioned in Henslowe's Diary under 1599. The latter
was the piece, probably, which we find licensed to James Roberts in
1602-3. But nothing is now known of it.-ED.
60
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
And therefore is the glorious planet Sol,
In noble eminence, enthron'd and spher'd
Amidst the other, whose med'cinable eye
Corrects the ill aspects of planets evil,
And posts, like the commandment of a king,
Sans check, to good and bad. But when the planets
In evil mixture, to disorder wander,
What plagues, and what portents, what mutiny,
What raging of the sea, shaking of earth,
Commotion in the winds, frights, changes, horrors,
Divert and crack, rend and deracinate
The unity and married calm of states
Quite from their fixure! O, when degree is shak'd
(Which is the ladder to all high designs),
Then enterprise is sick! How could communities,
Degrees in schools, and brotherhoods in cities,
Peaceful commérce from dividable shores,
The primogenity and due of birth,
Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels,
But by degree stand in authentic place?
Take but degree away, untune that string,
And hark, what discord follows! each thing meets
In mere oppugnancy: the bounded waters
Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores,
And make a sop of all this solid globe:
Strength should be lord of imbecility,
And the rude son should strike his father dead :
Force should be right, or rather, right and wrong-
Between whose endless jar Justice resides—
Should lose their names, and so should Justice too.
Then everything includes itself in power,
Power into will, will into appetite;
And appetite, an universal wolf,
So doubly seconded with will and power,
Must make perforce an universal prey,
And last eat up himself. Great Agamemnon,
This chaos, when degree is suffocate,
Follows the choking:
And this neglection of degree it is,
That by a pace goes backward, with a purpose
It hath to climb. The general's disdained
By him one step below; he, by the next;
That next, by him beneath: so every step,
Exampled by the first pace that is sick
Troilus and Cressida.
61
Of his superior, grows to an envious fever
Of pale and bloodless emulation;
And 'tis this fever that keeps Troy on foot,
Not her own sinews. To end a tale of length,
Troy in our weakness stands, not in her strength."
It cannot be said of Shakespear, as was said of some
one, that he was "without o'erflowing full." He was full,
even to o'erflowing. He gave heaped measure, running
over. This was his greatest fault. He was only in
danger "of losing distinction in his thoughts" (to borrow
his own expression)
“As doth a battle, when they charge on heaps
The enemy flying." 2
There is another passage, the speech of Ulysses to Achilles,
showing him the thankless nature of popularity, which
has a still greater depth of moral observation and richness
of illustration than the former. It is long, but worth the
quoting. The sometimes giving an entire argument from
the unacted plays of our author may with one class of
readers have almost the use of restoring a lost passage;
and may serve to convince another class of critics, that
the poet's genius was not confined to the production of
stage effect by preternatural means.
Ulysses. Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,
Wherein he puts alms for Oblivion ;
A great-siz'd monster of ingratitudes :
Those scraps are good deeds past, which are devour'd
As fast as they are made, forgot as soon
As they are done. Perseverance, dear my lord,
Keeps Honour bright: to have done, is to hang
Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail
In monumental mockery. Take th' instant way;
For Honour travels in a strait so narrow,
Where one but goes abreast; keep then the path,
For Emulation hath a thousand sons,
That one by one pursue; if you give way,
Or hedge aside from the direct forthright,
[¹ Act i., sc. 3.]
[2 Act iii., sc. 2.1
62
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
Like to an enter'd tide, they all rush by,
And leave you hindmost;
Or, like a gallant horse fall'n in first rank,
O'er-run and trampled on: then what they do in present,
Tho' less than yours in past must o'ertop yours:
For Time is like a fashionable host,
That slightly shakes his parting guest by th' hand,
And with his arms outstretch'd, as he would fly,
Grasps-in the comer: welcome ever smiles,
And farewell goes out sighing. O, let not virtue seek
Remuneration for the thing it was;
For beauty, wit,
High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service,
Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all
To envious and calumniating time.
One touch of nature makes the whole world kin ;
That all with one consent praise new-born gawds,
Tho' they are made and moulded of things past.
And give to dust, that is a little gilt,
More laud than gilt o'er-dusted.
The present eye praises the present object.
Then marvel not, thou great and complete man,
That all the Greeks begin to worship Ajax;
Since things in motion sooner catch the eye,
Than what not stirs. The cry went once on thee,
And still it might, and yet
may again,
If thou would'st not entomb thyself alive,
And case thy reputation in thy tent."1
The throng of images in the above lines is prodigious;
and though they sometimes jostle against one another,
they everywhere raise and carry on the feeling, which is
intrinsically true and profound. The debates between
the Trojan chiefs on the restoring of Helen are full of
knowledge of human motives and character. Troilus
enters well into the philosophy of war, when he says in
answer to something that falls from Hector,
Why, there you touch'd the life of our design :
Were it not glory that we more affected,
Than the performance of our heaving spleens,
I would not wish a drop of Trojan blood
[¹ Act iii., sc. 3.]
Troilus and Cressida.
63
Spent more in her defence. But, worthy Hector,
She is a theme of honour and renown,
A spur to valiant and magnanimous deeds." 1
The character of Hector, in a few slight indications
which appear of it, is made very amiable. His death is
sublime, and shows in a striking light the mixture of
barbarity and heroism of the age. The threats of Achilles
are fatal; they carry their own means of execution with
them :
“Come here about me, you my Myrmidons,
Mark what I say. Attend me where I wheel:
Strike not a stroke, but keep yourselves in breath;
And when I have the bloody Hector found,
Empale him with your weapons round about,
In fellest manner execute your aims.
Follow me, sirs, and my proceedings eye." 2
He then finds Hector and slays him, as if he had been
hunting down a wild beast. There is something revolting
as well as terrific in the ferocious coolness with which he
singles out his prey: nor does the splendour of the
achievement reconcile us to the cruelty of the means.
The characters of Cressida and Pandarus are very
amusing and instructive. The disinterested willingness
of Pandarus to serve his friend in an affair which lies
next his heart is immediately brought forward. "Go thy
way, Troilus, go thy way; had I a sister were a grace, or
a daughter a goddess, he should take his choice. O ad-
mirable man! Paris, Paris is dirt to him, and I warrant
Helen, to change, would give an eye to boot."s This is
the language he addresses to his niece: nor is she much
behindhand in coming into the plot. Her head is as light
and fluttering as her heart. "It is the prettiest villain,
she fetches her breath so short as a new-ta'en sparrow."
Both characters are originals, and quite different from
what they are in Chaucer. In Chaucer, Cressida is
2
4
[¹ Act ii., sc. 2.] [² Act v., sc. 7.] [³ Act i., sc. 2.] [* Act iii., sc. 2.]
}
64
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
represented as a grave, sober, considerate personage (a
widow-he cannot tell her age, nor whether she has
children or no), who has an alternate eye to her character,
her interest, and her pleasure: Shakespear's Cressida is a
giddy girl, an unpractised jilt, who falls in love with
Troilus, as she afterwards deserts him, from mere levity
and thoughtlessness of temper. She may be wooed and
won to anything and from anything, at a moment's
warning; the other knows very well what she would be
at, and sticks to it, and is more governed by substantial
reasons than by caprice or vanity. Pandarus again, in
Chaucer's story, is a friendly sort of go-between, tolerably
busy, officious, and forward in bringing matters to bear :
but in Shakespear he has "a stamp exclusive and pro-
fessional:" he wears the badge of his trade; he is a
regular knight of the game. The difference of the manner
in which the subject is treated arises perhaps less from
intention, than from the different genius of the two poets.
There is no double entendre in the characters of Chaucer :
they are either quite serious or quite comic. In Shake-
spear the ludicrous and the ironical are constantly blended
with the stately and the impassioned. We see Chaucer's
characters as they saw themselves, not as they appeared to
others or might have appeared to the poet.
He is as
deeply implicated in the affairs of his personages as they
could be themselves. He had to go a long journey with
each of them, and became a kind of necessary confidant.
There is little relief or light and shade in his pictures.
The conscious smile is not seen lurking under the brow
of grief or impatience. Everything with him is intense
and continuous-a working out of what went before.
Shakespear never committed himself to his characters.
He trifled, laughed, or wept with them as he chose. He
has no prejudices for or against them; and it seems a
matter of perfect indifference whether he shall be in jest
or earnest. According to him "the web of our lives is of
Troilus and Cressida.
65
a mingled yarn, good and ill together." His genius was
dramatic, as Chaucer's was historical. He saw both sides
of a question, the different views taken of it according to
the different interests of the parties concerned, and he
was at once an actor and spectator in the scene.
If any-
thing, he is too various and flexible: too full of transi-
tions, of glancing lights, of salient points. If Chaucer
followed up his subject too doggedly, perhaps Shakespear
was too volatile and heedless. The Muse's wing too
often lifted him from off his feet. He made infinite ex-
cursions to the right and the left :
"Who hath done to-day
Mad and fantastic execution;
Engaging and redeeming of himself,
With such a careless force and forceless care,
As if that luck, in very spite of cunning
Bade him win all,” 2
Chaucer attended chiefly to the real and natural, that
is, to the involuntary and inevitable impressions on the
mind in given circumstances; Shakespear exhibited also
the possible and the fantastical,-not only what things
are in themselves, but whatever they might seem to be,
their different reflections, their endless combinations. He
lent his fancy, wit, invention, to others, and borrowed
their feelings in return. Chaucer excelled in the force of
habitual sentiment; Shakespear added to it every variety
of passion, every suggestion of thought or accident.
Chaucer described external objects with the eye of a
painter, or he might be said to have embodied them with
the hand of a sculptor, every part is so thoroughly made
out and tangible:-Shakespear's imagination threw over
them a lustre
"Prouder than blue Iris bends."
Everything in Chaucer has a downright reality. A
simile or a sentiment is as if it were given in upon evi-
[¹All's Well that ends Well,' iv. 3.]
[2 Act v., sc. 5.]
F
66
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
dence. In Shakespear the commonest matter-of-fact has
a romantic grace about it; or seems to float with the
breath of imagination in a freer element. No one could
have more depth of feeling or observation than Chaucer
but he wanted resources of invention to lay open the
stores of nature or the human heart with the same radiant
light that Shakespear has done. However fine or pro-
found the thought, we know what is coming, whereas the
effect of reading Shakespear is "like vassalage at un-
awares encountering the eye of majesty." Chaucer's
mind was consecutive, rather than discursive. He arrived
at truth through a certain process; Shakespear saw every-
thing by intuition. Chaucer had a great variety of
power, but he could do only one thing at once. He set
himself to work on a particular subject. His ideas were
kept separate, labelled, ticketed, and parcelled out in a set
form, in pews and compartments by themselves. They
did not play into one another's hands. They did not
react upon one another, as the blower's breath moulds
the yielding glass. There is something hard and dry in
them. What is the most wonderful thing in Shakespear's
faculties is their excessive sociability, and how they gos-
siped and compared notes together.
We must conclude this criticism; and we will do it
with a quotation or two. One of the most beautiful pas-
sages in Chaucer's tale is the description of Cresseide's
first avowal of her love.
And as the newe abasehed nightyngale,
That stynteth firste whanne sche begynneth singe,
Whanne that sche heereth any heerdis tale,
Or in heggis any wight steringe;
And aftir, siker, doth her vois out ring;
Right so Cryseide, whanne hir drede stint,
Opened hir herte, and tolde him hir entent." 2
See also the two next stanzas, and particularly that
divine one beginning-
[Act iii., sc. 2.]
[2 Bell's Chaucer,' v., 158.]
Troilus and Cressida.
67
"Her armes small, her back both straight and soft," &c.
Compare this with the following speech of Troilus to
Cressida in the play :-
"O, that I thought it could be in a woman-
As, if it can, I will presume in you—
To feed for aye her lamp and flames of love,
To keep her constancy in plight and youth,
Outliving beauties outward, with a mind
That doth renew swifter than blood decays!
Or, that persuasion could but thus convince me,
That my integrity and truth to you
Might be affronted with the match and weight
Of such a winnow'd purity in love;
How were I then uplifted! But alas!
I am as true as Truth's simplicity,
And simpler than the infancy of Truth."
These passages may not seem very characteristic at first
sight, though we think they are so. We will give two,
that cannot be mistaken. Patroclus says to Achilles,
"Sweet, rouse yourself; and the weak wanton Cupid
Shall from your neck unloose his amorous fold,
And like a dew-drop from the lion's mane,
Be shook to air."
Troilus, addressing the God of Day on the approach of
the morning that parts him from Cressida, says with much
scorn,
"What! profrist thou thi light here for to selle?
Go selle it hem that smale seelis grave." 2
If nobody but Shakespear could have written the former,
nobody but Chaucer would have thought of the latter.
Chaucer was the most literal of poets, as Richardson was
of prose-writers.
[ Act iii., sc. 2.]
[2 Chaucer, ubi supra, p. 167.]
68
Characters of Shakespear's Piays.
T
ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA.'
THIS is a very noble play. Though not in the first class
of Shakespear's productions, it stands next to them, and is,
we think, the finest of his historical plays, that is, of those
in which he made poetry the organ of history, and assumed
a certain tone of character and sentiment, in conformity
to known facts, instead of trusting to his observations of
general nature or to the unlimited indulgence of his own
fancy. What he has added to the actual story is upon a
par with it. His genius was, as it were, a match for
history as well as nature, and could grapple at will with
either. The play is full of that pervading comprehensive
power by which the poet could always make himself
master of time and circumstances. It presents a fine
picture of Roman pride and Eastern magnificence: and in
the struggle between the two, the empire of the world
seems suspended, like

"The swan's down-feather,
That stands upon the swell at full of tide,
And neither way inclines." 2
The characters breathe, move, and live. Shakespear does
not stand reasoning on what his characters would do or
say, but at once becomes them, and speaks and acts for
them. He does not present us with groups of stage-
First printed, so far as is at present known, in the folio of 1623;
but in 1608, May 20, a play with this title, and almost unquestion-
ably the same, was entered at Stationers' Hall. Shakespear has
derived his material from North's translation of Amiot's French
version of Plutarch.-ED.
[2 Act iii., sc. 2.]
Antony and Cleopatra.
69
puppets, of poetical machines making set speeches on
human life, and acting from a calculation of problematical
motives, but he brings living men and women on the
scene, who speak and act from real feelings, according to
the ebbs and flows of passion, without the least tincture
of pedantry of logic or rhetoric. Nothing is made out by
inference and analogy, by climax and antithesis, but
everything takes place just as it would have done in
reality, according to the occasion. The character of
Cleopatra is a master-piece. What an extreme contrast it
affords to Imogen! One would think it almost impossible
for the same person to have drawn both. She is volup-
tuous, ostentatious, conscious, boastful of her charms,
haughty, tyrannical, fickle. The luxurious pomp and
gorgeous extravagance of the Egyptian queen are
displayed in all their force and lustre, as well as the
irregular grandeur of the soul of Mark Antony. Take
only the first four lines that they speak as an example of
the regal style of love-making:
Cleopatra. If it be love indeed, tell me how much?
Antony. There's beggary in the love that can be reckon'd.
Cleopatra. I'll set a bourn how far to be belov'd.
Antony. Then must thou needs find out new heaven, new
earth." 1
The rich and poetical description of her person begin-
ing-
"The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne,
Burn'd on the water; the poop was beaten gold,
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
The winds were love-sick with them


""
keems to prepare the way for, and almost to justify the
subsequent infatuation of Antony when in the sea-fight at
Actium he leaves the battle, and "like a doating mallard"
follows her flying sails.
Few things in Shakespear (and we know of nothing in
[¹ Act i., sc. 1.]
70
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
any other author like them) have more of that local truth
of imagination and character than the passage in which
Cleopatra is represented conjecturing what were the:
employments of Antony in his absence-"He's speaking
now, or murmuring-Where's my serpent of old Nile ?"
Or again, when she says to Antony, after the defeat at
Actium, and his summoning up resolution to risk another
fight:
"Cleo.
It is my birth-day;
I had thought t' have held it poor; but since my lord
Is Antony again, I will be Cleopatra." 2
Perhaps the finest burst of all is Antony's rage after
his final defeat when he comes in, and surprises the
messenger of Cæsar kissing her hand:
"To let a fellow that will take rewards,
And say, God quit you! be familiar with
My play-fellow, your hand; this kingly seal
And plighter of high hearts !"' 3
It is no wonder that he orders him to be whipped; but
his low condition is not the true reason: there is another
feeling which lies deeper, though Antony's pride would
not let him show it, except by his rage; he suspects the
fellow to be Cæsar's proxy.
Cleopatra's whole character is the triumph of the
voluptuous, of the love of pleasure and the power of
giving it, over every other consideration. Octavia is a
dull foil to her, and Fulvia a shrew and shrill-tongued
What a picture do those lines give of her~


CC
Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety; other women cloy
The appetites they feed; but she makes hungry
Where most she satisfies." 4
What a spirit and fire in her conversation with Antony's
messenger who brings her the unwelcome news of his
marriage with Octavia! How all the pride of beauty and
of high rank breaks out in her promised reward to him
[¹ Act i., sc. 5.] [2 Act iii., sc. 13.] [3 Ibid.] [4 Act ii., sc. 2.]
Antony and Cleopatra.
71
"If thou so yield him, there is gold, and here
My bluest veins to kiss !"-1
She had great and unpardonable faults, but the
grandeur of her death almost redeems them. She learns
from the depth of despair the strength of her affections.
She keeps her queen-like state in the last disgrace, and
her sense of the pleasurable in the last moments of her
life. She tastes a luxury in death. After applying the
asp, she says with fondness—
"Dost thou not see my baby at my breast,
That sucks the nurse asleep?
•
As sweet as balm, as soft as air, as gentle.
O Antony !" 2
It is worth while to observe that Shakespear has con-
trasted the extreme magnificence of the descriptions in
this play with pictures of extreme suffering and physical
horror, not less striking, partly perhaps to place the
effeminate character of Mark Antony in a more favourable
light, and at the same time to preserve a certain balance
of feeling in the mind. Cæsar says, hearing of his rival's
conduct at the court of Cleopatra :
“Antony,
Leave thy lascivious wassails. When thou once
Wert beaten from Modena, where thou slew'st
Hirtius and Pansa, consuls, at thy heel
Did famine follow, whom thou fought'st against,
Though daintily brought up, with patience more
Than savages could suffer. Thou didst drink
The stale of horses, and the gilded puddle
Which beast would cough at: thy palate then did deign
The roughest berry on the rudest hedge;
Yea, like the stag, when snow the pasture sheets,
The barks of trees thou browsed'st; on the Alps,
It is reported, thou didst eat strange flesh,
Which some did die to look on: and all this—-
It wounds thine honour that I speak it now-
Was borne so like a soldier, that thy cheek
So much as lank'd not."3
[¹ Act ii., sc. 5.1
[² Act v., sc. 2.]
[³ Act i., sc. 4.]
72
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
The passage after Antony's defeat by Augustus, where
he is made to say:
"Yes, my lord, yes; he at Philippi kept
His sword e'en like a dancer; while I struck
The lean and wrinkled Cassius, and 'twas I
That the mad Brutus ended "— ¹ 1
show us the
is one of those fine retrospections which
winding and eventful march of human life. The jealous
attention which has been paid to the unities both of time
and place has taken away the principle of perspective in
the drama, and all the interest which objects derive from
distance, from contrast, from privation, from change of
fortune, from long-cherished passion; and contrasts our
view of life from a strange and romantic dream, long,
obscure, and infinite, into a smartly-contested, three hours'
inaugural disputation on its merits by the different candi-
dates for theatrical applause.
The latter scenes of 'Antony and Cleopatra' are full
of the changes of accident and passion. Success and
defeat follow one another with startling rapidity. Fortune
sits upon her wheel more blind and giddy than usual.
This precarious state and the approaching dissolution of
his greatness are strikingly displayed in the dialogue of
Antony with Eros:
66
Antony. Eros, thou yet behold'st me?
Eros.
Ay, noble lord.
Antony. Sometime we see a cloud that's dragonish,
A vapour sometime like a bear or lion,
A tower'd citadel, a pendent rock,
A forked mountain, or blue promontory
With trees upon't, that nod unto the world,
And mock our eyes with air: thou hast seen these signs ;
They are black vesper's pageants.
Eros.
Ay, my lord.
Antony. That which is now a horse, even with a thought
The rack dislimns, and makes it indistinct
As water is in water.
[¹ Act iii., sc. 11.]
Hamlet.
73
Eros.
It does, my lord.
Antony. My good knave, Eros, now thy captain is
Even such a body," &c.¹
This is, without doubt, one of the finest pieces of
poetry in Shakespear. The splendour of the imagery, the
semblance of reality, the lofty range of picturesque objects
hanging over the world, their evanescent nature, the total
uncertainty of what is left behind, are just like the
mouldering schemes of human greatness. It is finer than
Cleopatra's passionate lamentation over his fallen grandeur,
because it is more dim, unstable, unsubstantial. Antony's
headstrong presumption and infatuated determination to
yield to Cleopatra's wishes to fight by sea instead of land,
meet a merited punishment; and the extravagance of his
resolutions, increasing with the desperateness of his cir-
cumstances, is well commented upon by Enobarbus:
"I see men's judgments are
A parcel of their fortunes, and things outward
Do draw the inward quality after them
To suffer all alike."2
The repentance of Enobarbus after his treachery to his
master is the most affecting part of the play. He canuot
recover from the blow which Antony's generosity gives him,
and he dies broken-hearted, "a master-leaver and a fugitive.”
Shakespear's genius has spread over the whole play a
richness like the overflowing of the Nile.
c
HAMLET.³
THIS is that Hamlet the Dane whom we read of in our
youth, and whom we may be said almost to remember in
[¹ Act iv., sc. 14.]
[2 Act iii., sc. 13.]
3 Printed (from an imperfect MS., but one containing some good
readings) in 1603, then more completely in 1604, of which last
edition the 4to of 1605 appears to be a mere reissue. It was, of
course, included in the collected works in 1623.— Ed.
74
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
རས་
X
66
our after-years; he who made that famous soliloquy on
life, who gave the advice to the players, who thought
"this goodly frame, the earth," a sterile promontory, and
"this brave o'er-hanging firmament, the air, this majestical
roof fretted with golden fire,” a foul and pestilent con-
gregation of vapours;" whom "man delighted not, nor
woman neither;" he who talked with the grave-diggers,
and moralised on Yorick's skull; the school-fellow of
Rosencraus and Guildenstern at Wittenberg; the friend
of Horatio; the lover of Ophelia; he that was mad and
sent to England; the slow avenger of his father's death;
who lived at the court of Horwendillus five hundred years
before we were born, but all whose thoughts we seem to
know as well as we do our own, because we have read them
in Shakespear.
Hamlet is a name; his speeches and sayings but the
idle coinage of the poet's brain. What then, are they not
real? They are as real as our own thoughts. Their
reality is in the reader's mind. It is we who are Hamlet.
This play has a prophetic truth, which is above that of
history. Whoever has become thoughtful and melancholy
through his own mishaps or those of others; whoever has
borne about with him the clouded brow of reflection, and
thought himself “too much i'th' sun whoever has seen
the golden lamp of day dimmed by envious mists rising in
his own breast, and could find in the world before him
only a dull blank with nothing left remarkable in it; who-
ever has known "the pangs of despised love, the insolence
of office, or the spurns which patient merit of the unworthy
takes he who has felt his mind sink within him, and
sadness cling to his heart like a malady, who has had his
hopes blighted and his youth staggered by the apparitions
of strange things; who cannot be well at ease, while he
sees evil hovering near him like a spectre; whose powers
of action have been eaten up by thought, he to whom the
universe seems infinite, and himself nothing; whose bit-


Hamlet.
75
x
terness of soul makes him careless of consequences, and
who goes to a play as his best resource to shove off, to a
second remove, the evils of life by a mock representation
of them this is the true Hamlet.

J
We have been so used to this tragedy that we hardly
know how to criticise it any more than we should know how
to describe our own faces. But we must make such ob-
servations as we can.
It is the one of Shakespear's plays *
that we think of the oftenest, because it abounds most in
striking reflections on human life, and because the dis-
tresses of Hamlet are transferred, by the turn of his mind,
to the general account of humanity. Whatever happens
to him we apply to ourselves, because he applies it so him-
self as a means of general reasoning. He is a great
moraliser; and what makes him worth attending to is,
that he moralises on his own feelings and experience. He
is not a common-place pedant. If ‘Lear' is distinguished
by the greatest depth of passion, 'Hamlet' is the most re-
markable for the ingenuity, originality, and unstudied
development of character. Shakespear had more magna-
nimity than any other poet, and he has shown more of it
in this play than in any other. There is no attempt to
force an interest: everything is left for time and circum-
stances to unfold. The attention is excited without effort,
the incidents succeed each other as matters of course, the
characters think and speak and act just as they might do
if left entirely to themselves. There is no set purpose, no
straining at a point. The observations are suggested by
the passing scene-the gusts of passion come and go like
sounds of music borne on the wind. The whole play is
an exact transcript of what might be supposed to have
taken place at the court of Denmark, at the remote period
of time fixed upon, before the modern refinements in
morals and manners were heard of. It would have been
interesting enough to have been admitted as a bystander
in such a scene, at such a time, to have heard and wit-

76
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
nessed something of what was going on.
But here we are
more than spectators. We have not only "the outward
pageants and the signs of grief;" but "we have that
within which passes show." We read the thoughts of the
heart, we catch the passions living as they rise. Other
dramatic writers give us very fine versions and paraphrases
of nature; but Shakespear, together with his own com-
ments, gives us the original text, that we may judge for
ourselves. This is a very great advantage.
The character of Hamlet stands quite by itself. It is
not a character marked by strength of will or even of
passion, but by refinement of thought and sentiment.
Hamlet is as little of the hero as a man can well be: but
he is a young and princely novice, full of high enthusiasm
and quick sensibility-the sport of circumstances, ques-
tioning with fortune and refining on his own feelings, and
forced from the natural bias of his disposition by the
strangeness of his situation. He seems incapable of deli-
berate action, and is only hurried into extremities on the
spur of the occasion, when he has no time to reflect, as in
the scene where he kills Polonius, and again, where he
alters the letters which Rosencraus and Guildenstern are
taking with them to England, purporting his death. At
other times, when he is most bound to act, he remains
puzzled, undecided, and sceptical, dallies with his pur-
poses, till the occasion is lost, and finds out some pretence
to relapse into indolence and thoughtfulness again. For
this reason he refuses to kill the King when he is at his
prayers, and by a refinement in malice, which is in truth
only an excuse for his own want of resolution, defers his
revenge to a more fatal opportunity, when he shall be en-
gaged in some act "that has no relish of salvation in it.”
"Now might I do it pat, now he is praying;
And now I'll do 't;—and so he goes to heaven;
And so am I reveng'd ?—that would be scanned:
A villain kills my father; and for that


Hamlet.
77
I, his sole son, do this same villain send
To heaven.
O, this is hire and salary, not revenge.
Up sword; and know thou a more horrid hent,
When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage.”
1

He is the prince of philosophical speculators; and be
cause he cannot have his revenge perfect, according to the
most refined idea his wish can form, he declines it alto-
gether. So he scruples to trust the suggestions of the
ghost, contrives the scene of the play to have surer proof
of his uncle's guilt, and then rests satisfied with this con-
firmation of his suspicions, and the success of his experi-
ment, instead of acting upon it. Yet he is sensible of his
own weakness, taxes himself with it, and tries to reason
himself out of it :
"How all occasions do inform against me,
And spur my dull revenge! What is a man,
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? A beast; no more.
Sure he that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and god-like reason
To fust in us unus'd. Now whether it be
Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple
Of thinking too precisely on th' event,-
A thought which, quarter'd, hath but one part wisdom,
And ever three parts coward,-I do not know
Why yet I live to say, This thing's to do;
Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means
To do 't. Examples, gross as earth, exhort me :
Witness this army of such mass and charge,
Led by a delicate and tender prince,
Whose spirit with divine ambition puff'd,
Makes mouths at the invisible event,
Exposing what is mortal and unsure
To all that fortune, death, and danger dare,
Even for an egg-shell. Rightly to be great
Is not to stir without great argument;
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw,
[¹ Act iii., sc. 3.]
78
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
When honour's at the stake. How stand I, then,
That have a father kill'd, a mother stain'd,
Excitements of my reason and my blood,
And let all sleep? while, to my shame, I see
The imminent death of twenty thousand men,
That for a fantasy and trick of fame,
Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot
Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,
Which is not tomb enough and continent
To hide the slain ?-O, from this time forth,
My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth.” 1
Still he does nothing; and this very speculation on his
own infirmity only affords him another occasion for in-
dulging it. It is not from any want of attachment to his
father or of abhorrence of his murder that Hamlet is thus
dilatory; but it is more to his taste to indulge his ima
gination in reflecting upon the enormity of the crime and
refining on his schemes of vengeance, than to put them
into immediate practice. His ruling passion is to think,
not to act: and any vague pretext that flatters this pro
pensity instantly diverts him from his previous purposes.
The moral perfection of this character has been called
in question, we think, by those who did not understand it.
It is more interesting than according to rules; amiable,
though not faultless. The ethical delineations of "that
noble and liberal casuist" (as Shakespear has been well
called) do not exhibit the drab-coloured quakerism off
morality. His plays are not copied either from the
'Whole Duty of Man,' or from 'The Academy of Compli-
ments !' 2 We confess we are a little shocked at the want
of refinement in those who are shocked at the want of re-
finement in Hamlet. The neglect of punctilious exactness
in his behaviour either partakes of the "licence of the
time," or else belongs to the very excess of intellectual

1
[¹ Act iv., sc. 4.]
2 An heterogeneous collection of anecdotes, stories, precepts for
good conduct, copies of love-letters, and other interesting particulars;
it was first published before 1640.-ED.
Х

Hamlet.
79
refinement in the character, which makes the common
rules of life, as well as his own purposes, sit loose upon
him. He may be said to be amenable only to the tribunal
of his own thoughts, and is too much taken up with the
airy world of contemplation to lay as much stress as he
ought on the practical consequences of things. His habi-
tual principles of action are unhinged and out of joint with
the time. His conduct to Ophelia is quite natural in his
circumstances. It is that of assumed severity only. It is
the effect of disappointed hope, of bitter regrets, of affec-
tion suspended, not obliterated, by the distractions of the
scene around him! Amidst the natural and preternatural
horrors of his situation, he might be excused in delicacy
from carrying on a regular courtship. When "his father's
spirit was in arms," it was not a time for the son to make
love in. He could neither marry Ophelia, nor wound her
mind by explaining the cause of his alienation, which he
durst hardly trust himself to think of. It would have
taken him years to have come to a direct explanation on
the point. In the harassed state of his mind, he could not
have done much otherwise than he did. His conduct does
not contradict what he says when he sees her funeral,
"I loved Ophelia : forty thousand brothers
Could not with all their quantity of love
Make up my sum."-¹



1
Nothing can be more affecting or beautiful than the
Queen's apostrophe to Ophelia on throwing the flowers.
into the grave.
"Sweets to the sweet, farewell.
[Scattering flowers.
I hop'd thou should'st have been my Hamlet's wife
I thought thy bride-bed to have deck'd, sweet maid,
And not have strew'd thy grave."
>> 2
Shakespear was thoroughly a master of the mixed mo-
tives of human character, and he here shows us the Queen,
who was so criminal in some respects, not without sensi-
[¹ Act v., sc. 1.]
[² Ibid]
80
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
bility and affection in other relations of life.-Ophelia is
a character almost too exquisitely touching to be dwelt
upon. Oh rose of May, oh flower too soon faded ! Her
love, her madness, her death, are described with the truest
touches of tenderness and pathos. It is a character which
nobody but Shakespear could have drawn in the way that
he has done, and to the conception of which there is not
even the smallest approach, except in some of the old ro-
mantic ballads.' Her brother, Laertes, is a character we
do not like so well: he is too hot and choleric, and some-
what rhodomontade. Polonius is a perfect character in its
kind; nor is there any foundation for the objections which
have been made to the consistency of this part. It is said
that he acts very foolishly and talks very sensibly. There
is no inconsistency in that. Again, that he talks wisely
at one time and foolishly at another; that his advice to
Laertes is very excellent, and his advice to the King and
Queen on the subject of Hamlet's madness very ridiculous.
But he gives the one as a father, and is sincere in it; he
gives the other as a mere courtier, a busy-body, and is ag-
cordingly officious, garrulous, and impertinent. In short,
Shakespear has been accused of inconsistency in this and
other characters, only because he has kept up the distinc-
tion which there is in nature, between the understandings
and the moral habits of men, between the absurdity of their
ideas and the absurdity of their motives. Polonius is not
a fool, but he makes himself so. His folly, whether in his
actions or speeches, comes under the head of impropriety
of intention.
We do not like to see our author's plays acted, and least
¹ In the account of her death, a friend has pointed out an instance
of the poet's exact observation of nature:-
"There is a willow growing o'er a brook,
That shows its hoary leaves i' th' glassy stream."
The inside of the leaves of the willow, next the water, is of a whitish
colour, and the reflection would therefore be "hoary."


The Tempest.
81
""
of all, 'Hamlet.' There is no play that suffers so much in
being transferred to the stage. Hamlet himself seems
hardly capable of being acted. Mr. Kemble unavoidably
fails in this character from a want of ease and variety.
The character of Hamlet is made up of undulating lines;
it has the yielding flexibility of " a wave o' th' sea. Mr.
Kemble plays it like a man in armour, with a determined
inveteracy of purpose, in one undeviating straight line,
which is as remote from the natural grace and refined sus-
ceptibility of the character, as the sharp angles and abrupt
starts which Mr. Kean introduces into the part. Mr. Kean's
Hamlet is as much too splenetic and rash as Mr. Kem-
ble's is too deliberate and formal. His manner is too
strong and pointed. He throws a severity, approaching
to virulence, into the common observations and answers.
There is nothing of this in Hamlet. He is, as it were,
wrapped up in his reflections, and only thinks aloud. There
should therefore be no attempt to impress what he says
jupon others by a studied exaggeration of emphasis or
manner; no talking at his hearers. There should be as
much of the gentleman and scholar as possible infused into
the part, and as little of the actor. A pensive air of sad-
ness should sit reluctantly upon his brow, but no appear-
ance of fixed and sullen gloom. He is full of weakness
and melancholy, but there is no harshness in his nature.
He is the most amiable of misanthropes.

THE TEMPEST.'
THERE can be little doubt that Shakespear was the most
universal genius that ever lived.
Either for tragedy,
comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pas-
1 First printed in the folio of 1623. It is supposed to be one of
he latest of Shakespear's productions. The exact original, if it
ad one, has not been met with.-ED.
G
!
82
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
toral, scene individable or poem unlimited, he is the only
man. Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus too light
for him." He has not only the same absolute command
over our laughter and our tears, all the resources of pas-
sion, of wit, of thought, of observation, but he has the most
unbounded range of fanciful invention, whether terrible
or playful, the same insight into the world of imagination
that he has into the world of reality; and over all there
presides the same truth of character and nature, and the
same spirit of humanity. His ideal beings are as true and
natural as his real characters; that is, as consistent with
themselves, or if we suppose such beings to exist at all,
they could not act, speak, or feel otherwise than as he
makes them. He has invented for them a language, man-
ners, and sentiments of their own, from the tremendous
imprecations of the Witches in 'Macbeth,' when they do “ a
deed without a name," to the sylph-like expressions of
Ariel, who "does his spiriting gently;" the mischievous
tricks and gossiping of Robin Goodfellow, or the uncouth
gabbling and emphatic gesticulations of Caliban in this
play.
The 'Tempest' is one of the most original and perfect off
Shakespear's productions, and he has shown in it all the
variety of his powers. It is full of grace and grandeur.
The human and imaginary characters, the dramatic and
the grotesque, are blended together with the greatest art
and without any appearance of it. Though he has here
given "to airy nothing a local habitation and a name,” ye
that part which is only the fantastic creation of his min
has the same palpable texture, and coheres "semblably
with the rest. As the preternatural part has the air o
reality, and almost haunts the imagination with a sense o
truth, the real characters and events partake of the wild-
ness of a dream. The stately magician, Prospero, driver
from his dukedom, but around whom (so potent is his art
airy spirits throng numberless to do his bidding; hi

The Tempest.
83
daughter Miranda (" worthy of that name "), to whom all
the power of his art points, and who seems the goddess of
the isle; the princely Ferdinand, cast by fate upon the
haven of his happiness in this idol of his love; the deli-
cate Ariel; the savage Caliban, half brute, half demon;
the drunken ship's crew-are all connected parts of the
story, and can hardly be spared from the place they fill.
Even the local scenery is of a piece and character with the
subject. Prospero's enchanted island seems to have risen
up out of the sea; the airy music, the tempest-tossed
vessel, the turbulent waves, all have the effect of the land-
scape back-ground of some fine picture. Shakespear's
pencil is (to use an allusion of his own) "like the dyer's
hand, subdued to what it works in." Everything in him,
though it partakes of "the liberty of wit," is also sub-
jected to "the law" of the understanding. For instance,
even the drunken sailors, who are made reeling-ripe, share,
in the disorder of their minds and bodies, in the tumult
of the elements, and seem on shore to be as much at the
mercy of chance as they were before at the mercy of the
winds and waves. These fellows with their sea-wit are
the least to our taste of any part of the play: but they are
as like drunken sailors as they can be, and are an indirect
foil to Caliban, whose figure acquires a classical dignity in
the comparison.
The character of Caliban is generally thought (and justly
so) to be one of the author's masterpieces. It is not in-
deed pleasant to see this character on the stage any more
than it is to see the god Pan personated there. But in
itself it is one of the wildest and most abstracted of all
Shakespear's characters, whose deformity whether of body
or mind is redeemed by the power and truth of the imagi-
nation displayed in it. It is the essence of grossness, but
there is not a particle of vulgarity in it. Shakespear has
described the brutal mind of Caliban in contact with the
pure and original forms of nature; the character grows
84
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
out of the soil where it is rooted, uncontrolled, uncouth,
and wild, uncramped by any of the meannesses of custon.
It is “of the earth, earthy." It seems almost to have ben
dug out of the ground, with a soul instinctively superadded
to it answering to its wants and origin. Vulgarity is not
natural coarseness, but conventional coarseness, learned
from others, contrary to, or without an entire conformity
of natural power and disposition; as fashion is the com-
mon-place affectation of what is elegant and refined without
any feeling of the essence of it. Schlegel, the admirable
German critic on Shakespear, observes that Caliban is a
poetical character, and "always speaks in blank verse.
He first comes in thus:
"Caliban. As wicked dew as e'er my mother brush'd
With raven's feather from unwholesome fen,
Drop on you both! a south-west blow on ye,
And blister you all o'er!
Prospero. For this, be sure, to-night thou shalt have cramps,
Side-stitches that shall pen thy breath up; urchins
Shall for that vast of night that they may work,
All exercise on thee: thou shalt be pinch'd
As thick as honey-comb, each pinch more stinging
Than bees that made 'em.
Caliban.
I must eat my dinner.
This island's mine, by Sycorax my mother,
Which thou tak'st from me. When thou cam'st first,
Thou strok'dst me, and mad'st much of me; would'st give me
Water with berries in't; and teach me how
To name the bigger light, and how the less,
That burn by day and night; and then I lov'd thee,
And show'd thee all the qualities o' th' isle,
The fresh springs, brine-pits, barren place and fertile :
Cursed be I that I did so! All the charms
Of Sycorax, toads, beetles, bats, light on you!
For I am all the subjects that you have,
Which first was mine own king; and here you sty me
In this hard rock, whiles you do keep from me
The rest o' th' island."1
[¹ Act i., sc. 2.]
The Tempest.
85
And again, he promises Trinculo his services thus, if he
will free him from his drudgery:
"I'll show thee the best springs; I'll pluck thee berries,
I'll fish for thee, and get thee wood enough.
I prithee, let me bring thee where crabs grow,
And I with my long nails will dig thee pig-nuts :
Show thee a jay's nest, and instruct thee how
To snare the nimble marmozet: I'll bring thee
To clust'ring filberds; and sometimes I'll get thee
Young scamels from the rock." 1
In conducting Stephano and Trinculo to Prospero's cell,
Caliban shows the superiority of natural capacity over
reater knowledge and greater folly; and in a former
cene, when Ariel frightens them with his music, Caliban
› encourage them accounts for it in the eloquent poetry
f the senses:
"Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,
Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometime a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices,
That if I then had waked after long sleep,
Would make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open, and show riches
Ready to drop upon me: that, when I wak'd,

I cried to dream again." 2
This is not more beautiful that it is true. The poet
here shows us the savage with the simplicity of a child,
and makes the strange monster amiable. Shakespear had
to paint the human animal rude and without choice in its
pleasures, but not without the sense of pleasure or some
germ of the affections. Master Barnardine in 'Measure
for Measure,' the savage of civilised life, is an admirable
philosophical counterpart to Caliban.
Shakespear has, as it were by design, drawn off from
Caliban the elements of whatever is ethereal and refined, to
compound them in the unearthly mould of Ariel. Nothing
was ever more finely conceived than this contrast between
[¹ Act ii, sc. 2.]
[² Act iii., sc. 2.]
:
86
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
the material and the spiritual, the gross and delicate.
Ariel is imaginary power, the swiftness of thought per-
sonified. When told to make good speed by Prospero, he
says, "I drink the air before me." This is something like
Puck's boast on a similar occasion, "I'll put a girdle round
about the earth in forty minutes." But Ariel differs from
Puck in having a fellow-feeling in the interests of those
he is employed about. How exquisite is the following
dialogue between him and Prospero !
"Ariel.
Your charia so strongly works em,
That if you now beheld them, your affections
Would become tender.

