appear so strange to one who had been on terms of familiarity with Sicilian and Italian women of rank; and bad as they may, too many of them, actually be, yet I doubt not that the extreme grossness of their language has impressed many an Englishman of the present era with far darker notions than the same language would have produced in the mind of one of Elizabeth’s, or James’s courtiers. Those who have read Shakspeare only, complain of occasional grossness in his plays; but compare him with his contemporaries, and the inevitable conviction is, that of the exquisite purity of his imagination.
The observation I have prefixed to the Volpone is the key to the faint interest which these noble efforts of intellectual power excite, with the exception of the fragment of the Sad Shepherd; because in that piece only is there any character with whom you can morally sympathize. On the other hand, Measure for Measure is the only play of Shakspeare’s in which there are not some one or more characters, generally many, whom you follow with affectionate feeling. For I confess that Isabella, of all Shakspeare’s female characters, pleases me the least; and Measure for Measure is, indeed, the only one of his genuine works, which is painful to me.
Let me not conclude this remark, however, without a thankful acknowledgment to the ‘manes’ of Ben Jonson, that the more I study his writings, I the more admire them; and the more my study of him resembles that of an ancient classic, in the ‘minutiae’ of his rhythm, metre, choice of words, forms of connection, and so forth, the more numerous have the points of my admiration become. I may add, too, that both the study and the admiration cannot but be disinterested, for to expect therefrom any advantage to the present drama would be ignorance. The latter is utterly heterogeneous from the drama of the Shakspearian age, with a diverse object and contrary principle. The one was to present a model by imitation of real life, taking from real life all that in it which it ought to be, and supplying the rest;–the other is to copy what is, and as it is,–at best a tolerable, but most frequently a blundering, copy. In the former the difference was an essential element; in the latter an involuntary defect. We should think it strange, if a tale in dance were announced, and the actors did not dance at all;–and yet such is modern comedy.
WHALLEY’S PREFACE.
But Jonson was soon sensible, how inconsistent this medley of names and manners was in reason and nature; and with how little propriety it could ever have a place in a legitimate and just picture of real life.
But did Jonson reflect that the very essence of a play, the very language in which it is written, is a fiction to which all the parts must conform? Surely, Greek manners in English should be a still grosser improbability than a Greek name transferred to English manners. Ben’s ‘personae’ are too often not characters, but derangements;–the hopeless patients of a mad-doctor rather,–exhibitions of folly betraying itself in spite of existing reason and prudence. He not poetically, but painfully exaggerates every trait; that is, not by the drollery of the circumstance, but by the excess of the originating feeling.
But to this we might reply, that far from being thought to build his characters upon abstract ideas, he was really accused of representing particular persons then existing; and that even those characters which appear to be the most exaggerated, are said to have had their respective archetypes in nature and life.
This degrades Jonson into a libeller, instead of justifying him as a dramatic poet. ‘Non quod verum est, sed quod verisimile’, is the dramatist’s rule. At all events, the poet who chooses transitory manners, ought to content himself with transitory praise. If his object be reputation, he ought not to expect fame. The utmost he can look forwards to, is to be quoted by, and to enliven the writings of, an antiquarian. Pistol, Nym and ‘id genus omne’, do not please us as characters, but are endured as fantastic creations, foils to the native wit of Falstaff.–I say wit emphatically; for this character so often extolled as the masterpiece of humor, neither contains, nor was meant to contain, any humor at all.
WHALLEY’S LIFE OF JONSON.
It is to the honor of Jonson’s judgment, that ‘the greatest poet of our nation’ had the same opinion of Donne’s genius and wit; and hath preserved part of him from perishing, by putting his thoughts and satire into modern verse.
‘Videlicet’ Pope!
He said further to Drummond, Shakspeare wanted art, and sometimes sense; for in one of his plays he brought in a number of men, saying they had suffered shipwreck in Bohemia, where is no sea near by a hundred miles.
I have often thought Shakspeare justified in this seeming anachronism. In Pagan times a single name of a German kingdom might well be supposed to comprise a hundred miles more than at present. The truth is, these notes of Drummond’s are more disgraceful to himself than to Jonson. It would be easy to conjecture how grossly Jonson must have been misunderstood, and what he had said in jest, as of Hippocrates, interpreted in earnest. But this is characteristic of a Scotchman; he has no notion of a jest, unless you tell him–‘This is a joke!’–and still less of that finer shade of feeling, the half-and-half, in which Englishmen naturally delight.
EVERY MAN OUT OF HIS HUMOUR.
Epilogue.
The throat of war be stopt within her land, And _turtle-footed_ peace dance fairie rings About her court.
‘Turtle-footed’ is a pretty word, a very pretty word: pray, what does it mean? Doves, I presume, are not dancers; and the other sort of turtle, land or sea, green-fat or hawksbill, would, I should suppose, succeed better in slow minuets than in the brisk rondillo. In one sense, to be sure, pigeons and ring-doves could not dance but with ‘eclat’–‘a claw?’
POETASTER.
Introduction.
Light! I salute thee, but with wounded nerves, Wishing thy golden splendor pitchy darkness.
There is no reason to suppose Satan’s address to the sun in the Paradise Lost, more than a mere coincidence with these lines; but were it otherwise, it would be a fine instance, what usurious interest a great genius pays in borrowing. It would not be difficult to give a detailed psychological proof from these constant outbursts of anxious self-assertion, that Jonson was not a genius, a creative power. Subtract that one thing, and you may safely accumulate on his name all other excellencies of a capacious, vigorous, agile, and richly-stored intellect.
Act i. sc. 1.
‘Ovid’. While slaves be false, fathers hard, and bawds be whorish–
The roughness noticed by Theobald and Whalley, may be cured by a simple transposition:-
While fathers hard, slaves false, and bawds be whorish.
Act iv. sc. 3.
‘Crisp’. O–oblatrant–furibund–fatuate–strenuous. O–conscious.
It would form an interesting essay, or rather series of essays, in a periodical work, were all the attempts to ridicule new phrases brought together, the proportion observed of words ridiculed which have been adopted, and are now common, such as ‘strenuous’, ‘conscious’, &c., and a trial made how far any grounds can be detected, so that one might determine beforehand whether a word was invented under the conditions of assimilability to our language or not. Thus much is certain, that the ridiculers were as often wrong as right; and Shakspeare himself could not prevent the naturalization of ‘accommodation’, ‘remuneration’, &c.; or Swift the gross abuse even of the word ‘idea’.
FALL OF SEJANUS.
Act I.
‘Arruntius’. The name Tiberius, I hope, will keep, howe’er he hath foregone The dignity and power.
‘Silius’. Sure, while he lives.
‘Arr’. And dead, it comes to Drusus. Should he fail, To the brave issue of Germanicus; And they are three: too many (ha?) for him To have a plot upon?
‘Sil’. I do not know
The heart of his designs; but, sure, their face Looks farther than the present.
‘Arr’. By the gods,
If I could guess he had but such a thought, My sword should cleave him down, &c.
The anachronic mixture in this Arruntius of the Roman republican, to whom Tiberius must have appeared as much a tyrant as Sejanus, with his James-and-Charles-the-First zeal for legitimacy of descent in this passage, is amusing. Of our great names Milton was, I think, the first who could properly be called a republican. My recollections of Buchanan’s works are too faint to enable me to judge whether the historian is not a fair exception.
Act ii. Speech of Sejanus:–
Adultery! it is the lightest ill
I will commit. A race of wicked acts Shall flow out of my anger, and o’erspread The world’s wide face, which no posterity Shall e’er approve, nor yet keep silent, &c.
