fpeech. I had not told pofterity this, but for their ignorance, who chofe that " circumftance to commend their friend by, wherein he most faulted: and to juftify mine own candour, for I loved the man, and do honour his memory, on this fide idolatry, as much as any. He was, indeed, honeft, and of an open and free nature, had an excellent fancy, brave notions, and gentle expreflions; wherein "he flowed with that facility, that fometimes it was neceffary he fhould be stopped: Suflaminandus erat, as Auguftus faid of Haterius. His wit was in his own power: would the rule of it had been fo too! Many times he fell into thofe things "which could not efcape laughter; as when he faid in the perfon of Cæfar, one fpeaking to him,

66

Cafar, thou doft me wrong.

Cafar did never wrong, but with juft caufe

" and fuch-like, which were ridiculous. But he redeemed his vices with his vir"tues: there was ever more in him to be praised than to be pardoned."

As for the paffage which he mentions out of Shakspeare, there is fomewhat like it in Julius Cæfar, but without the abfurdity; nor did I ever meet with it in any edition that I have feen, as quoted by Mr. Jonfon. Befides his plays in this edition, there are two or three afcribed to him by Mr. Langbain, which I have never feen, and know nothing of. He writ likewife Venus and Adonis, and Tarquin and Lucrece, in stanzas, which have been printed in a late collection of poems. As to the character given of him by Ben Jonfon, there is a good deal in it: but I believe it may be as well expreffed by what Horace fays of the first Romans, who wrote tragedy upon the Greek models (or indeed tranflated them), in his epiftle to Auguftus.

Natura fublimis & acer,

Nam fpirat tragicum fatis & feliciter audet,

Sed turpem putat in chartis metuitque lituram.

As I have not propofed to myself to enter into a large and complete collection upon Shakspeare's works, 10 I will only take the liberty, with all due fubmiffion to the judgment of others, to obferve fome of those things I have been pleased with in locking him over.

His plays are properly to be diftinguifhed only into comedies and tragedies. Those which are called hiftorics, and even fome of his comedies, are really tragedies, with a run or mixture of comedy amongst them. That way of tragi-comedy was the common mistake of that age, and is indeed become fo agreeable to the English tate, that though the feverer criticks among us cannot bear it, yet the generality of our audiences feem to be better pleafed with it than with an exact tragedy. The Merry Wives of Windjor, The Comedy of Errors, and The Taming of the Shrew, are all pure comedy; the reft, however they are called, have fomething of both kinds. It is not very eafy to determine which way of writing he was moft excellent in. There is certainly a great deal of entertainment in his comical humours; and tho' they did not then strike at all ranks of people, as the fatire of the prefent age has taken the liberty to do, yet there is a pleating and a well-diftinguished variety in thofe characters which he thought fit to meddle with. Falftaff is allowed by every body to be a mafter-piece; the character is always well fuftained, though drawn out into the length of three plays; and even the account of his death, given by his old landlady Mrs. Quickly, in the first act of Henry the Fifth, thongh it be extremely natural, is yet as diverting as any part of his life. If there be any fault in the draught he has made of this lewd old fellow, it is, that though he has made him a thief, lying, cowardly, vain-glorious, and in fhort every way vicious, yet he has given him to much wit as to make him almoft too agreeable; and I do not know whether fome people have not, in remembrance of the diverfion he had formerly

afforded

;