Prospero.
Dost thou think so, spirit?
And mine shall.
Ariel. Mine would, sir, were I human.
Prospero.
Hast thou, which art but air, a touch, a feeling
Of their afflictions, and shall not myself,
One of their kind, that relish all as sharply
Passion as they, be kindlier moved than thou art ?” 1
It has been observed that there is a peculiar charm i
the songs introduced in Shakespear, which, without con
veying any distinct images, seem to recall all the feeling
connected with them, like snatches of half-forgotten music
heard indistinctly and at intervals. There is this effect
produced by Ariel's songs, which (as we are told) seem to
sound in the air, and as if the person playing them were
invisible. We shall give one instance out of many of this
general power:
“ Enter FERDINAND; and ARIEL, invisible, playing and
singing: FERDINAND following.
ARIEL'S SONG.
Come unto these yellow sands,
And then take hands;
Court'sied when you have, and kiss’d,—
The wild waves whist;-
[¹ Act v., sc. 1.]
The Tempest.
87
Foot it featly here and there;
And sweet sprites the burden bear.
Hark, Hark!
[Burden dispersedly within: Bow, wow.]
The watch-dogs bark:
[Burden dispersedly within: Bow, wow.]
Hark, hark! I hear
The strain of strutting chanticleer
Cry, Cock-a-doodle-doo.
Ferdinand. Where should this music be? i' the air or
th' earth?
It sounds no more: and sure it waits upon
Some god o' th' island. Sitting on a bank
Weeping again the king my father's wreck,
This music crept by me upon the waters,
Allaying both their fury and my passion
With its sweet air; thence I have follow'd it,
Or it hath drawn me rather :-but 'tis gone.-
No, it begins again.
ARIEL sings:
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-
[Burden within: Ding, dong.]
Hark! now I hear them, Ding-dong, bell.
Ferdinand. The ditty does remember my drown'd father.
This is no mortal business, nor no sound
That the earth owes: I hear it now above me.". 1
The courtship between Ferdinand and Miranda is one of
the chief beauties of this play. It is the very purity of
love. The pretended interference of Prospero with it
heightens its interest, and is in character with the magi-
cian, whose sense of preternatural power makes him
arbitrary, tetchy, and impatient of opposition
[¹ Act i., sc. 2.]
88
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
C
The 'Tempest' is a finer play than the Midsummer
Night's Dream,' which has sometimes been compared with
it; but it is not so fine a poem.
There are a greater
number of beautiful passages in the latter. Two of the
most striking in the 'Tempest' are spoken by Prospero.
The one is that admirable one when the vision which he has
conjured up disappears, beginning "The cloud-capp'd
towers, the gorgeous palaces," &c., which has been so often
quoted, that every school-boy knows it by heart; the other
is that which Prospero makes in abjuring his art:
"Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves,
And ye that on the sands with printless foot
Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him
When he comes back; you demi-puppets that
By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make,
Whereof the ewe not bites; and you whose pastime
Is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice
To hear the solemn curfew, by whose aid—
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. But this rough magic
I here abjure; and when I have requir'd
Some heavenly music-which even now I do-
To work mine end upon their senses that
This airy charm is for, I'll break my staff,
Bury it certain fadoms in the earth,
And deeper than did ever plummet sound,
I'll drown my book." 1
We must not forget to mention among other things in
this play, that Shakespear has anticipated nearly all the
arguments on the Utopian schemes of modern philosophy.
[¹ Act v., sc. 1.]
Midsummer Night's Dream.
89
“Gonzalo. Had I plantation of this isle, my lord—
Antonio. He'd sow't with nettle-seed.
Sebastian.
Or docks, or mallows.
Gonzalo. And were the king on't, what would I do?
Sebastian. 'Scape being drunk, for want of wine.
Gonzalo. I' the commonwealth I would by contraries
Execute all things: for no kind of traffic
Would I admit: no name of magistrate ;
Letters should not be known; riches, poverty,
And use of service, none; contract, succession,
Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none;
No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil;
No occupation, all men idle, all,
And women too-but innocent and pure:
No sovereignty.
Sebastian.
Yet he would be king on't.
Antonio. The latter end of his commonwealth forgets the
beginning.
Gonzalo. All things in common nature should produce
Without sweat or endeavour; treason, felony,
Sword, pike, knife, gun, or need of any engine
Would I not have; but nature should bring forth,
Of its own kind, all foison, all abundance
To feed my innocent people!
Sebastian. No marrying 'mong his subjects?
Antonio. None, man; all idle :—whores and knaves.
Gonzalo. I would with such perfection govern, sir,
T'excel the golden age.
Sebastian.
Save his majesty !" 1
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM.
BOTTOM the Weaver is a character that has not had justice
done him. He is the most romantic of mechanics. And
what a list of companions he has-Quince the Carpenter,
Snug the Joiner, Flute the Bellows-mender, Snout the
Tinker, Starveling the Tailor; and then again, what a
group of fairy attendants, Puck, Peaseblossom, Cobweb,
Moth, and Mustard seed! It has been observed that
[¹ Act ii., sc. 1.]
90
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
Shakespear's characters are constructed upon deep physio-
logical principles; and there is something in this play
which looks very like it. Bottom the, Weaver, who takes
the lead of
"A crew of patches, rude mechanicals,
"" 1
That work for bread upon Athenian stalls,"
follows a sedentary trade, and he is accordingly represented
as conceited, serious, and fantastical. He is ready to
undertake anything and everything, as if it was as much
a matter of course as the motion of his loom and shuttle.
He is for playing the truant, the lover, the lady, the lion.
"I will roar that it shall do any man's heart good to hear
me;" and this being objected to as improper, he still has
a resource in his good opinion of himself, and “I will roar
you an 'twere any nightingale." Snug the Joiner is the
moral man of the piece, who proceeds by measurement
and discretion in all things. You see him with his rule
and compasses in his hand:
3
"Snug. Have you the lion's part written? Pray you, if it be,
give it me, for I am slow of study.
Quince. You may do it extempore, for it is nothing but roaring."4
Starveling the Tailor keeps the peace, and objects to the
lion and the drawn sword. "I believe we must leave the
killing out when all is done."5 Starveling, however, does
not start the objections himself, but seconds them when
made by others, as if he had not spirit to express his fears
without encouragement. It is too much to suppose all
this intentional: but it very luckily falls out so.
Nature
includes all that is implied in the most subtle analytical
distinctions; and the same distinctions will be found in
Shakespear. Bottom, who is not only chief actor, but
stage-manager for the occasion, has a device to obviate the
danger of frightening the ladies :
[¹ Act iii.. sc. 1.]
[* Ibid.]
[² Act i., sc. 2.]
[ Act iii., sc. 1.]
[³ Ibid.]
Midsummer Night's Dream.
91
"Write me a prologue, and let the prologue seem to say, we will
do no harm with our swords, and that Pyramus is not killed indeed;
and for the more better assurance, tell them that I Pyramus am not
Pyramus, but Bottom the Weaver: this will put them out of fear." ¹
Bottom seems to have understood the subject of dramatic
illusion at least as well as any modern essayist. If our
holiday mechanic rules the roast amongst his fellows, he
is no less at home in his new character of an ass,
"" with
amiable cheeks, and fair large ears." He instinctively.
acquires a most learned taste, and grows fastidious in the
choice of dried peas and bottled hay. He is quite familiar
with his new attendants, and assigns them their parts with
all due gravity:
"Monsieur Cobweb, good monsieur, get your weapons in your
hand, and kill me a red-hipped humble bee on the top of a thistle,
and, good monsieur, bring me the honey-bag."
$12
C
What an exact knowledge is here shown of natural history!
Puck, or Robin Goodfellow, is the leader of the fairy
band. He is the Ariel of the 'Midsummer Night's Dream ;'
and yet as unlike as can be to the Ariel in the Tempest.'
No other poet could have made two such different cha-
racters out of the same fanciful materials and situations.
Ariel is a minister of retribution, who is touched with the
sense of pity at the woes he inflicts. Puck is a madcap
sprite, full of wantonness and mischief, who laughs at those
whom he misleads-"Lord, what fools these mortals be!"
Ariel cleaves the air, and executes his mission with the
zeal of a winged messenger; Puck is borne along on his
fairy errand like the light and glittering gossamer before
the breeze. He is, indeed, a most Epicurean little gentle-
man, dealing in quaint devices, and faring in dainty
delights. Prospero and his world of spirits are a set
of moralists: but with Oberon and his fairies we are
launched at once into the empire of the butterflies. How
beautifully is this race of beings contrasted with the men
[¹ Act iii., sc. 1.]
[² Act iv.; sc. 1.]
92
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
and women actors in the scene, by a single epithet which
Titania gives to the latter, "the human mortals!" It is
astonishing that Shakespear should be considered, not only
by foreigners, but by many of our own critics, as a gloomy
and heavy writer, who painted nothing but "gorgons and
hydras, and chimeras dire." His subtlety exceeds that of
all other dramatic writers, insomuch that a celebrated
person of the present day said that he regarded him rather
as a metaphysician than a poet. His delicacy and sportive.
gaiety are infinite. In the 'Midsummer Night's Dream'
alone, we should imagine, there is more sweetness and
beauty of description than in the whole range of French
poetry put together. What we mean is this, that we will
produce out of that single play ten passages, to which we
do not think any ten passages in the works of the French
poets can be opposed, displaying equal fancy and imagery.
Shall we mention the remonstrance of Helena to Hermia,
or Titania's description of her fairy train, or her disputes
with Oberon about the Indian boy, or Puck's account of
himself and his employments, or the Fairy Queen's exhorta-
tion to the elves to pay due attendance upon her favourite,
Bottom; or Hippolita's description of a chase, or Theseus's
answer? The two last are as heroical and spirited as the
others are full of luscious tenderness. The reading of
this play is like wandering in a grove by moonlight; the
descriptions breathe a sweetness like odours thrown from
beds of flowers.
Titania's exhortation to the fairies to wait upon Bottom,
which is remarkable for a certain cloying sweetness in the
repetition of the rhymes, is as follows:-
"Be kind and courteous to this gentleman.
Hop in his walks, and gambol in his eyes,
Feed him with apricocks and dewberries,
With purple grapes, green figs and mulberries;
The honey-bags steal from the humble bees.
And for night tapers crop their waxen thighs,
And light them at the fiery glow-worm's eyes,
Midsummer Night's Dream.
93
To have my love to bed and to arise:
And pluck the wings from painted butterflies,
To fan the moonbeams from his sleeping eyes;
Nod to him, elves, and do him courtesies."
The sounds of the lute and of the trumpet are not more
distinct than the poetry of the foregoing passage, and of
the conversation between Theseus and Hippolita.
"Theseus. Go, one of you, find out the forester,
For now our observation is perform'd;
And since we have the vaward of the day,
My love shall hear the music of my hounds.
Uncouple in the western valley, go,—
Despatch, I say, and find the forester.
[Exit an Attend.]
We will, fair Queen, up to the mountain's top,
And mark the musical confusion
Of hounds and echo in conjunction.
Hippolita. I was with Hercules and Cadmus once,
When in a wood of Crete they bay'd the boar
With hounds of Sparta; never did I hear
Such gallant chiding; for besides the groves,
The skies, the fountains, every region near
Seem'd all one mutual cry;-I never heard
So musical a discord, such sweet thunder.
Theseus. My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind,
So flew'd, so sanded, and their heads are hung
With ears that sweep away the morning dew;
Crook-knee'd and dew-lapp'd, like Thessalian bulls,
Slow in pursuit, but matched in mouth like bells.
Each under each. A cry more tuneable
Was never holla'd to, nor cheer'd with horn,
In Crete, in Sparta, nor in Thessaly:
Judge when you hear."
2
Even Titian never made a hunting-piece of a gusto so
fresh and lusty, and so near the first ages of the world as
this.-
It had been suggested to us, that the 'Midsummer
Night's Dream' would do admirably to get up as a Christ-
mas after-piece; and our prompter proposed that Mr.
Kean should play the part of Bottom, as worthy of his
[¹ Act iii., sc. 1.]
[² Act iv., sc. 1.]
94
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
great talents. He might, in the discharge of his duty,
offer to play the lady like any of our actresses that he
pleased, the lover or the tyrant like any of our actors that
he pleased, and the lion like "the most fearful wild-fowl"
living. The carpenter, the tailor, and joiner, it was
thought, would hit the galleries. The young ladies in
love would interest the side-boxes; and Robin Goodfellow
and his companions excite a lively fellow-feeling in the
children from school. There would be two courts, an
empire within an empire, the Athenian and the Fairy
King and Queen, with their attendants, and with all their
finery. What an opportunity for processions, for the
sound of trumpets and glittering of spears! What a flut-
tering of urchins' painted wings; what a delightful
profusion of gauze clouds and airy spirits floating on
them!
Alas! the experiment has been tried, and has failed;'
not through the fault of Mr. Kean, who did not play the
part of Bottom, nor of Mr. Liston, who did, and who
played it well, but from the nature of things. The 'Mid-
summer 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 the stage do not agree well
together. The attempt to reconcile them in this instance
fails not only of effect, but of decorum. The ideal can
have no place upon the stage, which is a picture without
perspective; everything there is in the fore-ground.
That which was merely an airy shape, a dream, a pas-
sing thought, immediately becomes an unmanageable
reality. Where all is left to the imagination (as is the
case in reading), every circumstance, near or remote, has
1 The Midsummer Night's Dream,' altered by Reynolds into a
three-act drama, was brought out at Covent-garden, January 17
1816. See Geneste's Acc. of the English Stage, viii., 545-9.-ED.
Romeo and Juliet.
95
an equal chance of being kept in mind, and tells accord-
ingly to the mixed impression of all that has been suggested.
But the imagination cannot sufficiently qualify the actual
impressions of the senses. Any offence given to the eye
is not to be got rid of by explanation. Thus Bottom's
head in the play is a fantastic illusion, produced by magic
spells: on the stage it is an ass's head, and 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 per-
sonate Wall or Moonshine. Fairies are not incredible, but
fairies six feet high are so. Monsters are not shocking, if
they are seen at a proper distance. When ghosts appear
at mid-day, wher apparitions stalk along Cheapside, then
may the ‘Midsummer Night's Dream' be represented with-
out injury at Covent-garden or at Drury-lane. The boards
of a theatre and the regions of fancy are not the same
thing.
ROMEO AND JULIET.'
'ROMEO AND JULIET' is the only tragedy which Shakespear
has written entirely on a love-story. It is supposed to
have been his first play,2 and it deserves to stand in that
proud rank. There is the buoyant spirit of youth in every
line, in the rapturous intoxication of hope, and in the bit-
terness of despair. It has been said of 'Romeo and
Juliet' by a great critic, that "whatever is most intoxi-
1 It now seems to be generally admitted that this drama was not
written, or at least finished, quite at so early a date as was formerly
believed. It is supposed to have been composed in 1596, and was
first printed (very imperfectly) in 1597-a circumstance which, as
the edition of 1597 is nowhere described as a pirated one, appears
to me to militate rather against the hypothesis that the author was
at work on the play as long prior to its production as 1591.—ED.
2 This is now to be regarded as extremely doubtful.-ED.
96
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
cating in the odour of a southern spring, languishing in
the song of the nightingale, or voluptuous in the first
opening of the rose, is to be found in this poem." The
description is true; and yet it does not answer to our idea
of the play. For if it has the sweetness of the rose, it has
its freshness too; if it has the languor of the nightingale's
song, it has also its giddy transport; if it has the softness
of a southern spring, it is as glowing and as bright. There
is nothing of a sickly and sentimental cast. Romeo and
Juliet are in love, but they are not love-sick. Everything
speaks the very soul of pleasure, the high and healthy
pulse of the passions: the heart beats, the blood circulates
and mantles throughout. Their courtship is not an insipid
interchange of sentiments lip-deep, learnt at second-hand
from poems and plays,―made up of beauties of the most
shadowy kind, of "fancies wan that hang the pensive
head," of evanescent smiles, and sighs that breathe not, of
delicacy that shrinks from the touch, and feebleness that
scarce supports itself, an elaborate vacuity of thought, and
an artificial dearth of sense, spirit, truth, and nature! It
is the reverse of all this. It is Shakespear all over, and
Shakespear when he was young.
We have heard it objected to 'Romeo and Juliet,' that it
is founded on an idle passion between a boy and a girl,
who have scarcely seen and can have but little sympathy
or rational esteem for one another,¹ who have had no ex-
perience of the good or ills of life, and whose raptures or
despair must be therefore equally groundless and fantas-
tical. Whoever objects to the youth of the parties in this
play as "too unripe and crude" to pluck the sweets of
love, and wishes to see a first-love carried on into a good
¹ Shakespear was portraying the manners of a more southern
people than ourselves, where women arrive at womanhood early,
and where, especially in high families, it would scarcely have been
etiquette for the lover and his mistress to see much of each other
prior to the nuptials. Where there were meetings, they were usually
›landestine, and connived at by the nurse or governess.—ED.
Romeo and Juliet.
97
old age, and the passions taken at the rebound, when their
force is spent, may find all this done in the Stranger' and
in other German plays, where they do things by contraries,
and transpose nature to inspire sentiment and create philo-
sophy. Shakespear proceeded in a more straightforward,
and, we think, effectual way. He did not endeavour to
extract beauty from wrinkles, or the wild throb of passion
from the last expiring sigh of indifference. He did not
gather grapes of thorns nor figs of thistles." It was not
his way. But he has given a picture of human life, such
as it is in the order of nature. He has founded the pas-
sion of the two lovers not on the pleasures they had expe-
rienced, but on all the pleasures they had not experienced.
All that was to come of life was theirs. At that untried
source of promised happiness they slaked their thirst, and
the first eager draught made them drunk with love and
joy. They were in full possession of their senses and
their affections. Their hopes were of air, their desires of
fire. Youth is the season of love, because the heart is then
first melted in tenderness from the touch of novelty, and
kindled to rapture, for it knows no end of its enjoyments
or its wishes. Desire has no limit but itself. Passion,
the love and expectation of pleasure, is infinite, extrava-
gant, inexhaustible, till experience comes to check and
kill it. Juliet exclaims on her first interview with
Romeo-
"My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep."
And why should it not? What was to hinder the thrilling
tide of pleasure, which had just gushed from her heart,
from flowing on without stint or measure, but experience
which she was yet without? What was to abate the trans-
port of the first sweet sense of pleasure, which her heart
and her senses bad just tasted, but indifference which she
was yet a stranger to? What was there to check the
ardour of hope, of faith, of constancy, just rising in her
H
98
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
breast, but disappointment which she had not yet felt?
As are the desires and the hopes of youthful passion, such
is the keenness of its disappointments, and their baleful
effect. Such is the transition in this play from the highest
bliss to the lowest despair, from the nuptial couch to an
untimely grave. The only evil that even in apprehension
Lefalls the two lovers is the loss of the greatest possible
felicity; yet this loss is fatal to both, for they had rather
part with life than bear the thought of surviving all that
had made life dear to them. In all this, Shakespear has
but followed nature, which existed in his time, as well as
now. The modern philosophy, which reduces the whole
theory of the mind to habitual impressions, and leaves the
natural impulses of passion and imagination out of the
account, had not then been discovered; or if it had, would
have been little calculated for the uses of poetry.
It is the inadequacy of the same false system of philo-
sophy to account for the strength of our earliest attach-
ments, which has led Mr. Wordsworth to indulge in the
mystical visions of Platonism in his Ode on the Progress
of Life. He has very admirably described the vividness
of our impressions in youth and childhood, and how "they'
fade by degrees into the light of common day," and he
ascribes the change to the supposition of a pre-existent
state, as if our early thoughts were nearer heaven, reflec-
tions of former trials of glory, shadows of our past being.
This is idle. It is not from the knowledge of the past
that the first impressions of things derive their gloss and
splendour, but from our ignorance of the future, which
fills the void to come with the warmth of our desires, with
our gayest hopes, and brightest fancies. It is the ob-
scurity spread before it that colours the prospect of life
with hope, as it is the cloud which reflects the rainbow.
There is no occasion to resort to any mystical union and
transmission of feeling through different states of being to
account for the romantic enthusiasm of youth; nor to

Romeo and Juliet.
99
plant the root of hope in the grave, nor to derive it from
the skies. Its root is in the heart of man: it lifts its
head above the stars. Desire and imagination are inmates
of the human breast. The heaven "that lies about us in
our infancy" is only a new world, of which we know
nothing but what we wish it to be, and believe all that we
wish. In youth and boyhood, the world we live in is the
world of desire, and of fancy: it is experience that brings
us down to the world of reality. What is it that in youth
sheds a dewy light round the evening star? That makes
the daisy look so bright? That perfumes the hyacinth?
That embalms the first kiss of love? It is the delight of
novelty, and the seeing no end to the pleasure that we
fondly believe is still in store for us. The heart revels in
the luxury of its own thoughts, and is unable to sustain
the weight of hope and love that presses upon it.—The
effects of the passion of love alone might have dissipated
Mr. Wordsworth's theory, if he means anything more by
it than an ingenious and poetical allegory. That at least
is not a link in the chain let down from other worlds
"the purple light of love" is not a dim reflection of the
smiles of celestial bliss. It does not appear till the
middle of life, and then seems like "another morn risen
on mid-day." In this respect the soul comes into the
world “in utter nakedness." Love waits for the ripening
of the youthful blood. The sense of pleasure precedes the
love of pleasure, but with the sense of pleasure, as soon as
it is felt, come thronging infinite desires and hopes of
pleasure, and love is mature as soon as born. It withers
and it dies almost as soon!
This play presents a beautiful coup-d'œil of the progress
of human life. In thought it occupies years, and embraces
the circle of the affections from childhood to old age.
Juliet has become a great girl, a young woman since we
first remember her a little thing in the idle prattle of the
Nurse. Lady Capulet was about her age when she became
100
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
a mother, and old Capulet somewhat impatiently tells his
younger visitors,
"I have seen the day,
That I have worn a visor, and could tell
A whispering tale in a fair lady's ear,
Such as would please :-'tis gone, 'tis gone, 'tis gone."
Thus one period of life makes way for the following,
and one generation pushes another off the stage. One of
the most striking passages to show the intense feeling of
youth in this play is Capulet's invitation to Paris to visit
his entertainment:
"At my poor house look to behold this night
Earth-treading stars that make dark heaven light:
Such comfort as do lusty young men feel
When well-apparell'd April on the heel
Of limping Winter treads, even such delight
Among fresh female buds shall you this night
Inherit at my house." 2
The feelings of youth and of the spring are here blended
together like the breath of opening flowers. Images of
vernal beauty appear to have floated before the author's
mind, in writing this poem, in profusion. Here is another
of exquisite beauty, brought in more by accident than by
necessity. Montague declares of his son smit with a
hopeless passion, which he will not reveal :
"But he, his own affection's counsellor,
Is to himself-I will not say how true-
But to himself so secret and so close,
So far from sounding and discovery,
As is the bud bit with an envious worm,
Ere he can spread his sweet leaves to the air,
Or dedicate his beauty to the sun."
This casual description is as full of passionate beauty
as when Romeo dwells in frantic fondness on "the white
wonder of his Juliet's hand." The reader may, if he
pleases, contrast the exquisite pastoral simplicity of the
above lines with the gorgeous description of Juliet, when
[² Act i., sc. 2. [³ Act i., sc. 1.]
[¹ Act i., sc. 5.]
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101
Romeo first sees her at her father's house, surrounded by
company and artificial splendour :
"What lady's that which doth enrich the hand
Of yonder knight?
•
•
O she doth teach the torches to burn bright;
Her beauty hangs upon the cheek of night,
Like a rich jewel in an Æthiop's ear.” ¹
1
It would be hard to say which of the two garden scenes
is the finest, that where he first converses with his love, or
takes leave of her the morning after their marriage. Both
are like a heaven upon earth; the blissful bowers of Para-
dise let down upon this lower world. We will give only
one passage of these well-known scenes to show the perfect
refinement and delicacy of Shakespear's conception of the
female character. It is wonderful how Collins, who was
a critic and a poet of great sensibility, should have en-
couraged the common error on this subject by saying—
“But stronger Shakespear felt for man alone.”
The passage we mean is Juliet's apology for her maiden
boldness.
"Thou know'st the mask of night is on my face;
Else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek
For that which thou hast heard me speak to-night.
Fain would I dwell on form, fain, fain deny
What I have spoke: but farewell compliment:
Dost thou love me? I know thou wilt say, Ay,
And I will take thee at thy word: yet if thou swear't,
Thou may'st prove false; at lovers' perjuries,
They say, Jove laughs. O gentle Romeo,
If thou dost love, pronounce it faithfully;
Or if thou think I am too quickly won,
I'll frown and be perverse, and say thee nay,
So thou wilt woo: but else, not for the world.
In truth, fair Montague, I am too fond;
And therefore thou may'st think my 'haviour light;
But trust me, gentleman, I'll prove more true
Than those that have more cunning to be strange.
I should have been more strange, I must confess,
[¹ Act i, sc. 5.]
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Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
But that thou overheard'st, ere I was ware,
My true love's passion; therefore pardon me,
And not impute this yielding to light love,
Which the dark night hath so discovered." 1
In this and all the rest, her heart, fluttering between
pleasure, hope, and fear, seems to have dictated to her
tongue, and " calls true love spoken simple modesty." Of
the same sort, but bolder in virgin innocence, is her
soliloquy after her marriage with Romeo.
66
Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds,
Towards Phoebus' lodging; such a wagoner
As Phaëton would whip you to the west,
And bring in cloudy night immediately.
Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night;
That rude day's eyes may wink; and Romeo
Leap to these arms, untalk'd of and unseen!-
Lovers can see to do their amorous rites
By their own beauties: or, if love be blind,
It best agrees with night.-Come, civil night,
Thou sober-suited matron, all in black,
And learn me how to lose a winning match,
Play'd for a pair of stainless maidenhoods:
Hold my unmann'd blood, bating in my cheeks,
With thy black mantle; till strange love, grown bold,
Thinks true love acted simple modesty.
Come, night!-come, Romeo!-come, thou day in night—
For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night
Whiter than new snow upon a raven's back.—
Come, gentle night-come, loving, black-brow'd night,
Give me my Romeo: and when he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine,
That all the world will be in love with night,
And pay no worship to the garish sun.——
O. I have bought the mansion of a love,
But not possess'd it; and though I am sold,
Not yet enjoy'd: so tedious is this day,
As is the night before some festival
To an impatient child, that hath new robes,
And may not wear them." 2
[¹ Act ii., sc. 2.]
[2 Act iii., sc. 2.]
Romeo and Juliet.
103
We the rather insert this passage here, inasmuch as we
have no doubt it has been expunged from the Family
Shakespear. Such critics do not perceive that the feelings
of the heart sanctify, without disguising, the impulses of
nature. Without refinement themselves, they confound
modesty with hypocrisy. Not so the German critic,
Schlegel. Speaking of Romeo and Juliet,' he says, "It
was reserved for Shakespear to unite purity of heart and
the glow of imagination, sweetness and dignity of manners
and passionate violence, in one ideal picture." The cha-
racter is indeed one of perfect truth and sweetness. It
has nothing forward, nothing coy, nothing affected or
coquettish about it; it is a pure effusion of nature. It is
as frank as it is modest, for it has no thought that it
wishes to conceal. It reposes in conscious innocence on
the strength of its affections. Its delicacy does not consist
in coldness and reserve, but in combining warmth of ima-
gination and tenderness of heart with the most voluptuous
sensibility. Love is a gentle flame that rarefies and ex-
pands her whole being. What an idea of trembling haste
and airy grace, berne upon the thoughts of love, does the
Friar's exclamation give of her, as she approaches his cell
to be married!
rest.
"Here comes the lady :-O, so light of foot
Will ne'er wear out the everlasting flint :
A lover may bestride the gossamer,
That idles in the wanton summer air,
And yet not fall; so light is vanity.” ¹
The tragic part of this character is of a piece with the
I is the heroic founded on tenderness and delicacy.
Of this kind are her resolution to follow the Friar's ad-
vice, and the conflict in her bosom between apprehension
and love when she comes to take the sleeping potion.
Shakespears blamed for the mixture of low characters.
If this is a deformity, it is the source of a thousand
[¹ Act ii, sc. 6.]
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Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
beauties. One instance is the contrast between the guile-
less simplicity of Juliet's attachment to her first love, and
the convenient policy of the Nurse in advising her to marry
Paris, which excites such indignation in her mistress
"Ancient damnation! O most wicked fiend," &c.
Romeo is Hamlet in love. There is the same rich
exuberance of passion and sentiment in the one, that there
is of thought and sentiment in the other. Both are absent
and self-involved, both live out of themselves in a world
of imagination. Hamlet is abstracted from everything;
Romeo is abstracted from everything but his love, and lost
in it. His "frail thoughts dally with faint surmise," and
are fashioned out of the suggestions of hope, "the flattery
of sleep." He is himself only in his Juliet; she is his
only reality, his heart's true home and idol. The rest of
the world is to him a passing dream. How finely is this
character portrayed where he recollects himself on seeing
Paris slain at the tomb of Juliet!—
"What said my man when my betossèd soul
Did not attend him as we rode? I think
He told me Paris should have married Juliet." 1
And again, just before he hears the sudden tidings of her
death-
"If I may trust the flattering eye of sleep,
My dreams presage some joyful news at hand
My bosom's lord sits lightly on his throne,
And all this day an unaccustom❜d spirit
Lifts me above the ground with cheerful thoughts.
I dreamt my lady came and found me dead,—
Strange dream, that gives a dead man leave to think!--
And breath'd such life with kisses on my lips
That I reviv'd and was an emperor.
Ah me! how sweet is love itself possess'd,
When but love's shadows are so rich in joy!?
2
Romeo's passion for Juliet is not a first love it succeeds
and drives out his passion for another mistress, Rosaline,
[¹ Act v., sc. 3.]
[² Act v., sc. 1.]
Romeo and Juliet.
105
as the sun hides the stars. This is perhaps an artifice
(not absolutely necessary) to give us a higher opinion of
the lady, while the first absolute surrender of her heart to
him enhances the richness of the prize. The commence-
ment, progress, and ending of his second passion are how-
ever complete in themselves, not injured if they are not
bettered by the first. The outline of the play is taken
from an Italian novel; but the dramatic arrangement of
the different scenes between the lovers, the more than
dramatic interest in the progress of the story, the develop-
ment of the characters with time and circumstances, just
according to the degree and kind of interest excited, are
not inferior to the expression of passion and nature. It
has been ingeniously remarked among other proofs of skill
in the contrivance of the fable, that the improbability of
the main incident in the piece, the administering of the
sleeping-potion, is softened and obviated from the begin-
ning by the introduction of the Friar on his first appear-
ance culling simples and descanting on their virtues. Of
the passionate scenes in this tragedy, that between the
Friar and Romeo when he is told of his sentence of banish-
ment, that between Juliet and the Nurse when she hears
of it, and of the death of her cousin Tybalt (which bear
no proportion in her mind, when passion after the first
shock of surprise throws its weight into the scale of her
affections), and the last scene at the tomb, are among the
most natural and overpowering. In all of these it is not
merely the force of any one passion that is given, but the
slightest and most unlooked-for transitions from one to
another, the mingling currents of every different feeling
rising up and prevailing in turn, swayed by the master-
mind of the poet, as the waves undulate beneath the gliding
storm. Thus when Juliet has by her complaints encou-
raged the Nurse to say, “Shame come to Romeo," she in-
stantly repels the wish, which she had herself occasioned,
by answering:
106
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
"Blister'd be thy tongue
For such a wish! He was not born to shame.
Upon his brow shame is asham'd to sit,
For tis a throne where honour may be crown'd
Sole monarch of the universal earth!
O, what a beast was I to chide at him?
Nurse. Will you speak well of him that kill'd your
cousin?
Juliet. Shall I speak ill of him that is my husband?
Ah, poor my lord, what tongue shall smooth thy name,
When I, thy three-hours' wife, have mangled it ?” ¹
And then follows on the neck of her remorse and returning
fondness, that wish treading almost on the brink of im-
piety, but still held back by the strength of her devotion
to her lord, that "father, mother, nay, or both were dead,”
rather than Romeo banished. If she requires any other
excuse, it is in the manner in which Romeo echoes her
frantic grief and disappointment in the next scene at being
banished from her. Perhaps one of the finest pieces of
acting that ever was witnessed on the stage, is Mr. Kean's
manner of doing this scene and his repetition of the word,
Banished. He treads close indeed upon the genius of his
author.
A passage which this celebrated actor and able com-
mentator on Shakespear (actors are the best commentators
on the poets) did not give with equal truth or force of
feeling was the one which Romeo makes at the tomb of
Juliet, before he drinks the poison :
"Let me peruse this face-
Mercutio's kinsman! noble County Paris!
What said my man, when my betossèd soul
Did not attend him as we rode ! I think,
He told me Paris should have married Juliet!
Said he not so? or did I dream it so?
Or am I mad, hearing him talk of Juliet,
To think it was so?-O, give me thy hand,
One writ with me in sour misfortune's book!
I'll bury thee in a triumphant grave;—
[¹ Act iii., sc. 2.]
Romeo and Juliet.
107
A grave? O, no, a lantern, slaughter'd youth,
For here lies Juliet.
*
*
*
*
O my love! my wife!
*
Death, that hath suck'd the honey of thy breath,
Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty:
Thou art not conquer'd; beauty's ensign yet
Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks,
And Death's pale flag is not advanced there.—
Tybalt, liest thou there in thy bloody sheet?
O, what more favour can I do to thee,
Than with that hand that cut thy youth in twain,
To sunder his that was thine enemy?
Forgive me, cousin!—Ah, dear Juliet,
Why art thou yet so fair! Shall I believe
That unsubstantial death is amorous;
And that the lean abhorred monster keeps
Thee here in dark to be his paramour!
For fear of that, I still will stay with thee;
And never from this palace of dim night
Depart again: here, here will I remain
With worms that are thy chamber-maids; O, here
Will I set up my everlasting rest;
And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars
From this world-wearied flesh.-Eyes, look your last!
Arms, take your last embrace! and lips, O you,
The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss
A dateless bargain to engrossing death!—
Come, bitter conduct: come, unsavoury guide!
Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on
The dashing rock my sea-sick weary bark!
Here's to my love!-[Drinks.] O true apothecary!
Thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss I die.” i
The lines in this speech, describing the loveliness of
Juliet, who is supposed to be dead, have been compared
to those in which it is said of Cleopatra after her death,
that she looked “ as she would take another Antony in her
strong toil of grace;" and a question has been started
which is the finest, that we do not pretend to decide. We
can more easily decide between Shakespear and any other
author, than between him and himself. Shall we quote
[¹ Act v., sc. 3.]
1
108
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
any more passages to show his genius or the beauty of
'Romeo and Juliet ?' At that rate, we might quote the
whole. The late Mr. Sheridan, on being shown a volume
of the Beauties of Shakespear, very properly asked:
"But where are the other eleven ?” The character of
Mercutio in this play is one of the most mercurial and
spirited of the productions of Shakespear's comic muse.
LEAR.'
We wish that we could pass this play over, and say nothing
about it. All that we can say must fall far short of the
subject; or even of what we ourselves conceive of it. To
attempt to give a description of the play itself or of its
effect upon the mind, is mere impertinence: yet we must
say something. It is then the best of all Shakespear's
plays, for it is the one in which he was the most in earnest.
He was here fairly caught in the web of his own imagina-
tion. The passion which he has taken as his subject is
that which strikes its root deepest into the human heart;
of which the bond is the hardest to be unloosed; and the
cancelling and tearing to pieces of which gives the greatest
revulsion to the frame. This depth of nature, this force
of passion, this tug and war of the elements of our being,
this firm faith in filial piety, and the giddy anarchy and
whirling tumult of the thoughts at finding this prop failing
it, the contrast between the fixed, immoveable basis of
natural affection, and the rapid, irregular starts of imagina-
1 This drama having been performed before King James the First,
at Christmas, 1606, it is to be taken for granted that it had been
written some time before that date. Steevens seems to have shown
satisfactorily that it followed the publication of Harsnet's' Discoverie
of Egregious Popish Impostures,' 1603. But whether it was
anterior in execution to the old play of 'King Leir and his Three
Daughters,' printed in 1605, appears questionable.-ED.