The more we reflect and examine, examine and reflect, the more astonished shall we be at the immense superiority of Shakspeare over his contemporaries:–and yet what contemporaries!–giant minds indeed! Think of Jonson’s erudition, and the force of learned authority in that age; and yet in no genuine part of Shakspeare’s works is there to be found such an absurd rant and ventriloquism as this, and too, too many other passages ferruminated by Jonson from Seneca’s tragedies and the writings of the later Romans. I call it ventriloquism, because Sejanus is a puppet, out of which the poet makes his own voice appear to come.
Act v. Scene of the sacrifice to Fortune. This scene is unspeakably irrational. To believe, and yet to scoff at, a present miracle is little less than impossible. Sejanus should have been made to suspect priestcraft and a secret conspiracy against him.
VOLPONE.
This admirable, indeed, but yet more wonderful than admirable, play is from the fertility and vigour of invention, character, language, and sentiment the strongest proof, how impossible it is to keep up any pleasurable interest in a tale, in which there is no goodness of heart in any of the prominent characters. After the third act, this play becomes not a dead, but a painful, weight on the feelings. Zeluco is an instance of the same truth. Bonario and Celia should have been made in some way or other principals in the plot; which they might have been, and the objects of interest, without having been made characters. In novels, the person, in whose fate you are most interested, is often the least marked character of the whole. If it were possible to lessen the paramountcy of Volpone himself, a most delightful comedy might be produced, by making Celia the ward or niece of Corvino, instead of his wife, and Bonario her lover.
EPICAENE.
This is to my feelings the most entertaining of old Ben’s comedies, and, more than any other, would admit of being brought out anew, if under the management of a judicious and stage-understanding playwright; and an actor, who had studied Morose, might make his fortune.
Act i. sc. 1. Clerimont’s speech:–
He would have hanged a pewterer’s ‘prentice once on a Shrove Tuesday’s riot, for being ‘o that trade, when the rest were _quiet_.
The old copies read ‘quit’, i. e. discharged from working, and gone to divert themselves. (Whalley’s note.)
It should be ‘quit’, no doubt; but not meaning ‘discharged from working,’ &c.–but quit, that is, acquitted. The pewterer was at his holiday diversion as well as the other apprentices, and they as forward in the riot as he. But he alone was punished under pretext of the riot, but in fact for his trade.
Act ii. sc. 1.
‘Morose’. Cannot I, yet, find out a more compendious method, than by this _trunk_, to save my servants the labour of speech, and mine ears the discord of sounds?
What does ‘trunk’ mean here and in the 1st scene of the 1st act? Is it a large ear-trumpet?–or rather a tube, such as passes from parlour to kitchen, instead of a bell?
Whalley’s note at the end.
Some critics of the last age imagined the character of Morose to be wholly out of nature. But to vindicate our poet, Mr. Dryden tells us from tradition, and we may venture to take his word, that Jonson was really acquainted with a person of this whimsical turn of mind: and as humor is a personal quality, the poet is acquitted from the charge of exhibiting a monster, or an extravagant unnatural caricatura.
If Dryden had not made all additional proof superfluous by his own plays, this very vindication would evince that he had formed a false and vulgar conception of the nature and conditions of the drama and dramatic personation. Ben Jonson would himself have rejected such a plea:–
For he knew, poet never credit gain’d By writing _truths_, but things, like truths, well feign’d.
By ‘truths’ he means ‘facts.’ Caricatures are not less so, because they are found existing in real life. Comedy demands characters, and leaves caricatures to farce. The safest and truest defence of old Ben would be to call the Epicaene the best of farces. The defect in Morose, as in other of Jonson’s ‘dramatis personae’, lies in this;–that the accident is not a prominence growing out of, and nourished by, the character which still circulates in it, but that the character, such as it is, rises out of, or, rather, consists in, the accident. Shakspeare’s comic personages have exquisitely characteristic features; however awry, disproportionate, and laughable they may be, still, like Bardolph’s nose, they are features. But Jonson’s are either a man with a huge wen, having a circulation of its own, and which we might conceive amputated, and the patient thereby losing all his character; or they are mere wens themselves instead of men,–wens personified, or with eyes, nose, and mouth cut out, mandrake-fashion.
‘Nota bene’. All the above, and much more, will have been justly said, if, and whenever, the drama of Jonson is brought into comparisons of rivalry with the Shakspearian. But this should not be. Let its inferiority to the Shakspearian be at once fairly owned,–but at the same time as the inferiority of an altogether different ‘genus’ of the drama. On this ground, old Ben would still maintain his proud height. He, no less than Shakspeare, stands on the summit of his hill, and looks round him like a master,–though his be Lattrig and Shakspeare’s Skiddaw.
THE ALCHEMIST.
Act I. sc. 2. Face’s speech:–
Will take his oath o’ the Greek _Xenophon_, If need be, in his pocket.
Another reading is ‘Testament.’ Probably, the meaning is,–that intending to give false evidence, he carried a Greek Xenophon to pass it off for a Greek Testament, and so avoid perjury–as the Irish do, by contriving to kiss their thumb-nails instead of the book.
Act ii. sc. 2. Mammon’s speech:–
I will have all my beds blown up; not stuft: Down is too hard.
Thus the air-cushions, though perhaps only lately brought into use, were invented in idea in the seventeenth century!
CATILINE’S CONSPIRACY.
A fondness for judging one work by comparison with others, perhaps altogether of a different class, argues a vulgar taste. Yet it is chiefly on this principle that the Catiline has been rated so low. Take it and Sejanus, as compositions of a particular kind, namely, as a mode of relating great historical events in the liveliest and most interesting manner, and I cannot help wishing that we had whole volumes of such plays. We might as rationally expect the excitement of the Vicar of Wakefield from Goldsmith’s History of England, as that of Lear, Othello, &c. from the Sejanus or Catiline.
Act i. sc. 4.
‘Cat’. Sirrah, what ail you?
(‘He spies one of his boys not answer’.)
‘Pag’. Nothing.
‘Best’. Somewhat modest.
‘Cat’. Slave, I will strike your soul out with my foot, &c.
This is either an unintelligible, or, in every sense, a most unnatural, passage,–improbable, if not impossible, at the moment of signing and swearing such a conspiracy, to the most libidinous satyr. The very presence of the boys is an outrage to probability. I suspect that these lines down to the words ‘throat opens,’ should be removed back so as to follow the words ‘on this part of the house,’ in the speech of Catiline soon after the entry of the conspirators. A total erasure, however, would be the best, or, rather, the only possible, amendment.
Act ii. sc. 2. Sempronia’s speech:–
–He is but a new fellow,
An _inmate_ here in Rome, as Catiline calls him–
A ‘lodger’ would have been a happier imitation of the ‘inquilinus’ of Sallust.
Act iv. sc. 6. Speech of Cethegus:–
Can these or such be any aids to us, &c.
What a strange notion Ben must have formed of a determined, remorseless, all-daring, fool-hardiness, to have represented it in such a mouthing Tamburlane, and bombastic tongue-bully as this Cethegus of his!
BARTHOLOMEW FAIR.
Induction. Scrivener’s speech:–
If there be never a _servant-monster_ i’ the Fair, who can help it, he says, nor a nest of antiques?
The best excuse that can be made for Jonson, and in a somewhat less degree for Beaumont and Fletcher, in respect of these base and silly sneers at Shakspeare, is, that his plays were present to men’s minds chiefly as acted. They had not a neat edition of them, as we have, so as, by comparing the one with the other, to form a just notion of the mighty mind that produced the whole. At all events, and in every point of view, Jonson stands far higher in a moral light than Beaumont and Fletcher. He was a fair contemporary, and in his way, and as far as Shakspeare is concerned, an original. But Beaumont and Fletcher were always imitators of, and often borrowers from, him, and yet sneer at him with a spite far more malignant than Jonson, who, besides, has made noble compensation by his praises.
Act ii. sc. 3.
‘Just’. I mean a child of the horn-thumb, a babe _of booty_, boy, a cutpurse.
