Page images
PDF
EPUB
[merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small]

the ville ocinage of the poet's brain. What, th viams; their reality is in the reader's mind. I pęsto wa vich is above that of history. Whoever Escaps or those of others; whoever has bu

f medersen, and thaght himself 'too much i' the sun;' whoe

Í by ummet sy voos mists rising in his own breast, and could find

dra kui tank wish nothing left remarkable in it; whoever has known ‘t

the concience of cce, or the spurns which patient merit of the unwort de vil ta fit në mod wink within him, and sadness cling to his heart like a malady, who h ta sa tugines and his youth staggered by the apparitions of strange things; who cannot No a som ville se es ev hovering near him like a spectre; whose powers of action have be mom sy yg taughty-be to whom the universe seems infinite, and himself nothing; whose bittera I w. maka in careless of consequences, and who goes to a play as his best resource to shove to a mound remove, the evils of life, by a mock-representation of them-this is the true Hamlet. HAZLITT.

[graphic]
[ocr errors]

JULIUS CESAR.

Tus tragedy, there can be no reasonable doubt, was first published in the folio collection of 1623, where it is printed with, for that volume, a remarkable exemption from typographical inaccuracies. The date of its production is less certain. Malone, in his "Attempt to ascertain the order in which the Plays of Shakespeare were written," concludes that it could not have been composed before 1607; but, as his argument mainly rests upon the fact that a tragedy with the same title by William Alexander, afterwards Earl of Sterline, was printed in London that year, from which he conjectured Shakespeare had derived one or two ideas, it cannot be regarded as satisfactory. Upon safer grounds, we think, Mr. Collier believes that Shakespeare's "Julius Casar" was written and acted. before 1603. In Act V. Sc. 5, it will be remembered, Antony pays a beautiful tribute to the character of Brutus,

"His life was gentle; and the elements

So mix'd in him, that Nature might stand up
And say to all the world, This was a man!"

Referring to this passage, Mr. Collier observes, "In Drayton's edit. 8vo. 1603, p. 61, we meet with the subsequent stanza. Mortimer:

"Such one he was, of him we boldly say,

In whose rich soul all sovereign powers did suit,

In whom in peace th' elements all lay

So mix'd, as none could sovereignty impute;

As all did govern, yet all did obey:

His lively temper was so absolute,

Barons' Wars,' Book III. The author is speaking of

That't seem'd, when heaven bis model first began,

In him it show'd perfection of a man.'

Italie type is hardly necessary to establish that one poet must have availed himself, not only of the thought, but of the very words of the other. The question is, was Shakespeare indebted to Drayton, or Drayton to Shakespeare? We shall not enter into general probabilities, founded upon the original and exhaustless stores of the mind of our great dramatist, but advert to a few dates, which, we think, warrant the conclusion that Drayton, having heard Julius Cæsar' at a theatre, or seen it in manuscript, before 1603, applied to his own purpose, perhaps unconsciously, what, in fact, belonged to another poet.

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

Drayton's Barons' Wars' first appeared in 1596, 4to., under the title of Mortimeriados.' Malone had a copy without date, and he and Steevens erroneously imagined that the poem had been originally printed in 1598. In the 4to. of 1596, and in the undated edition, it is not divided into books, and is in seven-line stanzas; and what is there said of Mortimer bears no keness whatever to Shakespeare's expressions in Julius Cæsar.' Drayton afterwards changed the title from Mortimeriados' to The Barons' Wars,' and remodelled the whole historical poem, altering the stanza from the English ballad form to the Italian ottava rima. This course he took before 1603, when it came out in octavo, with the stanza first quoted, which contains so marked a similarity to the lines from Julius Cæsar.' We apprehend that he did so, because he had heard or seen Shakespeare's tragedy before 1603; and we think that strong presumptive

6

* It was published in Scotland, of which Malone was not aware, three years before.

[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small]
« PreviousContinue »