Lear.
109
tion, suddenly wrenched from all its accustomed holds.
and resting-places in the soul, this is what Shakespear has
given, and what nobody else but he could give. So we
believe. The mind of Lear, staggering between the weight
of attachment and the hurried movements of passion, is
like a tall ship driven about by the winds, buffetted by the
furious waves, but that still rides above the storm, having
its anchor fixed in the bottom of the sea; or it is like the
sharp rock circled by the eddying whirlpool that foams.
and beats against it, or like the solid promontory pushed
from its basis by the force of an earthquake.
The character of Lear itself is very finely conceived for
the purpose. It is the only ground on which such a story
could be built with the greatest truth and effect. It is his
rash haste, his violent impetuosity, his blindness to every-
thing but the dictates of his passions or affections, that
produces all his misfortunes, that aggravates his impa-
tience of them, that enforces our pity for him.
The part
which Cordelia bears in the scene is extremely beautiful:
the story is almost told in the first words she utters. We
see at once the precipice on which the poor old king stands
from his own extravagant and credulous importunity, the
indiscreet simplicity of her love (which, to be sure, has a
little of her father's obstinacy in it), and the hollowness of
her sisters' pretensions. Almost the first burst of that
noble tide of passion, which runs through the play, is in
the remonstrance of Kent to his royal master on the in-
justice of his sentence against his youngest daughter:
“Be Kent unmannerly, when Lear is mad!” This manly
plainness, which draws down on him the displeasure of the
unadvised king, is worthy, of the fidelity with which he
adheres to his fallen fortunes. The true character of the
two eldest daughters, Regan and Goneril (they are so
thoroughly hateful that we do not even like to repeat their
names), breaks out in their answer to Cordelia, who desires
them to treat their father well: "Prescribe not us our
ì
110
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
duties"—their hatred of advice being in proportion to
their determination to do wrong, and to their hypocritical
pretensions to do right. Their deliberate hypocrisy adds
the last finishing to the odiousness of their characters. It
is the absence of this detestable quality that is the only
relief in the character of Edmund the Bastard, and that at
times reconciles us to him. We are not tempted to ex-
aggerate the guilt of his conduct, when he himself gives it
up as a bad business, and writes himself down "plain
villain." Nothing more can be said about it. His reli-
gious honesty in this respect is admirable. One speech of
his is worth a million. His father, Gloster, whom he has
just deluded with a forged story of his brother Edgar's
designs against his life, accounts for his unnatural beha-
viour and the strange depravity of the times from the late
eclipses in the sun and moon. Edmund, who is in the
secret, says when he is gone :
"This is the excellent foppery of the world, that when we are
sick in fortune-often the surfeit of our own behaviour-we make
guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and stars as if we were
villains on necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves,
and treachers by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars, and
adulterers by an enforced obedience of planetary influence; and all
that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on: an admirable evasion
of whore-master man, to lay his goatish disposition to the charge of
a star! My father compounded with my mother under the dragon's
tail, and my nativity was under Ursa Major: so that it follows, I am
rough and lecherous. Tut! I should have been what I am, had the
maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardising."
The whole character, its careless, light-hearted villainy,
contrasted with the sullen, rancorous malignity of Regan
and Goneril, its connection with the conduct of the under-
plot, in which Gloster's persecution of one of his sons and
the ingratitude of another, form a counterpart to the mis-
takes and misfortunes of Lear: his double amour with the
two sisters, and the share which he has in bringing about
the fatal catastrophe, are all managed with an uncommon
degree of skill and power.
Lear.
111
*
It has been said, and we think justly, that the third act
of 'Othello and the three first acts of Lear,' are Shake
spear's great masterpieces in the logic of passion: that
they contain the highest examples not only of the force of
individual passion, but of its dramatic vicissitudes and
striking effects arising from the different circumstances
and characters of the persons speaking. We see the ebb
and flow of the feeling, its pauses and feverish starts, its
impatience of opposition, its accumulating force when it
has time to recollect itself, the manner in which it avails
itself of every passing word or gesture, its haste to repel
insinuation, the alternate contraction and dilatation of the
soul, and all "the dazzling fence of controversy" in this
mortal combat with poisoned weapons, aimed at the heart,
where each wound is fatal. We have seen in 'Othello,' how
the unsuspecting frankness and impetuous passions of the
Moor are played upon and exasperated by the artful dex-
terity of Iago. In the present play, that which aggravates
the sense of sympathy in the reader, and of uncontrollable
anguish in the swoln heart of Lear, is the petrifying indif-
ference, the cold, calculating, obdurate selfishness of his
daughters. His keen passions seem whetted on their stony
hearts. The contrast would be too painful, the shock too
great, but for the intervention of the Fool, whose well-
timed levity comes in to break the continuity of feeling
when it can no longer be borne, and to bring into play
again the fibres of the heart just as they are growing rigid
from over-strained excitement. The imagination is glad
to take refuge in the half-comic, half-serious comments of
the Fool, just as the mind under the extreme anguish of a
surgical operation vents itself in sallies of wit. The
character was also a grotesque ornament of the barbarous
times, in which alone the tragic ground-work of the story
could be laid. In another point of view it is indispen-
sable, inasmuch as while it is a diversion to the too great
intensity of our disgust, it carries the pathos to the highest


112
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.

$
pitch of which it is capable, by showing the pitiable weak-
ness of the old king's conduct and its irretrievable conse-
quences in the most familiar point of view. Lear may
well "beat at the gate which let his folly in," after, as the
Fool says, “he has made his daughters his mothers." The
character is dropped in the third act to make room for the
entrance of Edgar as Mad Tom, which well accords with
the increasing bustle and wildness of the incidents; and
nothing can be more complete than the distinction between
Lear's real and Edgar's assumed madness, while the resem-
blance in the cause of their distresses, from the severing
of the nearest ties of natural affection, keeps up a unity of
interest. Shakespear's mastery over his subject, if it was
not art, was owing to a knowledge of the connecting links
of the passions, and their effect upon the mind, still more
wonderful than any systematic adherence to rules, and
that anticipated and outdid all the efforts of the most
refined art, not inspired and rendered instinctive by
genius.
One of the most perfect displays of dramatic power is
the first interview between Lear and his daughter, after
the designed affronts upon him, which till one of his
knights reminds him of them, his sanguine temperament
had led him to overlook. He returns with his train from
hunting, and his usual impatience breaks out in his first
words, "Let me not stay a jot for dinner; go, get it
ready." He then encounters the faithful Kent in disguise,
and retains him in his service; and the first trial of his
honest duty is to trip up the heels of the officious Steward
who makes so prominent and despicable a figure through
the piece. On the entrance of Goneril the following
dialogue takes place :
"Lear. How now, daughter? what makes that frontlet on?
Methinks you are too much of late i' the frown.
Fool. Thou wast a pretty fellow, when thou hadst no need to
care for her frowning; now thou art an O without a figure I am
Lear.
113
better than thou art now; I am a fool, thou art nothing. [To Gon.]
Yes, forsooth, I will hold my tongue; so your face bids me, though
you say nothing. Mum, mum.
He that keeps nor crust nor crumb,
Weary of all, shall want some.—
That's a sheal'd peascod!
[Pointing to Lear.
Goneril. Not only, sir, this your all-licens'd fool,
But other of your insolent retinue
Do hourly carp and quarrel; breaking forth
In rank and not-to-be-endured riots.
Sir,
I had thought, by making this well known unto you,
T' have found a safe redress; but now grow fearful,
By what yourself too late have spoke and done,
That you protect this course, and put it on
By your allowance; which if you should, the fault
Would not 'scape censure, nor the redresses sleep,
Which, in the tender of a wholesome weal,
Might in their working do you that offence,
Which else were shame, that then necessity
Will call discreet proceeding.
Fool. For, you trow, nuncle,
The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long,
That it had its head bit off by its young.
So out went the candle, and we were left darkling.
Lear. Are you our daughter?
Goneril. Come, sir,
I would you would make use of that good wisdom
Whereof I know you're fraught; and put away
These dispositions, which of late transform you
From what you rightly are.
Fool. May not an ass know when the cart draws the horse ?—
Whoop, Jug! I love thee.
Lear. Does any here know me ?-Why, this is not Lear:
Doth Lear walk thus? speak thus? Where are his eyes?
Either his notion weakens, or his discernings
Are lethargied-Ha! waking?-'Tis not so.-
Who is it that can tell me who I am?
Fool. Lear's shadow.
Lear. I would learn that: for by the marks of sovereignty
Knowledge, and reason, I should be false-persuaded
I had daughters.-
Fool. Which they will make an obedient father.
Lear. Your name, fair gentlewoman?
I
114
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
Goneril. This admiration, sir, is much o' the savour
Of other your new pranks. I do beseech you
To understand my purposes aright:
As you are old and reverend, should be wise :
Here do you keep a hundred knights and squires;
Men so disorder'd, so debauch'd, and bold,
That this our court, infected with their manners,
Shows like a riotous inn: epicurism and lust
Make it more like a tavern, or a brothel,
Than a grac'd palace. The shame itself doth speak
For instant remedy: be then desir'd
By her, that else will take the thing she begs,
A little to disquantity your train ;
And the remainder, that shall still depend,
To be such men as may besort your age,
Which know themselves and you.
Lear.
Darkness and devils!-
Saddle my horses; call my train together.-
Degenerate bastard! I'll not trouble thee;
Yet have I left a daughter.
Goneril. You strike my people; and your disorder'd rabble
Make servants of their betters.
Enter ALBANY,
Lear. Woe, that too late repents-[To Albany.] O, sir, arc'
you come?
Is it your will? speak, sir.-Prepare my horses.—
Ingratitude! thou marble-hearted fiend,
More hideous, when thou show'st thee in a child,
Than the sea-monster!
Albany,
Pray, sir, be patient.
[To Goneril.
Lear. Detested kite! thou liest.
My train are men of choice and rarest parts,
That all particulars of duty know;
And in the most exact regard support
The worships of their name.-O most small fault,,
How ugly didst thou in Cordelia show!
Which, like an engine, wrench'd my frame of nature
From the fixt place; drew from my heart all love,
And added to the gall. O Lear, Lear, Lear!
Beat at this gate, that let thy folly in,
[Striking his hear.
And thy dear judgment out!-Go, go, my people!
Albany. My lord, I'm guiltless, as I'm ignorant
Of what hath mov'd you.
1
Lear.
115
Lear.
It may be so, my lord-
Hear, nature, hear! dear goddess, hear!
Suspend thy purpose, if thou didst intend
To make this creature fruitful!
Into her womb convey sterility!
Dry up in her the organs of increase;
And from her derogate body never spring
A babe to honour her! If she must teem,
Create her child of spleen: that it may live,
And be a thwart disnatur'd torment to her!
Let it stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth;
With cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks;
Turn all her mother's pains and benefits
To laughter and contempt; that she may feel
How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is
To have a thankless child!Away, away!
Albany. Now, gods, that we adore, whereof comes this?
Goneril. Never afflict yourself to know the cause;
But let his disposition have that scope
That dotage gives it.
Re-enter LEAR.
Lear. What, fifty of my followers at a clap!
Within a fortnight!
Albany.
What's the matter, sir?
[Exit.
Lear. I'll tell thee;-[To Gon.] life and death! I am asham'd
That thou hast power to shake my manhood thus:
That these hot tears, which break from me perforce,
Should make thee worth them.- Blasts and fogs upon thee!
Th' untented woundings of a father's curse
Pierce every sense about thee! -Old fond eyes
Beweep this cause again, I'll pluck you out;
And cast you, with the waters that you lose,
To temper clay. -Ha! is it come to this?
Let it be so: -I have another daughter,
Who, I am sure, is kind and comfortable;
When she shall hear this of tice, with her nails
She'll flay thy wolfish visage. Thou shalt find
That I'll resume the shape, which thou dost think
I have cast off for ever.
[Exeunt Lear, Kent, and Attendants." 1
This is certainly fine: no wonder that Lear says after
it, "O let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heavens," feeling
[¹ Act i., sc. 4.]
116
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
its effects by anticipation; but fine as is this burst of rage
and indignation at the first blow aimed at his hopes and
expectations, it is nothing near so fine as what follows
from his double disappointment, and his lingering efforts
to see which of them he shall lean upon for support and
find comfort in, when both his daughters turn against his
age and weakness. It is with some difficulty that Lear
gets to speak with his daughter Regan, and her husband,
at Gloster's castle. In concert with Goneril they have
left their own home on purpose to avoid him. His appre-
hensions are first alarmed by this circumstance, and when
Gloster, whose guests they are, urges the fiery temper of
the Duke of Cornwall as an excuse for not importuning
him a second time, Lear breaks out—
66
Vengeance! Plague! Death! Confusion !-
Fiery? What quality? Why, Gloster, Gloster,
I'd speak with the Duke of Cornwall, and his wife.” 1
Afterwards, feeling perhaps not well himself, he is
inclined to admit their excuse from illness, but then recol-
lecting that they have set his messenger (Kent) in the
stocks, all his suspicions are roused again, and he insists
on seeing them.
"Enter CORNWALL, REGAN, GLOSTER, and Servants.
Lear. Good-morrow to you both.
Cornwall. Hail to your grace!
Regan. I am glad to see your highness.
[Kent is set at liberty.
Lear. Regan, I think you are; I know what reason
I have to think so: if thou should'st not be glad,
I would divorce me from thy mother's tomb,
Sepulchring an adultress.
Some other time for that.-
-[To Kent.] O, are you free?
-Beloved Regan,
Thy sister's naught: O Regan, she hatlı tied
Sharp-tooth'd unkindness, like a vulture, here————
[Points to his heart.
I can scarce speak to thee; thou'lt not believe,
Of how deprav'd a quality-O Regan !
[¹ Act ii., sc. 4.]
Lear.
117
Regan. I pray you, sir, take patience; I have hope
You less know how to value her desert,
Than she to scant her duty.
Lear.
Say, how is that?
Regan. I cannot think my sister in the least
Would fail her obligation; if, sir, perchance,
She have restrain'd the riots of your followers,
"Tis on such ground, and to such wholesome end,
As clears her from all blame.
Lear.
My curses on her
Regan. O, sir, you are old;
Nature in you stands on the very verge
Of her confine: you should be rul❜d and led
By some discretion, that discerns your state
Better than yourself. Therefore, I pray you,
That to our sister you do make return;
Say you have wrong'd her, sir.
Lear.
Ask her forgiveness?
Do you but mark how this becomes the house?
Dear daughter, I confess that I am old;
Age is unnecessary; on my knees I beg,
That you'll vouchsafe me raiment, bed, and food.
Regan. Good sir, no more; these are unsightly tricks:
Return you to my sister.
Lear. [Rising.] Never, Regan:
She hath abated me of half my train;
Look'd blank upon me; struck me with her tongue,
Most serpent-like, upon the very heart :—
All the stor❜d vengeances of heaven fall
On her ungrateful top! Strike her young bones,
You taking airs, with lameness!
Cornwall.
Fie, sir, fie!
Lear. You nimble lightnings, dart your blinding flames
Into her scornful eyes! Infect her beauty,
You fen-suck'd fogs, drawn by the powerful sun,
To fall and blast her pride!
Regan. O the blest gods! So will you wish on me,
When the rash mood is on.
Lear. No, Regan, thou shalt never have my curse :
Thy tender-hefted nature shall not give
Thee o'er to harshness; her eyes are fierce; but thine
Do comfort, and not burn. 'Tis not in thee
To grudge my pleasures, to cut off my train,
To bandy hasty words, to scant my sizes,
ì
118
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
And, in conclusion, to oppose the bolt
Against my coming in: thou better know'st
The offices of nature, bond of childhood,
Effects of courtesy, dues of gratitude;
Thy half o' the kingdom thou hast not forgot,
Wherein I thee endow'd.
Regan.
Good sir, to the purpose.
[Trumpets within.
Lear. Who put my man i' the stocks?
Cornwall. What trumpet's that?
Regan. I know't, my sister's: this approves her letter,
That she would soon be here.
Enter OSWALD.
Is your lady come?
Lear. This is a slave, whose easy-borrow'd pride
Dwells in the fickle grace of her he follows:-
Out, varlet, from my sight!
Cornwall.
What means your grace?
Who comes here? O heavens,
Lear. Who stock'd my servant? Regan, I have good hope
Thou did'st not know on't.-
Enter GONERIL.
If you do love old men, if your sweet sway
Allow obedience, if yourselves are old,
Make it your cause; send down, and take my part!-
[To Gon.] Art not asham'd to look upon this beard ?—
O, Regan, wilt thou take her by the hand?
Goneril. Why not by the hand, sir? How have I offended?
All's not offence, that indiscretion finds,
And dotage terms so.
Lear.
O, sides, you are too tough!
Will you yet hold?-How came my man i' the stocks?
Cornwall. I set him there, sir: but his own disorders
Deserv'd much less advancement.
Lear.
You! did you?
Regan. I pray you, father, being weak, seem so.
If, till the expiration of your month,
You will return and sojourn with my sister,
Dismissing half your train, come then to me;
I'm now from home, and out of that provision
Which shall be needful for your entertainment.
Lear. Return to her, and fifty men dismiss'd?
No, rather I abjure ali roofs, and choose
To be a comrade with the wolf and owl-
To wage against the enmity o' th' air,
Lear.
119
-Return with her!
Necessity's sharp pinch !-
Why, the hot-blooded France, that dowerless took
Our youngest born, I could as well be brought
To knee his throne, and, squire-like, pension beg
To keep base life afoot.- -Return with her!
Persuade me rather to be slave and sumpter
To this detested groom.
Goneril.
[Pointing at Oswald.
At your choice, sir.
Lear. I prithee, daughters, do not make me mad;
I will not trouble thee, my child; farewell:
We'll no more meet, no more see one another :-
But yet thou art my flesh, my blood, my daughter;
Or rather a disease that's in my flesh,
Which I must needs call mine: thou art a bile,
A plague-sore, an embossed carbuncle,
In my corrupted blood. But I'll not chide thee;
Let shame come when it will, I do not call it :
I did not bid the thunder-bearer shoot,
Nor tell tales of thee to high-judging Jove:
Mend when thou canst; be better at thy leisure :
I can be patient; I can stay with Regan,
I and my hundred knights.
Regan.
Not altogether so ;
I look'd not for you yet, nor am provided
For your fit welcome. Give ear, sir, to my sister;
For those that mingle reason with your passion
Must be content to think you old, and so
But she knows what she does.
Is this well spoken?
Lear.
Regan. I dare avouch it, sir: What, fifty followers?
Is it not well? What should you need of more?
Yea, or so many? sith that both charge and danger
Speak 'gainst so great a number? How, in one house,
Should many people, under two commands,
Hold amity? 'Tis hard-almost impossible.
Goneril. Why might not you, my lord, receive attendance
From those that she calls servants, or from mine?
Regan. Why not, my lord? If then they chanc'd to slack you,
We would control them: If you will come to me-
For now I spy a danger - I entreat you
To bring but five-and-twenty; to no more
Will I give place, or notice.
Lear. I gave you all-
Regan.
And in good time you gave it.
120
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
Lear. Made you my guardians, my depositaries;
But kept a reservation to be follow'd
With such a number: what, must I come to you
With five-and-twenty, Regan! said you so?
Regan. And speak 't again, my lord: no more with me.
Lear. Those wicked creatures yet do look well-favour'd,
When others are more wicked; not being the worst,
Stands in some rank of praise: I'll go with thee;
[To Goneril
Thy fifty yet doth double five-and-twenty,
And thou art twice her love.
Gonerill.
Hear me, my lord;
What need you five-and-twenty, ten, or five,
To follow in a house, where twice so many
Have a command to tend you?
Regan.
What need one?
Lear. O, reason not the need: our basest beggars
Are in the poorest thing superfluous :
Allow not nature more than nature needs,
Man's life is cheap as beast's: thou art a lady;
If only to go warm were gorgeous,
Why, nature needs not what thou gorgeous wear'st;
Which scarcely keeps thee warm.—But for true need—
You heavens, give me that patience which I need!
You see me here, you gods, a poor old man,
As full of grief as age; wretched in both!
If it be you that stir these daughters' hearts
Against their father, fool me not so much
To bear it tamely; touch me with noble anger!
O, let no women's weapons, water-drops,
Stain my man's cheeks!-No, you unnatural hags,
I will have such revenges on you both,
That all the world shall-I will do such things—
What they are, yet I know not; but they shall be
The terrors of the earth. You think I'll weep:
No, I'll not weep:—
I have full cause of weeping; but this heart
Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws,
Or e'er I'll weep:-O, fool, I shall go mad !—
[Exeunt Lear, Gloster, Kent, and Fool."
If there is anything in any author like this yearning of
the heart, these throes of tenderness, this profound ex-
pression of all that can be thought and felt in the most
Lear.
121
!
heartrending situations, we are glad of it; but it is in
some author that we have not read.
"¹his
The scene in the storm, where he is exposed to all the
fury of the elements, though grand and terrible, is not so
fine, but the moralising scenes with Mad Tom, Kent,
and Gloster, are upon a par with the former. His excla-
mation in the supposed trial-scene of his daughters, “The
little dogs and all, Tray, Blanch, and Sweetheart, see,
they bark at me,”¹ his issuing his orders, "Then let them
anatomize Regan, see what breeds about her heart,”² and
his reflection when he sees the misery of Edgar, "Nothing
could have subdued nature to such a lowness but his
unkind daughters, are in a style of pathos, where the
extremest resources of the imagination are called in to
lay open the deepest movements of the heart, which was
peculiar to Shakespear. In the same style and spirit is
his interrupting the Fool, who asks, "whether a madman
be a gentleman or a yeoman," by answering "A king,
a king.'
"4

The indirect part that Gloster takes in these scenes
where his generosity leads him to relieve Lear and resent
the cruelty of his daughters, at the very time that he is
himself instigated to seek the life of his son, and suffering
under the sting of his supposed ingratitude, is a striking
accompaniment to the situation of Lear. Indeed, the
manner in which the threads of the story are woven
together is almost as wonderful in the way of art as the
carrying on the tide of passion, still varying and unim-
paired, is on the score of nature. Among the remarkable
instances of this kind are Edgar's meeting with his old
blind father; the deception he practises upon him when
he pretends to lead him to the top of Dover-cliff—“Come
on, sir, here's the place," to prevent his ending his life
and miseries together; his encounter with the perfidious
[2 Ibid.] [³ Act iii., so. 4.]
[³ Act iv., sc. 6.]
[¹ Act iii., sc. 6.]
[4 Act iii., sc. 6.]
122
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
*
""
Steward whom he kills, and his finding the letter from
Goneril to his brother upon him which leads to the final
catastrophe, and brings the wheel of Justice "full circle
home to the guilty parties. The bustle and rapid succes-
sion of events in the last scenes is surprising. But the
meeting between Lear and Cordelia is by far the most
affecting part of them. It has all the wildness of poetry,
and all the heartfelt truth of nature. The previous
account of her reception of the news of his unkind treat-
ment, her involuntary reproaches to her sisters, "Shame of
ladies, sisters," Lear's backwardness to see his daughter,
the picture of the desolate state to which he is reduced,
Alack, 'tis he; why he was met even now, as mad as the
vex'd sea, singing aloud,"¹ only prepare the way for and
heighten our expectation of what follows, and assuredly
this expectation is not disappointed when through the
tender care of Cordelia he revives and recollects her.
"Cordelia. How does my royal lord?
majesty !

How fares your
Lear. You do me wrong to take me out o' the grave:
Thou art a soul in bliss; but I am bound
Upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears
Do scald like molten lead.
Cordelia.
Sir, do you know me?
Lear. You are a spirit, I know: when did you dié ?
Cordelia. Still, still, far wide!
Doct. He's scarce awake; let him alone awhile.
Lear. Where have I been?
light?
Where am I?-Fair day-
I'm mightily abus'd.-I should e'en die with pity,
To see another thus.-I know not what to say.
I will not swear these are my hands :-let's see;
I feel this pin prick. 'Would I were assured
Of my condition.
ļ Cordelia. O, look upon me, sir,
And hold your hands in benediction o'er me:
No, sir, you must not kneel.
[¹ Act iv., sc. 4.]
1
Lear.
123
Lear.
Pray, do not mock me:
I am a very foolish fond old man,
Fourscore and upward; not an hour more nor less;
And, to deal plainly,
I fear, I am not in my perfect mind.
Methinks, I should know you, and know this man;
Yet I am doubtful; for I'm mainly ignorant
What place this is; and all the skill I have
Remembers not these garments; nor I know not
Where I did lodge last night. Do not laugh at me;
For, as I am a man, I think this lady
To be my child Cordelia.
Cordelia.
And so I am, I am !" 1
Almost equal to this in awful beauty is their consolation
of each other when, after the triumph of their enemies,
they are led to prison:
"Cordelia.
We are not the first
Who, with best meaning, have incurr'd the worst.
For thee, oppressed king, am I cast down;
Myself could else outfrown false fortune's frown.—-
Shall we not see these daughters and these sisters?
Lear. No, no, no, no! Come, let's away to prison:
We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage:
When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down
And ask of thee forgiveness: so we'll live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues
Talk of court news; and we'll talk with them too-
Who loses, and who wins; who's in, who's out;-
And take upon 's the mystery of things,
As if we were God's spies: and we'll wear out,
In a wall'd prison, packs and sects of great ones,
That ebb and flow by the moon.
Edmund.
Take them away.
Lear. Upon such sacrifices, my Cordelia,
The gods themselves throw incense." 2
The concluding events are sad, painfully sad; but their
pathos is extreme. The oppression of the feelings is
relieved by the very interest we take in the misfortunes of
others, and by the reflections to which they give birth.
[¹ Act iv., sc. 7.]
2
[² Act v., sc. 3.
124
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
Cordelia is hanged in prison by the orders of the bastard
Edmund, which are known too late to be countermanded,
and Lear dies broken-hearted, lamenting over her.
"Lear. And my poor fool is hang'd! No, no, no, life :
Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life,
And thou no breath at all? Thou wilt come no more,
Never, never, never, never, never!-
Pray you, undo this button: thank you, sir.”¹
He dies, and indeed we feel the truth of what Kent says
on the occasion—
"Vex not his ghost: O let him pass! he hates him,
That would upon the rack of this tough world
Stretch him out longer." 2
Yet a happy ending has been contrived for this play,
which is approved of by Dr. Johnson and condemned by
Schlegel. A better authority than either, on any subject
in which poetry and feeling are concerned, has given it in
favour of Shakespear, in some remarks on the acting of
Lear, with which we shall conclude this account.
“The ‘Lear' of Shakespear cannot be acted. The con-
temptible machinery with which they mimic the storm.
which he goes out in, is not more inadequate to represent
the horrors of the real elements than any actor can be to
represent Lear. The greatness of Lear is not in corporal
dimension, but in intellectual; the explosions of his pas-
sions are terrible as a volcano: they are storms turning up
and disclosing to the bottom that rich sea, his mind, with
all its vast riches. It is his mind which is laid bare. This
case of flesh and blood seems too insignificant to be thought
on; even as he himself neglects it. On the stage we see
nothing but corporal infirmities and weakness, the impo-
tence of rage; while we read it, we see not Lear, but we
are Lear;- we are in his mind: we are sustained by a
grandeur which baffles the malice of daughters and storms;
in the aberrations of his reason, we discover a mighty
[¹ Act v., sc. 3.]
[2 Ibid.]
Lear.
125
with such things?
tamperings with it
irregular power of reasoning, immethodised from the or-
dinary purposes of life, but exerting its powers, as the
wind blows where it listeth, at will on the corruptions and
abuses of mankind. What have looks or tones to do with
that sublime identification of his age with that of the
heavens themselves, when in his reproaches to them for con-
niving at the injustice of his children, he reminds them
that they themselves are old?' What gesture shall we
appropriate to this? What has the voice or the eye to do
But the play is beyond all art, as the
show: it is too hard and stony: it
must have love-scenes, and a happy ending. It is not
enough that Cordelia is a daughter, she must shine as
a lover too. Tate has put his hook in the nostrils of this
Leviathan, for Garrick and his followers, the showmen of
the scene, to draw it about more easily. A happy end-
ing!—as if the living martyrdom that Lear had gone
through, the flaying of his feelings alive, did not make a
fair dismissal from the stage of life the only decorous
thing for him. If he is to live and be happy after, if he
could sustain this world's burden after, why all this pudder
and preparation-why torment us with all this unnecessary
sympathy? As if the childish pleasure of getting his gilt
robes and sceptre again could tempt him to act over again
his misused station,—as if at his years and with his ex-
perience, anything was left but to die.”¹
Four things have struck us in reading Lear :'
1. That poetry is an interesting study, for this reason,
that it relates to whatever is most interesting in human
life. Whoever therefore has a contempt for poetry, has a
contempt for himself and humanity.
2. That the language of poetry is superior to the
language of painting; because the strongest of our recol-
lections relate to feelings, not to faces.
¹ See an article, called 'Theatralia,' in the second volume of the
Reflector,' by Charles Lamb (or in his Works,' 1818, 2 vols., 12mo.].
C
126
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
3. That the greatest strength of genius is shown in
describing the strongest passions: for the power of the
imagination, in works of invention, must be in proportion
to the force of the natural impressions, which are the sub-
ject of them.
4. That the circumstance which balances the pleasure
against the pain in tragedy is, that in proportion to the
greatness of the evil, is our sense and desire of the opposite
good excited; and that our sympathy with actual suffering
is lost in the strong impulse given to our natural affec-
tions, and carried away with the swelling tide of passion,
that gushes from and relieves the heart.
C
RICHARD II.2
'RICHARD II.' is a play little known compared with
Richard III.,' which last is a play that every unfledged
candidate for theatrical fame chooses to strut and fret his
hour upon the stage in; yet we confess that we prefer the
nature and feeling of the one to the noise and bustle of
the other; at least, as we are so often forced to see it
acted. In 'Richard II.' the weakness of the king leaves us
leisure to take a greater interest in the misfortunes of the
man. After the first act, in which the arbitrariness of his
behaviour only proves his want of resolution, we see him
staggering under the unlooked-for blows of fortune, be-
wailing his loss of kingly power, not preventing it,
sinking under the aspiring genius of Bolingbroke his
authority trampled on, his hopes failing him, and his
¹ The date of its composition seems to be uncertain. It was first
printed in 1597. In 1608 were first incorporated 'New Additions
of the Parliament Scene, and the Deposing of King Richard.'
There were two other early dramas on this subject; but to what
extent, if any, Shakespear was indebted to them cannot at present
be ascertained.-ED.

Richard II.
127
pride crushed and broken down under insults and injuries,
which his own misconduct had provoked, but which he
has not courage or manliness to resent. The change of
tone and behaviour in the two competitors for the throne
according to their change of fortune, from the capricious
sentence of banishment passed by Richard upon Boling-
broke, the suppliant offers and modest pretensions of the
latter on his return to the high and haughty tone with
which he accepts Richard's resignation of the crown after
the loss of all his power, the use which he makes of the
deposed king to grace his triumphal progress through the
streets of London, and the final intimation of his wish for
his death, which immediately finds a servile executioner,
is marked throughout with complete effect and without the
slightest appearance of effort. The steps by which Boling-
broke mounts the throne are those by which Richard
sinks into the grave. We feel neither respect nor love
for the deposed monarch; for he is as wanting in energy
as in principle: but we pity him, for he pities himself.
His heart is by no means hardened against himself, but
bleeds afresh at every new stroke of mischance, and his
sensibility, absorbed in his own person, and unused to
misfortune, is not only tenderly alive to its own sufferings,
but without the fortitude to bear them. He is, however,
human in his distresses; for to feel pain, and sorrow,
weakness, disappointment, remorse, and anguish, is the lot
of humanity, and we sympathise with him accordingly.
The sufferings of the man make us forget that he ever was
a king.
The right assumed by sovereign power to trifle at its
will with the happiness of others as a matter of course, or
to remit its exercise as a matter of favour, is strikingly
shown in the sentence of banishment so unjustly pro-
nounced on Bolingbroke and Mowbray, and in what
Bolingbroke says when four years of his banishment are
taken off, with as little reason:


128
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
"How long a time lies in one little word!
Four lagging winters and four wanton springs
End in a word: such is the breath of kings.":
A more affecting image of the loneliness of a state
of exile can hardly be given than by what Bolingbroke
afterwards observes of his having "sighed my English.
breath in foreign clouds ;"" or than that conveyed in Mow-
bray's complaint at being banished fer life :
"The language I have learned these forty years,
My native English, now I must forego;
And now my tongue's use is to me no more
Than an unstringed viol or a harp,
Or like a cunning instrument cas'd up,
Or being open, put into his hands
That knows no touch to tune the harmony.
I am too old to fawn upon a nurse,
Too far in years to be a pupil now.”—³
•
How very beautiful is all this, and at the same time how
very English too!
'Richard II.' may be considered as the first of that series
of English historical plays, in which "is hung armour of
the invincible knights of old," in which their hearts seem
to strike against their coats of mail, where their blood
tingles for the fight, and words are but the harbingers of
blows. Of this state of accomplished barbarism the appeal
of Bolingbroke and Mowbray is an admirable specimen.
Another of these "keen encounters of their wits," which
serve to whet the talkers' swords, is where Aumerle
answers in the presence of Bolingbroke to the charge
which Bagot brings against him of being an accessory in
Gloster's death:
"Fitzwater. If that thy valour stand on sympathy,
There is my gage, Aumerle, in gage to thine;
By that fair sun that shows me where thou stand❜st,
I heard thee say, and vauntingly thou spak'st it,
[¹ Act i., sc. 3.]
[² Act iii., sc. 1.]
[³ Act i., sc. 3.]
Richard II.
129
That thou wert cause of noble Gloster's death.
If thou deny'st it twenty times thou liest,
And I will turn thy falsehood to thy heart
Where it was forged, with my rapier's point.
Aumerle. Thou dar'st not, coward, live to see the day.
Fitzwater. Now, by my soul, I would it were this hour.
Aumerle. Fitzwater, thou art damn'd to hell for this.
Percy. Aumerle, thou liest; his honour is as true,
In this appeal, as thou art all unjust ;
And that thou art so, there I throw my gage
To prove it on thee, to the extremest point
Of mortal breathing. Seize it, if thou dar'st.
Aumerle. And if I do not, may my hands rot off,
And never brandish more revengeful steel
Over the glittering helmet of my foe. .
Who sets me else? By heav'n, I'll throw at all.
I have a thousand spirits in my breast,
To answer twenty thousand such as you.
•
Surrey. My lord Fitzwater, I do remember well
The very time Aumerle and you did talk.
Fitzwater. My lord, 'tis true: you were in presence then. ·
And you can witness with me, this is true.
Surrey. As false, by heav'n, as heav'n itself is true.
Fitzwater. Surrey, thou liest.
Surrey.
Dishonourable boy,
That lie shall lie so heavy on my sword,
That it shall render vengeance and revenge,
Till thou the lie-giver, and that lie do lie
In earth as quiet as thy father's skull.
In proof whereof, there is my honour's pawn:
Engage it to the trial, if thou dar'st.
Fitzwater. How fondly dost thou spur a forward horse:
If I dare eat or drink, or breathe, or live,
I dare meet Surrey in a wilderness,
And spit upon him, whilst I say he lies,
And lies, and lies: there is my bond of faith,
To tie thee to my strong correction.
As I do hope to thrive in this new world,
Aumerle is guilty of my true appeal—” ¹

The truth is, that there is neither truth nor honour in
all these noble persons: they answer words with words,
as they do blows with blows, in mere self-defence: nor
♫¹ Act iv., sc. 1.]
K
130
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
have they any principle whatever but that of courage in
maintaining any wrong they dare commit, or any false-
hood which they find it useful to assert. How different
were these noble knights and "barons bold" from their
more refined descendants in the present day, who, instead
of deciding questions of right by brute force, refer every-
thing to convenience, fashion, and good breeding! In
point of any abstract love of truth or justice, they are just
the same now that they were then.
The characters of old John of Gaunt and of his brother
York, uncles to the King, the one stern and foreboding,
the other honest, good-natured, doing all for the best, and
therefore doing nothing, are well kept up. The speech of
the former, in praise of England, is one of the most elo-
quent that ever was penned. We should perhaps hardly
be disposed to feed the pampered egotism of our country-
men by quoting this description, were it not that the con-
clusion of it (which looks prophetic) may qualify any
improper degree of exultation:
"This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle,
This earth of Majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-Paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war;
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house
Against the envy of less happier lands:
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,
This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings,
Fear'd by their breed and famous by their birth,
Renowned for their deeds as far from home
(For Christian service and true chivalry),
As is the sepulchre, in stubborn Jewry,
Of the world's ransom, blessed Mary's Son;
This land of such dear souls, this dear dear land,
Dear for her reputation through the world,
Is now leas'd out-I die pronouncing it--


Richard II.
131
Like to a tenement or pelting farm:
England bound in with the triumphant sea,
Whose rocky shore beats back the envious surge
Of watery Neptune, 's now bound in with shame,
With inky-blots and rotten parchment bonds.
That England that was wont to conquer others,
Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.”¹
The character of Bolingbroke, afterwards Henry IV., is
drawn with a masterly hand-patient for occasion, and
then steadily availing himself of it, seeing his advantage
afar off, but only seizing on it when he has it within his
reach, humble, crafty, bold, and aspiring, encroaching by
regular but slow degrees, building power on opinion, and
cementing opinion by power. His disposition is first un-
folded by Richard himself, who however is too self-willed
and secure to make a proper use of his knowledge:
"Ourself and Bushy, Bagot here and Green,
Observed his courtship to the common people:
How he did seem to dive into their hearts,
With humble and familiar courtesy,
What reverence he did throw away on slaves;
Wooing poor craftsmen with the craft of smiles
And patient under-bearing of his fortune,
As 'twere to banish their affections with him.
Off goes his bonnet to an oyster-wench;
A brace of draymen bid God speed him well,
And had the tribute of his supple knee,
With, Thanks my countrymen, my loving friends;
As were our England in reversion his,
And he our subjects' next degree in hope.”
Afterwards, he gives his own character to Percy, in these
words:
"I thank thee, gentle Percy, and be sure
I count myself in nothing else so happy,
As in a soul rememb'ring my good friends;
And as my fortune ripens with thy love,
It shall be still thy true love's recompense.