Does not this confirm, what the passage itself cannot but suggest, the propriety of substituting ‘booty’ for ‘beauty’ in Falstaff’s speech, Henry IV. Pt. I. act i. sc. 2. ‘Let not us, &c.?’
It is not often that old Ben condescends to imitate a modern author; but master Dan. Knockhum Jordan and his vapours are manifest reflexes of Nym and Pistol.
Ib. sc. 5.
‘Quarl’. She’ll make excellent geer for the coachmakers here in Smithfield, to anoint wheels and axletrees with.
Good! but yet it falls short of the speech of a Mr. Johnes, M. P., in the Common Council, on the invasion intended by Buonaparte: ‘Houses plundered–then burnt;–sons conscribed–wives and daughters ravished, &c. &c.–“But as for you, you luxurious Aldermen! with your fat will he grease the wheels of his triumphal chariot!”
Ib. sc. 6.
‘Cok’. Avoid i’ your satin doublet, Numps.
This reminds me of Shakspeare’s ‘Aroint thee, witch!’ I find in several books of that age the words _aloigne_ and _eloigne_–that is,–‘keep your distance!’ or ‘off with you!’ Perhaps ‘aroint’ was a corruption of ‘aloigne’ by the vulgar. The common etymology from _ronger_ to gnaw seems unsatisfactory.
Act iii. sc. 4.
‘Quarl’, How now, Numps! almost tired i’ your protectorship? overparted, overparted?
An odd sort of prophetic ality in this Numps and old Noll!
Ib. sc. 6. Knockhum’s speech:–
He eats with his eyes, as well as his teeth.
A good motto for the Parson in Hogarth’s Election Dinner,–who shows how easily he might be reconciled to the Church of Rome, for he worships what he eats.
Act v. sc. 5.
‘Pup. Di’. It is not prophane.
‘Lan’. It is not prophane, he says.
‘Boy’. It is prophane.
‘Pup’. It is not prophane.
‘Boy’. It is prophane.
‘Pup’. It is not prophane.
‘Lan’. Well said, confute him with Not, still.
An imitation of the quarrel between Bacchus and the Frogs in Aristophanes:–
[Greek (transliterated):
Choros. alla maen kekraxomestha g’, hoposon hae pharugx an aem_on chandanae, di’ aemeras, brekekekex, koax, koax.
Dionusos. touto gar ou nikaesete.
Choros. oude maen haemas su pant_os.
Dionusos. oude maen humeis ge dae m’ oudepote.]
THE DEVIL IS AN ASS.
Act I. sc. 1.
‘Pug’. Why any: Fraud, Or Covetousness, or lady Vanity, Or old Iniquity, _I’ll call him hither_.
The words in italics [between undescores] should probably be given to the master-devil, Satan. (Whalley’s note.)
That is, against all probability, and with a (for Jonson) impossible violation of character. The words plainly belong to Pug, and mark at once his simpleness and his impatience.
Ib. sc. 4. Fitz-dottrel’s soliloquy:-
Compare this exquisite piece of sense, satire, and sound philosophy in 1616 with Sir M. Hale’s speech from the bench in a trial of a witch many years afterwards. [1]
Act ii. sc. 1. Meercraft’s speech:–
Sir, money’s a whore, a bawd, a drudge.–
I doubt not that ‘money’ was the first word of the line, and has dropped out:–
Money! Sir, money’s a, &c.
[Footnote 1: In 1664, at Bury St. Edmonds on the trial of Rose Cullender and Amy Duny. Ed.]
THE STAPLE OF NEWS.
Act IV. sc. 3. Pecunia’s speech:–
No, he would ha’ done,
That lay not in his power: he had the use Of your bodies, Band and Wax, and sometimes Statute’s.
Read (1815),
–he had the use of
Your bodies, &c.
Now, however, I doubt the legitimacy of my transposition of the ‘of’ from the beginning of this latter line to the end of the one preceding;–for though it facilitates the metre and reading of the latter line, and is frequent in Massinger, this disjunction of the preposition from its case seems to have been disallowed by Jonson. Perhaps the better reading is–
O’ your bodies, &c.–
the two syllables being slurred into one, or rather snatched, or sucked, up into the emphasized ‘your.’ In all points of view, therefore, Ben’s judgment is just; for in this way, the line cannot be read, as metre, without that strong and quick emphasis on ‘your’ which the sense requires;–and had not the sense required an emphasis on ‘your,’ the _tmesis_ of the sign of its cases ‘of,’ ‘to,’ &c. would destroy almost all boundary between the dramatic verse and prose in comedy:–a lesson not to be rash in conjectural amendments. 1818.
Ib. sc. 4.
‘P. jun.’ I love all men of virtue, _frommy_ Princess.–
‘Frommy,’ ‘fromme’, pious, dutiful, &c.
Act v. sc. 4. Penny-boy sen. and Porter:–
I dare not, will not, think that honest Ben had Lear in his mind in this mock mad scene.
THE NEW INN.
Act I. sc. 1. Host’s speech:–
A heavy purse, and then two turtles, _makes_.–
‘Makes’, frequent in old books, and even now used in some counties for mates, or pairs.
Ib. sc. 3. Host’s speech:–
–And for a leap
O’ the vaulting horse, to _play_ the vaulting _house_.–
Instead of reading with Whalley ‘ply’ for ‘play,’ I would suggest ‘horse’ for ‘house.’ The meaning would then be obvious and pertinent. The punlet, or pun-maggot, or pun intentional, ‘horse and house,’ is below Jonson. The ‘jeu-de-mots’ just below–
Read a lecture
Upon _Aquinas_ at St. Thomas a _Water_ings–
had a learned smack in it to season its insipidity.
Ib. sc. 6. Lovel’s speech:–
Then shower’d his bounties on me, like the Hours, That open-handed sit upon the clouds,
And press the liberality of heaven Down to the laps of thankful men!
Like many other similar passages in Jonson, this is [Greek (transliterated): eidos chalepon idein]–a sight which it is difficult to make one’s self see,–a picture my fancy cannot copy detached from the words.
Act ii. sc. 5. Though it was hard upon old Ben, yet Felton, it must be confessed, was in the right in considering the Fly, Tipto, Bat Burst, &c. of this play mere dotages. Such a scene as this was enough to damn a new play; and Nick Stuff is worse still,–most abominable stuff indeed!
Act in. sc. 2. Lovel’s speech:–
So knowledge first begets benevolence, Benevolence breeds friendship, friendship love.–
Jonson has elsewhere proceeded thus far; but the part most difficult and delicate, yet, perhaps, not the least capable of being both morally and poetically treated, is the union itself, and what, even in this life, it can be.
NOTES ON BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.
Seward’s Preface. 1750.
The King And No King, too, is extremely spirited in all its characters; Arbaces holds up a mirror to all men of virtuous principles but violent passions. Hence he is, as it were, at once magnanimity and pride, patience and fury, gentleness and rigor, chastity and incest, and is one of the finest mixtures of virtues and vices that any poet has drawn, &c.
These are among the endless instances of the abject state to which psychology had sunk from the reign of Charles I. to the middle of the present reign of George III.; and even now it is but just awaking.
Ib. Seward’s comparison of Julia’s speech in the Two Gentlemen of Verona, act iv. last scene–
Madam, ’twas Ariadne passioning, &c.–
with Aspatia’s speech in the Maid’s Tragedy–
I stand upon the sea-beach now, &c. (Act ii.)
and preference of the latter.
It is strange to take an incidental passage of one writer, intended only for a subordinate part, and compare it with the same thought in another writer, who had chosen it for a prominent and principal figure.
Ib. Seward’s preference of Alphonso’s poisoning in A Wife for a Month, act i. sc. 1, to the passage in King John, act v. sc. 7,–
Poison’d, ill fare! dead, forsook, cast off!