afforded them, been forry to see his friend Hal use him fo fcurvily, when he comes to the crown in the end of The Second Part of Henry the Fourth. Amongst other extravagancies, in The Merry Wives of Windfor he has made him a deer-ftealer, that he might at the fame time remember his Warwickshire profecutor, under the name of Juftice Shallow; he has given him very near the fame coat of arms which Dugdale, in his Antiquities of that county, defcribes for a family there, and makes the Welsh parfon defcant very pleasantly upon them. That whole play is admirable the humours are various and well oppofed; the main defign, which is to cure Ford of his unreasonable jealoufy, is extremely well conducted. In Twelfth-Night there is fomething fingularly ridiculous and pleafant in the fantastical steward Malvolio. The parafite and the vain-glorious in Parolles, in All's Well that Ends Well, is as good as any thing of that kind in Plautus or Terence. Petruchio, in The Taming of the Shrew, is an uncommon piece of humour. The converfation of Benedict and Beatrice, in Much Ado about Nothing, and of Rofalind in As you Like It, have much wit and fprightliness all along. His clowns, without which character there was hardly any play writ in that time, are all very entertaining: and I believe Therfites in Troilus and Crefida, and Apemantus in Timon, will be allowed to be master-pieces of ill-nature, and fatirical fnarling. To thefe I might add that incomparable cha racter of Shylock the Jew, in The Merchant of Venice; but though we have feen that play received and acted as a comedy, and the part of the Jew performed by an excellent comedian, yet I cannot but think it was defigned tragically by the author. There appears in it a deadly spirit of revenge, fuch a favage fiercenefs and fellness, and fuch a bloody defignation of cruelty and mifchief, as cannot agree cither with the ftile or characters of comedy. The play itself, take it altogether, feems to me to be one of the most finished of any of Shakspeare's. The tale indeed in that part relating to the cafkets, and the extravagant and unufual kind of bond given by Antonio, is too much removed from the rules of probability; but, taking the fact for granted, we must allow it to be very beautifully written. There is fomething in the friendship of Antonio to Ballanio very great, generous, and tender. The whole fourth act (fuppofing, as I faid, the fact to be probable) is extremely fine. But there are two paffages that deferve a particular notice. The firft is, what Portia fays in praife of mercy, and the other on the power of mufick. The melancholy of Jaques, in As you Like It, is as fingular and odd as it is diverting. And if, what Horace fays,

Difficile eft propriè communia dicere,

it will be a hard tafk for any one to go beyond him in the defcription of the several degrees and ages of man's life, though the thought be old, and common enough.

-All the world's a flage,

And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being feven ages. Firft the infant
Merling and puking in the nurse's arms :
And then, the whining School-boy with his fatchel,
And fbining morning-face, creeping like fnail
Unwillingly to fchool. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woful ballad
Made to his miftrefs' eye-brow. Then a foldier
Full of frange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, fudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
E'n in the cannon's mouth.

And then the juftice
In fair round belly, with good capon lin'd,
With eyes fevere, and beard of formal cut,
Full of wife faws and modern inftances;

And

And fo be plays his part. The fixth age shifts
Into the lean and flipper'd pantaloon,
With fpectacles on nofe, and pouch on fide;
His youthful hofe, well fav'd, a world too wide
For bis fbrunk Jhanks; and his big manly voice,
Turning again tow'rd childish treble, pipes
And whiffles in his found. Laft fcene of all,
That ends this ftrange eventful hiftory,
Is fecond childifbnefs and mere oblivion,

Sans teeth, fans eyes, fans tafte, fans every thing.

His images are indeed every where fo lively, that the thing he would reprefent fands full before you, and you poffefs every part of it. I will venture to point out one more, which is, I think, as ftrong and as uncommon as any thing lever Law; it is an image of Patience. Speaking of a maid in love, he fays,

What an image is here given! and what a tafk would it have been for the greatest ters of Greece and Rome to have expreffed the paffions defigned by this ketch of tatuary! The ftile of his comedy is, in general, natural to the characters, and eafy in itself; and the wit moft commonly fprightly and pleating, except in thofe places where he runs into doggerel rhimes, as in The Comedy of Errors, and fome other plays. As for his jingling fometimes, and playing upon words, it was the common vice of the age he lived in: and if we find it in the pulpit, made use of as an ornament to the fermons of fome of the graveft divines of thofe times, perhaps it may not be thought too light for the stage.

But certainly the greatnefs of this author's genius does no where fo much appear, as where he gives his imagination an entire loofe, and raifes his fancy to a flight above mankind, and the limits of the vifible world. Such are his attempts in The Tempeft, Midfummer Night's Dream, Macbeth, and Hamlet. Of thefe, The Tempest, however it comes to be placed the first by the publifhers of his works, can never have been the first written by him: it feems to me as perfect in its kind, as almost any thing we have of his. One may obferve, that the unities are kept here, with an exactnels uncommon to the liberties of his writing; though that was what, I fuppofe, he valued himself least upon, fince his excellencies were all of another kind. I am very fenfible that he does, in this play, depart too much from that likeness to truth which ought to be obferved in thefe fort of writings; yet he does it fo very fely, that one is eafily drawn in to have more faith for his fake, than reafon does well allow of. His magick has fomething in it very folemn and very poetical and that extravagant character of Caliban is mighty well fuftained, fhews a wonderful invention in the author, who could strike out fuch a particular wild image, and is certainly one of the finest and most uncommon grotefques that ever was feen. The ervation, which I have been informed three very great men concurred in making upon this part, was extremely just; That Shakspeare had not only found out a new hafer in his Caliban, but had alfo devifed and adapted a new manner of language far that character.