193
We know how he afterwards kept his promise. His bold
assertion of his own rights, his pretended submission to
[¹ Act ii., sc. 1.] [² Act i., sc. 4.] [s 4 et ii., sc. 3.]

132
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.

ने
the king, and the ascendency which he tacitly assumes
over him without openly claiming it, as soon as he has
him in his power, are characteristic traits of this ambi-
tious and politic usurper. But the part of Richard him-
self gives the chief interest to the play. His folly, his
vices, his misfortunes, his reluctance to part with the
crown, his fear to keep it, his weak and womanish regrets,
his starting tears, his fits of hectic passion, his smothered
majesty, pass in succession before us, and make a picture
as natural as it is affecting. Among the most striking
touches of pathos are his wish:
"O, that I were a mockery king of snow,
Standing before the sun of Bolingbroke,
To melt myself away in water-drops!" 1
and the incident of the poor groom who comes to visit
him in prison, and tells him :
"O, how it yearn'd my heart, when I beheld,
In London streets, that coronation-day,
When Bolingbroke rode on roan Barbary—” 2
We shall have occasion to return hereafter to the charac-
ter of Richard II. in speaking of Henry VI. There is
only one passage more, the description of his entrance into
London with Bolingbroke, which we should like to quote
here, if it had not been so used and worn out, so thumbed
and got by rote, so praised and painted; but its beauty
surmounts all these considerations :
"Duchess. My lord, you told me you would tell the rest,
When weeping made you break the story off
Of our two cousins coming into London.
York. Where did I leave?
Duchess.

At that sad stop, my lord,
Where rude misgovern'd hands from window tops
Threw dust and rubbish on King Richard's head.
York. Then, as I said, the duke, great Bolingbroke,
Mounted upon a hot and fiery steed,
[¹ Act iv., sc. 1.]
[² Act v., sc. 5.]
Henry IV.
133
Which his aspiring rider seem'd to know,
With slow but stately pace kept on his course,
While all tongues cried-God save thee, Bolingbroke!
You would have thought the very windows spake,
So many greedy looks of young and old
Through casements darted their desiring eyes
Upon his visage; and that all the walls
With painted imagery had said at once-
Jesu preserve thee! welcome, Bolingbroke!
Whilst he, from one side to the other turning,
Bare-headed, lower than his proud steed's neck,
Bespake them thus, I thank you, countrymen :
And thus still doing, thus he pass'd along.
Duchess. Alas, poor Richard! where rides he the while?
York. As in a theatre, the eyes of men,
After a well-grac'd actor leaves the stage,
Are idly bent on him that enters next,
Thinking his prattle to be tedious:
Even so, or with much more contempt, men's eyes
Did scowl on Richard; no man cried, God save him!
No joyful tongue gave him his welcome home:
But dust was thrown upon his sacred head!
Which with such gentle sorrow he shook off-
His face still combating with tears and smiles,
The badges of his grief and patience-
That had not God, for some strong purpose, steel'd
The hearts of men, they must perforce have melted,
And barbarism itself have pitied him.” ¹
HENRY IV.
ΙΝ TWO PARTS.”
Ir Shakespear's fondness for the ludicrous sometimes led
to faults in his tragedies (which was not often the
has made us amends by the character of Falstaff.
perhaps the most substantial comic character that
[¹ Act v., sc. 2.]
case) he
This is
This is Y
ever was
2 The First Part was printed in 1598, the Second in 1600. See,
for further particulars, Dyce's 2nd edit., iv., 204–5.—Ed.
134
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
invented. Sir John carries a most portly presence in the
mind's eye; and in him, not to speak it profanely, " we
behold the fulness of the spirit of wit and humour bodily.
We are as well acquainted with his person as his mind,
and his jokes come upon us with double force and relish
from the quantity of flesh through which they make their
way, as he shakes his fat sides with laughter, or
"lards
the lean earth as he walks along." Other comic characters
seem, if we approach and handle them, to resolve them-
selves into air," into thin air;" but this is embodied and
palpable to the grossest apprehension it lies "three
fingers deep upon the ribs," it plays about the lungs and
diaphragm with all the force of animal enjoyment. His
body is like a good estate to his mind, from which he re-
ceives rents and revenues of profit and pleasure in kind,
according to its extent and the richness of the soil. Wit
is often a meagre substitute for pleasurable sensation; an
effusion of spleen and petty spite at the comforts of others,
from feeling none in itself. Falstaff's wit is an emanation
of a fine constitution; an exuberance of good-humour and
good-nature; an overflowing of his love of laughter and
good-fellowship; a giving vent to his heart's ease, and
over-contentment with himself and others. He would not
be in character, if he were not so fat as he is; for there is
the greatest keeping in the boundless luxury of his imagi-
nation and the pampered self-indulgence of his physical
appetites. He manures and nourishes his mind with jests,
as he does his body with sack and sugar. He carves out
his jokes, as he would a capon or a haunch of venison,
where there is cut and come again; and pours out upon
them the oil of gladness. His tongue drops fatness, and
in the chambers of his brain "it snows of meat and drink.”
He keeps up perpetual holiday and open house, and we
live with him in a round of invitations to a rump and
dozen. Yet we are not to suppose that he was a merc
sensualist. All this is as much in imagination as in reality.



Henry IV.
135
1
His sensuality does not engross and stupify his other
faculties, but "ascends me into the brain, dries me there
all the foolish and dull and crudy vapours which en-
viron it, makes it apprehensive, quick, forgetive, full of
nimble, fiery, and delectable shapes." His imagination
keeps up the ball after his senses have done with it. He
seems to have even a greater enjoyment of the freedom
from restraint, of good cheer, of his ease, of his vanity, in
the ideal exaggerated description which he gives of them,
than in fact. He never fails to enrich his discourse with
allusions to eating and drinking, but we never see him at
table. He carries his own larder about with him, and he
is himself "a tun of man." His pulling out the bottle in
the field of battle is a joke to show his contempt for glory
accompanied with danger, his systematic adherence to his
Epicurean philosophy in the most trying circumstances.
Again, such is his deliberate exaggeration of his own vices,
that it does not seem quite certain whether the account of
his hostess's bill, found in his pocket, with such an out-of-
the-way charge for capons and sack with only one half-
penny-worth of bread, was not put there by himself as a
trick to humour the jest upon his favourite propensities,
and as a conscious caricature of himself. He is repre-
sented as a liar, a braggart, a coward, a glutton, &c., and
yet we are not offended but delighted with him; for he is
all these as much to amuse others as to gratify himself.
He openly assumes all these characters to show the
humorous part of them. The unrestrained indulgence
of his own ease, appetites, and convenience, has neither
malice nor hypocrisy in it. In a word, he is an actor in
himself almost as much as upon the stage, and we no more
object to the character of Falstaff in a moral point of view
than we should think of bringing an excellent comedian,
who should represent him to the life, before one of the
police offices. We only consider the number of pleasant
[¹ Part II., act iv., sc. 3.]


•

136
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
lights in which he puts certain foibles (the more pleasant
as they are opposed to the received rules and necessary
restraints of society), and do not trouble ourselves about
the consequences resulting from them, for no mischievous
consequences do result. Sir John is old as well as fat, which
gives a melancholy retrospective tinge to the character;
and by the disparity between his inclinations and his
capacity for enjoyment, makes it still more ludicrous and
fantastical.
The secret of Falstaff's wit is for the most part a
masterly presence of mind, an absolute self-possession,
which nothing can disturb. His repartees are involuntary
suggestions of his self-love; instinctive evasions of every-
thing that threatens to interrupt the career of his trium-
phant jollity and self-complacency. His very size floats
him out of all his difficulties in a sea of rich conceits; and
he turns round on the pivot of his convenience, with every
occasion and at a moment's warning. His natural repug-
nance to every unpleasant thought or circumstance, of
itself makes light of objections, and provokes the most
extravagant and licentious answers in his own justification.
His indifference to truth puts no check upon his invention,
and the more improbable and unexpected his contrivances
are, the more happily does he seem to be delivered of
them, the anticipation of their effect acting as a stimulus
to the gaiety of his fancy. The success of one adven-
turous sally gives him spirits to undertake another: he
deals always in round numbers, and his exaggerations and
excuses are "open, palpable, monstrous as the father that
begets them." His dissolute carelessness of what he says
discovers itself in the first dialogue with the Prince:


46
Falstaff. By the Lord, thou sayest true, lad. And is not my
hostess of the tavern a most sweet wench?
P. Henry. As the honey of Hibla, my old lad of the castle. And
is not a buff-jerkin a most sweet robe of durance?
Falstaff. How now, how now, mad wag? what, in thy quips and
thy quiddities? what a plague have I to do with a buff-jerkin?
Henry IV.
137
P. Henry. Why, what a pox have I to do with my hostess of the
tavern?" 1
In the same scene he afterwards affects melancholy,
from pure satisfaction of heart, and professes reform,
because it is the farthest thing in the world from his
thoughts. He has no qualms of conscience, and therefore
would as soon talk of them as of anything else when the
humour takes him:


،،
Falstaff. But Hal, I prithee, trouble me no more with vanity. I
would to God thou and I knew where a commodity of good names
were to be bought. An old lord of the council rated me the other
day in the street about you, sir; but I marked him not, and yet he
talked very wisely, but I regarded him not; and yet he talked
wisely, and in the street too.
P. Henry. Thou didst well, for wisdom cries out in the streets,
and no man regards it.
Falstaff. O, thou hast damnable iteration, and art indeed able to
corrupt a saint. Thou hast done much harm upon me, Hal—God
forgive thee for it! Before I knew thee, Hal, I knew nothing, and
now I am, if a man should speak truly, little better than one of the
wicked. I must give over this life, and I will give it over; by the
Lord, an I do not, I am a villain. I'll be damn'd for never a king's
son in Christendom.
P. Henry. Where shall we take a purse to-morrow, Jack?
Falstaff. Zounds! where thou wilt, lad, I'll make one; an I do
not, call me villain, and baffle me.
P. Henry. I see a good amendment of life in thee, from praying to
purse-taking.
Falstaff. Why, Hal, 'tis my vocation, Hal. 'Tis no sin for a man
to labour in his vocation." 2
Of the other prominent passages, his account of his pre-
tended resistance to the robbers, "who grew from four men
in buckram into eleven" as the imagination of his own valour
increased with his relating it, his getting off when the truth is
discovered by pretending he knew the Prince, the scene in
which in the person of the old King he lectures the Prince
and gives himself a good character, the soliloquy on honour,
and description of his new-raised recruits, his meeting with
the chief-justice, his abuse of the Prince and Poins, who over-
[¹ Act i., sa 2.]
[2 Ibid.]

138
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
hear him, to Doll Tearsheet, his reconciliation with Mrs.
Quickly, who has arrested him for an old debt, and whom he
persuades to pawn her plate to lend him ten pounds more,
and the scenes with Shallow and Silence, are all inimitable.
Of all of them, the scene in which Falstaff plays the part,
first, of the King, and then of Prince Henry, is the one
that has been the most often quoted. We must quote it
once more in illustration of our remarks:
"Falstaff. Harry, I do not only marvel where thou spendest thy
time, but also how thou art accompanied: for though the camomile,
the more it is trodden on, the faster it grows, yet youth, the more it
is wasted, the sooner it wears. That thou art my son, I have partly
thy mother's word, partly my own opinion; but chiefly, a villainous
trick of thine eye, and a foolish hanging of thy nether lip, that doth
warrant me. If then thou be son to me, here lies the point; -Why,
being son to me, art thou so pointed at? Shall the blessed sun of
heaven prove a micher, and eat blackberries? A question not to be
asked. Shall the son of England prove a thief, and take purses? a
question to be asked. There is a thing, Harry, which thou hast
often heard of, and it is known to many in our land by the name of
pitch this pitch, as ancient writers do report, doth defile; so doth
the company thou keepest: for, Harry, now I do not speak to thee in
drink, but in tears; not in pleasure, but in passion; not in words
only, but in woes also:—and yet there is a virtuous man, whom I
have often noted in thy company, but I know not his name.

:
P. Henry. What manner of man, an it like your majesty?
Falstaff. A goodly portly man, i'faith, and a corpulent; of a
cheerful look, a pleasing eye, and a most noble carriage; and, as I
think, his age some fifty, or, by'r-lady, inclining to threescore; and
now I remember me, his name is Falstaff: if that man should be
lewdly given, he deceiveth me; for, Harry, I see virtue in his looks.
If then the tree may be known by the fruit, as the fruit by the tree,
then peremptorily I speak it, there is virtue in that Falstaff: him
keep with, the rest banish. And tell me now, thou naughty varlet,
tell me, where hast thou been this month?
P. Henry. Dost thou speak like a king? Do thou stand for me,
and I'll play my father.
Falstaff. Depose me? if thou dost it half so gravely, so majes-
tically, both in word and matter, hang me up by the heels for a
rabbit-sucker, or a poulter's hare.
P. Henry. Will, here I am set.
Falstaff. And here I stand:-judge, my masters.
Herry IV.
139
P. Henry. Now, Harry, whence come you ?
Falstaff. My noble lord, from Eastcheap.
P. Henry. The complaints I hear of thee are grievous,
Falstaff. S'blood, my lord, they are false :--nay, I'll tickle ye for
a young prince, i'faith.
P. Henry. Swearest thou, ungracious boy? henceforth ne'er look
on me. Thou art violently carried away from grace: there is a
devil haunts thee, in the likeness of an old fat man; a tun of man
is thy companion. Why dost thou converse with that trunk of
humours, that bolting-hutch of beastliness, that swollen parcel of
dropsies, that huge bombard of sack, that stuffed cloak-bag of guts,
that roasted Manningtree ox with the pudding in his belly, that
reverend vice, that grey iniquity, that father ruffian, that vanity in
years? Wherein is he good, but to taste sack and drink it? wherein
neat and cleanly, but to carve a capon and eat it? wherein cunning,
but in craft? wherein crafty, but in villainy? wherein villainous,
but in all things? wherein worthy, but in nothing?
Falstaff. I would, your grace would take me with you: whom
means your grace?
P. Henry. That villainous, abominable misleader of youth, Fal-
staff, that old white-bearded Satan.
Falstaff. My lord, the man I know.
P. Henry. I know thou dost.
Falstaff. But to say, I know more harm in him than in myself,
were to say more than I know. That he is old (the more the pity)
his white hairs do witness it: but that he is (saving your reverence)
a whore-master, that I utterly deny. If sack and sugar be a fault,
God help the wicked! if to be old and merry be a sin, then many
an old host that I know is damned if to be fat be to be hated,
then Pharaoh's lean kine are to be loved. No, my good lord;
banish Peto, banish Bardolph, banish Poins: but for sweet Jack
Falstaff, kind Jack Falstaff, true Jack Falstaff, valiant Jack Fal-
staff, and therefore more valiant, being as he is, old Jack Falstaff,
banish not him thy Harry's company; banish plump Jack, and
banish all the world.
P. Henry. I do, I will.
[A knocking heard: Exeunt Hostess, Francis, and Bardolph.
Re-enter BARDOLPH, running.
Bardolph. O, my lord, my lord; the sheriff, with a most monstrous
watch, is at the door.
Falstaff. Out, ye rogue! Play out the play: I have much to say
in the behalf of that Falstaff." 1
[¹ Act ii., sc. 4.]
140
Onaracters of Shakspeare's Plays.
One of the most characteristic descriptions of Sir John
is that which Mrs. Quickly gives of him when he asks her
"What is the gross sum that I owe thee?"
"Hostess. Marry, if thou wert an honest man, thyself and the
money too.
Thou didst swear to me upon a parcel-gilt goblet,
sitting in my Dolphin-chamber, at the round table, by a sea-coal
fire on Wednesday in Wheeson-week, when the prince broke thy
head for likening his father to a singing man of Windsor-thou
didst swear to me then, as I was washing thy wound, to marry me,
and make me my lady thy wife. Canst thou deny it? Did not
goodwife Keech, the butcher's wife, come in then, and call me gossip
Quickly? coming in to borrow a mess of vinegar; telling us, she
had a good dish of prawns; whereby thou didst desire to eat some;
whereby I told thee they were ill for a green wound? And didst
thou not, when she was gone down stairs, desire me to be no more
so familiarity with such poor people; saying, that ere long they
should call me madam? And didst thou not kiss
And didst thou not kiss me, and bid me
fetch thee thirty shillings? I put thee now to thy book oath: deny
it, if thou canst.” 1
This scene is to us the most convincing proof of Fal-
staff's power of gaining over the good-will of those he was
familiar with, except indeed Bardolph's somewhat profane
exclamation on hearing the account of his death, “Would
.I were with him, wheresome'er he is, whether in heaven or
in hell."
One of the topics of exulting superiority over others
most common in Sir John's mouth is his corpulence and
the exterior marks of good living which he carries about
him, thus "turning his vices into commodity." He
accounts for the friendship between the Prince and Poins,
from "their legs being both of a bigness;" and compares
Justice Shallow to "a man made after supper of a cheese-
paring." There cannot be a more striking gradation of
character than that between Falstaff and Shallow, and
Shallow and Silence. It seems difficult at first to fall
lower than the squire; but this fool, great as he is, finds
an admirer and humble foil in his cousin Silence. Vain

1
[¹ Part II., act ii., sc. 1.]
[2 Henry V.,' act ii., sc. 3.]
Henry IV.
141
of his acquaintance with Sir John, who makes a butt of
him, he exclaims, "Would, cousin Silence, that thou hadst
seen that which this knight and I have seen !"
“Ay,
Master Shallow, we have heard the chimes at midnight,”
says Sir John. To Falstaff's observation, “I did not think
Master Silence had been a man of this mettle," Silence
answers, “Who, I? I have been merry twice and once
ere now." What an idea is here conveyed of a prodigality
of living! What good husbandry and economical self-
denial in his pleasures! What a stock of lively recollec-
tions! It is curious that Shakespear has ridiculed in
Justice Shallow, who was "in some authority under the
king," that disposition to unmeaning tautology which is
the regal infirmity of later times, and which, it may be
supposed, he acquired from talking to his cousin Silence,
and receiving no answers:
"Falstaff. 'Fore God, you have here a goodly dwelling and a rich.
Shallow. Barren, barren, barren; beggars all, beggars all, Sir
John: marry, good air. Spread, Davy, spread, Davy. Well said,
Davy.
Falstaff. This Davy serves you for good uses.
Shallow. A good varlet, a good varlet, a very good varlet, Sir
John. By the mass, I have drank too much sack at supper-a
good varlet. Now sit down, now sit down. Come, cousin."¹
The true spirit of humanity, the thorough knowledge of
the stuff we are made of, the practical wisdom with the
seeming fooleries in the whole of the garden-scene at
Shallow's country-seat, and just before in the exquisite
lialogue between him and Silence on the death of old
Double, have no parallel anywhere else. In one point of
view, they are laughable in the extreme; in another they
are equally affecting, if it is affecting to show what a little
thing is human life, what a poor forked creature man is!
The heroic and serious part of these two plays founded
n the story of Henry IV. is not inferior to the comic and
[¹ Part II., act v., sc. 3.]
J


142
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
+
farcical. The characters of Hotspur and Prince Henry
are two of the most beautiful and dramatic, both in them-
selves and from contrast, that ever were drawn. They
are the essence of chivalry. We like Hotspur the best
upon the whole, perhaps because he was unfortunate.
The characters of their fathers, Henry IV. and old
Northumberland, are kept up equally well. Henry
naturally succeeds by his prudence and caution in keeping
what he has got; Northumberland fails in his enterprise
from an excess of the same quality, and is caught in the
web of his own cold, dilatory policy. Owen Glendower is
a masterly character. It is as bold and original as it is
intelligible and thoroughly natural. The disputes between
him and Hotspur are managed with infinite address and
insight into nature. We cannot help pointing out here
some very beautiful lines, where Hotspur describes the
fight between Glendower and Mortimer :
"When on the gentle Severn's sedgy bank,
In single opposition, hand to hand,
He did confound the best part of an hour
In changing hardiment with great Glendower :
Three times they breath'd, and three times did they drink,
Upon agreement, of swift Severn's flood;
Who then, affrighted with their bloody looks,
Ran fearfully among the trembling reeds,
And hid his crisp head in the hollow bank,
Blood-stained with these valiant combatants.""
The peculiarity and the excellence of Shakespear's
poetry is, that it seems as if he made his imagination the
handmaid of nature, and nature the plaything of his.
imagination. He appears to have been all the characters,
and in all the situations he describes. It is as if either he
had had all their feelings, or had lent them all his genius
to express themselves. There cannot be stronger instances
of this than Hotspur's rage when Henry IV. forbids him
to speak of Mortimer, his insensibility to all that his
[¹ Part I., act i., sc. 3.]
龚
​

Henry V.
143
father and uncle urge to calm him, and his fine abstracted
apostrophe to honour, "By heaven methinks it were an
easy leap to pluck bright honour from the moon," &c.
After all, notwithstanding the gallantry, generosity, good
temper, and idle freaks of the madcap Prince of Wales,
we should not have been sorry, if Northumberland's force
had come up in time to decide the fate of the battle at
Shrewsbury; at least, we always heartily sympathise with
Lady Percy's grief, when she exclaims,
"Had my sweet Harry had but half their numbers,
To-day might I, hanging on Hotspur's neck,
Have talked of Monmouth's grave."

1

The truth is, that we never could forgive the Prince's
treatment of Falstaff; though perhaps Shakespear knew
what was best, according to the history, the nature of the
times, and of the man. We speak only as dramatic
critics. Whatever terror the French in those days might
have of Henry V., yet, to the readers of poetry at present,
Falstaff is the better man of the two. We think of him
and quote him oftener.

HENRY V.2
HENRY V. is a very favourite monarch with the English
nation, and he appears to have been also a favourite with
Shakespear, who labours hard to apologise for the actions
of the king, by showing us the character of the man, as the
king of good fellows." He scarcely deserves this honour.
He was fond of war and low company; we know little
[¹ Part II., act ii., sc. 3.]
66
2 This drama is supposed to have been written in 1599; it was›
printed (very incorrectly) in 1600. There was an older play on
the same subject, entitled The Famous Victories of Henry the
Fifth; this was first published in 1598, but had been written and
performed more than ten years before.-ED.
144
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
else of him. He was careless, dissolute, and ambitious;-
idle, or doing mischief. In private, he seemed to have no
idea of the common decencies of life, which he subjected
to a kind of regal licence; in public affairs, he seemed to
have no idea of any rule of right or wrong, but brute
force, glossed over with a little religious hypocrisy and
archiepiscopal advice. His principles did not change
with his situation and professions. His adventure on
Gadshill was a prelude to the affair of Agincourt, only a
bloodless one; Falstaff was a puny prompter of violence
and outrage, compared with the pious and politic Arch-
bishop of Canterbury, who gave the king carte blanche, in
a genealogical tree of his family, to rob and murder in
circles of latitude and longitude abroad-to save the
possessions of the church at home. This appears in the
speeches in Shakespear, where the hidden motives that
actuate princes and their advisers in war and policy are
better laid open than in speeches from the throne or
woolsack. Henry, because he did not know how to
govern his own kingdom, determined to make war upon
his neighbours. Because his own title to the crown was
doubtful, he laid claim to that of France. Because he
did not know how to exercise the enormoùs power which
had just dropped into his hands, to any one good purpose,
he immediately undertook (a cheap and obvious resource
of sovereignty) to do all the mischief he could. Even if
absolute monarchs had the wit to find out objects of laud-
able ambition, they could only "plume up their wills" in
adhering to the more sacred formula of the royal pre-
rogative, “the right divine of kings to govern wrong,"
because will is only then triumphant when it is opposed
to the will of others, because the pride of power is only
then shown, not when it consults the rights and interests
of others, but when it insults and tramples on all justice
and all humanity. Henry declares his resolution, “France
being ours, we'll bend it to our awe, or break it all to
Henry V.
145
pieces"-a resolution worthy of a conqueror, to destroy
all that he cannot enslave; and what adds to the joke, he
lays all the blame of the consequences of his ambition on
those who will not submit tamely to his tyranny. Such
is the history of kingly power, from the beginning to the
end of the world;-with this difference, that the object of
war formerly, when the people adhered to their allegiance,
was to depose kings; the object latterly, since the people
swerved from their allegiance, has been to restore kings,
and to make common cause against mankind. The
object of our late invasion and conquest of France was to
restore the legitimate monarch, the descendant of Hugh
Capet, to the throne: Henry V. in his time made war on
and deposed the descendant of this very Hugh Capet, on
the plea that he was a usurper and illegitimate, What
would the great modern catspaw of legitimacy and re-
storer of divine right have said to the claim of Henry and
the title of the descendants of Hugh Capet? Henry V.,
it is true, was a hero, a King of England, and the con-
queror of the king of France. Yet we feel little love or
admiration for him. He was a hero, that is, he was
ready to sacrifice his own life for the pleasure of destroy-
ing thousands of other lives: he was a king of England,
but not a constitutional one, and we only like kings ac-
cording to the law; lastly, he was a conqueror of the
French king, and for this we dislike him less than if he
had conquered the French people. How then do we like
him? We like him in the play. There he is a very
amiable monster, a very splendid pageant. As we like to
gaze at a panther or a young lion in their cages in the
Tower, and catch a pleasing horror from their glistening
eyes, their velvet paws, and dreadless roar, so we take a
very romantic, heroic, patriotic, and poetical delight in
the boasts and feats of our younger Harry, as they appear
on the stage and are confined to lines of ten syllables;
[¹ Act i., sc. 2.]
146
Characters of Shakespears Plays.
where no blood follows the stroke that wounds our ears,
where no harvest bends beneath horses' hoofs, no city
flames, no little child is butchered, no dead men's bodies
are found piled on heaps and festering the next morning
-in the orchestra!
So much for the politics of this play; now for the
poetry. Perhaps one of the most striking images in all
Shakespear is that given of war in the first lines of the
Chorus:
"O for a muse of fire, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention,
A kingdom for a stage, princes to act,
And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!
Then should the warlike Harry, like himself,
Assume the port of Mars, and at his heels
Leash'd in like hounds, should famine, sword, and fire
Crouch for employment."
Rubens, if he had painted it, would not have improved
upon this simile.
The conversation between the Archbishop of Canter-
bury and the Bishop of Ely, relating to the sudden change
in the manners of Henry V., is among the well-known
Beauties of Shakespear. It is indeed admirable both for
strength and grace. It has sometimes occurred to us that
Shakespear, in describing "the reformation" of the
Prince, might have had an eye to himself—
"Which is a wonder how his grace should glean it,
Since his addiction was to courses vain,
His companies unletter'd, rude and shallow,
His hours fill'd up with riots, banquets, sports;
And never noted in him any study,
Any retirement, any sequestration
From open haunts and popularity.
Ely. The strawberry grows underneath the nettle,
And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best
Neighbour'd by fruit of baser quality:
And so the prince obscur'd his contemplation
Under the veil of wildness, which no doubt
I
Henry V.
147
Grew, like the summer-grass, fastest by night,
Unseen, yet crescive in his faculty.”¹
This at least is as probable an account of the progress
of the poet's mind as we have met with in any of the
Essays on the Learning of Shakespear.
Nothing can be better managed than the caution which
the king gives the meddling Archbishop, not to advise him
rashly to engage in the war with France, his scrupulous
dread of the consequences of that advice, and his eager
desire to hear and follow it :
"And God forbid, my dear and faithful lord,
That you should fashion, wrest, or bow your reading,
Or nicely charge your understanding soul
With opening titles miscreate, whose right
Suits not in native colours with the truth.
For God doth know how many now in health
Shall drop their blood in approbation
Of what your reverence shall incite us to.
Therefore take heed how you impawn your person,
How you awake the sleeping sword of war;
We charge you in the name of God, take heed.
For never two such kingdoms did contend
Without much fall of blood, whose guiltless drops
Are every one a woe, a sore complaint
'Gainst him, whose wrong gives edge unto the sword,
That makes such waste in brief mortality.
Under this conjuration, speak, my lord;
For we will hear, note, and believe in heart,
That what you speak, is in your conscience wash'd,
As pure as sin with baptism." 2
Another characteristic instance of the blindness of
human nature to everything but its own interests, is the
complaint made by the king of "the ill neighbourhood”
of the Scot in attacking England when she was attacking
France.
"For once the eagle England being in prey,
To her unguarded nest the weasel Scot
Comes sneaking, and so sucks her princely eggs.'
"3
[¹ Act i., sc. 1.]
[2 Act i., sc. 2.]
[3 lbid.]
148
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
It is worth observing that in all these plays, which
give an admirable picture of the spirit of the good old
times, the moral inference does not at all depend upon the
nature of the actions, but on the dignity or meanness of
the persons committing them. "The eagle England" has
a right “to be in prey," but "the weasel Scot" has none
"to come sneaking to her nest," which she has left to
pounce upon others. Might was right, without equivoca-
tion or disguise, in that heroic and chivalrous age. The
substitution of right for might, even in theory, is among
the refinements and abuses of modern philosophy.
A more beautiful rhetorical delineation of the effects of
subordination in a commonwealth can hardly be con-
ceived than the following :—
"For government, though high, and low, and lower,
Put into parts, doth keep in one concent,
Congreeing in a full and natural close,
Like music.
Therefore doth heaven divide
The state of man in divers functions,
Setting endeavour in continual motion;
To which is fixed, as an aim or butt,
Obedience: for so work the honey-bees;
Creatures that, by a rule in nature, teach
The art of order to a peopled kingdom.
They have a king, and officers of sorts:
Where some, like magistrates, correct at home;
Others, like merchants, venture trade abroad;
Others, like soldiers, armed in their stings,
Make boot upon the summer's velvet buds;
Which pillage they with merry march bring home
To the tent-royal of their emperor;
Who, busied in his majesty, surveys
The singing mason building roofs of gold;
The civil citizens kneading up the honey;
The poor mechanic porters crowding in
Their heavy burthens at his narrow gate;
The sad-eyed justice, with his surly hum,
Delivering o'er to executors pale
The lazy yawning drone. I this infer,--
Henry V.
149
That many things, having full reference
To one concent, may work contrariously:
As many arrows, loosed several ways,
Fly to one mark;
As many several streets meet in one town;
As many fresh streams run in one salt sea;
As many lines close in the dial's centre;
So may a thousand actions, once a-foot,
End in one purpose, and be all well borne
Without defeat." 1
'Henry V. is but one of Shakespear's second-rate
plays. Yet by quoting passages, like this, from his
second-rate plays alone, we might make a volume "rich
with his praise:"
"As is the oozy bottom of the sea
With sunken wreck and sumless treasuries."
Of this sort are the king's remonstrance to Scroop,
Grey, and Cambridge, on the detection of their treason,
his address to the soldiers at the siege of Harfleur, and
the still finer one before the battle of Agincourt, the
description of the night before the battle, and the re-
flections on ceremony put into the mouth of the king:
O hard condition,
Twin-born with greatness, subject to the breath
Of every fool, whose sense no more can feel
But his own wringing!
What infinite heart's ease must kings neglect,
:
That private men enjoy!
And what have kings, that privates have not too,
Save ceremony-save general ceremony?
And what art thou, thou idol ceremony?
What kind of god art thou, that suffer'st more
Of mortal griefs, than do thy worshippers?
What are thy rents? what are thy comings-in?
O ceremony, show me but thy worth!
What is thy soul, O adoration?
Art thou aught else but, place, degree, and form,
Creating awe and fear in other men?
Wherein thou art less happy, being feared,
[¹ Act i., sc. 2.]
150
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
Than they in fearing.
What drink'st thou oft, instead of homage sweet,
But poison'd flattery? O, be sick, great greatness,
And bid thy ceremony give thee cure!
Think'st thou, the fiery fever will go out
With titles blown from adulation?
Will it give place to flexure and low bending?
Canst thou, when thou command'st the beggar's knee,
Command the health of it? No, thou proud dream,
That play'st so subtly with a king's repose,
I am a king that find thee: and I know
'Tis not the balm, the sceptre, and the ball,
The sword, the mace, the crown imperial,
The inter-tissu'd robe of gold and pearl,
The farsed title running 'fore the king,
The throne he sits on, nor the tide of pomp
That beats upon the high shore of this world—
No, not all these, thrice-gorgeous ceremony,
Not all these, laid in bed majestical,
Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave
Who, with a body fill'd and vacant mind,
Gets him to rest, cramm'd with distressful bread,
Never sees horrid night, the child of hell:
But, like a lacquey, from the rise to set,
Sweats in the eye of Phoebus, and all night
Sleeps in Elysium; next day, after dawn,
Doth rise, and help Hyperion to his horse;
And follows so the ever-running year
With profitable labour, to his grave:
And, but for ceremony, such a wretch,
Winding up days with toil and nights with sleep,
Has the fore-hand and vantage of a king.
The slave, a member of the country's peace,
Enjoys it; but in gross brain little wots,
What watch the king keeps to maintain the peace,
Whose hours the peasant best advantages."
Most of these passages are well known: there is on
which we do not remember to have seen noticed, and ye
it is no whit inferior to the rest in heroic beauty.
the account of the deaths of York and Suffolk:
It i
"Exeter. The duke of York commends him to your majesty.
K. Henry. Lives he, good uncle? thrice within this hour
1
?
Henry V.
151
;
I saw him down; thrice up again, and fighting;
From helmet to the spur all blood he was.
Exeter. In which array (brave soldier) doth he lie,
Larding the plain: and by his bloody side
(Yoke-fellow to his honour-owing wounds)
The noble earl of Suffolk also lies.
Suffolk first died: and York, all haggled o'er,
Comes to him, where in gore he lay insteep´d,
And takes him by the beard: kisses the gashes,
That bloodily did yawn upon his face;
And cries aloud-Tarry, dear cousin Suffolk !
My soul shall thine keep company to heaven:
Tarry, sweet soul, for mine, then fly abreast ;
As, in this glorious and well-foughten field,
We kept together in our chivalry!
Upon these words I came, and cheer'd him up:
He smil❜d me in the face, raught me his hand,
And, with a feeble gripe, says-—Dear my lord,
Commend my service to my sovereign.
So did he turn, and over Suffolk's neck
He threw his wounded arm, and kiss'd his lips;
And so, espous'd to death, with blood he seal'd
A testament of noble-ending love.” ¹
But we must have done with splendid quotations. The
behaviour of the king, in the difficult and doubtful cir-
cumstances in which he is placed, is as patient and
modest as it is spirited and lofty in his prosperous
fortune. The character of the French nobles is also
very admirably depicted; and the Dauphin's praise of
his horse shows the vanity of that class of persons in
a very striking point of view. Shakespear always ac-
companies a foolish prince with a satirical courtier, as
we see in this instance. The comic parts of 'Henry V.'
are very inferior to those of 'Henry IV.' Falstaff is
dead, without him, Pistol, Nym, and Bardolph are
satellites without a sun. Fluellen the Welchman is the
most entertaining character in the piece. He is good-
natured, brave, choleric, and pedantic. His parallel
between Alexander and Harry of Monmouth, and his
[¹ Act iv., sc. 6.]
152
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
desire to have "some disputations" with Captain Mac-
morris on the discipline of the Roman wars, in the
heat of the battle, are never to be forgotten. His treat-
ment of Pistol is as good as Pistol's treatment of his
French prisoner. There are two other remarkable prose
passages in this play: the conversation of Henry in dis-
guise with the three sentinels on the duties of a
soldier, and his courtship of Katherine in broken
French. We like them both exceedingly, though the
first savours perhaps too much of the king, and the
last too little of the lover.
1
HENRY VI.
IN THREE PARTS.¹
DURING the time of the civil wars of York and Lancaster,
England was a perfect bear-garden, and Shakespear has
given us a very lively picture of the scene. The three
parts of 'Henry VI.' convey a picture of very little else;
and are inferior to the other historical plays. They have
brilliant passages; but the general ground-work is com-
paratively poor and meagre, the style "flat and unraised.”
There are few lines like the following:-
"Glory is like a circle in the water;
Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself,
Till, by broad spreading, it disperse to naught." 2
The first part relates to the wars in France after the
death of Henry V. and the story of the Maid of Orleans.
She is here almost as scurvily treated as in Voltaire's
Pucelle. Talbot is a very magnificent sketch: there is
1 First printed in the folio of 1623. It seems to be extremely
difficult to arrive at any conclusion as to Shakespear's amount of
participation in the authorship of this tripartite drama, founded on
older plays, which are likewise unidentified with the writers.—ED.
[² Part I., act i., sc. 2.]
Henry VI.
153
something as formidable in this portrait of him, as there
I would be in a monumental figure of him or in the sight of
the armour which he wore. The scene in which he visits
the Countess of Auvergne, who seeks to entrap him, is a
very spirited one, and his description of his own treatment
while a prisoner to the French not less remarkable :
}
Salisbury. Yet tell'st thou not how thou wert entertain❜d.
Talbot. With scoffs and scorns, and contumelious taunts.
In open market-place produced they me,
To be a public spectacle to all.
Here, said they, is the terror of the French,
The scarecrow that affrights our children so.
Then broke I from the officers that led me,
And with my nails digg'd stones out of the ground,
To hurl at the beholders of my shame.
My grisly countenance made others fly,
None durst come near for fear of sudden death.
In iron walls they deem'd me not secure :
So great fear of my name 'mongst them was spread,
That they suppos'd I could rend bars of steel,
And spurn in pieces posts of adamant.
Wherefore a guard of chosen shot I had :
They walk'd about me every minute-while;
And if I did but stir out of my bed,
Ready they were to shoot me to the heart."'
" 1
The second part relates chiefly to the contests between
the nobles during the minority of Henry, and the death of
Gloucester, the good Duke Humphrey. The character of
Cardinal Beaufort is the most prominent in the group :
the account of his death is one of our author's master-
pieces. So is the speech of Gloucester to the nobles on
the loss of the provinces of France by the King's marriage
with Margaret of Anjou. The pretensions and growing
ambition of the Duke of York, the father of Richard III.,
are also very ably developed. Among the episodes, the
tragi-comedy of Jack Cade, and the detection of the im-
postor Simcox are truly edifying.
The third part describes Henry's loss of his crown: his
[¹ Part I., act i., sc. 4.]
154
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
death takes place in the last act, which is usually thrust
into the common acting play of 'Richard III.' The
character of Gloucester, afterwards King Richard, is here
very powerfully commenced, and his dangerous designs
and long-reaching ambition are fully described in his
soliloquy in the third act, beginning, “Ay, Edward will
use women honourably." Henry VI. is drawn as dis-
tinctly as his high-spirited Queen, and notwithstanding
the very mean figure which Henry makes as a King, we
still feel more respect for him than for his wife.
We have already observed that Shakespear was scarcely
more remarkable for the force and marked contrasts of
his characters than for the truth and subtlety with which
he has distinguished those which approached the nearest
to each other. For instance, the soul of Othello is hardly
more distinct from that of Iago than that of Desdemona is
shown to be from Æmilia's; the ambition of Macbeth is as
distinct from the ambition of Richard III. as it is from
the meekness as Duncan; the real madness of Lear is as
different from the feigned madness of Edgar¹ as from the
babbling of the fool; the contrast between wit and folly
in Falstaff and Shallow is not more characteristic though
more obvious than the gradations of folly, loquacious or
reserved, in Shallow and Silence; and again, the gallantry
of Prince Henry is as little confounded with that of
Hotspur as with the cowardice of Falstaff, or as the
sensual and philosophic cowardice of the Knight is with
the pitiful and cringing cowardice of Parolles. All these
several personages were as different in Shakespear as they
would have been in themselves: his imagination borrowed
from the life, and every circumstance, object, motive,
passion, operated there as it would in reality, and pro-
duced a world of men and women as distinct, as true and
1 There is another instance of the same distinction in Hamlet
and Ophelia. Hamlet's pretended madness would make a very
good real madness in any other author.
་
{
Henry VI.
155
as various as those that exist in nature. The peculiar
property of Shakespear's imagination was this truth,
accompanied with the unconsciousness of nature: indeed,
imagination to be perfect must be unconscious, at least
in production; for nature is so. We shall attempt
one example more in the characters of Richard II. and
Henry VI.
The characters and situations of both these persons
were so nearly alike, that they would have been completely
confounded by a common-place poet. Yet they are kept
quite distinct in Shakespear. Both were kings, and both
unfortunate. Both lost their crowns owing to their mis-
management and imbecility; the one from a thoughtless
wilful abuse of power, the other from an indifference to it.
The manner in which they bear their misfortunes corre-
sponds exactly to the causes which led to them. The one
is always lamenting the loss of his power which he has
not the spirit to regain; the other seems only to regret
that he had ever been king, and is glad to be rid of the
power, with the trouble; the effeminacy of the one is
that of a voluptuary, proud, revengeful, impatient of con-
tradiction, and inconsolable in his misfortunes; the effe-
minacy of the other is that of an indolent, good-natured
mind, naturally averse to the turmoils of ambition and the
cares of greatness, and who wishes to pass his time in
monkish indolence and contemplation. Richard bewails
the loss of the kingly power only as it was the means of
gratifying his pride and luxury; Henry regards it only
as a means of doing right, and is less desirous of the
advantages to be derived from possessing it than afraid
of exercising it wrong. In knighting a young soldier, he
gives him ghostly advice—
“Edward Plantagenet, arise a knight,
And learn this lesson-draw thy sword in right."1
Richard II. in the first speeches of the play betrays his
[¹ Part III., act ii., sc. 2.]