Mr. Seward! Mr. Seward! you may be, and I trust you are, an angel; but you were an ass.
Ib.
Every reader of _taste_ will see how superior this is to the quotation from Shakspeare.
Of what taste?
Ib. Seward’s classification of the Plays:–
Surely Monsieur Thomas, The Chances, Beggar’s Bush, and the Pilgrim, should have been placed in the very first class! But the whole attempt ends in a woeful failure.
HARRIS’S COMMENDATORY POEM ON FLETCHER.
I’d have a state of wit convok’d, which hath A _power_ to take up on common faith:–
This is an instance of that modifying of quantity by emphasis, without which our elder poets cannot be scanned. ‘Power,’ here, instead of being one long syllable–pow’r–must be sounded, not indeed as a spondee, nor yet as a trochee; but as–[Symbol: u-shape beneath line];–the first syllable is 1 1/4.
We can, indeed, never expect an authentic edition of our elder dramatic poets (for in those times a drama was a poem), until some man undertakes the work, who has studied the philosophy of metre. This has been found the main torch of sound restoration in the Greek dramatists by Bentley, Porson, and their followers;–how much more, then, in writers in our own language! It is true that quantity, an almost iron law with the Greek, is in English rather a subject for a peculiarly fine ear, than any law or even rule; but, then, instead of it, we have, first, accent; secondly, emphasis; and lastly, retardation, and acceleration of the times of syllables according to the meaning of the words, the passion that accompanies them, and even the character of the person that uses them. With due attention to these,–above all, to that, which requires the most attention and the finest taste, the character, Massinger, for example, might be reduced to a rich and yet regular metre. But then the ‘regulae’ must be first known;–though I will venture to say, that he who does not find a line (not corrupted) of Massinger’s flow to the time total of a trimeter catalectic iambic verse, has not read it aright. But by virtue of the last principle–the retardation or acceleration of time–we have the proceleusmatic foot * * * *, and the ‘dispondaeus’ — — — –, not to mention the ‘choriambus’, the ionics, paeons, and epitrites. Since Dryden, the metre of our poets leads to the sense: in our elder and more genuine bards, the sense, including the passion, leads to the metre. Read even Donne’s satires as he meant them to be read, and as the sense and passion demand, and you will find in the lines a manly harmony.
LIFE OF FLETCHER IN STOCKDALE’S EDITION. 1811.
In general their plots are more regular than Shakspeare’s.–
This is true, if true at all, only before a court of criticism, which judges one scheme by the laws of another and a diverse one. Shakspeare’s plots have their own laws or regulae, and according to these they are regular.
MAID’S TRAGEDY.
Act I. The metrical arrangement is most slovenly throughout.
‘Strat’. As well as masque can be, &c.
and all that follows to ‘who is return’d’–is plainly blank verse, and falls easily into it.
Ib. Speech of Melantius:–
These soft and silken wars are not for me: The music must be shrill, and all confus’d, That stirs my blood; and then I dance with arms.
What strange self-trumpeters and tongue-bullies all the brave soldiers of Beaumont and Fletcher are! Yet I am inclined to think it was the fashion of the age from the Soldier’s speech in the Counter Scuffle; and deeper than the fashion B. and F. did not fathom.
Ib. Speech of Lysippus:–
Yes, but this lady
Walks discontented, with her wat’ry eyes Bent on the earth, &c.
Opulent as Shakspeare was, and of his opulence prodigal, he yet would not have put this exquisite piece of poetry in the mouth of a no-character, or as addressed to a Melantius. I wish that B. and F. had written poems instead of tragedies.
Ib.
‘Mel’. I might run fiercely, not more hastily, Upon my foe.
Read
I might run more fiercely, not more hastily.–
Ib. Speech of Calianax:–
Office! I would I could put it off! I am sure I sweat quite through my office!
The syllable _off_ reminds the testy statesman of his robe, and he carries on the image.
Ib. Speech of Melantius:–
–Would that blood,
That sea of blood, that I have lost in fight, &c.
All B. and F.’s generals are pugilists, or cudgel-fighters, that boast of their bottom and of the _claret_ they have shed.
Ib. The Masque;–Cinthia’s speech:–
But I will give a greater state and glory, And raise to time a _noble_ memory
Of what these lovers are.
I suspect that ‘nobler,’ pronounced as ‘nobiler’–[Symbol (metrical): U-=shape below the line]–, was the poet’s word, and that the accent is to be placed on the penultimate of ‘memory.’ As to the passage–
Yet, while our reign lasts, let us stretch our power, &c.
removed from the text of Cinthia’s speech by these foolish editors as unworthy of B. and F.–the first eight lines are not worse, and the last couplet incomparably better, than the stanza retained.
Act ii. Amintor’s speech:–
Oh, thou hast nam’d a word, that wipes away All thoughts revengeful! In that sacred name, ‘The king,’ there lies a terror.
It is worth noticing that of the three greatest tragedians, Massinger was a democrat, Beaumont and Fletcher the most servile _jure divino_ royalist, and Shakspeare a philosopher;–if aught personal, an aristocrat.
A KING AND NO KING.
Act IV. Speech of Tigranes:–
She, that forgat the greatness of her grief And miseries, that must follow such mad passions, Endless and wild _as_ women! &c.
Seward’s note and suggestion of ‘in.’
It would be amusing to learn from some existing friend of Mr. Seward what he meant, or rather dreamed, in this note. It is certainly a difficult passage, of which there are two solutions;–one, that the writer was somewhat more injudicious than usual;–the other, that he was very, very much more profound and Shakspearian than usual. Seward’s emendation, at all events, is right and obvious. Were it a passage of Shakspeare, I should not hesitate to interpret it as characteristic of Tigranes’ state of mind,–disliking the very virtues, and therefore half-consciously representing them as mere products of the violence, of the sex in general in all their whims, and yet forced to admire, and to feel and to express gratitude for, the exertion in his own instance. The inconsistency of the passage would be the consistency of the author. But this is above Beaumont and Fletcher.
THE SCORNFUL LADY.
Act II. Sir Roger’s speech:–
Did I for this consume my _quarters_ in meditations, vows, and woo’d her in heroical epistles? Did I expound the Owl, and undertake, with labor and expense, the recollection of those thousand pieces, consum’d in cellars and tobacco-shops, of that our honor’d Englishman, Nic. Broughton? &c.
Strange, that neither Mr. Theobald, nor Mr. Seward, should have seen that this mock heroic speech is in full-mouthed blank verse! Had they seen this, they would have seen that ‘quarters’ is a substitution of the players for ‘quires’ or ‘squares,’ (that is) of paper:–
Consume my quires in meditations, vows, And woo’d her in heroical epistles.
They ought, likewise, to have seen that the abbreviated ‘Ni. Br.’ of the text was properly ‘Mi. Dr.’–and that Michael Drayton, not Nicholas Broughton, is here ridiculed for his poem The Owl and his Heroical Epistles.
Ib. Speech of Younger Loveless:–
Fill him some wine. Thou dost not see me mov’d, &c.
These Editors ought to have learnt, that scarce an instance occurs in B. and F. of a long speech not in metre. This is plain staring blank verse.
THE CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY.
I cannot but think that in a country conquered by a nobler race than the natives, and in which the latter became villeins and bondsmen, this custom, ‘lex merchetae’, may have been introduced for wise purposes,–as of improving the breed, lessening the antipathy of different races, and producing a new bond of relationship between the lord and the tenant, who, as the eldest born, would, at least, have a chance of being, and a probability of being thought, the lord’s child. In the West Indies it cannot have these effects, because the mulatto is marked by nature different from the father, and because there is no bond, no law, no custom, but of mere debauchery. 1815.
Act i. sc. 1. Rutilio’s speech:–
Yet if you play not fair play, &c.
