The one is in Philaster, page 131. The other in Twelfth-Night, act i. scene 4.—In the same page of Philaster, there is a description of love, which the reader, if he pleases, may compare to two descriptions of love in As You Like It-both by Silvia, but neither preferable to our author's. I cannot quote half of those which occur in the play of Philaster alone, which bear the same degree of likeness as the last quoted passages, i. e. where the hands are scarce to be distinguished; but I will give one parallel more from thence, because the passages are both extremely fine, though the hands from one single expression of Shakespeare's are more visible, a prince deprived of his throne and betrayed as he thought in love, thus mourns his melancholy state. "Oh! that I had been nourish'd in these woods Whereon she dwells; that might have strew'd my bed With leaves and reeds, and with the skins of beasts Our neighbours; and have borne at her big breasts In the other, a king thus compares the state of royalty to that of a private life. "No not all these, thrice-gorgeous Ceremony, Not all these laid in bed majestical, Gets him to rest, cramm'd with distressful bread; Winding up days with toil, and nights with sleep, The instances of these two classes, particularly the former, where the exquisite beauties of Shakespeare are not quite reached, are most numerous; and though the design of the notes in this edition was in general only to settle the text, yet in three of the plays, The Faithful Shepherdess, The False One, and The Two Noble Kinsmen, that design is much enlarged, for reasons there assigned. And if the reader pleases to turn to these, he will find several parallels between Fletcher, Shakespeare, and means 66 5 Juvenal, Sat. vi. [* But like a lackey, &c.-Seward proposes altering A to HIS; for A lackey being "the idlest of all servants," the simile is absurd;" but HIS lackey" (i. e. the lackey of Phoebus)" one who follows the motions of the sun as constant as a lackey does those of his master." Is not this a distinction without a difference? or does Avollo keep but one lackey?— In supporting the variation, he makes some remarks (which we think uninteresting) on remote antecedents, and digresses on the subject of Richard mentioning the formal Vice, Iniquity, with which every reader of Shakespeare's Commentators must be already surfeited.] Milton, Milton, that are most of them to be ranged under one of these classes: But there is a third class of those instances where our authors have been so happy as to soar above Shakespeare, and even where Shakespeare is not greatly beneath himself. In The Two Gentlemen of Verona, the forlorn Julia, disguised as a boy, being asked of 'Silvia how tall Julia was, answers: "About my stature: For at Pentecost, When all our pageants of delight were play'd, "6 Act iv, scene the last. There is something extremely tender, innocent, and delicate, in these lines of Shakespeare, but our authors are far beyond this praise in their allusion to the same story. In the Maid's Tragedy, Aspatía in like manner forsaken by her lover, finds her maid Antiphila working a picture of Ariadne; and after several fine reflections upon Theseus, says; If I in thought felt not her very sorrow.] Whoever fully catches the tender melancholy of these lines, will know that Julia under such distress could not feign a case so exactly the parallel of her own, without such emotions as would speak themselves in every feature, and flow in tears from her eyes. She adds the last line therefore to take off the suspicion of her being the real Julia. But would she only say, that she felt Julia's sorrow formerly, when she saw her weep? No! She must excuse the present perturbation of her countenance, and the true reading most probably is: "And would I might be dead, If I in thought feel not her very sorrow." This better agrees with the double meaning intended, and with Silvia's reply, who says, "She is beholden to thee, gentle youth. I weep myself to think upon thy words." [The text is surely unexceptionable, and the alteration a needless refinement.] 7 Put me' on th' wild island.] I have given these lines as I think we ought to read them, but very different from what are printed in this edition. Four of the old quarto's, the folio, and the late octavo read, "And you shall find all true but the wild island. I observed I stand upon the sea-beach now, and think (If thou hadst ever feeling of a sorrow) Vol. i. act ii. Whoever has seen either the original or print of Guido's Bacchus and Ariadne will have the best comment on these lines. In both are the arms extended, the hair blown by the wind, the barren roughness of the rocks, the broken trunks of leafless trees, and in both she looks like Sorrow's monument. So that exactly ut pictura poesis; and hard it is to say, whether our authors or Guido painted best. I shall refer to the note below for a farther comment, and proceed to another instance of superior excellence in our authors, and where they have more evidently built on Shakes I observed to Mr. Theobald, that here was a glaring poetical contradiction. She you'll find all true except the wild island, and instantly she is upon the island. “ I stand upon the sea-beach now," &c. says, The wild island therefore in her imagination is as true as the rest. The enthusiasm is noble, but wants a proper introduction, which the change only of a b for a p will tolerably give. "And you shall find all true.