156
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
real character. In the first alarm of his pride, on hearing
of Bolingbroke's rebellion, before his presumption has met
with any check, he exclaims-
"Mock not my senseless conjuration, lords:
This earth shall have a feeling, and these stones
Prove armed soldiers, ere her native king
Shall falter under proud rebellion's arms.
*
*
*
Not all the water in the rough rude sea
Can wash the balm from an anointed king;
The breath of worldly men cannot depose
The deputy elected by the Lord.
For every man that Bolingbroke hath press'd,
To lift shrewd steel against our golden crown,
Heaven for his Richard hath in heavenly pay
A glorious angel; then, if angels fight,
Weak men must fall; for heaven still guards the right."
"1
Yet, notwithstanding this royal confession of faith, on
the very first news of actual disaster, all his conceit of
himself as the peculiar favourite of Providence vanishes
into air:
"But now the blood of twenty thousand men
Did triumph in my face, and they are fled.
All souls that will be safe fly from my side;
For time hath set a blot upon my pride.""
Immediately after, however, recollecting that "cheap
defence" of the divinity of kings which is to be found in
opinion, he is for arming his name against his enemies:
"Awake, thou sluggard majesty, thou sleep'st;
Is not the King's name forty thousand names?
Arm, arm, my name: a puny subject strikes
At thy great glory—”3
King Henry does not make any such vapouring resist-
ance to the loss of his crown, but lets it slip from off his
head as a weight which he is neither able nor willing to
bear; stands quietly by to see the issue of the contest for
his kingdom, as if it were a game at push-pin, and is
pleased when the odds prove against him.
[¹Richard II.,' act iii., sc. 2.] [2 Ibid.] [³ Ibid.]
(
A
Henry VI.
157
}
When Richard first hears of the death of his favourites,
Bushy, Bagot, and the rest, he indignantly rejects all idea
of any further efforts, and only indulges in the extrava-
gant impatience of his grief and his despair, in that fine
speech which has been so often quoted :—
"Aumerle. Where is the duke my father with his power?
K. Richard. No matter where: of comfort no man speak:
Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs,
Make dust our paper, and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth!
Let's choose executors, and talk of wills :
And yet not so-for what can we bequeath,
Save our deposed bodies to the ground?
Our lands, our lives, and all are Bolingbroke's,
And nothing can we call our own but death,
And that small model of the barren earth,
Which serves as paste and cover to our bones.
For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground,
And tell sad stories of the death of kings:
How some have been depos'd, some slain in war;
Some haunted by the ghosts they have depos'd;
Some poison'd by their wives, some sleeping kill'd;
All murder'd :-for within the hollow crown,
That rounds the mortal temples of a king,
Keeps Death his court: and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state, and grinning at his pomp;
Allowing him a breath, a little scene
To monarchize, be fear'd, and kill with looks ;
Infusing him with self and vain conceit—
As if this flesh, which walls about our life,
Were brass impregnable; and humour'd thus,
Comes at the last, and with a little pin
Bores through his castle wall, and-farewell king!
Cover your heads, and mock not flesh and blood
With solemn reverence; throw away respect,
Tradition, form, and ceremonious duty,
For you have but mistook me all this while :
I live on bread like you, feel want, taste grief,
Need friends, like you ;-subjected thus,
How can you say to me-I am a king ?"1
There is as little sincerity afterwards in his affected
[Richard II.,' act ii., sc. 2.]
158
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
resignation to his fate, as there is fortitude in this exag-
gerated picture of his misfortunes before they have
happened.
When Northumberland comes back with the message
from Bolingbroke, he exclaims, anticipating the result:
"What must the king do now? Must he submit?
The king shall do it: must he be depos'd?
The king shall be contented: must he lose
The name of king? O' God's name let it go.
I'll give my jewels for a set of beads;
My gorgeous palace for a hermitage;
My gay apparel for an alms-man's gown;
My figur'd goblets for a dish of wood;
My sceptre for a palmer's walking staff;
My subjects for a pair of carved saints;
And my large kingdom for a little grave—
A little little grave, an obscure grave.” ¹
1
How differently is all this expressed in King Henry's
soliloquy, during the battle with Edward's party :-
•
•
"This battle fares like to the morning's war,
When dying clouds contend with growing light,
What time the shepherd, blowing of his nails,
Can neither call it perfect day nor night.
Here on this mole-hill will I sit me down;
To whom God will, there be the victory!
For Margaret my Queen and Clifford too
Have chid me from the battle, swearing both
They prosper best of all, when I am thence.
Would I were dead, if God's good will were so!
For what is in this world but grief and woe?
O God! methinks it were a happy life
To be no better than a homely swain,
To sit upon a hill as I do now,
To carve out dials quaintly, point by point,
Thereby to see the minutes how they run :
How many make the hour full complete,
How many hours bring about the day,
How many days will finish up the year,
How many years a mortal man may live.
[¹Richard II.,' act iii., sc. 3.]
Henry VI.
159
When this is known, then to divide the times:
So many hours must I tend my flock,
So many hours must I take my rest,
So many hours must I contemplate,
So many hours must I sport myself;
So many days my ewes have been with young,
So many weeks ere the poor fools will yean,
So many months ere I shall shear the fleece :
So many minutes, hours, weeks, months, and years
Pass'd over to the end they were created,
Would bring white hairs unto a quiet grave.
Ah! what a life were this! how sweet, how lovely!
Gives not the hawthorn bush a sweeter shade
To shepherds looking on their silly sheep,
Than doth a rich-embroider'd canopy
To kings that fear their subjects' treachery?
O yes, it doth, a thousandfold it doth.
And to conclude, the shepherds' homely curds,
His cold thin drink out of his leather bottle,
His wonted sleep under a fresh tree's shade,
All which secure and sweetly he enjoys,
Is far beyond a prince's delicates,
His viands sparkling in a golden cup,
His body couched in a curious bed,
When care, mistrust, and treasons wait on him."1
This is a true and beautiful description of a naturally
quiet and contented disposition, and not, like the former,
the splenetic effusion of disappointed ambition.
In the last scene of 'Richard II.' his despair lends him
courage he beats the keeper, slays two of his assassins,
and dies with imprecations in his mouth against Sir
Pierce Exton, who "had staggered his royal person."
Henry, when he is seized by the deer-stealers, only reads.
them a moral lecture on the duty of allegiance and the
sanctity of an oath; and when stabbed by Gloucester in
the Tower, reproaches him with his crimes, but pardons
him his own death.
[Henry VI.,' Part III., act ii., sc. 5.]
鹫
​160
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
RICHARD III.¹
RICHARD III.' may be considered as properly a stage-play:
it belongs to the theatre, rather than to the closet. We
shall therefore criticise it chiefly with a reference to the
manner in which we have seen it performed. It is the
character in which Garrick came out it was the second
character in which Mr. Kean appeared, and in which he
acquired his fame. Shakespear we have always with us:
actors we have only for a few seasons; and therefore some
account of them may be acceptable, if not to our cotem-
poraries, to those who come after us, if" that rich and idle
personage, Posterity," should deign to look into our
writings.
2
It is possible to form a higher conception of the charac-
ter of Richard than that given by Mr. Kean: but we
cannot imagine any character represented with greater
distinctness and precision, more perfectly articulated in
every part. Perhaps indeed there is too much of what is
technically called execution. When we first saw this
celebrated actor in the part, we thought he sometimes
failed from an exuberance of manner, and dissipated the
impression of the general character by the variety of his
resources. To be complete, his delineation of it should
have more solidity, depth, sustained and impassioned feel-
ing, with somewhat less brilliancy, with fewer glancing
lights, pointed transitions, and pantomimic evolutions,
1 First printed in 1597, about which date it seems to have been
composed. In the folio of 1623 it is republished with a very varying
text.-ED.
2 February 15, 1814.—E».
3 See, for fuller particulars on this part of the subject, 'View of
the English Stage,' 1821, pp. 5-13.-Ed.
Richard III.
161
The Richard of Shakespear is towering and lofty;
equally impetuous and commanding; haughty, violent,
and subtle; bold and treacherous; confident in his
strength as well as in his cunning; raised high by his
birth, and higher by his talents and his crimes; a royal
usurper, a princely hypocrite, a tyrant, and a murderer of
the house of Plantagenet :
"But I was born so high:
Our aery buildeth in the cedar's top,
And dallies with the wind, and scorns the sun.
31
The idea conveyed in these lines (which are indeed
omitted in the miserable medley acted for 'Richard III.')
is never lost sight of by Shakespear, and should not be
out of the actor's mind for a moment. The restless and
sanguinary Richard is not a man striving to be great, but
to be greater than he is; conscious of his strength of will,
his power of intellect, his daring courage, his elevated
station; and making use of these advantages to commit
unheard-of crimes, and to shield himself from remorse and
infamy.
If Mr. Kean does not entirely succeed in concentrating
all the lines of the character, as drawn by Shakespear, he
gives an animation, vigour, and relief to the part which
we have not seen equalled. He is more refined than
Cooke; more bold, varied, and original than Kemble in
the same character. In some parts he is deficient in
dignity, and particularly in the scenes of state business,
he has by no means an air of artificial authority. There
is at times an aspiring elevation, an enthusiastic rapture
in his expectations of attaining the crown, and at others
a gloating expression of sullen delight, as if he already
clenched the bauble, and held it in his grasp. The court-
ship scene with Lady Anne is an admirable exhibition of
smooth and smiling villainy. The progress of wily
adulation, of encroaching humility, is finely marked by his
[¹ Act i., sc. 3.]
M
162
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
1
action, voice, and eye. He seems, like the first Tempter,
to approach his prey, secure of the event, and as if success
had smoothed his way before him. The late Mr. Cooke's
manner of representing this scene was more vehement,
hurried, and full of anxious uncertainty. This, though
more natural in general, was less in character in this par-
ticular instance. Richard should woo less as a lover than
as an actor-to show his mental superiority, and power of
making others the playthings of his purposes. Mr. Kean's
attitude in leaning against the side of the stage before he
comes forward to address Lady Anne, is one of the most
graceful and striking ever witnessed on the stage. It
would do for Titian to paint. The frequent and rapid
transition of his voice from the expression of the fiercest
passion to the most familiar tones of conversation was that
which gave a peculiar grace of novelty to his acting on
his first appearance. This has been since imitated and
caricatured by others, and he himself uses the artifice
more sparingly than he did. His byplay is excellent.
His manner of bidding his friends "Good-night," after
pausing with the point of his sword, drawn slowly back-
ward and forward on the ground, as if considering the
plan of the battle next day, is a particularly happy and
natural thought. He gives to the two last acts of the
play the greatest animation and effect. He fills every
part of the stage; and makes up for the deficiency of his
person by what has been sometimes objected to as an
excess of action. The concluding scene, in which he is
killed by Richmond, is the most brilliant of the whole.
He fights at last like one drunk with wounds; and the
<
1 The writer may have seen George Frederick Cooke perform in
Richard III.,' Sept. 20, 1809, at Covent Garden. He also filled
the parts of Falstaff and Sir John Restless in ‘A New Way to pay
Old Debts.' See Geneste, viii., 178, et seqq. Cooke died, I believe,
at New York, in 1821, in extreme distress. See a singular letter
respecting him in Memoirs of William Hazlitt,' 1867, ii., 1.— En.
Richard III.
163
attitude in which he stands with his hands stretched out,
after his sword is wrested from him, has a preternatural
and terrific grandeur, as if his will could not be disarmed,
and the very phantoms of his despair had power to kill.
Mr. Kean has since in a great measure effaced the impres-
sion of his Richard III. by the superior efforts of his
genius in Othello (his master-piece), in the murder-scene
in Macbeth, in Richard II., in Sir Giles Overreach, and
lastly in Oroonoko; but we still like to look back to his
first performance of this part, both because it first assured
his admirers of his future success, and because we bore
our feeble but, at that time, not useless testimony to the
merits of this very original actor, on which the town was
considerably divided for no other reason than because
they were original.
The manner in which Shakespear's plays have been
generally altered or rather mangled by modern mechanists
is a disgrace to the English stage. The patch-work
'Richard III.,' which is acted under the sanction of his
name, and which was manufactured by Cibber, is a striking
example of this remark.
The play itself is undoubtedly a very powerful effusion
of Shakespear's genius. The ground-work of the character
of Richard-that mixture of intellectual vigour with moral
depravity, in which Shakespear delighted to show his
strength-gave full scope as well as temptation to the
exercise of his imagination. The character of his hero is
almost everywhere predominant, and marks his lurid track
throughout. The original play is however too long for
representation, and there are some few scenes which might
be better spared than preserved, and by omitting which it
would remain a complete whole. The only rule, indeed,
for altering Shakespear is to retrench certain passages
which may be considered either as superfluous or obsolete,
but not to add or transpose anything. The arrangement
and development of the story, and the mutual contrast and
164
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
combination of the dramatis persona, are in general as
finely managed as the development of the characters or
the expression of the passions.
This rule has not been adhered to in the present
instance. Some of the most important and striking
passages in the principal character have been omitted, to
make room for idle and misplaced extracts from other
plays; the only intention of which seems to have been to
make the character of Richard as odious and disgusting as
possible. It is apparently for no other purpose than to
make Gloucester stab King Henry on the stage, that the
fine abrupt introduction of the character in the opening
of the play is lost in the tedious whining morality of the
uxorious king (taken from another play);—we say tedious,
because it interrupts the business of the scene, and loses
its beauty and effect by having no intelligible connection
with the previous character of the mild, well-meaning
monarch. The passages which the unfortunate Henry
has to recite are beautiful and pathetic in themselves, but
they have nothing to do with the world that Richard has
to “bustle in." In the same spirit of vulgar caricature is
the scene between Richard and Lady Anne (when his
wife) interpolated without any authority, merely to
gratify this favourite propensity to disgust and loathing.
With the same perverse consistency, Richard, after his
last fatal struggle, is raised up by some galvanic process,
to utter the imprecation, without any motive but pure
malignity, which Shakespear has so properly put into the
mouth of Northumberland on hearing of Percy's death.
To make room for these worse than needless additions,
many
of the most striking passages in the real play have
been omitted by the foppery and ignorance of the prompt-
book critics. We do not mean to insist merely on
passages which are fine as poetry and to the reader, such
as Clarence's dream, &c., but on those which are impor-
Lant to the understanding of the character, and peculiarly
i
Richard III.
165
adapted for stage effect. We will give the following as
instances among several others. The first is the scene
where Richard enters abruptly to the Queen and her
friends to defend himself:-
"Gloucester. They do me wrong, and I will not endure it.
Who are they that complain unto the king,
That I forsooth am stern, and love them not?
By holy Paul, they love his grace but lightly,
That fill his ears with such dissentious rumours:
Because I cannot flatter and speak fair,
Smile in men's faces, smooth, deceive, and cog,
Duck with French nods and apish courtesy,
I must be held a rancorous enemy.
Cannot a plain man live, and think no harm,
But thus his simple truth must be abus'd
By silken, sly, insinuating Jacks?
Gray. To whom in all this presence speaks your grace?
Gloucester. To thee, that hast nor honesty nor grace;
When have I injur'd thee? when done thee wrong?
Or thee? or thee? or any of your faction?
A plague upon you all !”¹
Nothing can be more characteristic than the turbulent
pretensions to meekness and simplicity in this address.
Again, the versatility and adroitness of Richard is
admirably described in the following ironical conversation
with Brakenbury:-
<<
Brakenbury. Beseech your graces both to pardon me.
His majesty hath straitly given in charge,
That no man shall have private conference,
Of what degree soever, with your brother.
Gloucester. Even so, and please your worship, Brakenbury,
You may partake of anything we say :
We speak no treason, man—we say the king
Is wise and virtuous, and his noble queen
Well struck in years, fair, and not jealous.
We say that Shore's wife hath a pretty foot,
A cherry lip, a bonny eye, a passing pleasing tongue;
And that the queen's kindred are made gentlefolks.
How say you, sir? Can you deny all this?
[¹ Act i., se. 3.]
166
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
Brakenbury. With this, my lord, myself have nought to do.
Gloucester. Naught to do with Mistress Shore? I tell thee,
fellow;
He that doth naught with her, excepting one,
Were best to do it secretly alone.
Brakenbury. What one, my lord?
Gloucester. Her husband, knave—would'st thou betray me?"¹
The feigned reconciliation of Gloucester with the
Queen's kinsmen is also a master-piece. One of the finest
strokes in the play, and which serves to show as much as
anything the deep, plausible manners of Richard, is the
unsuspecting security of Hastings, at the very time when
the former is plotting his death, and when that very
appearance of cordiality and good-humour on which
Hastings builds his confidence arises from Richard's
consciousness of having betrayed him to his ruin. This,
with the whole character of Hastings, is omitted.
Perhaps the two most beautiful passages in the original
play are the farewell apostrophe of the Queen to the
Tower, where the children are shut up from her, and
Tyrrel's description of their death. We will finish our
quotations with them:
66
Queen. Stay, yet look back with me unto the Tower;
Pity, you ancient stones, those tender babes,
Whom envy hath immured within your walls;
Rough cradle for such little pretty ones,
Rude, rugged nurse, old sullen playfellow,
For tender princes-"
>> 2
The other passage is the account of their death by
Tyrrel:-
"Dighton and Forrest, whom I did suborn
To do this ruthless piece of butchery,
Albeit they were flesh'd villains, bloody dogs,—
Melting with tenderness and mild compassion,
Wept like two children in their death's sad story:
O, thus! quoth Dighton, lay the gentle babes;
Thus, thus, quoth Forrest, girdling one another
[2 Act iv., sc. 1.]
[¹ Act i., sc. 1.]
Henry VIII.
167
Within their innocent alabaster arms;
Their lips were four red roses on a stalk,
And in their summer beauty kiss'd each other;
A book of prayers on their pillow lay,
Which once, quoth Forrest, almost changed my mind;
But O the devil!-there the villain stopped;
When Dighton thus told on-we smothered
The most replenished sweet work of nature,
That from the prime creation e'er she fram'd."
These are some of those wonderful bursts of feeling,
done to the life, to the very height of fancy and nature,
which our Shakespear alone could give. We do not insist
on the repetition of these last passages as proper for the
stage: we should indeed be loth to trust them in the
mouth of almost any actor; but we should wish them to
be retained in preference at least to the fantoccini exhi-
bition of the young princes, Edward and York, bandying
childish wit with their uncle.
HENRY VIII.¹
THIS play contains little action or violence of passion, yet
it has considerable interest of a more mild and thoughtful
cast, and some of the most striking passages in the author's
works. The character of Queen Katherine is the most
perfect delineation of matronly dignity, sweetness, and
resignation that can be conceived. Her appeals to the
protection of the king, her remonstrances to the cardinals,
her conversations with her women, show a noble and
1 First printed in the folio of 1623. It is supposed to have been
written after the death of Queen Elizabeth; but the precise date is
not known. An historical play on the reign of Henry VIII., by
Samuel Rowley, was published in 1605. The latter is, beyond reason-
able doubt, the play entered at Stationers' Hall, Feb. 12, 1604–5,
and not Shakespear's piece, as Mr. Collier appears to think.-Ed.
168
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
generous spirit accompanied with the utmost gentleness
of nature. What can be more affecting than her answer
to Campeius and Wolsey, who come to visit her as pre-
tended friends.
"Nay, forsooth, my friends,
They that must weigh out my afflictions,
They that my trust must grow to, live not here;
They are, as all my comforts are, far hence,
In mine own country, lords." 1
Dr. Johnson observes of this play, that "the meek sor-
rows and virtuous distress of Katherine have furnished
some scenes, which may be justly numbered among the
greatest efforts of tragedy. But the genius of Shakespear
comes in and goes out with Katherine. Every other part
may be easily conceived and easily written." This is
easily said; but with all due deference to so great a
reputed authority as that of Johnson, it is not true. For
instance, the scene of Buckingham led to execution is one
of the most affecting and natural in Shakespear, and one
to which there is hardly an approach in any other author.
Again, the character of Wolsey,' the description of his
pride and of his fall, are inimitable, and have, besides
their gorgeousness of effect, a pathos, which only the
genius of Shakespear could lend to the distresses of a
proud, bad man, like Wolsey. There is a sort of child-
like simplicity in the very helplessness of his situation,
arising from the recollection of his past overbearing am-
bition. After the cutting sarcasms of his enemies on his
disgrace, against which he bears up with a spirit conscious
of his own superiority, he breaks out into that fine apos-
trophe-
[¹ Act iii., sc. 1.]
* Possibly Shakespear may have seen an earlier drama in two
parts, performed in 1601-2, but apparently (in some shape or other)
in existence even before that date, in which Wolsey was the fore
most character. See Halliwell's Dict. of Old Plays,' 1860, in v.—
ED.
Henry VIII.
169
1
"Farewell, a long farewell, to all my greatness !
This is the state of man: to-day he puts forth
The tender leaves of hope, to-morrow blossoms,
And bears his blushing honours thick upon him;
The third day comes a frost, a killing frost;
And when he thinks, good easy man, full surely
His greatness is a-ripening-nips his root,
And then he falls, as I do. I have ventur'd,
Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders,
These many summers in a sea of glory;
But far beyond my depth: my high-blown pride
At length broke under me; and now has left me,
Weary and old with service, to the mercy
Of a rude stream, that must for ever hide me.
Vain pomp and glory of the world, I hate ye:
I feel my heart new open'd. O how wretched
Is that poor man, that hangs on princes' favours!
There is betwixt that smile we would aspire to,
That sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin,
More pangs and fears than wars or women have;
And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer,
Never to hope again !”—¹
1
:
There is in this passage, as well as in the well-known
dialogue with Cromwell which follows, something which
stretches beyond commonplace; nor is the account which
Griffith gives of Wolsey's death less Shakespearian; and
the candour with which Queen Katherine listens to the
praise of "him whom I most hated living
"2 adds the last
graceful finishing to her character.
Among other images of great individual beauty might
be mentioned the description of the effect of Ann Boleyn's
presenting herself to the crowd at her coronation :
"While her grace sat down
To rest awhile, some half an hour or so,
In a rich chair of state, opposing freely
The beauty of her person to the people.
Believe me, sir, she is the goodliest woman
That ever lay by man: which when the people
Had the full view of, such a noise arose
[¹ Act iii., sc. 2.]
[2 Act iv., sc. 2.]
1
170
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
As the shrouds make at sea in a stiff tempest,
As loud and to as many tunes-
The character of Henry VIII. is drawn with great truth
and spirit. It is like a very disagreeable portrait, sketched
by the hand of a master. His gross appearance, his blus-
tering demeanour, his vulgarity, his arrogance, his sen-
suality, his cruelty, his hypocrisy, his want of common
decency and common humanity, are marked in strong
lines. His traditional peculiarities of expression complete
the reality of the picture. The authoritative expletive,
"Ha!" with which he intimates his indignation or sur-
prise, has an effect like the first startling sound that breaks
from a thunder-cloud. He is of all the monarchs in our
history the most disgusting: for he unites in himself all
the vices of barbarism and refinement, without their vir-
tues. Other kings before him (such as Richard III.) were
tyrants and murderers out of ambition or necessity: they
gained or established unjust power by violent means:
they destroyed their enemies, or those who barred their
access to the throne, or made its tenure insecure. But
Henry VIII.'s power is most fatal to those whom he loves:
he is cruel and remorseless to pamper his luxurious appe-
tites: bloody and voluptuous; an amorous murderer; an
uxorious debauchee. His hardened insensibility to the
feelings of others is strengthened by the most profligate
self-indulgence. The religious hypocrisy under which he
masks his cruelty and his lust, is admirably displayed in
the speech in which he describes the first misgivings of
his conscience and its increasing throes and terrors, which
have induced him to divorce his queen. The only thing
in his favour in this play is his treatment of Cranmer:
there is also another circumstance in his favour, which is
his patronage of Hans Holbein.-It has been said of
Shakespear-"No maid could live near such a man.” It
might with as good reason be said "No king could live
[¹ Act iv., sc. 1.]
King John.
171
are
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near such a man.' His eye would have penetrated through
the pomp of circumstance and the veil of opinion. As it
is, he has represented such persons to the life-his plays
are in this respect the glass of history-he has done them
the same justice as if he had been a privy councillor all
his life, and in each successive reign. Kings ought never
to be seen upon the stage. In the abstract, they are very
disagreeable characters; it is only while living that they
"the best of kings." It is their power, their splen-
dour, it is the apprehension of the personal consequences
of their favour or their hatred that dazzles the imagination
and suspends the judgment of their favourites or their
vassals; but death cancels the bond of allegiance and of
interest; and seen as they were, their power and their
pretensions look monstrous and ridiculous. The charge
brought against modern philosophy as inimical to loyalty
is unjust, because it might as well be brought against
other things. No reader of history can be a lover of
kings. We have often wondered that Henry VIII. as he
is drawn by Shakespear, and as we have seen him repre-
sented in all the bloated deformity of mind and person,
is not hooted from the English stage.
KING JOHN.¹
King John' is the last of the historical plays we shall have
to speak of; and we are not sorry that it is. If we are to
indulge our imaginations, we had rather do it upon an
imaginary theme; if we are to find subjects for the exer-
cise of our pity and terror, we prefer seeking them in
fictitious danger and fictitious distress. It gives a soreness
1 First printed in the folio of 1623. It is founded on an anony-
mous drama entitled 'The Troublesome Reign of John, King of
England,' first published in 1591. Shakespear's play is mentioned
by Meres in his 'Palladis Tamia,' 1598.-ED.
172
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
↑
to our feelings of indignation or sympathy, when we know
that in tracing the progress of sufferings and crimes, we
are treading upon real ground, and recollect that the
poet's dream "denoted a foregone conclusion "—irrevocable
ills, not conjured up by fancy, but placed beyond the
reach of poetical justice. That the treachery of King
John, the death of Arthur, the grief of Constance, had a
real truth in history, sharpens the sense of pain, while it
hangs a leaden weight on the heart and the imagination.
Something whispers us that we have no right to make a
mock of calamities like these, or to turn the truth of
things into the puppet and plaything of our fancies. "To
consider thus may be "to consider too curiously;" but
still we think that the actual truth of the particular
events, in proportion as we are conscious of it, is a draw-
back on the pleasure as well as the dignity of tragedy.
'King John' has all the beauties of language and all the
richness of the imagination to relieve the painfulness of
the subject. The character of King John himself is kept
pretty much in the background; it is only marked in by
comparatively slight indications. The crimes he is tempted
to commit are such as are thrust upon him rather by cir-
cumstances and opportunity than of his own seeking: he
is here represented as more cowardly than cruel, and as
more contemptible than odious. The play embraces only
a part of his history. There are, however, few characters
on the stage that excite more disgust and loathing. He
has no intellectual grandeur or strength of character to
shield him from the indignation which his immediate
conduct provokes: he stands naked and defenceless, in
that respect, to the worst we can think of him: and be-
sides, we are impelled to put the very worst construction
on his meanness and cruelty by the tender picture of the
beauty and helplessness of the object of it, as well as
by the frantic and heartrending pleadings of maternal
despair. We do not forgive him the death of Arthur,
King John.
173
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because he had too late revoked his doom and tried to
prevent it; and perhaps because he has himself repented
of his black design, our moral sense gains courage to hate
him the more for it. We take him at his word, and think
his purposes must be odious indeed, when he himself
shrinks back from them. The scene in which King John
suggests to Hubert the design of murdering his nephew is
a master-piece of dramatic skill, but it is still inferior—
very inferior—to the scene between Hubert and Arthur,
when the latter learns the orders to put out his eyes. If
anything ever was penned, heart-piercing, mixing the
extremes of terror and pity, of that which shocks and that
which soothes the mind, it is this scene. We will give it
entire, though perhaps it is tasking the reader's sympathy
too much :-
"Enter HUBERT and two Attendants.
Hubert. Heat me these irons hot, and look you stand
Within the arras; when I strike my foot
Upon the bosom of the ground, rush forth
And bind the boy, which you shall find with me,
Fast to the chair: be heedful: hence, and watch.
First Attend. I hope your warrant will bear out the deed.
Hubert. Uncleanly scruples! fear not you; look to`t.—
[Exeunt Attendants.
Young lad, come forth; I have to say with you.
Enter ARTHUR.
Arthur. Good morrow, Hubert.
Hubert. Good morrow, little Prince.
Arthur. As little prince, having so great a title
To be more prince, as may be. You are sad.
Hubert. Indeed I have been merrier.
Arthur.
Mercy on me!
Methinks nobody should be sad but I:
Yet I remember when I was in France,
Young gentlemen would be as sad as night,
Only for wantonness. By my christendom,
So I were out of prison, and kept sheep,
I should be merry as the day is long.
And so I would be here, but that I doubt
My uncle practises more harm to me.
174
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
He is afraid of me, and I of him.
Is it my fault that I was Geffrey's son?
Indeed it is not, and I would to heav'n
I were your son, so you would love me, Hubert.
Hubert. [Aside.] If I talk to him, with his innocent prate
He will awake my mercy, which lies dead;
Therefore I will be sudden, and dispatch.
Arthur. Are you sick, Hubert? you look pale to-day?
In sooth, I would you were a little sick,
That I might sit all night and watch with you.
Alas, I love you more than you do me.
Hubert. [Aside.] His words do take possession of my bosom.
Read here, young Arthur. [Showing a paper.-How now, foolish
rheum!
Turning dis-piteous torture out of door!
I must be brief, lest resolution drop
Out at mine eyes in tender womanish tears.—
Can you not read it? is it not fair writ?
Arthur. Too fairly, Hubert, for so foul effect:
Must you with irons burn out both mine eyes?
Hubert. Young boy, I must.
Arthur.
Hubert.
And will you?
And I will.
Arthur. Have you the heart? When your head did but ache,
I knit my handkerchief about your brows
(The best I had, a princess wrought it me),
And I did never ask it you again ;
And with my hand at midnight held your head;
And like the watchful minutes to the hour,
Still and anon cheer'd up the heavy time,
Saying, What lack you? and, Where lies your grief?
Or, What good love may I perform for you?
Many a poor man's son would have lien still,,
And ne'er have spoke a loving word to you;
But you at your sick service had a prince.
Nay, you may think my love was crafty love,
And call it cunning:-do, and if you will:
If heaven be pleased that you must use me ill,
Why then you must -Will you put out mine eyes?
These eyes that never did, nor never shall,
So much as frown on you?
Hubert.
I've sworn to do it;
And with hot irons must I burn them out.
Arthur. Ah, none but in this iron age would do it!
King John.
175
The iron of itself, though heat[ed] red-hot,
Approaching near these eyes, would drink my tears,
And quench his fiery indignation
Even in the water of mine innocence;
Nay, after that consume away in rust,
But for containing fire to harm mine eyes.
Are you more stubborn-hard than hammer'd iron?
An if an angel should have come to me,
And told me Hubert should put out mine eyes,
I would not have believ'd him,-no tongue but Hubert's.
Hubert. Come forth.
Re-enter Attendants with cord, irons, &c.
Do as I bid you.
[Stamps.
Arthur. O save me, Hubert, save me! my eyes are out
Even with the fierce looks of these bloody men.
Hubert. Give me the iron, I say, and bind him here.
Arthur. Alas, what need you be so boisterous-rough?
I will not struggle, I will stand stone-still.
For heaven-sake, Hubert, let me not be bound !
Nay, hear me, Hubert! drive these men away,
And I will sit as quiet as a lamb ;
I will not stir, nor wince, nor speak a word,
Nor look upon the iron angerly;
Thrust but these men away, and I'll forgive you,
Whatever torment you do put me to.
Hubert. Go, stand within; let me alone with him.
First Attend. I am best pleas'd to be from such a deed.
Arthur. Alas, I then have chid away my friend.
He hath a stern look, but a gentle heart;
Let him come back, that his compassion may
Give life to yours.
Hubert.
Come, boy, prepare yourself.
Arthur. Is there no remedy?
Hubert.
[Exeunt.
None, but to lose your eyes.
Arthur. O heaven! that there were but a mote in yours,
A grain, a dust, a gnat, a wandering hair,
Any annoyance in that precious sense!
Then, feeling what small things are boisterous there,
Your vile intent must needs seem horrible.
Hubert. Is this your promise? go to, hold your tongue.
Arthur. Hubert, the utterance of a brace of tongues
Must needs want pleading for a pair of eyes:
Let me not hold my tongue;-let me not, Hubert;
176
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
L
Or, Hubert, if you will, cut out my tongue,
So I may keep mine eyes: O, spare mine eyes!
Though to no use but still to look on you.
Lo, by my troth, the instrument is cold,
And would not harm me.
Hubert.
I can heat it, boy.
Arthur. No, in good sooth, the fire is dead with grief,
Being create for comfort, to be us❜d
In undeserv'd extremes; see else yourself;
There is no malice in this burning coal;
The breath of heaven hath blown his spirit out,
And strew'd repentant ashes on his head.
Hubert. But with my breath I can revive it, boy.
Arthur. And if you do, you will but make it blush,
And glow with shame of your proceedings, Hubert:
Nay, it perchance will sparkle in your eyes,
And, like a dog that is compell'd to fight,
Snatch at his master that doth tarre him on.
All things that you should use to do me wrong,
Deny their office; only you do lack
That mercy which fierce fire and iron extend,
Creatures of note for mercy-lacking uses.
Hubert. Well, see to live; I will not touch thine eyes
For all the treasure that thine uncle owes:
Yet I am sworn, and I did purpose, boy,
With this same very iron to burn them out.
Arthur. O, now you look like Hubert. All this while
You were disguised.
Hubert.
Peace; no more. Adieu,
Your uncle must not know but you are dead.
I'll fill these dogged spies with false reports:
And, pretty child, sleep doubtless and secure,
That Hubert, for the wealth of all the world,
Will not offend thee.
Arthur,
O heaven! I thank you, Hubert.
Hubert. Silence, no more; go closely in with me;
Much danger do I undergo for thee.
[Exeunt."
His death afterwards, when he throws himself from his
prison walls, excites the utmost pity for his innocence
and friendless situation, and well justifies the exaggerated
denunciations of Falconbridge to Hubert, whom he õus-
pects wrongfully of the deed :
[Act iv., sc. 1.]
1
King John.
177
[
"There is not yet so ugly a fiend of hell
As thou shalt be, if thou didst kill this child.
-If thou didst but consent
To this most cruel act, do but despair:
And if thou want'st a cord, the smallest thread
That ever spider twisted from her womb
Will serve to strangle thee; a rush will be a beam
To hang thee on; or would'st thou drown thyself,
Put but a little water in a spoon,
And it shall be as all the ocean,
"1
Enough to stifle such a villain up."
The excess of maternal tenderness, rendered desperate
by the fickleness of friends and the injustice of fortune,
and made stronger in will, in proportion to the want of
all other power, was never more finely expressed than in
Constance. The dignity of her answer to King Philip,
when she refuses to accompany his messenger, “To me
and to the state of my great grief, let kings assemble,'
her indignant reproach to Austria for deserting her cause,
her invocation to death, "that love of misery," however
fine and spirited, all yield to the beauty of the passage,
where, her passion subsiding into tenderness, she addresses
the Cardinal in these words:
'And, father Cardinal, I have heard you say
That we shall see and know our friends in heaven:
If that be true, I shall see my boy again,
For since the birth of Cain, the first male child,
To him that did but yesterday suspire,
There was not such a gracious creature born.
But now will canker-sorrow eat my bud,
And chase the native beauty from his cheek,
And he will look as hollow as a ghost,
As dim and meagre as an ague-fit,
And so he'll die; and rising so again,
When I shall meet him in the court of heaven,
I shall not know him; therefore never, never
Must I behold my pretty Arthur more.
K. Philip. You are as fond of grief as of your child.
Constance, Grief fills the room up of my absent child.
[¹ Act iv., sc. 3,]
""
N
178
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
1
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Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me;
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
Remembers me of all his gracious parts;
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form.
Then have I reason to be fond of grief."1
The contrast between the mild resignation of Queen
Katherine to her own wrongs, and the wild, uncontrollable
affliction of Constance for the wrongs which she sustains
as a mother, is no less naturally conceived than it is ably
sustained throughout these two wonderful characters.
The accompaniment of the comic character of the
Bastard was well chosen to relieve the poignant agony of
suffering, and the cold cowardly policy of behaviour in
the principal characters of this play. Its spirit, invention,
volubility of tongue and forwardness in action, are un-
bounded. Aliquando sufflaminandus erat, says Ben Jonson
of Shakespear. But we should be sorry if Ben Jonson
had been his licenser. We prefer the heedless mag-
nanimity of his wit infinitely to all Jonson's laborious.
caution. The character of the Bastard's comic humour is
the same in essence as that of other comic characters in
Shakespear; they always run on with good things and are
never exhausted; they are always daring and successful.
They have words at will, and a flow of wit like a flow of
animal spirits. The difference between Falconbridge and
the others is that he is a soldier, and brings his wit to
bear upon action, is courageous with his sword as well as
tongue, and stimulates his gallantry by his jokes, his
enemies feeling the sharpness of his blows and the sting
of his sarcasms at the same time. Among his happiest
sallies are his descanting on the composition of his own
person, his invective against "commodity, tickling com-
modity," and his expression of contempt for the Archduke
of Austria, who had killed his father, which begins in jest
but ends in serious earnest. His conduct at the siege of
[Act iii., sc. 4.]
}
King John.
179
Angiers shows that his resources were not confined to
verbal retorts. The same exposure of the policy of courts
and camps, of kings, nobles, priests, and cardinals, takes
place here as in the other plays we have gone through,
and we shall not go into a disgusting repetition.
This, like the other plays taken from English history,
is written in a remarkably smooth and flowing style, very
different from some of the tragedies, 'Macbeth,' for in-
stance. The passages consist of a series of single lines,
not running into one another. This peculiarity in the
versification, which is most common in the three parts of
'Henry VI.,' has been assigned as a reason why those
plays were not written by Shakespear. But the same
structure of verse occurs in his other undoubted plays, as
in‘Richard II.' and in 'King John.' The following are
instances:-
"That daughter there of Spain, the lady Blanch,
Is niece to England; look upon the years
Of Lewis the dauphin and that lovely maid.
If lusty love should go in quest of beauty,
Where should he find it fairer than in Blanch?
If zealous love should go in search of virtue,
Where should he find it purer than in Blanch?
If love ambitious sought a match of birth,
Whose veins bound richer blood than lady Blanch?
Such as she is, in beauty, virtue, birth,
Is the young dauphin every way complete:
If not complete, O say he is not she;
And she again wants nothing, to name want,
If want it be not, that she is not he.
He is the half part of a blessed man,
Left to be finished by such as she;
And she a fair divided excellence,
Whose fulness of perfection lies in him.
O, two such silver currents, when they join,
Do glorify the banks that bound them in:
And two such shores to two such streams made one,
Two such controlling bounds shall you be, kings,
To these two princes if you marry them.'
[¹ Act ii., sc. 1.]
180
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
Another instance, which is certainly very happy as an
example of the simple enumeration of a number of par-
ticulars, is Salisbury's remonstrance against the second
crowning of the king.
"Therefore to be possessed with double pomp,
To guard a title that was rich before;
To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,
To throw a perfume on the violet,
To smooth the ice, to add another hue
Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light
To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish;
Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.
1 י
TWELFTH NIGHT; OR, WHAT YOU WILL.”
THIS is justly considered as one of the most delightful of
Shakespear's comedies. It is full of sweetness and
pleasantry. It is perhaps too good-natured for comedy.
It has little satire, and no spleen. It aims at the
ludicrous rather than the ridiculous. It makes us laugh
at the follies of mankind, not despise them, and still less
bear any ill-will towards them. Shakespear's comic
genius resembles the bee rather in its power of extracting
sweets from weeds or poisons, than in leaving a sting
behind it. He gives the most amusing exaggeration of
the prevailing foibles of his characters, but in a way that
they themselves, instead of being offended at, would
almost join in to humour; he rather contrives opportuni-
ties for them to show themselves off in the happiest lights,
than renders them contemptible in the perverse construc-
[¹ Act iv., sc. 2.]
2 First printed in 1623. From Manningham's Diary, lately edited
by Mr. Bruce for the Camden Society, it appears that the drama
was performed at the Middle Temple, Feb. 2, 1601-2. How much
earlier it was written, cannot be ascertained at present, but Meres
does not mention it in 1598.—Ed.
།
Twelfth Night.
181
}
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tion of the wit or malice of others.
There is a certain
stage of society in which people become conscious of their
peculiarities and absurdities, affect to disguise what they
are, and set up pretensions to what they are not. This
gives rise to a corresponding style of comedy, the object
of which is to detect the disguises of self-love, and to
make reprisals on these preposterous assumptions of vanity,
by marking the contrast between the real and the affected
character as severely as possible, and denying to those
who would impose on us for what they are not even the
merit which they have. This is the comedy of artificial
life, of wit and satire, such as we see it in Congreve,
Wycherley, Vanbrugh, &c. To this succeeds a state of
society from which the same sort of affectation and pre-
tence are banished by a greater knowledge of the world
or by their successful exposure on the stage; and which by
neutralising the materials of comic character, both natural
and artificial, leaves no comedy at all—but the sentimental.
Such is our modern comedy. There is a period in the
progress of manners anterior to both these, in which the
foibles and follies of individuals are of nature's planting,
not the growth of art or study; in which they are there-
fore unconscious of them themselves, or care not who
knows them, if they can but have their whim out; and
in which, as there is no attempt at imposition, the spec-
tators rather receive pleasure from humouring the incli-
nations of the persons they laugh at, than wish to give
them pain by exposing their absurdity. This may be
called the comedy of nature, and it is the comedy which
we generally find in Shakespear. Whether the analysis
here given be just or not, the spirit of his comedies is
evidently quite distinct from that of the authors above
mentioned, as it is in its essence the same with that of
Cervantes, and also very frequently of Molière, though
he was more systematic in his extravagance than Shake-
spear. Shakespear's comedy is of a pastoral and poetical
182
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
cast. Folly is indigenous to the soil, and shoots out
with native, happy, unchecked luxuriance. Absurdity has
every encouragement afforded it; and nonsense has room
to flourish in. Nothing is stunted by the churlish, icy
hand of indifference or severity. The poet runs riot in a
conceit, and idolises a quibble. His whole object is to
turn the meanest or rudest objects to a pleasurable ac-
count. The relish which he has of a pun, or of the quaint
humour of a low character, does not interfere with the
delight with which he describes a beautiful image, or the
most refined love. The clown's forced jests do not spoil
the sweetness of the character of Viola; the same house
is big enough to hold Malvolio, the Countess, Maria, Sir
Toby, and Sir Andrew Aguecheek. For instance, nothing
can fall much lower than this last character in intellect
or morals; yet how are his weaknesses nursed and dandled
by Sir Toby into something "high fantastical," when on
Sir Andrew's commendation of himself for dancing and
fencing, Sir Toby_answers—“ Wherefore are these things
hid? Wherefore have these gifts a curtain before them?
Are they like to take dust like Mistress Moll's picture?
Why dost thou not go to church in a galliard, and come
home in a coranto? My very walk should be a jig! I
would not so much as make water but in a cinque-pace.
What dost thou mean? Is this a world to hide virtues
in? I did think by the excellent constitution of thy leg,
it was framed under the star of a galliard How Sir
Toby, Sir Andrew, and the Clown afterwards chirp over
their cups, how they "rouse the night-owl in a catch, that
will draw three souls out of one weaver!" What can be
better than Sir Toby's unanswerable answer to Malvolio,
"Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall
be no more cakes and ale ?" In a word, the best turn is
given to everything, instead of the worst. There is a
constant infusion of the romantic and enthusiastic, in
proportion as the characters are natural and sincere:

Twelfth Night.
183
whereas, in the more artificial style of comedy, every-
thing gives way to ridicule and indifference, there being
nothing left but affectation on one side, and incredulity
on the other. Much as we like Shakespear's comedies,
we cannot agree with Dr. Johnson that they are better
than his tragedies; nor do we like them half so well.
If his inclination to comedy sometimes led him to trifle
with the seriousness of tragedy, the poetical and impas-
sioned passages are the best parts of his comedies. The
great and secret charm of 'Twelfth Night' is the
character of Viola. Much as we like catches and cakes
and ale, there is something that we like better. We have
a friendship for Sir Toby; we patronise Sir Andrew ;
we have an understanding with the Clown, a sneaking
kindness for Maria and her rogueries; we feel a regard
for Malvolio, and sympathise with his gravity, his smiles,
his cross garters, his yellow stockings, and imprisonment
in the stocks. But there is something that excites in us
a stronger feeling than all this-it is Viola's confession
of her love.
་
"Duke. And what's her history?
Viola. A blank, my lord; she never told her love:
She let concealment, like a worm i' th' bud,
Feed on her damask cheek: she pin'd in thought,
And with a green and yellow melancholy,
She sat like Patience on a monument,
Smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed?
We men may say more, swear more: but indeed,
Our shows are more than will; for still we prove
Much in our vows, but little in our love.
Duke. But died thy sister of her love, my boy?
Viola. I am all the daughters of my father's house,
And all the brothers too;—and yet I know not.". 1
Shakespear alone could describe the effect of his own
poetry.
O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet south
[¹ Act ii., sc. 4.]
184
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour.”1
What we so much admire here is not the image of Patience
on a monument. which has been generally quoted, but the
lines before and after it. They “give a very echo to the
seat where love is throned." How long ago it is since
we first learnt to repeat them; and still, still they vibrate
on the heart, like the sounds which the passing wind
draws from the trembling strings of a harp left on some
desert shore! There are other passages of not less im-
passioned sweetness. Such is Olivia's address to Sebas-
tian, whom she supposes to have already deceived her in a
promise of marriage :
"Blame not this haste of mine. If you mean well,
Now go with me and with this holy man
Into the chantry by: there, before him,
And underneath that consecrated roof,/
Plight me the full assurance of your faith,
That my most jealous and too doubtful soul)
May live at peace."?
We have already said something of Shakespear's songs.
One of the most beautiful of them occurs in this play,
with a preface of his own to it;
"Duke. O fellow, come, the song we had last night.
Mark it, Cesario, it is old and plain:
The spinsters and the knitters in the sun,
And the free maids that weave their thread with bones,
Do use to chaunt it: it is silly sooth,
And dallies with the innocence of love,
Like the old age.
Clo. Are you ready, sir?
Duke. Ay: prithee sing.
SONG.
Clo. Come away, come away, death,
And in sad cypress let me be laid;
Fly away, fly away, breath;
I am slain by a fair cruel maid.
[¹ Act i., sc. 1.]
[² Act iv., sc. 3.]
i
Twelfth Night.
185
..
My shroud of white, stuck all with yew,
O, prepare it;
My part of death no one so true
Did share it.
Not a flower, not a flower sweet,
On my black coffin let there be strown;
Not a friend, not a friend greet
My poor corpse, where my bones shall be thrown:
A thousand thousand sighs to save,
Lay me, O! where
Sad true-love never find my grave,
To weep there.”1
Who, after this, will say that Shakespear's genius was
only fitted for comedy? Yet after reading other parts of
this play, and particularly the garden-scene where Mal-
volio picks up the letter, if we were to say that his genius
for comedy was less than his genius for tragedy, it would
perhaps only prove that our own taste in such matters is
more saturnine than mercurial:-
"Sir Toby. Here comes the little villain :-Enter Maria. How
now, my metal of India?
Maria. Get ye all three into the box-tree: Malvolio's coming
down this walk: he has been yonder i' the sun, practising behaviour
to his own shadow this half hour: observe him, for the love of
mockery; for I know this letter will make a contemplative idiot of
him. Close, in the name of jesting! [The others hide themselves.]
Lie thou there-[Throws down a letter] for here comes the trout
that must be caught with tickling.
[Exit.
Enter MALVOLIO.
Malvolio. 'Tis but fortune; all is fortune. Maria once told me,
she did affect me; and I have heard herself come thus near, that,
should she fancy, it should be one of my complexion. Besides, she
uses me with a more exalted respect than any one else that follows
her. What should I think on't?
Sir Toby. Here's an over-weening rogue!
Fabian. O, peace! Contemplation makes a rare turkey-cock of
him; how he jets under his advanced plumes!
Sir Andrew. 'Slight, I could so beat the rogue!
Sir Toby. Peace, I say.
[ Act ii., sc. 4.1
186
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
Malvolio. To be Count Malvolio ;-
Sir Toby. Ah, rogue!
Sir Andrew. Pistol him, pistol him.
Sir Toby. Peace, peace!
Malvolio. There is example for't; the lady of the Strachy married
the yeoman of the wardrobe.
Sir Andrew. Fie on him, Jezebel !
Fabian. O, peace! now he's deeply in; look, how imagination
blows him.
Malvolio. Having been three months married to her, sitting in
my state,
Sir Toby. O for a stone bow, to hit him in the eye!
Malvolio. Calling my officers about me, in my branched velvet
gown; having come from a day-bed, where I have left Olivia
sleeping:-
Sir Toby. Fire and brimstone!
Fabian. O, peace, peace!
Malvolio. And then to have the humour of state: and after a
demure travel of regard,- -telling them, I know my place, as I
would they should do theirs,-to ask for my kinsman Toby.-
Sir Toby. Bolts and shackles !
Fabian. O, peace, peace, peace! now, now.
Malvolio. Seven of my people, with an obedient start, make out
for him; I frown the while; and, perchance, wind up my watch,
or play with some rich jewel. Toby approaches; courtsies there
to me.
Sir Toby. Shall this fellow live?
Fabian. Though our silence be drawn from us by th' ears, yet
peace.
Malvolio. I extend my hand to him thus, quenching my familiar
smile with an austere regard of control.
Sir Toby. And does not Toby take you a blow o' the lips then?
Malvolio. Saying, Cousin Toby, my fortunes having cast me on
your niece, give me this prerogative of speech ;-
Sir Toby. What, what?
Malvolio. You must amend your drunkenness.
Fabian. Nay, patience, or we break the sinews of our plot.
Malvolio. Besides, you waste the treasure of your time with a
foolish knight-
Sir Andrew. That's me, I warrant you.
Malvolio. One Sir Andrew—
Sir Andrew. I knew, 'twas I; for many do call me fool.
Malvolio. What employment have we here?
[Taking up the letter."
Two Gentlemen of Verona.
187
The letter and his comments on it are equally good. If
poor Malvolio's treatment afterwards is a little hard,
poetical justice is done in the uneasiness which Olivia
suffers on account of her mistaken attachment to Cesario,
as her insensibility to the violence of the Duke's passion
is atoned for by the discovery of Viola's concealed love of
him.
THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA.'
THIS is little more than the first outline of a comedy
loosely sketched in. It is the story of a novel dramatised
with very little labour or pretension; yet there are pas-
sages of high poetical spirit, and of inimitable quaintness
of humour, which are undoubtedly Shakespear's, and
there is throughout the conduct of the fable a careless
grace and felicity which marks it for his. One of the
editors (we believe Mr. Pope) remarks in a marginal note
to the Two Gentlemen of Verona' "It is observable (I
know not for what cause) that the style of this comedy is
less figurative, and more natural and unaffected than the
greater part of this author's, though supposed to be one
of the first he wrote." Yet so little does the editor ap-
pear to have made up his mind upon this subject, that we
find the following note to the very next (the second)
scene. This whole scene, like many others in these
plays (some of which I believe were written by Shake-
spear, and others interpolated by the players) is composed
of the lowest and most trifling conceits, to be accounted
for only by the gross taste of the age he lived in; Populo
¹ First printed in 1623; but, as it is mentioned by Meres in his
'Palladis Tamia,' as an extant drama in 1598, it is usually regarded
as one of the poet's earliest original productions for the stage. See
Dyce's Shakespear, 2nd edit., i., 261, and Collier's Shakespear's
Library,' ii.—ED.
6
188
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
ut placerent. I wish I had authority to leave them out,
but I have done all I could, set a mark of reprobation
upon them, throughout this edition." It is strange that
our fastidious critic should fall so soon from praising to
reprobating. The style of the familiar parts of this
comedy is indeed made up of conceits-low they may be
for what we know, but then they are not poor, but rich
ones. The scene of Launce with his dog (not that in the
second, but that in the fourth act) is a perfect treat in the
way of farcical drollery and invention; nor do we think
Speed's manner of proving his master to be in love deficient
in wit or sense, though the style may be criticised as not
simple enough for the modern taste :
"Valentine. Why, how know you that I am in love?
Speed. Marry, by these special marks: first, you have learned,
like Sir Proteus, to wreathe your arms like a malcontent; to relish
a love-song like a robin-red breast; to walk alone like one that had
the pestilence; to sigh like a school-boy that had lost his ABC; to
weep like a young wench that had buried her grandam; to fast like
one that takes diet; to watch like one that fears robbing; to speak
puling like a beggar at Hallowmas. You were wont, when you
laughed, to crow like a cock; when you walked, to walk like one
of the lions; when you fasted, it was presently after dinner; when
you looked sadly, it was for want of money: and now you are
metamorphosed with a mistress, that when I look on you, I can
hardly think you my master."1
The tender scenes in this play, though not so highly
wrought as in some others, have often much sweetness of
sentiment and expression. There is something pretty
and playful in the conversation of Julia with her maid,
when she shows such a disposition to coquetry about re-
ceiving the letter from Proteus, and her behaviour after-
wards, and her disappointment, when she finds him
faithless to his vows, remind us at a distance of Imogen's
tender constancy. Her answer to Lucetta, who advises
her against following her lover in disguise, is a beautiful.
piece of poetry :
[¹ Act ii., sc. 1.]
The Merchant of Venice.
189
"Lucetta. I do not seek to quench your love's hot fire,
But qualify the fire's extreme rage,
Lest it should burn above the bounds of reason.
Julia. The more thou damm'st it up, the more it burns;
The current that with gentle murmur glides,
Thou know'st, being stopp'd, impatiently doth rage;
But when his fair course is not hindered,
He makes sweet music with th' enamell'd stones,
Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge
He overtaketh in his pilgrimage:
And so by many winding nooks he strays,
With willing sport, to the wild ocean.¹
Then let me go, and hinder not my course;
I'll be as patient as a gentle stream,
And make a pastime of each weary step,
Till the last step have brought me to my love;
And there I'll rest, as after much turmoil,
A blessed soul doth in Elysium."2
6
If Shakespear indeed had written only this and other
passages in the Two Gentlemen of Verona,' he would
almost have deserved Milton's praise of him-
"And sweetest Shakespear, Fancy's child,
Warbles his native wood-notes wild."
But as it is, he deserves rather more praise than this.
THE MERCHANT OF VENICE.³
THIS is a play that in spite of the change of manners and
prejudices still holds undisputed possession of the stage.
1 The river wanders at its own sweet will.-WORDSWORTH.
[² Act iv., sc. 7.]
<
3 This is supposed by Malone to be the Venetian Comedy '
mentioned by Henslowe under date of 1594. In 1598, it is
enumerated by Meres among Shakespear's then extant productions;
and in the same year it was entered at Stationers' Hall. It was
not printed, however, till 1600, when two editions of it appeared.
The story, on which it is mainly founded, is one which, in slightly
varied forms, occurs in several collections of tales.-Ep.
190
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
Shakespear's malignant has outlived Mr. Cumberland's
benevolent Jew. In proportion as Shylock has ceased to
be a popular bugbear, "baited with the rabble's curse,” he
becomes a half-favourite with the philosophical part of the
audience, who are disposed to think that Jewish revenge
is at least as good as Christian injuries. Shylock is a
good hater; a man no less sinned against than sinning."
If he carries his revenge too far, yet he has strong grounds
for “the lodged hate he bears Antonio,” which he explains
with equal force of eloquence and reason. He seems the
depositary of the vengeance of his race; and though the
long habit of brooding over daily insults and injuries has
crusted over his temper with inveterate misanthropy, and
hardened him against the contempt of mankind, this adds
but little to the triumphant pretensions of his enemies.
There is a strong, quick, and deep sense of justice mixed
up with the gall and bitterness of his resentment. The
constant apprehension of being burnt alive, plundered,
banished, reviled, and trampled on, might be supposed to
sour the most forbearing nature, and to take something
from that "milk of human kindness," with which his
persecutors contemplated his indignities. The desire of
revenge is almost inseparable from the sense of wrong;
and we can hardly help sympathising with the proud
spirit, hid beneath his "Jewish gaberdine," stung to
madness by repeated undeserved provocations, and labour-
ing to throw off the load of obloquy and oppression heaped
upon him and all his tribe by one desperate act of “law-
ful" revenge, till the ferociousness of the means by which
he is to execute his purpose, and the pertinacity with
which he adheres to it, turn us against him; but even at
last, when disappointed of the sanguinary revenge with
which he had glutted his hopes, and exposed to beggary
and contempt by the letter of the law on which he had
insisted with so little remorse, we pity him, and think
him hardly dealt with by his judges. In all his answers
The Merchant of Venice.
191
and retorts upon his adversaries, he has the best not only
of the argument but of the question, reasoning on their
own principles and practice. They are so far from
allowing of any measure of equal dealing, of common
justice or humanity between themselves and the Jew, that
even when they come to ask a favour of him, and Shylock
reminds them that on such a day they spit upon him,
another spurned him, another called him dog, and for
these curtesies they request he'll lend them so much
money,' Antonio, his old enemy, instead of any acknow-
ledgment of the shrewdness and justice of his remon-
strance, which would have been preposterous in a respect-
able Catholic merchant in those times, threatens him with
a repetition of the same treatment—
"I am as like to call thee so again,
To spit on thee again, to spurn thee too."2
After this, the appeal to the Jew's mercy, as if there
were any common principle of right and wrong between
them, is the rankest hypocrisy or the blindest prejudice;
and the Jew's answer to one of Antonio's friends, who
asks him what his pound of forfeit flesh is good for, is
irresistible-
To bait fish withal; if it will feed nothing else, it will feed my
revenge. He hath disgrac'd me, and hindered me of half a million,
laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorn'd my nation,
thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies ;
and what's his reason? I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes; hath
not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions ;
fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the
same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by
the same winter and summer that a Christian is? If you prick us,
do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you
poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not
revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in
that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? revenge.
If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by
[2 Ibid.]
[¹ Act i., sc. 3.]
192
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
Christian example? why, revenge. The villainy you teach me I
will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.” ¹
The whole of the trial-scene, both before and after the
entrance of Portia, is a master-piece of dramatic skill.
The legal acuteness, the passionate declamations, the
sound maxims of jurisprudence, the wit and irony inter-
spersed in it, the fluctuations of hope and fear in the
different persons, and the completeness and suddenness of
the catastrophe, cannot be surpassed. Shylock, who is
his own counsel, defends himself well, and is triumphant
on all the general topics that are urged against him, and
only fails through a legal flaw. Take the following as an
instance:
“Shylock. What judgment shall I dread, doing no wrong?
You have among you many a purchas'd slave,
Which like your asses, and your dogs, and mules,
You use in abject and in slavish parts,
Because you bought them:-shall I say to you,
Let them be free, marry them to your heirs?
Why sweat they under burdens? let their beds
Be made as soft as yours, and let their palates
Be season'd with such viands? You will answer,
The slaves are ours :-so do I answer you:
The pound of flesh, which I demand of him,
Is dearly bought, 'tis mine, and I will have it :
If you deny me, fie upon your law!
There is no force in the decrees of Venice:
I stand for judgment: answer,-shall I have it?” 2
The keenness of his revenge awakes all his faculties;
and he beats back all opposition to his purpose, whether
grave or gay, whether of wit or argument, with an equal
degree of earnestness and self-possession. His character
is displayed as distinctly in other less prominent parts of
the play, and we may collect from a few sentences the
history of his life-his descent and origin, his thrift and
domestic economy, his affection for his daughter, whom
he loves next to his wealth, his courtship and his first
[¹ Act iii., sc. 1.]
[² Act iv., sc. 1.]
The Merchant of Venice.
193
""
present to Leah his wife! "I would not have given it
(the ring which he first gave her) "for a wilderness of
monkeys!" What a fine Hebraism is implied in this
expression!
1
Portia is not a very great favourite with us; neither are
we in love with her maid, Nerissa. Portia has a certain
degree of affectation and pedantry about her, which is
very unusual in Shakespear's women, but which perhaps
was a proper qualification for the office of a "civil doctor,”
which she undertakes and executes so successfully. The
speech about Mercy is very well; but there are a thousand
finer ones in Shakespear. We do not admire the scene of
the caskets: and object entirely to the Black Prince,
Morocchius. We should like Jessica better if she had
not deceived and robbed her father, and Lorenzo, if he
had not married a Jewess, though he thinks he has a right
to wrong a Jew. The dialogue between this newly-
married couple by moonlight, beginning "On such a
night," &c., is a collection of classical elegancies.
Launcelot, the Jew's man, is an honest fellow. The
dilemma in which he describes himself placed between
his "conscience and the fiend," the one of which advises
him to run away from his master's service and the other
to stay in it, is exquisitely humorous.
Gratiano is a very admirable subordinate character.
He is the jester of the piece: yet one speech of his, in
his own defence, contains a whole volume of wisdom.
"Antonio. I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano,
A stage, where every man must play his part;
And mine a sad one.
Gratiano.
Let me play the fool:
With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come;
And let my liver rather heat with wine,
Than my heart cool with mortifying groans.
Why should a man, whose blood is warm within,
Sit like his grandsire cut in alabaster?
[¹ Act iii., sc. 1.]
194
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
Sleep when he wakes? and creep into the jaundice
By being peevish? I tell thee what, Antonio--
I love thee, and it is my love that speaks ;--
There are a sort of men, whose visages
Do cream and mantle like a standing pond:
And do a wilful stillness entertain,
With purpose to be dress'd in an opinion
Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit;
As who should say, I am Sir Oracle,
And when I ope my lips, let no dog bark!
O my Antonio, I do know of these,
That therefore only are reputed wise,
For saying nothing; when, I'm very sure,
If they should speak, would almost damn those ears,
Which hearing them, would call their brothers fools.
I'll tell thee more of this another time:
But fish not with this melancholy bait,
For this fool-gudgeon, this opinion." ¹
Gratiano's speech on the philosophy of love, and the
effect of habit in taking off the force of passion, is as full
of spirit and good sense. The graceful winding-up of
this play in the fifth act, after the tragic business is des-
patched, is one of the happiest instances of Shakespear's
knowledge of the principles of the drama. We do not
mean the pretended quarrel between Portia and Nerissa
and their husbands about the rings, which is amusing
enough, but the conversation just before and after the
return of Portia to her own house, beginning, "How sweet
the moonlight sleeps upon this bank," and ending,
"Peace! how the moon sleeps with Endymion, and would
not be awaked." There is a number of beautiful thoughts
crowded into that short space, and linked together by the
most natural transitions.
When we first went to see Mr. Kean in Shylock, we
expected to see, what we had been used to see, a decrepit
old man, bent with age and ugly with mental deformity,
grinning with deadly malice, with the venom of his heart
congealed in the expression of his countenance, sullen,
[¹ Act i., sc. 1.]
The Merchant of Venice.
195
morose, gloomy, inflexible, brooding over one idea, that of
his hatred, and fixed on one unalterable purpose, that of
his revenge. We were disappointed, because we had
taken our idea from other actors, not from the play. There
is no proof there that Shylock is old, but a single line,
"Bassanio and old Shylock, both stand forth,”—which
does not imply that he is infirm with age--and the cir-
cumstance that he has a daughter marriageable, which
does not imply that he is old at all. It would be too
much to say that his body should be made crooked and
deformed to answer to his mind, which is bowed down and
warped with prejudices and passion. That he has but
one idea, is not true; he has more ideas than any other
person in the piece; and if he is intense and inveterate in
the pursuit of his purpose, he shows the utmost elasticity,
vigour, and presence of mind, in the means of attaining
it. But so rooted was our habitual impression of the part
from seeing it caricatured in the representation, that it
was only from a careful perusal of the play itself that we
saw our error. The stage is not in general the best place
to study our author's characters in. It is too often filled
with traditional common-place conceptions of the part,
handed down from sire to son, and suited to the taste of
the great vulgar and the small.—“'Tis an unweeded garden :
things rank and gross do merely gender in it!" If a man
of genius comes once in an age to clear away the rubbish,
to make it fruitful and wholesome, they cry, ""Tis a bad
school it may be like nature, it may be like Shakespear,
but it is not like us." Admirable critics!¹
¹ Edmund Kean it was who, to the complete astonishment of the
rest of the company with which he was acting at Drury-lane, first
discarded the traditional red beard, in which Shylock had from time
immemorial appeared on the boards, and substituted a black beard.
-ED.
196
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
THE WINTER'S TALE.¹
WE wonder that Mr. Pope should have entertained doubts
of the genuineness of this play. He was, we suppose,
shocked (as a certain critic suggests) at the Chorus, Time,
leaping over sixteen years with his crutch between the
third and fourth act, and at Antigonus's landing with the
infant Perdita on the sea-coast of Bohemia. These slips
or blemishes however do not prove it not to be Shakespear's ;
for he was as likely to fall into them as anybody; but we
do not know anybody but himself who could produce the
beauties. The stuff of which the tragic passion is com
posed, the romantic sweetness, the comic humour, ar
evidently his. Even the crabbed and tortuous style c
the speeches of Leontes, reasoning on his own jealousy,
beset with doubts and fears, and entangled more and more
in the thorny labyrinth, bears every mark of Shakespear's
peculiar manner of conveying the painful struggle of
different thoughts and feelings, labouring for utterance,
and almost strangled in the birth. For instance :--
"Ha' not you seen, Camillo?
But that's past doubt; you have, or your eyeglass
Is thicker than a cuckold's horn, or heard,—
For to a vision so apparent, rumour
Cannot be mute; or thought-for cogitation
Resides not within that man that does not think 't-
My wife is slippery? If thou wilt confess,
1 First printed in 1623. The earliest record of its existence seem:
to be the entry in the diary of Dr. Forman, under the date o
May 15, 1611, from which it is to be seen that the drama wa
performed on that day at the Globe Theatre, Forman being present
-ED.
The Winter's Tale.
197
Or else be impudently negative,
To have nor eyes, nor ears, nor thought."
Here Leontes is confounded with his passion, and does not
know which way to turn himself, to give words to the
anguish, rage, and apprehension, which tug at his breast.
It is culy as he is worked up into a clearer conviction of his
wrongs by insisting on the grounds of his unjust suspicions
to Camillo, who irritates him by his opposition, that he
bursts out into the following vehement strain of bitter
indignation: yet even here his passion staggers, and is as
‚it were oppressed with its own intensity :
W
A
T
"Is whispering nothing?
Is leaning cheek to cheek? is meeting noses?
Kissing with inside lip? stopping the career
Of laughter with a sigh ?-a note infallible
Of breaking honesty !-horsing foot on foot?
Skulking in corners? wishing clocks more swift?
Hours, minutes? the noon, midnight? and all eyes
Blind with the pin-and-web, but theirs; theirs only,
That would unseen be wicked? is this nothing?
Why then the world, and all that's in't is nothing,
The covering sky is nothing, Bohemia nothing,
My wife is nothing-"2
The character of Hermione is as much distinguished by
its saint-like resignation and patient forbearance, as that
of Paulina is by her zealous and spirited remonstrances
against the injustice done to the queen, and by her devoted
attachment to her misfortunes. Hermione's restoration to
her husband and her child, after her long separation from
them, is as affecting in itself as it is striking in the repre-
sentation. Camillo, and the old shepherd and his son, are
ubordinate but not uninteresting instruments in the
development of the plot, and though last, not least, comes
Autolycus, a very pleasant, thriving rogue; and (what is
the best feather in the cap of all knavery) he escapes with
impunity in the end.
The 'Winter's Tale' is one of the best acting of our
[¹ Act i, sc. 2.]
[2 Ibid.]
198
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
author's plays. We remember seeing it with great
pleasure many years ago. It was on the night that King
took leave of the stage, when he and Mrs. Jordan played
together in the after-piece of the 'Wedding-day.' Nothing
could go off with more éclat, with more spirit, and grandeur
of effect. Mrs. Siddons played Hermione, and in the last
scene acted the painted statue to the life-with true
monumental dignity and noble passion; Mr. Kemble, in
Leontes, worked himself up into a very fine classical
phrensy; and Bannister,² as Autolycus, roared as loud for
pity as a sturdy beggar could do who felt none of the pain
he counterfeited, and was sound of wind and limb. We
shall never see these parts so acted again; or if we did, it
would be in vain. Actors grow old, or no longer surprise
us by their novelty. But true poetry, like nature, is
always young; and we still read the courtship of Florizel
and Perdita, as we welcome the return of spring, with the
same feelings as ever:
"Florizel. Thou dearest Perdita,
With these forc'd thoughts, I prithee, darken not
The mirth o' the feast: or, I'll be thine, my fair,
Or not my father's: for I cannot be
Mine own, nor anything to any, if
I be not thine: to this I am most constant,
Tho' destiny say no. Be merry, gentle;
Strangle such thoughts as these with anything
That you behold the while. Your guests are coming:
Lift up your countenance, as it were the day
Of celebration of that nuptial, which
We two have sworn shall come.
Perdita.
Stand you auspicious!
Florizel.
O Lady Fortune,
See, your guests approach.
Address yourself to entertain them sprightly,
And let's be red with mirth.
1 Nov. 28, 1811, at Covent Garden.-ED.
2 Geneste (viii., 286) says that Fawcett filled the part of.
Autolycus.-ED.
{
The Winter's Tale.
199
Enter SHEPHERD, with POLIXENES and CAMILLO disguised; CLOWN,
Mopsa, Dorcas, and other Shepherds and Shepherdesses.
Shepherd. Fie, daughter! when my old wife liv'd, upon
This day, she was both pantler, butler, cook;
Both dame and servant: welcom❜d all, serv'd all :
Would sing her song and dance her turn: now here
At upper end o' the table, now i' the middle:
On his shoulder, and his: her face o' fire
With labour; and the thing she took to quench it
She would to each one sip. You are retir'd,
As if you were a feasted one, and not
The hostess of the meeting: pray you, bid
These unknown friends to 's welcome; for it is
A way to make us better friends, more known.
Come, quench your blushes, and present yourself
That which you are, mistress o' the feast; come on,
And bid us welcome to your sheep-shearing,
As your good flock shall prosper.
Perdita. [To Pol.] Sir, welcome!
It is my father's will I should take on me
The hostess-ship o' the day: [To Cam.] you're welcome, sir!
Give me those flowers there, Dorcas.-Reverend sirs,
For you there's rosemary and rue; these keep
Seeming and savour all the winter long:
Grace and remembrance be to you both,
And welcome to our shearing!
Polixenes.
Shepherdess
(A fair one are you), well you fit our ages
With flowers of winter.
Perdita.
Sir, the year growing ancient,―—
Not yet on summer's death, nor on the birth
Of trembling winter, the fair'st flowers o' the season
Are our carnations, and streak'd gillyflowers,
Which some call nature's bastards: of that kind
Our rustic garden's barren; and I care not
To get slips of them.
Polixenes.
Do you neglect them?
Perdita.
Wherefore, gentle maiden,
For I have heard it said
There is an art which, in their piedness, shares
With great creating nature.
Polixenes.
Say, there be :
Yet nature is made better by no mean,
But nature makes that mean: so, o'er that art
200
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
Which you say adds to nature, is an art
That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry
A gentler scion to the wildest stock;
And make conceive a bark of baser kind
By bud of nobler race: this is an art
Which does mend nature,-change it rather: but
The art itself is nature.
Perdita.
So it is.¹
Polixenes. Then make your garden rich in gillyflowers,
And do not call them bastards.
Perdita.
I'll not put
The dibble in earth, to set one slip of them;
No more than, were I painted, I would wish
This youth should say, 'twere well; and only therefore
Desire to breed by me.-Here's flowers for you;
Hot lavender, mints, savoury, marjoram;
The marigold, that goes to bed wi' the sun,
And with him rises weeping: these are flowers
Of middle summer, and, I think, they're given
To men of middle age. You are very welcome.
Camillo. I should leave grazing, were I of your flock,
And only live by gazing.
Perdita.
Out, alas!
You'd be so lean, that blasts of January
Would blow you through and through. Now my fair'st friends.
I would I had some flowers o' the spring, that might
Become your time of day; and yours, and yours,
That wear upon your virgin branches yet
Your maidenheads growing :-O Proserpina,
For the flowers now, that, frighted, thou let'st fall
From Dis's waggon! daffodils,
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty: violets dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes,
Or Cytherea's breath; pale primroses,
That die unmarried, ere they can behold
Bright Phoebus in his strength (a malady
Most incident to maids); bold oxlips, and
The crown-imperial; lilies of all kinds,
The fleur-de-luce being one! O, these I lack
To make you garlands of; and my sweet friend
The lady, we here see, gives up the argument, but keeps her
mind.
The Winter's Tale.
201
To strew him o'er and o'er.
Florizel.
What, like a corse?
Perdita. No, like a bank for love to lie and play on;
Not like a corse; or if-not to be buried,
Come take your flowers;
But quick, and in mine arms.
Methinks, I play as I have seen them do
In Whitsun pastorals: sure this robe of mine
Does change my disposition.
Florizel.
Still betters what is done.
What you do,
When you speak, sweet,
I'd have you do it ever : when you sing,
I'd have you buy and sell so; so give alms;
Pray so; and for the ordering your affairs,
To sing them too; when you do dance, I wish you
A wave o' the sea, that you might ever do
Nothing but that: move still, still so,
And own no other function. Each your doing,
So singular in each particular.
Crowns what you're doing in the present deeds,
That all your acts are queens.
Perdita.
O Doricles,
Your praises are too large; but that your youth
And the true blood, which peeps forth fairly through 't,
Do plainly give you out an unstain'd shepherd,
With wisdom I might fear, my Doricles,
You woo'd me the false way.
Florizel.
I think you have
As little skill to fear, as I have purpose
To put you to't. But, come; our dance, I pray :
Your hand, my Perdita: so turtles pair,
That never mean to part.
Perdita.
I'll swear for 'em.
Polixenes. This is the prettiest low-born lass that ever
Ran on the green-sward; nothing she does, or seems,
But smacks of something greater than herself,
Too noble for this place.
Camillo.
He tells her something
That makes her blood look out: good sooth she is
The queen of curds and cream.
1
This delicious scene is interrupted by the father of the
prince discovering himself to Florizel, and haughtily
[¹ Act iv., sc. 3.]
202
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
breaking off the intended match between his son and
Perdita. When Polixenes goes out, Perdita says,
"Even here undone :
I was not much afeard; for once or twice
I was about to speak; and tell him plainly,
The self-same sun that shines upon his court,
Hides not his visage from our cottage, but
Looks on alike. [To Florizel.] Wilt please you, sir, be gone?
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 farther,
But milk my ewes and weep."¹
As Perdita, the supposed shepherdess, turns out to be the
daughter of Hermione, and a princess in disguise, both
feelings of the pride of birth and the claims of nature are
satisfied by the fortunate event of the story, and the fine
romance of poetry is reconciled to the strictest court-
etiquette.
ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL.²
'ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL' is one of the most pleasing
of our author's comedies. The interest is however more
of a serious than of a comic nature. The character of
Helen is one of great sweetness and delicacy. She is
placed in circumstances of the most critical kind, and has
to court her husband both as a virgin and a wife: yet the
most scrupulous nicety of female modesty is not once
violated. There is not one thought or action that ought
to bring a blush into her cheeks, or that for a moment
lessens her in our esteem. Perhaps the romantic attach-
[¹ Act iv., sc. 3.]
2 First printed in 1623. The composition is supposed to have
been divided between two distinct periods of the author's life, the
play having been laid aside unfinished, and then subsequently
resumed and completed. It is thought to be the piece mentioned by
Meres under the title of 'Love's Labours Won,' in 1598.-Ed.
•
All's Well that Ends Well.
203
ment of a beautiful and virtuous girl to one placed above
her hopes by the circumstances of birth and fortune, was
never so exquisitely expressed as in the reflections which
she utters when young Rousillon leaves his mother's
house, under whose protection she has been brought up
with him, to repair to the French king's court:
“Helena. O, were that all--I think not on my father,
And these great tears grace his remembrance more
Than those I shed for him. What was he like?
I have forgot him: my imagination
Carries no favour in it but Bertram's.
I am undone, there is no living, none,
If Bertram be away. It were all one
That I should love a bright particular star,
And think to wed it, he is so above me:
In his bright radiance and collateral light
Must I be comforted, not in his sphere.
Th' ambition in my love thus plagues itself;
The bind that would be mated by the lion,
Must die for love. "Twas pretty, though a plague,
To see him every hour, to sit and draw
His arched brows, his hawking eye, his curls
In our heart's table: heart too capable
Of every line and trick of his sweet favour.
But now he's gone, and my idolatrous fancy
Must sanctify his relics."
1
The interest excited by this beautiful picture of a fond
and innocent heart is kept up afterwards by her resolution
to follow him to France, the success of her experiment in
restoring the king's health, her demanding Bertram in
marriage as a recompense, his leaving her in disdain, her
interview with him afterwards disguised as Diana, a
young lady whom he importunes with his secret addresses,
and their final reconciliation when the consequences of
her stratagem and the proofs of her love are fully made
known. The persevering gratitude of the French king to
his benefactress, who cures him of a languishing dis-
temper by a prescription hereditary in her family, the
[¹ Act i., sc. 1.]
་
204
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
indulgent kindness of the Countess, whose pride of birth
yields, almost without a struggle, to her affection for
Helen, the honesty and uprightness of the good old lord
Lafeu, make very interesting parts of the picture. The
wilful stubbornness and youthful petulance of Bertram
are also very admirably described. The comic part of
the play turns on the folly, boasting, and cowardice of
Parolles, a parasite and hanger-on of Bertram's, the
detection of whose false pretensions to bravery and honour
forms a very amusing episode. He is first found out by
the old lord Lafeu, who says, "The soul of this man is
his clothes ;" and it is proved afterwards that his heart is
in his tongue, and that both are false and hollow. The
adventure of "the bringing off of his drum" has become
proverbial as a satire on all ridiculous and blustering
undertakings which the person never means to perform:
nor can anything be more severe than what one of the
bystanders [the First Lord] remarks upon what Parolles
says of himself, "Is it possible he should know what he
is, and be that he is?" Yet Parolles himself gives the
best solution of the difficulty afterwards when he is
thankful to escape with his life and the loss of character;
for, so that he can live on, he is by no means squeamish
about the loss of pretensions, to which he had sense
enough to know he had no real claim, and which he had
assumed only as a means to live.
1
"Parolles. Yet am I thankful: if my heart were great,
'Twould burst at this. Captain I'll be no more,
But I will eat and drink, and sleep as soft
As captain shall: simply the thing I am
Shall make me live. Who knows himself a braggart,
Let him fear this; for it shall come to pass,
That every braggart shall be found an ass.
Rust, sword! cool, blushes! and, Parolles, live
Safest in shame! being fool'd, by foolery thrive!
There's place and means for every man alive.
I'll after them."
[¹ Act iv., sc. 1.]
All's Well that Ends Well.
205
The story of All's Well that Ends Well,' and of
several others of Shakespear's plays, is taken from Boc-
cacio. The poet has dramatised the original novel with
great skill and comic spirit, and has preserved all the
beauty of character and sentiment without improving upon
it, which was impossible. There is indeed in Boccacio's
serious pieces a truth, a pathos, and an exquisite re-
finement of sentiment, which is hardly to be met with in
any other prose writer whatever. Justice has not been
done him by the world. He has in general passed for a
mere narrator of lascivious tales or idle jests. This
character probably originated in his obnoxious attacks on
the monks, and has been kept up by the grossness of
mankind, who revenged their own want of refinement on
Boccacio, and only saw in his writings what suited the
coarseness of their own tastes. But the truth is, that he
has carried sentiment of every kind to its very highest
purity and perfection. By sentiment we would here
understand the habitual workings of some one powerful
feeling, where the heart reposes almost entirely upon
itself, without the violent excitement of opposing duties
or untoward circumstances. In this way, nothing ever
came up to the story of Frederigo Alberigi and his
Falcon. The perseverance in attachment, the spirit of
gallantry and generosity displayed in it, has no pa-
rallel in the history of heroical sacrifices. The feeling
is so unconscious too, and involuntary, is brought out in
such small, unlooked-for, and unostentatious circum-
stances, as to show it to have been woven into the very
nature and soul of the author. The story of Isabella is
affecting in the circum-
scarcely less fine, and is more
stances and in the catastrophe. Dryden has done justice
to the impassioned eloquence of the Tancred and Sigis-
munda; but has not given an adequate idea of the wild
preternatural interest of the story of Honoria. Cimon
and Iphigene is by no means one of the best, notwith-
206
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
standing the popularity of the subject. The proof of
unalterable affection given in the story of Jeronymo, and
the simple touches of nature and picturesque beauty in
the story of the two holiday lovers, who were poisoned
by tasting of a leaf in the garden at Florence, are perfect
master-pieces. The epithet of Divine was well bestowed
on this great painter of the human heart. The invention
implied in his different tales is immense: but we are not
to infer that it is all his own. He probably availed
himself of all the common traditions which were floating in
his time, and which he was the first to appropriate. Homer
appears the most original of all authors—probably for no
other reason than that we can trace the plagiarism no
farther. Boccacio has furnished subjects to numberless
writers since his time, both dramatic and narrative. The
story of Griselda is borrowed from his Decameron by
Chaucer; as is the Knight's Tale (Palamon and Arcite)
from his poem of the Theseid.
LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST.¹
If we were to part with any of the author's comedies, it
should be this. Yet we should be loth to part with Don
Adriano de Armado, that mighty potentate of nonsense,
or his page, that handful of wit; with Nathaniel the
curate, or Holofernes the schoolmaster, and their dispute
after dinner on "the golden cadences of poesy;" with
Costard the clown, or Dull the constable. Biron is too
accomplished a character to be lost to the world, and yet
he could not appear without his fellow-courtiers and the
¹ This is believed to have been one of Shakespear's earliest
dramatic efforts, if not the earliest one, in which he did not work on
materials ready to his hand, as in the three parts of the 'Conten-
tion.' It was printed, with corrections, in 1598, but the date of the
first edition is not known.-ED.
Love's Labour's Lost.
207
king: and if we were to leave out the ladies, the gentle-
men would have no mistresses. So that we believe we
may let the whole play stand as it is, and we shall hardly
venture to “set a mark of reprobation on it." Still we
have some objections to the style, which we think savours
more of the pedantic spirit of Shakespear's time than of
his own genius; more of controversial divinity, and the
logic of Peter Lombard, than of the inspiration of the
Muse. It transports us quite as much to the manners of
the court, and the quirks of courts of law, as to the scenes
of nature or the fairy-land of his own imagination. Shake-
spear has set himself to imitate the tone of polite con-
versation then prevailing among the fair, the witty, and
the learned, and he has imitated it but too faithfully. It
is as if the hand of Titian had been employed to give
grace to the curls of a full-bottomed periwig, or Raphael
had attempted to give expression to the tapestry figures
in the House of Lords. Shakespear has put an excellent
description of this fashionable jargon into the mouth of
the critical Holofernes "as too picked, too spruce, too
affected, too odd, as it were, too peregrinate, as I may call
it ;" and nothing can be more marked than the difference
when he breaks loose from the trammels he had imposed
on himself, “as light as bird from brake," and speaks in
his own person. We think, for instance, that in the
following soliloquy the poet has fairly got the start of
Queen Elizabeth and her maids of honour:
"Biron. O! and I, forsooth, in love,
I that have been love's whip;
A very beadle to a humorous sigh:
A critic, nay, a night-watch constable,
A domineering pedant o'er the boy,
Than whom no mortal so magnificent.
This wimpled, whining, purblind, wayward boy,
This signior Junio, giant-dwarf, Dan Cupid,
Regent of love-rhymes, lord of folded arms,
Th' anointed sovereign of sighs and groans:
Liege of all loiterers and malcontents,
208
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
Dread prince of plackets, king of codpieces,
Sole imperator, and great general
Of trotting paritors:-O my little heart!--
And I to be a corporal of his field,
And wear his colours like a tumbler's hoop!
What, what! I love! I sue! I seek a wife!
A woman, that is like a German clock,
Still a-repairing; ever out of frame ;
And never going aright, being a watch,
But being watch'd, that it may still go right?
Nay, to be perjur'd, which is worst of all:
And among three to love the worst of all,
A whitely wanton with a velvet brow,
With two pitch balls stuck in her face for eyes;
Ay, and by heav'n, one that will do the deed,
Though Argus were her eunuch and her guard;
And I to sigh for her! to watch for her!
To pray for her! Go to; it is a plague
That Cupid will impose for my neglect
Of his almighty dreadful little might.
Well, I will love, write, sigh, pray, sue, and groan:
Some men must love my lady, and some Joan.”¹
The character of Biron drawn by Rosaline, and that
which Biron gives of Boyet are equally happy. The
observations on the use and abuse of study, and on the
power of beauty to quicken the understanding as well as
the senses, are excellent. The scene which has the
greatest dramatic effect is that in which Biron, the king,
Longaville, and Dumain, successively detect each other
and are detected in their breach of their vow and in their
profession of attachment to their several mistresses, in
which they suppose themselves to be overheard by no one.
The reconciliation between these lovers and their sweet-
hearts is also very good, and the penance which Rosaline
imposes on Biron, before he can expect to gain her
consent to marry him, full of propriety and beauty:
“Rosaline. Oft have I heard of you, my Lord Biron,
Before I saw you: and the world's large tongue
Proclaims you for a man replete with mocks ;
[¹ Act iii., sc. 1.]
Love's Labour's Lost.
209
Full of comparisons and wounding flouts;
Which you on all estates will execute,
That lie within the mercy of your wit.
To weed this wormwood from your faithful brain ;
And therewithal to win me, if you please
(Without the which I am not to be won),
You shall this twelvemonth term from day to day
Visit the speechless sick, and still converse
With groaning wretches; and your task shall be,
With all the fierce endeavour of your wit,
T'enforce the pained impotent to smile.
Biron. To move wild laughter in the throat of death?
It cannot be it is impossible:
Mirth cannot move a soul in agony.
Rosaline. Why, that's the way to choke a gibing spirit,
Whose influence is begot of that loose grace,
Which shallow-laughing hearers give to fools:
A jest's prosperity lies in the ear
Of him that hears it; never in the tongue
Of him that makes it: then, if sickly ears,
Deaf'd with the clamours of their own dear groans,
Will hear your idle scorns, continue them,
And I will have you, and that fault withal;
But, if they will not, throw away that spirit,
And I shall find you empty of that fault,
Right joyful of your reformation.
Biron. A twelvemonth? Well, befall what will befall,
I'll jest a twelvemonth in an hospital."¹
The famous cuckoo-song closes the play: but we shall
add no more criticisms: "the words of Mercury are
harsh after the songs of Apollo."
[¹ Act v., sc. 2.]
م
210
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.¹
THIS admirable comedy used to be frequently acted till
of late years. Mr. Garrick's Benedick was one of his
most celebrated characters; and Mrs. Jordan, we have
understood, played Beatrice very delightfully. The se-
rious part is still the most prominent here, as in other
instances that we have noticed. Here is the principal
figure in the piece, and leaves an indelible impression on
the mind by her beauty, her tenderness, and the hard
trial of her love, The passage in which Claudio_first
makes a confession of his affection towards her, conveys
as pleasing an image of the entrance of love into a
youthful bosom as can well be imagined/
'O, my lord,
When you went onward on this ended action,
I look'd upon her with a soldier's eye,
That lik'd, but had a rougher task in hand
Than to drive liking to the name of love;
But now I am return'd, and that war-thoughts
Have left their places vacant, in their rooms
Come thronging soft and delicate desires,
All prompting me how fair young Hero is,
Saying, I lik'd her ere I went to wars. "93
In the scene at the altar, when Claudio, urged on by the
villain Don John, brings the charge of incontinence against
her, and as it were divorces her in the very marriage-
1 Printed in 1600, and in the folio of 1623. Shakespear seems
here to have resorted to Ariosto's tale of 'Ariodanto and Genevra,'
which was extant in his time in at least two English translations,
those by Harington and Beverley. But the former says that
George Turbervile had also translated the story, which Harington
calls "
a pretty comical matter."-ED.
2 It is still occasionally put on the stage (1869).—Ed.
Act i., se. 1.]
J