Evidently to be transposed and read thus:–
Yet if you play not fair, above-board too, I’ll tell you what–I’ve a foolish engine here:–I say no more–But if your Honor’s guts are not enchanted–
Licentious as the comic metre of B. and F. is,–a far more lawless, and yet far less happy, imitation of the rhythm of animated talk in real life than Massinger’s–still it is made worse than it really is by ignorance of the halves, thirds, and two-thirds of a line which B. and F. adopted from the Italian and Spanish dramatists. Thus in Rutilio’s speech:–
Though I confess
Any man would desire to have her, and by any means, &c.
Correct the whole passage–
Though I confess
Any man would Desire to have her, and by any means, At any rate too, yet this common hangman That hath whipt off a /THOUsand maids’ HEADS/ already– That he should glean the harvest, sticks in my stomach!
[Between the two /, upper-case syllables have the stress, written as a horizontal line above them in the original text, and lower-case syllables are unstressed, written as a u-shape (the u-symbol previously described) above them. text Ed.]
In all comic metres the gulping of short syllables, and the abbreviation of syllables ordinarily long by the rapid pronunciation of eagerness and vehemence, are not so much a license, as a law,–a faithful copy of nature, and let them be read characteristically, the times will be found nearly equal. Thus the three words marked above make a ‘choriambus’–u u –, or perhaps a ‘paeon primus’–u u u; a dactyl, by virtue of comic rapidity, being only equal to an iambus when distinctly pronounced. I have no doubt that all B. and F.’s works might be safely corrected by attention to this rule, and that the editor is entitled to transpositions of all kinds, and to not a few omissions. For the rule of the metre once lost–what was to restrain the actors from interpolation?
THE ELDER BROTHER
Act I. sc. 2. Charles’s speech:–
–For what concerns tillage,
Who better can deliver it than Virgil In his Georgicks? and to cure your herds, His Bucolicks is a master-piece.
Fletcher was too good a scholar to fall into so gross a blunder, as Messrs. Sympson and Colman suppose. I read the passage thus:-
–For what concerns tillage,
Who better can deliver it than Virgil, In his /GeORGicks/, _or_ to cure your herds; (His Bucolicks are a master-piece.)
But when, &c.
Jealous of Virgil’s honor, he is afraid lest, by referring to the Georgics alone, he might be understood as undervaluing the preceding work. ‘Not that I do not admire the Bucolics, too, in their way:–But when, &c.’
Act iii. sc. 3. Charles’s speech:–
–She has a face looks like a _story_; The _story_ of the heavens looks very like her.
Seward reads ‘glory;’ and Theobald quotes from Philaster–
That reads the story of a woman’s face.–
I can make sense of this passage as little as Mr. Seward;–the passage from Philaster is nothing to the purpose. Instead of ‘a story,’ I have sometimes thought of proposing ‘Astraea.’
Ib. Angellina’s speech:–
–You’re old and dim, Sir, And the shadow of the earth eclips’d your judgment.
Inappropriate to Angellina, but one of the finest lines in our language.
Act iv. sc. 3. Charles’s speech:–
And lets the serious part of life run by As thin neglected sand, whiteness of name. You must be mine, &c.
Seward’s note, and reading–
–Whiteness of name,
You must be mine!
Nonsense! ‘Whiteness of name,’ is in apposition to ‘the serious part of life,’ and means a deservedly pure reputation. The following line–‘You _must_ be mine!’ means–‘Though I do not enjoy you to-day, I shall hereafter, and without reproach.’
THE SPANISH CURATE.
Act IV. sc. 7. Amaranta’s speech:–
And still I push’d him on, as he had been _coming_.
Perhaps the true word is ‘conning,’ that is, learning, or reading, and therefore inattentive.
WIT WITHOUT MONEY.
Act I. Valentine’s speech:–
One without substance, &c.
The present text, and that proposed by Seward, are equally vile. I have endeavoured to make the lines sense, though the whole is, I suspect, incurable except by bold conjectural reformation. I would read thus:–
One without substance of herself, that’s woman; Without the pleasure of her life, that’s wanton; Tho’ she be young, forgetting it; tho’ fair, Making her glass the eyes of honest men, Not her own admiration.
‘That’s wanton,’ or, ‘that is to say, wantonness.’
Act ii. Valentine’s speech:–
Of half-a-crown a week for pins and puppets–
As there is a syllable wanting in the measure here. (Seward.)
A syllable wanting! Had this Seward neither ears nor fingers? The line is a more than usually regular iambic hendecasyllable.
Ib.
With one man satisfied, with one rein guided; With one faith, one content, one bed;
_Aged_, she makes the wife, preserves the fame and issue; A widow is, &c.
Is ‘apaid’–contented–too obsolete for B. and F.? If not, we might read it thus:-
Content with one faith, with one bed apaid, She makes the wife, preserves the fame and issue;–
Or it may be–
–with one breed apaid–
that is, satisfied with one set of children, in opposition to–
A widow is a Christmas-box, &c.
Colman’s note on Seward’s attempt to put this play into metre.
The editors, and their contemporaries in general, were ignorant of any but the regular iambic verse. A study of the Aristophanic and Plautine metres would have enabled them to reduce B. and F. throughout into metre, except where prose is really intended.
THE HUMOROUS LIEUTENANT.
Act I. sc. 1. Second Ambassador’s speech:–
–When your angers, _Like_ so many brother billows, rose together, And, curling up _your_ foaming crests, defied, &c.
This worse than superfluous ‘like’ is very like an interpolation of some matter of fact critic–all ‘pus, prose atque venenum’. The ‘your’ in the next line, instead of ‘their,’ is likewise yours, Mr. Critic!
Act ii: sc. 1. Timon’s speech:–
Another of a new _way_ will be look’d at.–
We much suspect the poets wrote, ‘of a new _day_.’ So, immediately after,
–Time may For all his wisdom, yet give us a day.
(SEWARD’S NOTE.)
For this very reason I more than suspect the contrary.
Ib. sc. 3. Speech of Leucippe:–
I’ll put her into action for a _wastcoat_.–
What we call a riding-habit,–some mannish dress.
THE MAD LOVER.
Act IV. Masque of beasts:–
–This goodly tree,
An usher that still grew before his lady, Wither’d at root: this, for he could not wooe, A grumbling lawyer: &c.
Here must have been omitted a line rhyming to ‘tree;’ and the words of the next line have been transposed:–
–This goodly tree,
_Which leafless, and obscur’d with moss you see_, An usher this, that ‘fore his lady grew, Wither’d at root: this, for he could not wooe, &c.
THE LOYAL SUBJECT.
It is well worthy of notice, and yet has not been, I believe, noticed hitherto, what a marked difference there exists in the dramatic writers of the Elizabetho-Jacobaean age–(Mercy on me! what a phrase for ‘the writers during the reigns of Elizabeth and James I.!’)–in respect of their political opinions. Shakspeare, in this as in all other things, himself and alone, gives the permanent politics of human nature, and the only predilection, which appears, shews itself in his contempt of mobs and the populacy. Massinger is a decided Whig;–Beaumont and Fletcher high-flying, passive-obedience, Tories. The Spanish dramatists furnished them with this, as with many other ingredients. By the by, an accurate and familiar acquaintance with all the productions of the Spanish stage previously to 1620, is an indispensable qualification for an editor of B. and F.;–and with this qualification a most interesting and instructive edition might be given. This edition of Colman’s Stockdale, (1811,) is below criticism.
In metre, B. and F. are inferior to Shakspeare, on the one hand, as expressing the poetic part of the drama, and to Massinger, on the other, in the art of reconciling metre with the natural rhythm of conversation,–in which, indeed, Massinger is unrivalled. Read him aright, and measure by time, not syllables, and no lines can be more legitimate,–none in which the substitution of equipollent feet, and the modifications by emphasis, are managed with such exquisite judgment. B. and F. are fond of the twelve syllable (not Alexandrine) line, as–
Too many fears’ tis thought too: and to nourish those–
This has, often, a good effect, and is one of the varieties most common in Shakspeare.