—Put the wild island; But as there are numberless instances of many words, and particularly monosyllables, being dropt from the text (of which there is one in the same page with these lines, and another in the same play, vol. i. p. 59. very remarkable) I suppose this to have happened here; for by reading Put me on the wild island ;-I stand upon, &c. how nobly does she start as it were from fancy to reality, from the picture into the life? Me' on th' by elisions common to all our old poets, may become one syllable in the pronunciation; but if we speak them fall, and make a twelve syllable verse, it will have a hundred fellows in our authors, and should have had one but three lines below the passage here quoted, "Make a dull silence, till you feel a sudden sadness As Aspatia's grief had been of long continuance, sudden was evidently corrupt, and I therefore proposed to Mr. Theobald to read sullen, which is an epithet perfectly proper and extremely nervous; but as he could by no means be persuaded to mention the former conjecture, and the only objection he urged was, that it made a twelve-syllable verse, he would not let one of twelve syllables remain so near it; and therefore without authority of any prior edition, discarded the epithet intirely from the text, and adopted the reading of the first quarto in the former passage. "Suppose I stund upon the sea-beach now," &c. As this is much the most unpoetical of all the readings, and the first introducers of the text in the intermediate editions claim their corrections from the original manuscript, I can by no means approve the choice he has made. [We cannot perceive any necessity for these variations; the oldest quarto is therefore followed in this edition.-But is certainly preferable to put, with Seward's elisions; and suppose, at the beginning of the line, seems much better than and think at the end, as it continues the dialogue more easily. As to sudden, Theobald's silent omission is very faulty; the expression is dark, but we cannot find that sullen at all assists it.] peare's peare's foundation. At the latter-end of King John the King has received a burning poison; and being asked, The first and last lines are to be ranged among the faults that so much disgrace Shakespeare, which he committed to please the corrupt taste of the age he lived in, but to which Beaumont and Fletcher's learning and fortune made them superior. The intermediate lines are extremely beautiful, and marked as such by the late great editor, but yet are much improved in two plays of our authors, the first in Valentinian, where the Emperor, poisoned in the same manner, dies with more violence, fury, and horror, than King John; but the passage I shall quote is from A Wife for a Month, a play which does not upon the whole equal the poetic sublimity of Valentinian, though it rather excels it in the poisoning scene. The Prince Alphonso, who had been long in a phrenzy of melancholy, is poisoned with a hot fiery potion; under the agonies of which he thus raves: "Give me more air, more air, air; blow, blow, blow, And rivers run thro' my afflicted spirit. I am all fire, fire, fire; the raging dog-star Reigns in my blood; oh, which way shall I turn me? Fling me into the ocean or I perish. head. Dig, dig, dig, dig, until the springs fly up, The cold, cold springs, that I may leap into them, And bathe my scorch'd limbs in their purling pleasures; Or shoot me into the higher region, Where treasures of delicious snow are nourish'd, And banquets of sweet hail. Rug. Hold him fast, friar, Oh, how he burns! Alph. What, will ye sacrifice me? Upon the altar lay my willing body, And pile your wood up, fling your holy incense; And, as I turn me, you shall see all flame, Consuming flame. Stand off me, or you're ashes. Mart. To bed, good Sir. Alph. My bed will burn about me; Like Phaeton, in all-consuming flashes Am I enclos'd; let me fly, let me fly, give room; Like Like jewels round about my head, to cool me. Every reader of taste will see how superior this is to the quotation from Shakespeare. The images are vastly more numerous, more judicious, more nervous, and the passions are wrought up to the highest pitch; so that it may be fairly preferred to every thing of its kind in all Shakespeare, except one scene of Lear's madness, which it would emulate too, could we see such an excellent comment on it as Lear receives from his representative on the stage. As these last quotations are not only specimens of diction and sentiment, but of passions inflamed into poetic enthusiasm; I shall refer the reader to some other parallels of passions and characters that greatly resemble, and sometimes rival the spirit and sublimity of Shakespeare. He will please therefore to compare the phrenzy and the whole sweet character of the Jailor's Daughter in the Two Noble Kinsmen to Ophelia in Hamlet, where the copy is so extremely like the original that either the same hand drew both, or Fletcher's is not to be distinguished from Shakespeare's:To compare the deaths of Pontius and cius in Valentinian with that of Cassius, Brutus and their friends in Julius Cæsar, and if he admires a little less, he will weep much more; it more excels in the pathetic than it falls short in dignity:-To compare the character and passions of Cleopatra in the False One, to those of Shakespeare's Cleopatra:-To compare the pious deprecations and grief-mingled fury of Edith (upon the murder of her father by Rollo, in the Bloody Brother) to the grief and fury of Macduff, upon his wife and children's murder. Our authors will not, we hope, be found light in the scale in any of these instances; though their beam in general fly some little upwards, it will sometimes at least tug hard for a poise. But be it allowed, that as in diction and sentiment, so in characters and passions, Shakespeare in general excels, yet here too a very strong instance occurs of pre-eminence in our authors. It is Juliana in the Double Marriage, who, through her whole character, in conjugal fidelity, unshaken constancy and amiable tenderness, even more than rivals the Portia of Shakespeare, and her death not only far excels the others, but even the most pathetic deaths that Shakespeare has any where described or exhibited; King Lear's with Cordelia dead in his arms, most resembles, but by no means equals it; the grief, in this case, only pushes an old man into the grave, already half buried with age and misfortunes; in the other, it is such consummate horror, as in a few minutes freezes youth and beauty into a monumental statue. The last parallel I shall mention, shall give Shakespeare his due preference, where our authors very visibly emulate but cannot reach him. It is the quarrel of Amintor and Melantius in the Maid's Tragedy compared to that of Brutus and Cassius. The beginning of the quarrel is upon as just grounds, and the passions are wrought up to as great violence, but there is not such extreme dignity of character, VOL. I. f nor |