Much Ado about Nothing.
211
ceremony, her appeals to her own conscious innocence
and honour are made with the most affecting simplicity.
"Claudio. No, Leonato,
I never tempted her with word too large,
But, as a brother to his sister, show'd
Bashful sincerity and comely love.
Hero. And seem'd I ever otherwise to you?
Claudio. Out on thy seeming! I will write against it:
You seem'd to me as Dian in her orb,
As chaste as is the bud ere it be blown ;
But you are more intemperate in your blood
Than Venus, or those pamper'd animals
That rage in savage sensuality.
Hero. Is my lord well, that he doth speak so wide?
Leonato. Are these things spoken, or do I but dream?
John. Sir, they are spoken, and these things are true.
Benedick. This looks not like a nuptial.
Hero.
True! O God!” 1

The justification of Hero in the end, and her restoration
to the confidence and arms of her lover, is brought about
by one of those temporary consignments to the grave of
which Shakespear seems to have been fond. He has
perhaps explained the theory of this predilection in the
following lines:-
"Friar. She dying, as it must be so maintain'd,
Upon the instant that she was accus'd,
Shall be lamented, pitied, and excus'd,
Of every hearer: for it so falls out,
That what we have we prize not to the worth,
While we enjoy it; but being lack'd and lost,
Why then we rack the value; then we find
The virtue, that possession would not show us
Whilst it was ours. So will it fare with Claudio;
When he shall hear she died upon his words,
The idea of her love shall sweetly creep
Into his study of imagination;
And every lovely organ of her life
Shall come apparel'd in more precious habit,
More moving, delicate, and full of life,
[¹ Act iv., sc. 1.]
212
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
Into the eye and prospect of his soul,
Than when she liv'd indeed.” ·

The principal comic characters in 'Much Ado about
Nothing,' Benedick and Beatrice, are both essences in
their kind. His character as a woman-hater is admirably
supported, and his conversion to matrimony is no less
happily effected by the pretended story of Beatrice's love
for him. It is hard to say which of the two scenes is the
best, that of the trick which is thus practised on Benedick
or that in which Beatrice is prevailed on to take pity or
him by overhearing her cousin and her maid declare
(which they do on purpose) that he is dying of love for
her. There is something delightfully picturesque in the
manner in which Beatrice is described as coming to heal
the plot which is contrived against herself:
“For look where Beatrice, like a lapwing, runs
Close by the ground, to hear our conference." 2
In consequence of what she hears (not a word of which i
true) she exclaims when these good-natured informant
are gone:
What fire is in mine ears? Can this be true?
Stand I condemn'd for pride and scorn so much?
Contempt, farewell! and maiden pride, adieu !
No glory lives behind the back of such.
And, Benedick, love on, I will requite thee,
Taming my wild heart to thy loving hand;
If thou dost love, my kindness shall incite thee
To bind our loves up in an holy band:
For others say thou dost deserve; and I
Believe it better than reportingly." 3
And Benedick, on his part, is equally sincere in hi
repentance with equal reason, after he has heard the grey
beard, Leonato, and his friend, "Monsieur Love," discours
of the desperate state of his supposed inamorata.
"This can be no trick; the conference was sadly 4 borne. The
have the truth of this from Hero. They seem to pity th
[³ Ibid.]
[¹ Act iv., sc. 1.]
[2 Act iii., sc. 1.]
4. e. seriously, in earnest.-ED.
Much Ado about Nothing.
213
lady; it seems her affections have their full bent. Love me!
why, it must be requited. I hear how I am censur'd: they say,
I will bear myself proudly, if I perceive the love come from her;
they say too, that she will rather die than give any sign of
affection.—I did never think to marry: I must not seem proud :-
happy are they that hear their detractions, and can put them to
mending. They say, the lady is fair; 'tis a truth, I can bear them
witness and virtuous;-'tis so, I cannot reprove it: and wise-
but for loving me :-by my troth it is no addition to her wit;—nor
no great argument of her folly, for I will be horribly in love with
her. I may chance have some odd quirks and remnants of wit
broken on me, because I have rail'd so long against marriage: but
doth not the appetite alter?-a man loves the meat in his youth,
that he cannot endure in his age. Shall quips and sentences, and
these paper-bullets of the brain, awe a man from the career of his
humour ?-no: the world must be peopled. When I said, I would
die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married.—
Here comes Beatrice: by this day, she's a fair lady: I do spy some
marks of love in her."
The beauty of all this arises from the characters of the
persons so entrapped. Benedick is a professed and
stanch enemy to marriage, and gives very plausible
reasons for the faith that is in him. And as to Beatrice,
she persecutes him all day with her jests (so that he
could hardly think of being troubled with them at night),
she not only turns him but all other things into jest, anà
is proof against everything serious.
"Hero. Disdain and scorn ride sparkling in her eyes,
Misprising what they look on; and her wit
Values itself so highly, that to her
All matter else seems weak: she cannot love,
Nor take no shape nor project of affection,
She is so self-endear'd.

Ursula.
Sure I think so;
And therefore, certainly, it were not good
She knew his love, lest she make sport at it.
Hero. Why, you speak truth: I never yet saw man,
How wise, how noble, young, how rarely featur'd,
But she would spell him backward: if fair-fac'd,
She'd swear the gentleman should be her sister;
[¹ Act ii., sc. 2.]
214
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
Х
If black, why, nature, drawing of an antick,
Made a foul blot: if tall, a lance ill-headed;
If low, an agate very vilely cut:
If speaking, why, a vane blown with all winds;
If silent, why, a block moved with none.
So turns she every man the wrong side out;
And never gives to truth and virtue that
Which simpleness and merit purchaseth."¹
These were happy materials for Shakespear to work on,
and he has made a happy use of them. Perhaps that
middle point of comedy was never more nicely hit in which
the ludicrous blends with the tender, and our follies, turn-
ing round against themselves in support of our affections,
retain nothing but their humanity.
Dogberry and Verges in this play are inimitable spe-
cimens of quaint blundering and misprisions of meaning;
and are a standing record of that formal gravity of
pretension and total want of common understanding,
which Shakespear no doubt copied from real life, and
which in the course of two hundred years appear to have
ascended from the lowest to the highest offices in the
state.

AS YOU LIKE IT.2
SHAKESPEAR has here converted the forest of Arden into
another Arcadia, where they "fleet the time carelessly,
as they did in the golden world.' It is the most ideal
[¹ Act ii., sc. 2.]
<
113
2 First printed, so far as existing information goes, in the folio of
1623; but on the 4th of August, no year mentioned [? 1600] was
entered, inter alia, As You Like Yt, a book.' The other articles,
all by "Mr. Shakespear," were published; but of a quarto of ‘As
You Like It,' no trace has at present been found. Shakespear has
here made good use of a novel by his contemporary Lodge, entitled
Rosalynd, Euphues' Golden Legacie,' first published in 1590, and
often reprinted.—ED.
3 Act i., sc. 1.1
As You Like It.
215
of any of this author's plays. It is a pastoral drama, in
which the interest arises more out of the sentiments and
characters than out of the actions or situations. It is not
'what is done, but what is said, that claims our attention.
Nursed in solitude, "under the shade of melancholy
boughs,"¹ the imagination grows soft and delicate, and the
wit runs riot in idleness, like a spoiled child, that is never
sent to school. Caprice and fancy reign and revel here,
and stern necessity is banished to the court. The mild
sentiments of humanity are strengthened with thought
and leisure; the echo of the cares and noise of the world
strikes upon the ear of those "who have felt them know-
ingly,"² softened by time and distance. "They hear the
tumult, and are still." The very air of the place seems
to breathe a spirit of philosophical poetry to stir the
thoughts, to touch the heart with pity, as the drowsy
forest rustles to the sighing gale. Never was there
such beautiful moralising, equally free from pedantry or
petulance:
“And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything."
"3
Jaques is the only purely contemplative character in
Shakespear. He thinks, and does nothing. His whole
occupation is to amuse his mind, and he is totally regard-
less of his body and his fortunes. He is the prince of
philosophical idlers; his only passion is thought; he
sets no value upon anything but as it serves as food for
reflection. He can "suck melancholy out of a song, as a
weasel sucks eggs;" the motley fool,
;"4 the motley fool, "who morals on
the time," is the greatest prize he meets with in the
forest. He resents Orlando's passion for Rosalind as
some disparagement of his own passion for abstract
truth; and leaves the Duke, as soon as he is restored to
[2 Cymbeline,' act iii., sc. 3.]
[³ As You Like It,' act ii., sc. 1.] [ Act ii., sc. 5.] [³ Ibid. sc. 7.]
[¹ Act ii., sc. 7.]
216
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
his sovereignty, to seek his brother out who has quitted
it, and turned hermit.
"Out of these convertites
There is much matter to be heard and learn'd."
Within the sequestered and romantic glades of the
forest of Arden, they find leisure to be good and wise,
or to play the fool and fall in love. Rosalind's character
is made up of sportive gaiety and natural tenderness:
her tongue runs the faster to conceal the pressure at her
heart. She talks herself out of breath, only to get deeper
in love. The coquetry with which she plays with her
lover in the double character which she has to support is
managed with the nicest address. How full of voluble,
laughing grace is all her conversation with Orlando :
"In heedless mazes running
With wanton haste and giddy cunning."
How full of real fondness and pretended cruelty is her
answer to him when he promises to love her "For ever
and a day !"
"Say a day without the ever: no, no, Orlando; men are April
when they woo, December when they wed: maids are May when
they are maids; but the sky changes when they are wives. I will
be more jealous of thee than a Barbary cock-pigeon over his ben;
more clamorous than a parrot against rain; more new-fangled than
an ape; more giddy in my desires than a monkey; I will weep for
nothing, like Diana in the fountain, and I will do that, when you
are disposed to be merry; I will laugh like a hyen, and that when
you are inclined to sleep.
Orlando. But will my Rosalind do so?
Rosalind. By my life she will do as I do."2
The silent and retired character of Celia is a necessary
relief to the provoking loquacity of Rosalind, nor can
anything be better conceived or more beautifully described
than the mutual affection between the two cousins:
L' Act v., sc. 4.]
[2 Act iv., sc. 1.]

As You Like It.
"We still have slept together,
Rose at an instant, learn'd, play'd, eat together,
And wheresoe'er we went, like Juno's swans,
Still we went coupled and inseparabie.”¹
The unrequited love of Silvius for Phebe shows the
perversity of this passion in the commonest scenes of
life, and the rubs and stops which nature throws in its
way, where fortune has placed none. Touchstone is not
in love, but he will have a mistress as a subject for the
exercise of his grotesque humour, and to show his con-
tempt for the passion, by his indifference about the
person. He is a rare fellow. He is a mixture of the
ancient cynic philosopher with the modern buffoon, and
turns folly into wit, and wit into folly, just as the fit
takes him. His courtship of Audrey not only throws a
degree of ridicule on the state of wedlock itself, but he
is equally an enemy to the prejudices of opinion in
other respects. The lofty tone of enthusiasm, which the
Duke and his companions in exile spread over the still-
ness and solitude of a country life, receives a pleasant
shock from Touchstone's sceptical determination of the
question:
"Corin. And how like you this shepherd's life, Master Touch-
stone?
Clown. Truly, shepherd, in respect of itself, it is a good life; but
in respect that it is a shepherd's life, it is naught. In respect that
it is solitary, I like it very well; but in respect that it is private, it
is a very vile life. Now in respect it is in the fields, it pleaseth me
well; but in respect it is not in the court, it is tedious. As it is a
spare life, look you, it fits my humour; but as there is no more
plenty in it, it goes much against my stomach.”2
Zimmerman's celebrated work on Solitude discovers only
half the sense of this passage.
There is hardly any of Shakespear's plays that con-
tains a greater number of passages that have been quoted
in books of extracts, or a greater number of phrases that
[² Act iii., sc. 2.]
[¹ Act i., sc. 3.]
2

Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
become in a manner proverbial. If we were to give
the striking passages, we should give half the play.
We will only recall a few of the most delightful to the
reader's recollection. Such are the meeting between
Orlando and Adam, the exquisite appeal of Orlando to
the humanity of the Duke and his company to supply
him with food for the old man, and their answer, the
Duke's description of a country life, and the account of
Jaques moralising on the wounded deer, his meeting with
Touchstone in the forest, his apology for his own melan-
choly and his satirical vein, and the well-known speech
on the stages of human life, the old song of “ Blow, blow,
thou winter's wind," Rosalind's description of the marks
of a lover and of the progress of time with different
persons, the picture of the snake wreathed round Oliver's
neck while the lioness watches her sleeping prey, and
Touchstone's lecture to the shepherd, his defence of
cuckolds, and panegyric on the virtues of “ an If."-All
of these are familiar to the reader: there is one passage
of equal delicacy and beauty which may have escaped
him, and with it we shall close our account of 'As You
Like It.' It is Phebe's description of Ganimed, at the
end of the third act.
"Think not I love him, tho' I ask for him;
'Tis but a peevish boy, yet he talks well;-
But what care I for words! yet words do well,
When he that speaks them pleases those that hear:
It is a pretty youth-not very pretty-
But sure he's proud, and yet his pride becomes him;
He'll make a proper man; the best thing in him
Is his complexion; and faster than his tongue
Did make offence, his eye did heal it up:
He is not very tall, yet for his years he's tall;
His leg is but so so, and yet 'tis well;
There was a pretty redness in his lip,
A little riper and more lusty red
Than that mixed in his cheek; 'twas just the difference
Betwixt the constant red and mingled damask.
There be some women, Silvius, had they mark'd him
The Taming of the Shrew.
219
In parcels as I did, would have gone near
To fall in love with him: but for my part
I love him not, nor hate him not; and yet
have more cause to hate him than to love him;
For what had he to do to chide at me?”
THE TAMING OF THE SHREW.'
'THE TAMING OF THE SHREW' is almost the only one of
Shakespear's comedies that has a regular plot, and down-
right moral. It is full of bustle, animation, and rapidity
of action. It shows admirably how self-will is only to
be got the better of by stronger will, and how one degree
of ridiculous perversity is only to be driven out by
another still greater. Petruchio is a madman in his
senses; a very honest fellow, who hardly speaks a word of
truth, and succeeds in all his tricks and impostures. He
acts his assumed character to the life, with the most
fantastical extravagance, with complete presence of mind,
with untired animal spirits, and without a particle of ill-
humour from beginning to end.-The situation of poor
Katherine, worn out by his incessant persecutions, be-
comes at last almost as pitiable as it is ludicrous, and it
is difficult to say which to admire most, the unaccount-
ableness of his actions, or the unalterableness of his
resolutions. It is a character which most husbands
ought to study, unless perhaps the very audacity of
Petruchio's attempt might alarm them more than his
success would encourage them. What a sound must the
following speech carry to some married ears!
1 Only known to us in the folio of 1623, and in a subsequent
quarto impression of 1631. There was an anterior drama, printed
in 1594, 1596, and 1607, in which the incidents and general structure
of the story are similar, and in which Shakespear has even been
thought (probably in error) to have had a hand.-ED
220
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
"Think you a little din can daunt my ears?
Have I not in my time heard lions roar?
Have I not heard the sea, puff'd up with winds,
Rage like an angry boar, chafed with sweat?
Have I not heard great ordnance in the field?
And heav'n's artillery thunder in the skies?
Have I not in a pitched battle heard
Loud larums, neighing steeds, and trumpets clang?
And do you tell me of a woman's tongue,
That gives not half so great a blow to hear,
As will a chesnut in a farmer's fire?"1
Not all Petruchio's rhetoric would persuade more than
(C some dozen followers" to be of this heretical way of
thinking. He unfolds his scheme for the Taming of
the Shrew,' on a principle of contradiction, thus:—
"I will attend her here,
And woo her with some spirit when she comes.
Say that she rail; why then I'll tell her plain,
She sings as sweetly as a nightingale;
Say that she frown; I'll say she looks as clear
As morning roses newly wash'd with dew;
Say she be mute, and will not speak a word;
Then I'll commend her volubility,
And say she uttereth piercing eloquence:
If she do bid me pack, I'll give her thanks,
As though she bid me stay by her a week;
If she deny to wed, I'll crave the day,
When I shall ask the banns, and when be married ?"2
He accordingly gains her consent to the match, by telling
her father that he has got it; disappoints her by not
returning at the time he has promised to wed her, and
when he returns, creates no small consternation by the
oddity of his dress and equipage. This, however, is
nothing to the astonishment excited by his mad-brained
behaviour at the marriage. Here is the account of it by
an eye-witness :—
"Gremio. Tut, she's a lamb, a dove, a fool to him :
I'll tell you, Sir Lucentio: when the priest
[¹ Act i., sc. 2.]
[2 Act ii., sc. 1.]
The Taming of the Shrew.
221
Should ask if Katherine should be his wife?
Ay, by gogs wouns, quoth he; and swore so loud,
That, all amaz'd, the priest let fall the book;
And as he stooped again to take it up,
This mad-brain'd bridegroom took him such a cuff,
That down fell priest and book, and book and priest.
Now take them up, quoth he, if any list.
Tranio. What said the wench when he rose up again?
Gremio. Trembled and shook; for why he stamp'd and swore,
As if the vicar meant to cozen him.
But after many ceremonies done,
He calls for wine; a health! quoth he; as if
He'd been aboard, carousing with his mates
After a storm; quaff'd off the muscadel,
And threw the sops all in the sexton's face;
Having no other reason,
But that his beard grew thin and hungerly,
And seem'd to ask him sops, as he was drinking.
This done, he took the bride about the neck,
And kiss'd her lips with such a clamorous smack,
That at the parting all the church did echo:
And I, seeing this, came thence for very shame;
And after me, I know, the rout is coming.
Such a mad marriage never was before.”¹
The most striking and at the same time laughable
feature in the character of Petruchio throughout, is the
studied approximation to the intractable character of real
madness, his apparent insensibility to all external con-
siderations, and utter indifference to everything but the
wild and extravagant freaks of his own self-will. There
is no contending with a person on whom nothing makes
any impression but his own purposes, and who is bent on
his own whims just in proportion as they seem to want
common sense. With him a thing's being plain and
reasonable is a reason against it. The airs he gives him-
self are infinite, and his caprices as sudden as they are
groundless. The whole of his treatment of his wife at
home is in the same spirit of ironical attention and in-
verted gallantry. Everything flies before his will, like a
[¹ Act iii., sc. 2.]
222
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
conjuror's wand, and he only metamorphoses his wife's
temper by metamorphosing her senses and all the objects
she sees, at a word's speaking. Such are his insisting
that it is the moon and not the sun which they see, &c.
This extravagance reaches its most pleasant and poetical
height in the scene where, on their return to her father's,
they meet old Vincentio, whom Petruchio immediately
addresses as a young lady :—
"Petruchio. Good morrow, gentle mistress, where away?
Tell me, sweet Kate, and tell me truly too,
Hast thou beheld a fresher gentlewoman?
Such war of white and red within her cheeks;
What stars do spangle heaven with such beauty,
As those two eyes become that heav'nly face?
Fair lovely maid, once more good day to thee:
Sweet Kate, embrace her for her beauty's sake.
Hortensio. 'A will make the man mad to make a woman of him.
Katherine. Young budding virgin, fair and fresh and sweet,
Whither away, or where is thy abode?
Happy the parents of so fair a child ;
Happier the man whom favourable stars
Allot thee for his lovely bed-fellow.
Petruchio. Why, how now, Kate, I hope thou art not mad:
This is a man, old, wrinkled, faded, wither'd,
And not a maiden, as thou say'st he is.
Katherine. Pardon, old father, my mistaking eyes
That have been so bedazzled with the sun
That everything I look on seemeth green.
Now I perceive thou art a reverend father."
591
The whole is carried off with equal spirit, as if the
poet's comic Muse had wings of fire. It is strange how
one man could be so many things; but so it is. The
concluding scene, in which trial is made of the obedience
of the new-married wives (so triumphantly for Petruchio)
is a very happy one.-In some parts of this play there is
a little too much about music-masters and masters of
philosophy. They were things of greater rarity in those
days than they are now. Nothing however can be better
[¹ Act iv., sc. 6.]
The Taming of the Shrew.
223
than the advice which Tranio gives his master for the
prosecution of his studies :—
"The mathematics, and the metaphysics,
Fall to them as you find your stomach serves you :
No profit grows where is no pleasure ta'en:
In brief, sir, study what you most affect."
We have heard the Honeymoon' called "an elegant
Katherine and Petruchio." We suspect we do not under-
stand this word elegant in the sense that many people do.
But in our sense of the word, we should call Lucentio's
description of his mistress elegant :
"Tranio, I saw her coral lips to move,
And with her breath she did perfume the air :
Sacred and sweet was all I saw in her." 2
When Biondello tells the same Lucentio for his encourage-
ment, “I knew a wench married in an afternoon as she
went to the garden for parsley to stuff a rabbit, and so
may you, sir"—there is nothing elegant in this, and yet
we hardly know which of the two passages is the best.
'The Taming of the Shrew' is a play within a play.
It is supposed to be a play acted for the benefit of Sly
the tinker, who is made to believe himself a lord, when
he wakes after a drunken brawl. The character of Sly
and the remarks with which he accompanies the play are
as good as the play itself. His answer when he is asked
how he likes it, "Indifferent well; 'tis a good piece of
work, would 'twere done," is in good keeping, as if he
were thinking of his Saturday night's job. Sly does not
change his tastes with his new situation, but in the midst
of splendour and luxury still calls out lustily and re-
peatedly "for a pot o'small ale." He is very slow in
giving up his personal identity in his sudden advance-
ment-
"I am Christophero Sly; call me not honour nor lordship. I ne'er
drank sack in my life: and if you give me any conserves, give me
[¹ Act. i., sc. 1.]
[2 Ibid.]
224
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
conserves of beef: ne'er ask me what raiment I'll wear, for I have
no more doublets than backs, no more stockings than legs, nor no
more shoes than feet, nay, sometimes more feet than shoes, or such
shoes as my toes look through the over-leather.-What, would you
make me mad? Am not I Christophero Sly, old Sly's son of Burton-
heath, by birth a pedlar, by education a card-maker, by transmutation
a bear-herd, and now by present profession a tinker? Ask Marian
Hacket, the fat alewife of Wincot, if she know me not; if she say
I am not fourteen-pence on the score for sheer ale, score me up for
the lying'st knave in Christendom.” ¹
This is honest. The Slys are no rogues," as he says
of himself. We have a great predilection for this repre-
sentative of the family; and what makes us like him the
better is, that we take him to be of kin (not many de-
grees removed) to Sancho Panza.
MEASURE FOR MEASURE.2
THIS is a play as full of genius as it is of wisdom. Yet
there is an original sin in the nature of the subject, which
prevents us from taking a cordial interest in it.
"The
height of moral argument” which the author has main-
tained in the intervals of passion or blended with the
more powerful impulses of nature, is hardly surpassed in
any of his plays. But there is in general a want of pas-
sion; the affections are at a stand; our sympathies are
repulsed and defeated in all directions. The only passion
which influences the story is that of Angelo; and yet he
seems to have a much greater passion for hypocrisy than
for his mistress. Neither are we greatly enamoured of
Isabella's rigid chastity, though she could not act other-
[¹ Induction,' sc. 2.]
* First printed in the folio of 1623. It appears to have been
written early in 1604. Shakespear found his material chiefly in an
old drama by George Whetstone, entitled 'Promos and Cassandra,'
1578, or in Whetstone's own prose version of that story in the
Heptameron of Civil Discourses,' 1582.-ED.
Measure for Measure.
225
wise than she did. We do not feel the same confidence
in the virtue that is "sublimely good" at another's
expense, as if it had been put to some less disinterested
trial. As to the Duke, who makes a very imposing and
mysterious stage-character, he is more absorbed in his own
plots and gravity than anxious for the welfare of the state;
more tenacious of his own character than attentive to the
feelings and apprehensions of others. Claudio is the
only person who feels naturally; and yet he is placed in
circumstances of distress which almost preclude the wish
for his deliverance. Mariana is also in love with Angelo,
whom we hate. In this respect, there may be said to be
a general system of cross-purposes between the feelings of
the different characters and the sympathy of the reader or
the audience. This principle of repugnance seems to have
reached its height in the character of Master Barnardine,
who not only sets at defiance the opinions of others, but
has even thrown off all self-regard,—“ a man that appre-
hends death no more dreadfully but as a drunken sleep ;
careless, reckless, and fearless of what's past, present, or
to come." He is a fine antithesis to the morality and the
hypocrisy of the other characters of the play. Barnardine
is Caliban transported from Prospero's wizard island to
the forests of Bohemia or the prisons of Vienna. He is
the creature of bad habits as Caliban is of gross instincts.
.He has however a strong notion of the natural fitness of
things, according to his own sensations-" He has been
drinking hard all night, and he will not be hanged that
day —and Shakespear has let him off at last. We do
not understand why the philosophical German critic,
Schlegel, should be so severe on those pleasant persons,
Lucio, Pompey, and Master Froth, as to call them
"wretches." They appear all mighty comfortable in
´heir occupations, and determined to pursue them, as
he flesh and fortune should serve." A very good exposure
1
[¹ Act iv., sc. 2.]
CC
1
226
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
of the want of self-knowledge and contempt for others,
which is so common in the world, is put into the mouth of
Abhorson, the jailer, when the Provost proposes to asso-
ciate Pompey with him in his office-" A bawd, sir? Fie
upon him, he will discredit our mystery." And the same
answer will serve in nine instances out of ten to the same
kind of remark, "Go to, sir, you weigh equally; a feather
will turn the scale." Shakespear was in one sense the
least moral of all writers; for morality (commonly so
called) is made up of antipathies; and his talent consisted
in sympathy with human nature, in all its shapes, degrees,
depressions, and elevations. The object of the pedantic
moralist is to find out the bad in everything: his was to
show that "there is some soul of goodness in things evil.”
Even Master Barnardine is not left to the mercy of what
others think of him; but when he comes in, speaks for
himself, and pleads his own cause, as well as if counsel
had been assigned him. In one sense, Shakespear was no
moralist at all: in another, he was the greatest of all
moralists. He was a moralist in the same sense in which
nature is one. He taught what he had learnt from her.
He showed the greatest knowledge of humanity with the
greatest fellow-feeling for it.
One of the most dramatic passages in the present play
is the interview between Claudio and his sister, when she
comes to inform him of the conditions on which Angelo
will spare his life.
"Claudio. Let me know the point.
:
Isabella. O, I do fear thee, Claudio and I quake,
Lest thou a feverous life should'st entertain,
And six or seven winters more respect
Than a perpetual honour. Dar'st thou die ?
The sense of death is most in apprehension;
And the poor beetle, that we tread upon,
In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great
As when a giant dies.
Claudio.
Why give you me this shame ?
Measure for Measure.
227
Think you I can a resolution fetch
From flowery tenderness? If I must die,
I will encounter darkness as a bride,
And hug it in mine arms.
Isabella. There spake my brother! there my father's grave
Did utter forth a voice! Yes, thou must die:
Thou art too noble to conserve a life
In base appliances. This outward-sainted deputy-
Whose settled visage and deliberate word
Nips youth i' the head, and follies doth emmew,
As falcon doth the fowl-is yet a devil.
His filth within being cast, he would appear
A pond as deep as holl.
Claudio.
The priestly Angelo?
Isabella O, 'tis the cunning livery of hell,
The damned'st body to invest and cover
In priestly guards! Dost thou think, Claudio,--
If I would yield him my virginity,
Thou mightst be freed?
Claudio.
O, heavens! it cannot be.
Isabella. Yes, he would give 't thee, from this rank offence,
So to offend him still. This night's the time
That I should do what I abhor to name,
Or else thou diest to-morrow.
Claudio.
Thou shalt not do 't.
Isabella. O, were it but my life,
I'd throw it down for your deliverance
As frankly as a pin.
Claudio.
Thanks, dear Isabel.
Isabella. Be ready, Claudio, for your death to-morrow.
Claudio. Yes.-Has he affections in him,
That thus can make him bite the law by the nose,
When he would force it? Sure it is no sin,
Or of the deadly seven it is the least.
Isabella.
Which is the least?
Claudio. If it were damnable, he being so wise,
Why should he for the momentary trick
Be perdurably fin'd? O, Isabel!
Isabella.
Claudio.
What says my brother?
Death's a fearful thing.
Isabella. And shamed life a hateful.
Claudio. Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;
To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot;
This sensible warm motion to become
228
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice;
To be imprison'd in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendent world; or to be worse than worst
Of those that lawless and incertain thoughts
Imagine howling!-'tis too horrible!
The weariest and most loathed worldly life,
That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment
Can lay on nature, is a paradise
To what we fear of death.
Isabella. Alas! alas!
Claudio.
Sweet sister, let me live :
What sin you do to save a brother's life,
Nature dispenses with the deed so far,
That it becomes a virtue." 1
What adds to the dramatic beauty of this scene and
the effect of Claudio's passionate attachment to life is, tha
it immediately follows the Duke's lecture to him, in the
character of the Friar, recommending an absolute indiffer
ence to it:
"Reason thus with life,-
If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing
That none but fools would keep: a breath thou art,
Servile to all the skyey influences
That do this habitation, where thou keep'st,
Hourly afflict: merely, thou art death's fool ;
For him thou labour'st by thy flight to shun,
And yet runn'st toward him still. Thou art not noble;
For all th' accommodations that thou bear'st
Are nurs'd by baseness. Thou'rt by no means valiant;
For thou dost fear the soft and tender fork
Of a poor worm. Thy best of rest is sleep,
And that thou oft provok'st; yet grossly fear'st
Thy death, which is no more. Thou art not thyself;
For thou exist'st on many a thousand grains
That issue out of dust. Happy thou art not;
For what thou hast not, still thou striv'st to get;
And what thou hast, forgett'st. Thou art not certain ;
[¹ Act iii., sc. 1.]
+
}
The Merry Wives of Windsor.
229
For thy complexion shifts to strange effects,
After the moon. If thou art rich thou'rt poor;
For, like an ass whose back with ingots bows
Thou bear'st thy heavy riches but a journey,
And death unloads thee. Friend thou hast none;
For thy own bowels, which do call thee sire,
The mere effusion of thy proper loins,
Do curse the gout, serpigo, and the rheum,
For ending thee no sooner. Thou'st nor youth, nor age
But, as it were, an after-dinner's sleep,
Dreaming on both: for all thy blessed youth
Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms
Of palsied eld; and when thou art old, and rich,
Thou hast neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty,
To make thy riches pleasant. What's yet in this,
That bears the name of life? Yet in this life
Lie hid more thousand deaths; yet death we fear,
That makes these odds all even."¹
THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR.2
THE 'Merry Wives of Windsor' is no doubt a very
amusing play, with a great deal of humour, character, and
nature in it: but we should have liked it much better if
any one else had been the hero of it, instead of Falstaff.
We could have been contented if Shakespear had not
been "commanded to show the knight in love." Wits
and philosophers, for the most part, do not shine in that
character; and Sir John himself by no means comes off
with flying colours. Many people complain of the
degradation and insults to which Don Quixote is so
frequently exposed in his various adventures. But what
are the unconscious indignities which he suffers, com-
[¹ Act iii., sc. 1.]
2 First printed (imperfectly) in 1602; the earliest genuine text is
in the folio of 1623. The more or less probable sources of Shake-
spear's drama are collected in the Appendix to the Shakespear
Society's reprint of edit. 1602.-ED.
230
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
pared with the sensible mortifications which Falstaff is
made to bring upon himself? What are the blows and
buffettings which the Don receives from the staves of the
Yanguesian carriers or from Sancho Panza's more hard-
hearted hands, compared with the contamination of the
buck-basket, the disguise of the fat woman of Brentford,
and the horns of Herne the hunter, which are discovered...
on Sir John's head? In reading the play, we indeed
wish him well through all these discomfitures, but it
would have been as well if he had not got into them.
Falstaff in the 'Merry Wives of Windsor' is not the man
he was in the two parts of 'Henry IV.' His wit and
eloquence have left him. Instead of making a butt of
others, he is made a butt of by them. Neither is there a
single particle of love in him to excuse his follies: he is
merely a designing bare-faced knave, and an unsuccessfulˇ
one. The scene with Ford as Master Brook, and that
with Simple, Slender's man, who comes to ask after the
Wise Woman, are almost the only ones in which his
old intellectual ascendency appears. He is like a person
recalled to the stage to perform an unaccustomed and un-
gracious part; and in which we perceive only "some
faint sparks of those flashes of merriment that were wont
to set the hearers in a roar. But the single scene with.
Doll Tearsheet, or Mrs. Quickly's account of his desiring
"to eat some of housewife Keach's prawns," and telling
her “to be no more so familiarity with such people,” is
worth the whole of the 'Merry Wives of Windsor' put
together. Ford's jealousy, which is the mainspring of the,
comic incidents, is certainly very well managed. Page,
on the contrary, appears to be somewhat uxorious in his-
disposition; and we have pretty plain indications of the
effect of the characters of the husbands on the different
""
degrees of fidelity in their wives. Mrs. Quickly
makes a very lively go-between, both between Falstaff
and his Dulcineas, and Anne Page and her lovers, and.
1
i
یا
The Merry Wives of Windsor.
231
seems in the latter case so intent on her own interest as
totally to overlook the intentions of her employers. Her
master, Doctor Caius, the Frenchman, and her fellow-
servant, Jack Rugby, are very completely described.
This last-mentioned person is rather quaintly commended
by Mrs. Quickly as "an honest, willing, kind fellow, as
ever servant shall come in house withal, and I warrant
you, no tell-tale, nor no breed-bate; his worst fault is,
that he is given to prayer; he is something peevish that
way; but nobody but has his fault." The Welch
Parson, Sir Hugh Evans (a title which in those days was
given to the clergy) is an excellent character in all
respects. He is as respectable as he is laughable. He
has "very good discretions and very odd humours." The
duel-scene with Caius gives him an opportunity to show
his cholers and his tremblings of mind," his valour
and his melancholy, in an irresistible manner. In the
dialogue which at his mother's request he holds with his
pupil, William Page, to show his progress in learning, it
is hard to say whether the simplicity of the master or the
scholar is the greatest. Nym, Bardolph, and Pistol are
but the shadows of what they were; and Justice Shallow
himself has little of his consequence left. But his
cousin, Slender, makes up for the deficiency. He is a
very potent piece of imbecility. In him the pretensions.
of the worthy Gloucestershire family are well kept up,
and immortalised. He and his friend Sackerson and his
book of songs and his love of Anne Page and his having
nothing to say to her can never be forgotten. It is the
only first-rate character in the play: but it is in that
class. Shakespear is the only writer who was as great in
describing weakness as strength.
[¹ Act i., sc. 4.]
232
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
THE COMEDY OF ERRORS.¹
THIS Comedy is taken very much from the Menæchmi of
Plautus, and is not an improvement on it. Shakespear
appears to have bestowed no great pains on it, and there
are but a few passages which bear the decided stamp of
his genius. He seems to have relied on his author, and
on the interest arising out of the intricacy of the plot.
The curiosity excited is certainly very considerable,
though not of the most pleasing kind. We are teazed as
with a riddle, which notwithstanding we try to solve. In
reading the play, from the sameness of the names of the
two Antipholises and the two Dromios, as well from their
being constantly taken for each other by those who see
them, it is difficult, without a painful effort of attention,
to keep the characters distinct in the mind. And again,
on the stage, either the complete similarity of their
persons and dress must produce the same perplexity
whenever they first enter, or the identity of appearance
which the story supposes will be destroyed. We still,
however, having a clue to the difficulty, can tell which is
which, merely from the practical contradictions which
arise as soon as the different parties begin to speak; and
we are indemnified for the perplexity and blunders into
which we are thrown by seeing others thrown into greater
and almost inextricable ones. This play (among other
¹ This was one of Shakespear's earliest dramatic productions;
it is supposed, with some reason, to be the same play which was
performed at Gray's Inn in 1594. There is no edition of it, however,
prior to that contained in the first folio. The author resorted to the
'Menæchmi' of Plautus, of which no English translation is at
present known earlier than that by W. W[arner], 1595, 4to.-Ed.
J
The Comedy of Errors.
233
considerations) leads us not to feel much regret that
Shakespear was not what is called a classical scholar.
We do not think his forte would ever have lain in imi-
tating or improving on what others invented, so much.
as in inventing for himself, and perfecting what he
invented, not perhaps by the omission of faults, but by
the addition of the highest excellences. His own genius
was strong enough to bear him up, and he soared longest
and best on unborrowed plumes. The only passage of a
very Shakespearian cast in this comedy is the one in
which the Abbess, with admirable characteristic artifice,
makes Adriana confess her own misconduct in driving her
husband mad:
"Abbess. How long hath this possession held the man?
Adriana. This week he hath been heavy, sour, sad,
And much, much different from the man he was;
But, till this afternoon, his passion
Ne'er brake into extremity of rage.
Abbess. Hath he not lost much wealth by wreck of sea?
Buried some dear friend? Hath not else his eye
Stray'd his affection in unlawful love?
A sin prevailing much in youthful men,
Who give their eyes the liberty of gazing.
Which of these sorrows is he subject to?
Adriana. To none of these, except it be the last:
Namely, some love that drew him oft from home.
Abbess. You should for that have reprehended him.
Adriana. Why, so I did.
Abbess.
Ay, but not rough enough.
Adriana. As roughly as my modesty would let me.
Abbess. Haply, in private?
Adriana.
Abbess. Ay, but not enough.
And in assemblies too.
Adriana. It was the copy of our conference:
In bed, he slept not for my urging it;
At board, he fed not for my urging it;
Alone it was the subject of my theme;
In company, I often glanc'd at it;
Still did I tell him it was vile and bad.
Abbess. And therefore came it that the man was mad :
The venom'd clamours of a jealous woman
234
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
Poison more deadly than a mad dog's tooth.
It seems, his sleeps were hinder'd by thy railing:
And therefore comes it that his head is light.
Thou says't his meat was sauc'd with thy upbraidings:
Unquiet meals make ill digestions,
Therefore the raging fire of fever bred :
And what's a fever but a fit of madness?
Thou says't his sports were hinder'd by thy brawls:
Sweet recreation barr'd, what doth ensue
But moody and dull melancholy,
Kinsman to grim and comfortless despair
And at her heels a huge infectious troop
Of pale distemperatures and foes to life?
In food, in sport, and life-preserving rest
To be disturb'd, would mad or man or beast;
The consequence is, then, thy jealous fits
Have scar'd thy husband from the use of wits.
Luciana. She never reprehended him but mildly,
When he demeaned himself rough-rude, and wildly.—
Why bear you these rebukes, and answer not?
Adriana. She did betray me to my own reproof."
Pinch the conjuror is also an excrescence not to be
found in Plautus. He is indeed a very formidable ana-
chronism:
CC
They brought one Pinch, a hungry lean-fac'd villain,
A mere anatomy, a mountebank,
A thread-bare juggler and a fortune-teller;
A needy, hollow-ey'd, sharp-looking wretch,
A living-dead man.
This is exactly like some of the Puritanical portraits to
be met with in Hogarth.
i
DOUBTFUL PLAYS OF SHAKESPEAR.
WE shall give for the satisfaction of the reader what the
celebrated German critic, Schlegel, says on this subject,
and then add a very few remarks of our own.
[¹ Act v., sc. 1.]
[2 Ibid.]
Doubtful Plays.
235
"All the editors, with the exception of Capell, are
unanimous in rejecting Titus Adronicus' as unworthy of
Shakespear, though they always allow it to be printed
with the other pieces, as the scape-goat, as it were, of
their abusive criticism. The correct method in such an
investigation is first to examine into the external grounds,
evidences, &c., and to weigh their worth; and then to
adduce the internal reasons derived from the quality of
the work. The critics of Shakespear follow a course
directly the reverse of this; they set out with a pre-
conceived opinion against a piece, and seek, in justification
of this opinion, to render the historical grounds suspicious,
and to set them aside. Titus Andronicus' is to be found in
the first folio edition of Shakespear's works, which it was
known was conducted by Heminge and Condell, for many
years his friends and fellow-managers of the same theatre.
Is it possible to persuade ourselves that they would not
have known if a piece in their repertory did or did not
actually belong to Shakespear? And are we to lay to the
charge of these honourable men a designed fraud in this
single case, when we know that they did not show them-
selves so very desirous of scraping everything together
which went by the name of Shakespear, but, as it appears,
merely gave those plays of which they had manuscripts in
hand? Yet the following circumstance is still stronger:
George Meres, a contemporary and admirer of Shakespear,
mentions 'Titus Andronicus' in an enumeration of his works,
in the year 1598. Meres was personally acquainted with
the poet, and so very intimately, that the latter read over
to him his Sonnets before they were printed. I cannot
conceive that all the critical scepticism in the world
would be sufficient to get over such a testimony.
"This tragedy, it is true, is framed according to a false
idea of the tragic, which by an accumulation of cruelties
and enormities degenerates into the horrible, and yet
leaves no deep impression behind: the story of Tereus
236
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
and Philomela is heightened and overcharged under other
names, and mixed up with the repast of Atreus and
Thyestes, and many other incidents. In detail there is
no want of beautiful lines, bold images, nay, even features
which betray the peculiar conception of Shakespear.
Among these we may reckon the joy of the treacherous
Moor at the blackness and ugliness of his child begot in
adultery; and in the compassion of Titus Andronicus,
grown childish through grief, for a fly which had been
struck dead, and his rage afterwards when he imagines he
discovers in it his black enemy, we recognise the future
poet of 'Lear.' Are the critics afraid that Shakespear's
fame would be injured, were it established that in his
early youth he ushered into the world a feeble and
immature work? Was Rome the less the conqueror of
the world because Remus could leap over its first walls?
Let any one place himself in Shakespear's situation at the
commencement of his career. He found only a few
indifferent models, and yet these met with the most
favourable reception, because men are never difficult to
please in the novelty of an art before their taste has
become fastidious from choice and abundance. Must not
this situation have had its influence on him before he
learned to make higher demands on himself, and by
digging deeper in his own mind, discovered the richest
veins of a noble metal? It is even highly probable that
he must have made several failures before getting into the
right path. Genius is in a certain sense infallible, and
has nothing to learn; but art is to be learned, and must
be acquired by practice and experience. In Shakespear's
acknowledged works we find hardly any traces of his
apprenticeship, and yet an apprenticeship he certainly
had. This every artist must have, and especially in a
period where he has not before him the example of a
school already formed. I consider it as extremely pro-
bable, that Shakespear began to write for the theatre at a
Doubtful Plays.
237
r
much earlier period than the one which is generally
stated, namely, not till after the year 1590. It appears
that, as early as the year 1584, when only twenty years
of age, he had left his paternal home and repaired to
London. Can we imagine that such an active head
would remain idle for six whole years without making
any attempt to emerge by his talents from an uncongenial
situation? That in the dedication of the poem of Venus
and Adonis he calls it, "the first heir of his invention,"
proves nothing against the supposition. It was the first
which he printed; he might have composed it at an
earlier period; perhaps, also, he did not include thea-
trical labours, as they then possessed but little literary
dignity. The earlier Shakespear began to compose for
the theatre, the less are we enabled to consider the im-
maturity and imperfection of a work as a proof of its
spuriousness in opposition to historical evidence, if we
only find in it prominent features of his mind. Several
of the works rejected as spurious may still have been
produced in the period betwixt 'Titus Andronicus' and
the earliest of the acknowledged pieces.
“At last, Steevens published seven pieces ascribed to
Shakespear in two supplementary volumes. It is to be
remarked, that they all appeared in print in Shakespear's
life-time, with his name prefixed at full length.' They
are the following:
"1. 'Locrine." The proofs of the genuineness of this
piece are not altogether unambiguous; the grounds for
doubt, on the other hand, are entitled to attention. How-
ever, this question is immediately connected with that
respecting 'Titus Andronicus,' and must be at the same
time resolved in the affirmative or negative.
This is not the case.-Ed.
2 By Charles Tylney, 1595, 4to. It has the initials W. S. on the
title; but in an extant copy it is assigned in a MS. note by Sir
George Buc, Master of the Revels under James I., to Tylney.-ED.
238
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
"2. 'Pericles, Prince of Tyre.' This piece was ac-
knowledged by Dryden, but as a youthful work of
Shakespear. It is most undoubtedly his, and it has been
admitted into several of the late editions. The supposed
imperfections originate in the circumstance that Shake-
spear here handled a childish and extravagant romance of
the old poet Gower, and was unwilling to drag the
subject out of its proper sphere. Hence he even intro-
duces Gower himself, and makes him deliver a prologue
entirely in his antiquated language and versification.
This power of assuming so foreign a manner is at least no
proof of helplessness.
2
"3. 'The London Prodigal.' If we are not mistaken,
Lessing pronounced this piece to be Shakespear's, and
wished to bring it on the German stage.
"4. "The Puritan; or, the Widow of Watling Street.'
One of my literary friends, intimately acquainted with
Shakespear, was of opinion that the poet must have
wished to write a play for once in the style of Ben
Jonson, and that in this way we must account for the
difference between the present piece and his usual manner.
To follow out this idea however would lead to a very
nice critical investigation."
"5. Thomas, Lord Cromwell.'*
This drama is included by Mr. Dyce in his 2nd edit.; he
recognises Shakespear's hand in the later portions, assigning the
principal share of the production to a very inferior pen. The
materials employed in its composition are reprinted in 'Shakespear's
Library.' But the most curious circumstance connected with
'Pericles' is, perhaps, the prose novel which was formed from it by
some one who witnessed its performance, and was printed in 1608, a
year prior to any known impression of the play.—ED.
2 Both this and the following were published in 1607.-ED.
3 Some of the incidents in this play, clearly not Shakespear's,
appear to have been founded on real events on the life of George
Peele the dramatist, the George Pyeboard of the piece. See 'Old
English Jest Books,' 1864, ii. 262, et seqq.-Ed.
* Printed in 1602, and again in 1613.-ED.
Doubtful Plays.
239
“6. 'Sir John Oldcastle-First Part.'¹
"7. A Yorkshire Tragedy.'2
"The three last pieces are not only unquestionably
Shakespear's, but in my opinion they deserve to be classed
among his best and maturest works.3 Steevens admits at
last, in some degree, that they are Shakespear's, as well
as the others, excepting Locrine,' but he speaks of all of
them with great contempt, as quite worthless productions.
This condemnatory sentence is not however in the slightest
degree convincing, nor is it supported by critical acumen.
I should like to see how such a critic would, of his own
natural suggestion, have decided on Shakespear's ac-
knowledged master-pieces, and what he would have
thought of praising in them, had the public opinion not
imposed on him the duty of admiration. Thomas, Lord
Cromwell,' and 'Sir John Oldcastle,' are biographical
dramas, and models in this species: the first is linked,
from its subject, to 'Henry the Eighth,' and the second to
Henry the Fifth.' The second part of Oldcastle' is
wanting; I know not whether a copy of the old edition
has been discovered in England, or whether it is lost.*
"The Yorkshire Tragedy' is a tragedy in one act, a
dramatised tale of murder: the tragical effect is over-
powering, and it is extremely important to see how
poetically Shakespear could handle such a subject.
C
"There have been still farther ascribed to him:-1st.
'The Merry Devil of Edmonton,' a comedy in one act,
printed in Dodsley's old plays. This has certainly some
5
¹ No more was ever printed. This drama was a sort of joint
compilation by Munday, Drayton, Wilson, and Hathaway; but to
what extent each was concerned does not appear.-ED.
2 First printed in 1608.—Ev.
3 Chacun à son goût !—ED.
<
4 The First Part' is one of the least rare of the old quartos;
no copy of the Second Part' has been found, and, it is believed, for
the good reason that it was never written.-ED.
5 Printed in 1608; there are later editions. The author is not
known.-ED.
240
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
1
C
6
4th.
appearances in its favour. It contains a merry landlord,
who bears a great similarity to the one in the 'Merry
Wives of Windsor.' However, at all events, though an
ingenious, it is but a hasty sketch. 2nd. The Arraign-
ment of Paris.' 3rd. The Birth of Merlin.'2
'Edward the Third.'3 5th. Fair Em.'4 6th. 'Muce-
dorus.' 7th. 'Arden of Feversham.' I have never
seen any of these, and cannot therefore say anything
respecting them. From the passages cited, I am led to
conjecture that the subject of 'Mucedorus' is the popular
story of Valentine and Orson; a beautiful subject which
Lope de Vega has also taken for a play. 'Arden of
Feversham' is said to be a tragedy on the story of a man,
from whom the poet was descended by the mother's side.
If the quality of the piece is not too directly at variance
with this claim, the circumstance would afford an addi-
tional probability in its favour. For such motives were
not foreign to Shakespear: he treated Henry the Seventh,
who bestowed lands on his forefathers for services per-
formed by them, with a visible partiality.
“Whoever takes from Shakespear a play early ascribed
to him, and confessedly belonging to his time, is un-
questionably bound to answer, with some degree of
1
¹ By George Peele. It is in Mr. Dyce's edition of his works,
1828, 1829, 1861.-Ed.
2 This drama purports to have been written by William Shake-
spear and William Rowley as a joint production; it was first
printed, so far as can be now ascertained, in 1662. Shakespear's
concern in its execution is extremely doubtful.—Ed.
3 'The Raigne of Edward the Third,' a well-written play, but not
Shakespear's, was printed in 1596 and 1599.-ED.
4 Printed in 1631, unless an undated 4to. is (which I think likely)
earlier.-ED.
5 Printed in 1598; there are later editions.-ED.
6 Printed in 1592, 1599, 1633. In 1770 the play was republished
by Mr. Jacob of Feversham as Shakespear's; but the opinion has
not obtained many converts. There is a later drama by Lillo,
founded on this tragical occurrence.—ED.
Doubtful Plays.
241
probability, this question: who has then written it?
Shakespear's competitors in the dramatic walk are pretty
well known, and if those of them who have even acquired
a considerable name, a Lilly, a Marlow, a Heywood, are
still so very far below him, we can hardly imagine that
the author of a work, which rises so high beyond theirs,
would have remained unknown.” ¹
We agree to the truth of this last observation, but not
to the justice of its application to some of the plays here
mentioned. It is true that Shakespear's best works are
very superior to those of Marlow, or Heywood, but it is
not true that the best of the doubtful plays above enu-
merated are superior or even equal to the best of theirs.
The Yorkshire Tragedy,' which Schlegel speaks of as an
undoubted production of our author's, is much more in
the manner of Heywood than of Shakespear. The effect
is indeed overpowering, but the mode of producing it is
by no means poetical. The praise which Schlegel gives
to 'Thomas, Lord Cromwell,' and to Sir John Oldcastle,'
is altogether exaggerated. They are very indifferent
compositions, which have not the slightest pretensions to
rank with Henry V.' or 'Henry VIII.' We suspect
that the German critic was not very well acquainted with
the dramatic contemporaries of Shakespear, or aware of
their general merits; and that he accordingly mistakes a
resemblance in style and manner for an equal degree of
excellence. Shakespear differed from the other writers of
his age not in the mode of treating his subjects, but in the
grace and power which he displayed in them. The reason
assigned by a literary friend of Schlegel's for supposing
"The Puritan; or, the Widow of Watling Street,' to be
Shakespear's, viz., that it is in the style of Ben Jonson,
that is to say, in a style just the reverse of his own, is not
very satisfactory to a plain English understanding.
Locrine,' and 'The London Prodigal,' if they were
1 Lectures on Dramatic Literature' [ed. 1815], vol. ii., page 252.
R
242
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
C
Shakespear's at all, must have been among the sins of
his youth. Arden of Feversham' contains several strik-
ing passages, but the passion which they express is rather
that of a sanguine temperament than of a lofty imagi-
nation; and in this respect they approximate more nearly
to the style of other writers of the time than to Shake-
spear's. 'Titus Andronicus' is certainly as unlike
Shakespear's usual style as it is possible. It is an
accumulation of vulgar physical horrors, in which the
power exercised by the poet bears no proportion to the
repugnance excited by the subject. The character of
Aaron the Moor is the only thing which shows any
originality of conception; and the scene in which he
expresses his joy "at the blackness and ugliness of his
child begot in adultery," the only one worthy of Shake-
spear. Even this is worthy of him only in the display of
power, for it gives no pleasure. Shakespear managed
these things differently. Nor do we think it a sufficient
answer to say that this was an embryo or crude production
of the author. In its kind it is full grown, and its
features decided and overcharged. It is not like a first
imperfect essay, but shows a confirmed habit, a systematic
preference of violent effect to everything else. There are
occasional detached images of great beauty and delicacy,
but these were not beyond the powers of other writers
then living. The circumstance which inclines us to reject
the external evidence in favour of this play being Shake-
spear's is, that the grammatical construction is constantly
false and mixed up with vulgar abbreviations, a fault that
never occurs in any of his genuine plays. A similar
defect, and the halting measure of the verse are the chief
objections to 'Pericles of Tyre,' if we except the far-
fetched and complicated absurdity of the story. The
movement of the thoughts and passions has something in
it not unlike Shakespear, and several of the descriptions.
are either the original hints of passages which Shakespear
Poems and Sonnets.
243
has engrafted on his other plays, or are imitations of
them by some contemporary poet. The most memorable
idea in it is in Marina's speech, where she compares the
world to " a lasting storm, hurrying her from her friends."
(C
POEMS AND SONNETS.
OUR idolatry of Shakespear (not to say our admiration)
ceases with his plays. In his other productions, he was
a mere author, though not a common author. It was
only by representing others that he became himself. He
could go out of himself, and express the soul of Cleopatra ;
but in his own person he appeared to be always waiting
for the prompter's cue. In expressing the thoughts of
others, he seemed inspired; in expressing his own, he was
a mechanic. The licence of an assumed character was
necessary to restore his genius to the privileges of nature,
and to give him courage to break through the tyranny of
fashion, the trammels of custom. In his plays, he was
as broad and casing as the general air :" in his poems,
on the contrary, he appears to be "cooped, and cabined
in" by all the technicalities of art, by all the petty
intricacies of thought and language, which poetry had
learned from the controversial jargon of the schools,
where words had been made a substitute for things.
There was, if we mistake not, something of modesty, and
a painful sense of personal propriety at the bottom of this.
Shakespear's imagination, by identifying itself with the
strongest characters in the most trying circumstances,
grappled at once with nature, and trampled the littleness
of art under his feet: the rapid changes of situation, the
wide range of the universe, gave him life and spirit, and
afforded full scope to his genius; but returned into his
closet again, and having assumed the badge of his pro-
244
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
fession, he could only labour in his vocation, and conform
himself to existing models. The thoughts, the passions,
the words which the poet's pen, "glancing from heaven to
earth, from earth to heaven," lent to others, shook off the
fetters of pedantry and affectation; while his own thoughts
and feelings, standing by themselves, were seized upon as
lawful prey, and tortured to death according to the
established rules and practice of the day. In a word, we
do not like Shakespear's poems, because we like his
plays: the one, in all their excellences, are just the
reverse of the other. It has been the fashion of late to
cry up our author's poems, as equal to his plays: this is
the desperate cant of modern criticism. We would ask,
was there the slightest comparison between Shakespear,
and either Chaucer or Spenser, as mere poets? Not any.
The two poems of Venus and Adonis and of Tarquin and
Lucrece appear to us like a couple of ice-houses. They
are about as hard, as glittering, and as cold. The author
seems all the time to be thinking of his verses, and not
of his subject,-not of what his characters would feel, but
of what he shall say; and as it must happen in all such
cases, he always puts into their mouths those things
which they would be the last to think of, and which it
shows the greatest ingenuity in him to find out. The
whole is laboured, up-hill work. The poet is perpetually
singling out the difficulties of the art to make an ex-
hibition of his strength and skill in wrestling with them.
He is making perpetual trials of them, as if his mastery
over them were doubted. The images, which are often
striking, are generally applied to things which they are
the least like: so that they do not blend with the poem,
but seem stuck upon it, like splendid patch-work, or
remain quite distinct from it, like detached substances,
painted and varnished over. A beautiful thought is sure
to be lost in an endless commentary upon it. The
speakers are like persons who have both leisure and
Poems and Sonnets.
245
inclination to make riddles on their own situation, and to
twist and turn every object or incident into acrostics and
anagrams. Everything is spun out into allegory; and a
digression is always preferred to the main story. Sen-
timent is built up upon plays of words; the hero or
heroine feels, not from the impulse of passion, but from
the force of dialectics. There is besides a strange attempt
to substitute the language of painting for that of poetry,
to make us see their feelings in the faces of the persons;
and again, consistently with this, in the description of the
picture in Tarquin and Lucrece, those circumstances are
chiefly insisted on which it would be impossible to
convey except by words. The invocation to opportunity
in the Tarquin and Lucrece is full of thoughts and
images, but at the same time it is overloaded by them.
The concluding¹ stanza expresses all our objections to
this kind of poetry :-
"Out, idle words, servants to shallow fools;
Unprofitable sounds, weak arbitrators!
Busy yourselves in skill-contending schools;
Debate where leisure serves with dull debaters;
To trembling clients be you mediators:
For me I force not argument a straw,
Since that my case is past the help of law."
The description of the horse in Venus and Adonis has
been particularly admired, and not without reason:—
"Round-hoof'd, short-jointed, fetlocks shag and long,
Broad breast, full eye, small head, and nostril wide,
High crest, short ears, straight legs, and passing strong,
Thin mane, thick tail, broad buttock, tender hide;
Look, what a horse should have, he did not lack,
Save a proud rider on so proud a back."
Now this inventory of perfections shows great knowledge.
of the horse; and is good matter-of-fact poetry. Let the
reader but compare it with a speech in the 'Midsummer
Night's Dream,' where Theseus describes his hounds-
¹ It is not the concluding stanza. See Dyce's 2nd edit., viii,
316.-ED.
246
Characters of Shakespear's Plays.
“And their heads are hung
With ears that sweep away the morning dew"-
and he will perceive at once what we mean by the dif-
ference between Shakespear's own poetry, and that of his
plays. We prefer the Passionate Pilgrim very much to
the Lover's Complaint. It has been doubted whether the
latter poem is Shakespear's.¹
Of the Sonnets we do not well know what to say. The
subject of them seems to be somewhat equivocal; but
many of them are highly beautiful in themselves, and
interesting as they relate to the state of the personal
feelings of the author. The following are some of the
most striking-
[CONSTANCY.]
"Let those who are in favour with their stars,
Of public honour and proud titles boast,
Whilst I, whom fortune of such triumph bars,
Unlook'd-for joy in that I honour most.
Great princes' favourites their fair leaves spread
But as the marigold in the sun's eye;
And in themselves their pride lies buried,
For at a frown they in their glory die.
The painful warrior famoused for fight,
After a thousand victories once foil'd,
Is from the book of honour razed quite,
And all the rest forgot for which he toil'd:
Then happy I, that love and am belov'd,
Where I may not remove nor be remov'd."
[LOVE'S CONSOLATION.]
"When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least :
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
1 Without any substantial reason.-ED.
Poems and Sonnets.
247
Haply I think on thee,—and then my state
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd, such wealth brings,
That then I scorn to change my state with kings."
[NOVELTY.]
"My love is strengthen'd, though more weak in seeming ;
I love not less, though less the show appear:
That love is merchandis'd, whose rich esteeming
The owner's tongue doth publish everywhere.
Our love was new, and then but in the spring,
When I was wont to greet it with my lays:
As Philomel in summer's front doth sing,
And stops his pipe in growth of riper days:
Not that the summer is less pleasant now
Than when her mournful hymns did hush the night,
But that wild music burdens every bough,
And sweets grown common lose their dear delight.
Therefore, like her, I sometime hold my tongue,
Because I would not dull you with my song."
[LIFE'S DECAY.]
"That time of year thou may'st in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day,
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou seest the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by.
This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long."
In all these, as well as in many others, there is a mild
tone of sentiment, deep, mellow, and sustained, very
different from the crudeness of his earlier poems.
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