RULE A WIFE AND HAVE A WIFE.
Act III. Old Woman’s speech:–
–I fear he will knock my Brains out for lying.
Mr. Seward discards the words ‘for lying’, because ‘most of the things spoke of Estifania are true, with only a little exaggeration, and because they destroy all appearance of measure.’ (Colman’s note.)
Mr. Seward had his brains out. The humor lies in Estifania’s having ordered the Old Woman to tell these tales of her; for though an intriguer, she is not represented as other than chaste; and as to the metre, it is perfectly correct.
Ib.
‘Marg’. As you love me, give way.
‘Leon’. It shall be better, I will give none, madam, &c.
The meaning is: ‘It shall be a better way, first;–as it is, I will not give it, or any that you in your present mood would wish.’
THE LAWS OF CANDY.
Act I. Speech of Melitus:–
Whose insolence and never yet match’d pride Can by no character be well express’d,
But in her only name, the proud Erota.
Colman’s note.
The poet intended no allusion to the word ‘Erota’ itself; but says that her very name, ‘the proud Erota,’ became a character and adage; as we say, a Quixote or a Brutus: so to say an ‘Erota,’ expressed female pride and insolence of beauty.
Ib. Speech of Antinous:-
Of my peculiar honors, not deriv’d
From ‘successary’, but purchas’d with my blood.–
The poet doubtless wrote ‘successry,’ which, though not adopted in our language, would be, on many occasions, as here, a much more significant phrase than ancestry.
THE LITTLE FRENCH LAWYER.
Act I. sc. 1. Dinant’s speech:–
Are you become a patron too? ‘Tis a new one, No more on’t, &c.
Seward reads:–
Are you become a patron too?
_How long Have you been conning this speech?_ ‘Tis a new one, &c.
If conjectural emendation, like this, be allowed, we might venture to read:–
Are you become a patron _to a new tune_?
or,
Are you become a patron? ‘Tis a new _tune_.
Ib.
‘Din’. Thou wouldst not willingly Live a protested coward, or be call’d one?
‘Cler’. Words are but words.
‘Din’. Nor wouldst thou take a blow?
Seward’s note.
O miserable! Dinant sees through Cleremont’s gravity, and the actor is to explain it. ‘Words are but words,’ is the last struggle of affected morality.
VALENTINIAN.
Act I. sc. 3. It is a real trial of charity to read this scene with tolerable temper towards Fletcher. So very slavish–so reptile–are the feelings and sentiments represented as duties. And yet remember he was a bishop’s son, and the duty to God was the supposed basis.
Personals, including body, house, home, and religion;–property, subordination, and inter-community;–these are the fundamentals of society. I mean here, religion negatively taken,–so that the person be not compelled to do or utter, in relation of the soul to God, what would be, in that person, a lie;–such as to force a man to go to church, or to swear that he believes what he does not believe. Religion, positively taken, may be a great and useful privilege, but cannot be a right,–were it for this only that it cannot be pre-defined. The ground of this distinction between negative and positive religion, as a social right, is plain. No one of my fellow-citizens is encroached on by my not declaring to him what I believe respecting the super-sensual; but should every man be entitled to preach against the preacher, who could hear any preacher? Now it is different in respect of loyalty. There we have positive rights, but not negative rights;–for every pretended negative would be in effect a positive;–as if a soldier had a right to keep to himself, whether he would, or would not, fight. Now, no one of these fundamentals can be rightfully attacked, except when the guardian of it has abused it to subvert one or more of the rest. The reason is, that the guardian, as a fluent, is less than the permanent which he is to guard. He is the temporary and mutable mean, and derives his whole value from the end. In short, as robbery is not high treason, so neither is every unjust act of a king the converse. All must be attacked and endangered. Why? Because the king, as ‘a’ to A., is a mean to A. or subordination, in a far higher sense than a proprietor, as ‘b’. to B. is a mean to B. or property.
Act ii. sc. 2. Claudia’s speech:-
Chimney-pieces! &c.
The whole of this speech seems corrupt; and if accurately printed,–that is, if the same in all the prior editions, irremediable but by bold conjecture. ”Till’ my tackle,’ should be, I think, ‘while,’ &c.
Act iii. sc. 1. B. and F. always write as if virtue or goodness were a sort of talisman, or strange something, that might be lost without the least fault on the part of the owner. In short, their chaste ladies value their chastity as a material thing–not as an act or state of being; and this mere thing being imaginary, no wonder that all their women are represented with the minds of strumpets, except a few irrational humorists, far less capable of exciting our sympathy than a Hindoo, who has had a bason of cow-broth thrown over him;–for this, though a debasing superstition, is still real, and we might pity the poor wretch, though we cannot help despising him. But B. and F.’s Lucinas are clumsy fictions. It is too plain that the authors had no one idea of chastity as a virtue, but only such a conception as a blind man might have of the power of seeing, by handling an ox’s eye. In The Queen of Corinth, indeed, they talk differently; but it is all talk, and nothing is real in it but the dread of losing a reputation. Hence the frightful contrast between their women (even those who are meant for virtuous) and Shakspeare’s. So, for instance, The Maid in the Mill:–a woman must not merely have grown old in brothels, but have chuckled over every abomination committed in them with a rampant sympathy of imagination, to have had her fancy so drunk with the ‘minutiae’ of lechery as this icy chaste virgin evinces hers to have been.
It would be worth while to note how many of these plays are founded on rapes,–how many on incestuous passions, and how many on mere lunacies. Then their virtuous women are either crazy superstitions of a merely bodily negation of having been acted on, or strumpets in their imaginations and wishes, or, as in this Maid in the Mill, both at the same time. In the men, the love is merely lust in one direction,–exclusive preference of one object. The tyrant’s speeches are mostly taken from the mouths of indignant denouncers of the tyrant’s character, with the substitution of ‘I’ for ‘he,’ and the omission of the prefatory ‘he acts as if he thought’ so and so. The only feelings they can possibly excite are disgust at the Aeciuses, if regarded as sane loyalists, or compassion, if considered as Bedlamites. So much for their tragedies. But even their comedies are, most of them, disturbed by the fantasticalness, or gross caricature, of the persons or incidents. There are few characters that you can really like,–(even though you should have had erased from your mind all the filth, which bespatters the most likeable of them, as Piniero in The Island Princess for instance,)–scarcely one whom you can love. How different this from Shakspeare, who makes one have a sort of sneaking affection even for his Barnardines;–whose very Iagos and Richards are awful, and, by the counteracting power of profound intellects, rendered fearful rather than hateful;–and even the exceptions, as Goneril and Regan, are proofs of superlative judgment and the finest moral tact, in being left utter monsters, ‘nulla virtute redemptae,’ and in being kept out of sight as much as possible,–they being, indeed, only means for the excitement and deepening of noblest emotions towards the Lear, Cordelia, &c. and employed with the severest economy! But even Shakspeare’s grossness–that which is really so, independently of the increase in modern times of vicious associations with things indifferent,–(for there is a state of manners conceivable so pure, that the language of Hamlet at Ophelia’s feet might be a harmless rallying, or playful teazing, of a shame that would exist in Paradise)–at the worst, how diverse in kind is it from Beaumont and Fletcher’s! In Shakspeare it is the mere generalities of sex, mere words for the most part, seldom or never distinct images, all head-work, and fancy-drolleries; there is no sensation supposed in the speaker. I need not proceed to contrast this with B. and F.
ROLLO.