It is the fame magick that raifes the Fairies in Midsummer Night's Dream, the Witches in Macbeth, and the Ghost in Hamlet, with thoughts and language fo proper to the parts they fuftain, and fo peculiar to the talent of this writer. But of the two laft of these plays I fhall have occafion to take notice, among the tragedies of

* Lord Falkland, Lord C. J. Vaughan, and Mr. Selden.

Mr.

Mr. Shakspeare. If one undertook to examine the greatest part of these by those rules which are established by Ariftotle, and taken from the model of a Grecian stage, it would be no very hard talk to find a great many faults; but as Shakspeare lived under a kind of mere light of nature, and had never been made acquainted with the regularity of thofe written precepts, fo it would be hard to judge him by a law he knew nothing of. We are to confider him as a man that lived in a state of almost univerfal licence and ignorance: there was no established judge, but every one took the liberty to write according to the dictates of his own fancy. When one confiders, that there is not one play before him of a reputation good enough to entitle it to an appearance on the prefent ftage, it cannot but be a matter of great wonder that he fhould advance dramatick poetry fo far as he did. The fable is what is generally placed the first among thofe that are reckoned the constituent parts of a tragick or heroick poem; not, perhaps, as it is the most difficult or beautiful, but as it is the first properly to be thought of in the contrivance and courfe of the whole; and with the fable ought to be confidered the fit difpofition, order, and conduct of its feveral parts. As it is not in this province of the drama that the strength and maftery of Shakspeare lay, fo I fhall not undertake the tedious and ill-natured trouble to point out the feveral faults he was guilty of in it. His tales were feldom invented, but rather taken either from true history, or novels and romances: and he commonly made ufe of them in that order, with those incidents, and that extent of time in which he found them in the authors from whence he borrowed them, Almost all his hiftorical plays comprehend a great length of time, and very different and diftinct places: and in his Antony and Cleopatra, the fcene travels over the greatest part of the Roman empire. But in recompence for his careleffnefs in this point, when he comes to another part of the drama, the manners of his characters, in acting or speaking what is proper for them, and fit to be fhewn by the poet, he may be generally juftified, and in very many places greatly commended. For thofe plays which he has taken from the English or Roman hiftory, let any man compare them, and he will find the character as exact in the poet as the hiftorian. He feems indeed fo far from propofing to himself any one action for a fubject, that the title very often tells you, it is The Life of King John, King Richard, &c. What can be more agreeable to the idea our hiftorians give of Henry the Sixth, than the picture Shakspeare has drawn of him? His manners are every where exactly the fame with the ftory; one finds him ftill defcribed with fimplicity, paffive fanctity, want of courage, weaknefs of mind, and eafy fubmiffion to the governance of an imperious wife, or prevailing faction: though at the fame time the poet does justice to his good qualities, and moves the pity of his audience for him, by fhewing him pious, difinterested, a contemner of the things of this world, and wholly refigned to the fevereft difpenfations of God's providence. There is a fhort feene in the Second Part of Henry the Sixth, which I cannot but think admirable in its kind. Cardinal Beaufort, who had murdered the Duke of Gloucefter, is thewn in the laft agonies on his death-bed, with the good king praying over him. There is fo much terror in one, fo much tenderness and moving piety in the other, as muit touch any one who is capable either of fear or pity. In his Henry the Eighth, that prince is drawn with that greatnefs of mind, and all thofe good qualities which are attri buted to him in any account of his reign. If his faults are not fhewn in an equal degree, and the fhades in this picture do not bear a juft proportion to the lights, it is not that the artist wanted either colours or fkill in the difpofition of them; but the truth, I believe, might be, that he forebore doing it out of regard to queen Eliza beth, fince it could have been no very great refpect to the memory of his mistress, to have expofed fome certain parts of her father's life upon the ftage. He has dealt much more freely with the minifter of that great king, and certainly nothing was ever more justly written, than the character of Cardinal Wolfey. He has fhewn him infolent in his profperity; and yet, by a wonderful addrefs, he makes his fall and ruin the fubject of general compaffion. The whole man, with his vices and virtues, is finely and exactly defcribed in the fecond scene of the fourth act.. The diftreffes likewife of Queen Catharine, in this play, are very movingly touched;