This is, perhaps, the most energetic of Fletcher’s tragedies. He evidently aimed at a new Richard III. in Rollo;–but as in all his other imitations of Shakspeare, he was not philosopher enough to bottom his original. Thus, in Rollo, he has produced a mere personification of outrageous wickedness, with no fundamental characteristic impulses to make either the tyrant’s words or actions philosophically intelligible. Hence, the most pathetic situations border on the horrible, and what he meant for the terrible, is either hateful, [Greek (transliterated): to misaeton], or ludicrous. The scene of Baldwin’s sentence in the third act is probably the grandest working of passion in all B. and F.’s dramas;–but the very magnificence of filial affection given to Edith, in this noble scene, renders the after scene–(in imitation of one of the least Shakspearian of all Shakspeare’s works, if it be his, the scene between Richard and Lady Anne,)–in which Edith is yielding to a few words and tears, not only unnatural, but disgusting. In Shakspeare, Lady Anne is described as a weak, vain, very woman throughout.
Act i. sc. I.
‘Gis’. He is indeed the perfect character Of a good man, and so his actions speak him.
This character of Aubrey, and the whole spirit of this and several other plays of the same authors, are interesting as traits of the morals which it was fashionable to teach in the reigns of James I. and his successor, who died a martyr to them. Stage, pulpit, law, fashion,–all conspired to enslave the realm. Massinger’s plays breathe the opposite spirit; Shakspeare’s the spirit of wisdom which is for all ages. By the by, the Spanish dramatists–Calderon, in particular,–had some influence in this respect, of romantic loyalty to the greatest monsters, as well as in the busy intrigues of B. and F.’s plays.
THE WILD GOOSE CHASE.
Act II. sc. 1. Belleur’s speech:–
–that wench, methinks,
If I were but well set on, for she is _a fable_, If I were but hounded right, and one to teach me.
Sympson reads ‘affable,’ which Colman rejects, and says, ‘the next line seems to enforce’ the reading in the text.
Pity, that the editor did not explain wherein the sense, ‘seemingly enforced by the next line,’ consists. May the true word be ‘a sable,’ that is, a black fox, hunted for its precious fur? Or ‘at-able,’–as we now say,–‘she is come-at-able?’
A WIFE FOR A MONTH.
Act IV. sc. 1. Alphonso’s speech:-
Betwixt the cold bear and the raging lion Lies my safe way.
Seward’s note and alteration to–
‘Twixt the cold bears, far from the raging lion–
This Mr. Seward is a blockhead of the provoking species. In his itch for correction, he forgot the words–‘lies my safe way!’ The Bear is the extreme pole, and thither he would travel over the space contained between it and ‘the raging lion.’
THE PILGRIM.
Act IV. sc. 2. Alinda’s interview with her father is lively, and happily hit off; but this scene with Roderigo is truly excellent. Altogether, indeed, this play holds the first place in B. and F.’s romantic entertainments, ‘Lustspiele’, which collectively are their happiest performances, and are only inferior to the romance of Shakspeare in the As you Like It, Twelfth Night, &c.
Ib.
‘Alin’. To-day you shall wed Sorrow, And Repentance will come to-morrow.
Read ‘Penitence,’ or else–
Repentance, she will come to-morrow.
THE QUEEN OF CORINTH.
Act II. sc. 1. Merione’s speech. Had the scene of this tragi-comedy been laid in Hindostan instead of Corinth, and the gods here addressed been the Veeshnoo and Co. of the Indian Pantheon, this rant would not have been much amiss.
In respect of style and versification, this play and the following of Bonduca may be taken as the best, and yet as characteristic, specimens of Beaumont and Fletcher’s dramas. I particularly instance the first scene of the Bonduca. Take Shakspeare’s Richard II., and having selected some one scene of about the same number of lines, and consisting mostly of long speeches, compare it with the first scene in Bonduca,–not for the idle purpose of finding out which is the better, but in order to see and understand the difference. The latter, that of B. and F., you will find a Avell arranged bed of flowers, each having its separate root, and its position determined aforehand by the will of the gardener,–each fresh plant a fresh volition. In the former you see an Indian fig-tree, as described by Milton;–all is growth, evolution, [Greek (transliterated): genesis];–each line, each word almost, begets the following, and the will of the writer is an interfusion, a continuous agency, and not a series of separate acts. Shakspeare is the height, breadth, and depth of genius: Beaumont and Fletcher the excellent mechanism, in juxta-position and succession, of talent.
THE NOBLE GENTLEMAN.
Why have the dramatists of the times of Elizabeth, James I. and the first Charles become almost obsolete, with the exception of Shakspeare? Why do they no longer belong to the English, being once so popular? And why is Shakspeare an exception?–One thing, among fifty, necessary to the full solution is, that they all employed poetry and poetic diction on unpoetic subjects, both characters and situations, especially in their comedy. Now Shakspeare is all, all ideal,–of no time, and therefore for all times. Read, for instance, Marine’s panegyric in the first scene of this play:–
Know The eminent court, to them that can be wise, And fasten on her blessings, is a sun, &c.
What can be more unnatural and inappropriate–(not only is, but must be felt as such)–than such poetry in the mouth of a silly dupe? In short, the scenes are mock dialogues, in which the poet _solus_ plays the ventriloquist, but cannot keep down his own way of expressing himself. Heavy complaints have been made respecting the transprosing of the old plays by Cibber; but it never occurred to these critics to ask, how it came that no one ever attempted to transprose a comedy of Shakspeare’s.
THE CORONATION.
Act I. Speech of Seleucus:–
Altho’ he be my enemy, should any
Of the gay flies that buz about the court, _Sit_ to catch trouts i’ the summer, tell me so, I durst, &c.
Colman’s note.
Pshaw! ‘Sit’ is either a misprint for ‘set,’ or the old and still provincial word for ‘set,’ as the participle passive of ‘seat’ or ‘set.’ I have heard an old Somersetshire gardener say:–“Look, Sir! I set these plants here; those yonder I ‘sit’ yesterday.”
Act ii. Speech of Arcadius:–
Nay, some will swear they love their mistress, Would hazard lives and fortunes, &c.
Read thus:–
Nay, some will swear they love their mistress so, They would hazard lives and fortunes to preserve One of her hairs brighter than Berenice’s, Or young Apollo’s; and yet, after this, &c.
‘/They would HAzard/’ [1]–furnishes an anapaest for an ‘iambus’. ‘And yet,’ which must be read, /’ANyet’/, is an instance of the enclitic force in an accented monosyllable. /’And YET’/ is a complete ‘iambus’; but ‘anyet’ is, like ‘spirit’, a dibrach u u, trocheized, however, by the ‘arsis’ or first accent damping, though not extinguishing, the second.
[Footnote 1: As noted earlier in this text, the words between / marks are pronounced with stress on the upper-case syllables, and none on the lower-case syllables. In the original text, stress is indicated by a horizontal line over the syllable, and lack of stress by a u-shape, as the u u later in this paragraph. text Ed.]
WIT AT SEVERAL WEAPONS.
Act I. Oldcraft’s speech:
I’m arm’d at all points, &c.
It would be very easy to restore all this passage to metre, by supplying a sentence of four syllables, which the reasoning almost demands, and by correcting the grammar. Read thus:–
Arm’d at all points ‘gainst treachery, I hold My humor firm. If, living, I can see thee Thrive by thy wits, I shall have the more courage, Dying, to trust thee with my lands. If not, The best wit, I can hear of, carries them. For since so many in my time and knowledge, Rich children of the city, have concluded _For lack of wit_ in beggary, I’d rather Make a wise stranger my executor,
Than a fool son my heir, and have my lands call’d After my wit than name: and that’s my nature!
Ib. Oldcraft’s speech:–
To prevent which I have sought out a match for her.–
Read
Which to prevent I’ve sought a match out for her.
Ib. Sir Gregory’s speech:–
–Do you think I’ll have any of the wits hang upon me after I am married once?
Read it thus:–
Do you think
That I’ll have any of the wits to hang Upon me after I am married once?
and afterwards–
Is it a fashion in London,
To marry a woman, and to never see her?
The superfluous ‘to’ gives it the Sir Andrew Ague-cheek character.
THE FAIR MAID OF THE INN.
Act II. Speech of Albertus:–
But, Sir,
By my life, I vow to take assurance from you, That right-hand never more shall strike my son, …
Chop his hand off!
In this (as, indeed, in all other respects; but most in this) it is that Shakspeare is so incomparably superior to Fletcher and his friend,–in judgment! What can be conceived more unnatural and motiveless than this brutal resolve? How is it possible to feel the least interest in Albertus afterwards? or in Cesario after his conduct?
THE TWO NOBLE KINSMEN.
On comparing the prison scene of Palamon and Arcite, Act ii. sc. 2, with the dialogue between the same speakers, Act i. sc. 2, I can scarcely retain a doubt as to the first act’s having been written by Shakspeare. Assuredly it was not written by B. and F. I hold Jonson more probable than either of these two.
The main presumption, however, for Shakspeare’s share in this play rests on a point, to which the sturdy critics of this edition (and indeed all before them) were blind,–that is, the construction of the blank verse, which proves beyond all doubt an intentional imitation, if not the proper hand, of Shakspeare. Now, whatever improbability there is in the former, (which supposes Fletcher conscious of the inferiority, the too poematic _minus_-dramatic nature, of his versification, and of which there is neither proof, nor likelihood,) adds so much to the probability of the latter. On the other hand, the harshness of many of these very passages, a harshness unrelieved by any lyrical inter-breathings, and still more the want of profundity in the thoughts, keep me from an absolute decision.
Act i. sc. 3. Emilia’s speech:–
–Since his depart, his _sports_,
Tho’ craving seriousness and skill, &c.
I conjecture ‘imports,’ that is, duties or offices of importance. The flow of the versification in this speech seems to demand the trochaic ending–/u/; while the text blends jingle and _hisses_ to the annoyance of less sensitive ears than Fletcher’s–not to say, Shakspeare’s.
THE WOMAN HATER.
Act. I. sc. 2. This scene from the beginning is prose printed as blank verse, down to the line–
E’en all the valiant stomachs in the court–
where the verse recommences. This transition from the prose to the verse enhances, and indeed forms, the comic effect. Lazarillo concludes his soliloquy with a hymn to the goddess of plenty.
ON THE PROMETHEUS OF AESCHYLUS:
An Essay, preparatory to a series of disquisitions respecting the Egyptian, in connection with the sacerdotal, theology, and in contrast with the mysteries of ancient Greece. Read at the Royal Society of Literature, May 18, 1825.
The French ‘savans’ who went to Egypt in the train of Buonaparte, Denon, Fourrier, and Dupuis, (it has been asserted), triumphantly vindicated the chronology of Herodotus, on the authority of documents that cannot lie;–namely, the inscriptions and sculptures on those enormous masses of architecture, that might seem to have been built in the wish of rivalling the mountains, and at some unknown future to answer the same purpose, that is, to stand the gigantic tombstones of an elder world. It is decided, say the critics, whose words I have before cited, that the present division of the zodiac had been already arranged by the Egyptians fifteen thousand years before the Christian era, and according to an inscription ‘which cannot lie’ the temple of Esne is of eight thousand years standing.
Now, in the first place, among a people who had placed their national pride in their antiquity, I do not see the impossibility of an inscription lying; and, secondly, as little can I see the improbability of a modern interpreter misunderstanding it; and lastly, the incredibility of a French infidel’s partaking of both defects, is still less evident to my understanding. The inscriptions may be, and in some instances, very probably are, of later date than the temples themselves,–the offspring of vanity or priestly rivalry, or of certain astrological theories; or the temples themselves may have been built in the place of former and ruder structures, of an earlier and ruder period, and not impossibly under a different scheme of hieroglyphic or significant characters; and these may have been intentionally, or ignorantly, miscopied or mistranslated.
But more than all the preceding,–I cannot but persuade myself, that for a man of sound judgment and enlightened common sense–a man with whom the demonstrable laws of the human mind, and the rules generalized from the great mass of facts respecting human nature, weigh more than any two or three detached documents or narrations, of whatever authority the narrator may be, and however difficult it may be to bring positive proofs against the antiquity of the documents–I cannot but persuade myself, I say, that for such a man, the relation preserved in the first book of the Pentateuch,–and which, in perfect accordance with all analogous experience, with all the facts of history, and all that the principles of political economy would lead us to anticipate, conveys to us the rapid progress in civilization and splendour from Abraham and Abimelech to Joseph and Pharaoh,–will be worth a whole library of such inferences.
I am aware that it is almost universal to speak of the gross idolatry of Egypt; nay, that arguments have been grounded on this assumption in proof of the divine origin of the Mosaic monotheism. But first, if by this we are to understand that the great doctrine of the one Supreme Being was first revealed to the Hebrew legislator, his own inspired writings supply abundant and direct confutation of the position. Of certain astrological superstitions,–of certain talismans connected with star-magic,–plates and images constructed in supposed harmony with the movements and influences of celestial bodies,–there doubtless exist hints, if not direct proofs, both in the Mosaic writings, and those next to these in antiquity. But of plain idolatry in Egypt, or the existence of a polytheistic religion, represented by various idols, each signifying a several deity, I can find no decisive proof in the Pentateuch; and when I collate these with the books of the prophets, and the other inspired writings subsequent to the Mosaic, I cannot but regard the absence of any such proof in the latter, compared with the numerous and powerful assertions, or evident implications, of Egyptian idolatry in the former, both as an argument of incomparably greater value in support of the age and authenticity of the Pentateuch; and as a strong presumption in favour of the hypothesis on which I shall in part ground the theory which will pervade this series of disquisitions;–namely, that the sacerdotal religion of Egypt had, during the interval from Abimelech to Moses, degenerated from the patriarchal monotheism into a pantheism, cosmotheism, or worship of the world as God.
The reason, or pretext, assigned by the Hebrew legislator to Pharaoh for leading his countrymen into the wilderness to join with their brethren, the tribes who still sojourned in the nomadic state, namely, that their sacrifices would be an abomination to the Egyptians, may be urged as inconsistent with, nay, as confuting this hypothesis. But to this I reply, first, that the worship of the ox and cow was not, in and of itself, and necessarily, a contravention of the first commandment, though a very gross breach of the second;–for it is most certain that the ten tribes worshipped the Jehovah, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, under the same or similar symbols:–secondly, that the cow, or Isis, and the Io of the Greeks, truly represented, in the first instance, the earth or productive nature, and afterwards the mundane religion grounded on the worship of nature, or the [Greek (transliterated): to pan], as God. In after times, the ox or bull was added, representing the sun, or generative force of nature, according to the habit of male and female deities, which spread almost over the whole world,–the positive and negative forces in the science of superstition;–for the pantheism of the sage necessarily engenders polytheism as the popular creed. But lastly, a very sufficient reason may, I think, be assigned for the choice of the ox or cow, as representing the very life of nature, by the first legislators of Egypt, and for the similar sacred character in the Brachmanic tribes of Hindostan. The progress from savagery to civilization is evidently first from the hunting to the pastoral state, a process which even now is going on, within our own times, among the South American Indians in the vast tracts between Buenos Ayres and the Andes: but the second and the most important step, is from the pastoral, or wandering, to the agricultural, or fixed, state. Now, if even for men born and reared under European civilization, the charms of a wandering life have been found so great a temptation, that few who have taken to it have been induced to return, (see the confession in the preamble to the statute respecting the gipsies); [1]–how much greater must have been the danger of relapse in the first formation of fixed states with a condensed