and

and though the art of the poet has fereened King Henry from any grofs imputation. of injuftice, yet one is inclined to wifh, the Queen had met with a fortune more worthy of her birth and virtue. Nor are the manners, proper to the perfons repreferred, lefs justly obferved in thofe characters taken from the Roman history; and of this, the fierceness and impatience of Coriolanus, his courage and difdain of the common people, the virtue and philofophical temper of Brutus, and the irregu lar greatnets of mind in M. Antony, are beautiful proofs. For the two laft elpecally, you find them exactly as they are defcribed by Plutarch, from whom cernly Shakspeare copied them. He has indeed followed his original pretty clofe, and taken in feveral little incidents that might have been fpared in a play. But, as I histed before, his design feems most commonly rather to defcribe thofe great men in the feveral fortunes and accidents of their lives, than to take any fingle great action, and form his work fimply upon that. However, there are fome of his pieces where the fable is founded upon one action only. Such are more especially, Rento and Juliet, Hamlet, and Othello. The defign in Romeo and Juliet is pinly the punishment of their two families, for the unreasonable feuds and animofities that had been fo long kept up between them, and occafioned the emation of fo much blood. In the management of this story, he has fhewn fomething wonderfully tender and paffionate in the love-part, and very pitiful in the ditrefs. Hamlet is founded on much the fame tale with the Electra of Sophocles. In each of them a young prince is engaged to revenge the death of his father, their mothers are equally guilty, are both concerned in the murder of their husbands, and are afterwards married to the murderers. There is in the first part of the Greek tragedy fomething very moving in the grief of Electra; but, as Mr. Dacier has obferved, there is fomething very unnatural and fhocking in the manners he has given that Princefs and Oreftes in the latter part. Oreftes imbrues his hands in the blood of his own mother; and that barbarous action is performed, though not immediately upon the stage, yet fo near, that the audience hear Clytemneftra crying cut to Egyfthus for help, and to her fon for mercy: while Electra her daughter, and a Princess (both of them characters that ought to have appeared with more decency) frands upon the stage, and encourages her brother in the parricide. What horrors does this not raife! Clytemneftra was a wicked woman, and had deferved to de; nay, in the truth of the ftory, fhe was killed by her own fon; but to reprefent action of this kind on the stage, is certainly an offence against thofe rules of manproper to the perfons, that ought to be obferved there. On the contrary, let us only look a little on the conduct of Shakspeare. Hamlet is reprefented with the fine piety towards his father, and refolution to revenge his death, as Orestes; he has the fame abhorrence for his mother's guilt, which, to provoke him the more, is heightened by inceft: but it is with wonderful art and juftness of judgment that the poet restrains him from doing violence to his mother. To prevent any thing of that kind, he makes his father's Ghost forbid that part of his

Bers

But bowfoever thou purfu'ft this act,
Taint not thy mind, nor let thy foul contrive
Against thy mother aught; leave her to heav'n,
And to thofe thorns that in her bofom lodge,
To prick and fling her.

vengeance:

This is to diftinguish between horror and terror. The latter is a proper passion of tragedy, but the former ought always to be carefully avoided. And certainly no dramatic writer ever fucceeded better in raifing terror in the minds of an audience than Shakspeare has done. The whole tragedy of Macbeth, but more especially the fcene where the King is murdered, in the fecond act, as well as this play, is a poble proof of that manly fpirit with which he writ; and both fhew how powerful he was, in giving the strongest motions to our fouls that they are capable of. I cannot leave Hamlet, without taking notice of the advantage with which we have feen this mafter-piece of Shakspeare diftinguish itself upon the stage, by Mr. Bet

terton's