Act I. scene iii. has the characteristics of Shakspere.] It is

identified, not only by several others of the qualities marking the first scene, but more particularly by the wealth of its allusion, and by a closeness, directness, and pertinency of reply which Fletcher's most spirited dialogues do not reach. It presents more than one exceed[33:1]ingly beautiful climax; a figure which repeatedly occurs in the play, and is always used with peculiar energy.

SCENE--_Before the Gates of Athens.--Enter Perithous, Hippolita, and Emilia._

_Perithous._ No further.

_Hippolita._ Sir, farewell. Repeat my wish|es To our great lord, of whose success I dare | not Make any timorous question; yet I wish | him Excess and overflow of power, an't might | be, To dure ill-dealing Fortune. Speed to him! Store never hurts good governors.

[Sidenote: Shakspere metaphor,]

_Perithous._ Though I know His ocean needs not my poor drops, yet they Must yield their tribute there. (_To Emilia._) My precious maid, Those best affections that the heavens infuse In their _best-tempered pieces_, keep _enthroned_ In your dear heart!

_Emilia._ Thanks, sir! Remember me To our all royal brother, for whose speed The great Bellona I'll solicit; and, Since in our terrene state, petitions are | not, Without gifts, understood, I'll offer to | her What I shall be advised she likes. Our hearts Are in his army, in his tent.

[Sidenote: phrase.]

_Hippolita._ In's bos|om! We have been soldiers, and we cannot weep When our friends don their helms or put to sea, Or tell of babes broacht on the lance, or wom|en That have sod their infants in (and after eat | them) The brine they wept at killing them; then if You stay to see of us such spinsters, we Should hold you here for ever.

. . . . .

_Emilia._ How his long|ing Follows his friend!... Have you observëd him Since our great lord departed?

_Hippolita._ With much la|bour, And I did love him for't.[33:2]...

[Sidenote: Female friendship: the description has Shakspere's characteristics.]

[34:1]The description of female friendship which follows is familiar to all lovers of poetry. It is disfigured by one or two strained conceits, and some obscurities arising partly from errors in the text: but the beauty of the sketch in many parts is extreme, and its character distinctly that of Shakspeare, vigorous and even quaint, thoughtful and sometimes almost metaphysical, instinct with animation, and pregnant with fancy; offering, in short, little resemblance to the manner of any poet but Shakspeare, and the most unequivocal opposition to Fletcher's.

_Emilia._ Doubtless There is a best, and reason has no man|ners To say, it is not you. I was acquaint|ed Once with a time when I enjoy'd a play|fellow---- You were at wars when she the grave enrich'd, (Who made too proud the bed,) took leave o' the moon, Which then look'd pale at parting, when our count Was each eleven.

_Hippolita._ 'Twas Flavina.

[Sidenote: Shakspere fancy.]

_Emilia._ Yes. You talk of Perithous' and Theseus' love: Theirs has more ground, is more maturely seas|oned, More buckled with strong judgment; and their needs, The one of the other, may be said to wat|er Their intertangled roots of love.--But I And she I sigh and spoke of, were things in|nocent,-- Loved for we did, and,--like the elements, That know not what nor why, yet do effect Rare issues by their operance,--our souls Did so to one another. What she liked, Was then of me approved; what not, condemned. No more arraign|ment.| The flower that I would pluck, And put between my breasts, (then but begin|ning To swell about the blossom,) she would long Till she had such another, and commit | it To the like innocent cradle, where, phoenix-like, They died in perfume; on my head, no toy But was her pattern; her affections, (pret|ty, Though happily her careless wear,) I fol|low'd For my most serious decking.--Had mine ear Stolen some new air, or at adventure humm'd From musical coinage,--why, it was a note Whereon her spirits would sojourn, rather dwell | on, And sing it in her slumbers.--This rehears|al [34:2](Which, every innocent wots well, comes in Like old importment's bastard) has this end, That the true love 'tween maid and maid may be More than in sex dividual....

[Sidenote: Act I. scene iv. Shakspere's.]

The fourth scene is laid in a battle-field near Thebes, and Theseus enters victorious. The three queens fall down with thanks before him; and a herald announces the capture of the Two Noble Kinsmen, wounded and senseless, and scarcely retaining the semblance of life. [Sidenote: Has Shakspere's words and quibbles.] The phraseology of this short scene is like Shakspeare's, being brief and energetic, and in one or two instances passing into quibbles.

[Sidenote: Act I. scene v. is Shakspere's.]

The last scene of this act is of a lyrical cast, and comprised in a few lamentations spoken by the widowed queens over the corpses of their dead lords. It ends with this couplet:

The world's a city full of straying streets, And death's the market-place, where each one meets.

[Sidenote: Act II. not Shakspere's.]

In the Second Act no part seems to have been taken by Shakspeare. [Sidenote: The prose of II. i. is not from Chaucer,] It commences with one of those scenes which are introduced into the play in departure from the narrative of Chaucer, forming an underplot which is clearly the work of a different artist from many of the leading parts of the drama. The Noble Kinsmen, cured of their wounds, have been committed to strait and perpetual prison in Athens, and the first part of this scene is a prose dialogue between their jailor and a suitor of his daughter. The maiden's admiration of the prisoners is then exhibited. [Sidenote: and is very dull: it is not Shakspere's.] You will see afterwards, that there are several circumstances besides the essential dulness of this prose part, which fully absolve Shakspeare from the charge of having written it.

[Sidenote: The verse of Act II. scene i.]

The versified portion of this scene, which follows the prose dialogue among the inferior characters, presents the incident on which the interest of the story hinges, the commencement of the fatal and chimerical passion, which, inspiring both the knights towards the young Emilia, severs the bonds of friendship which had so long held them together. The noble prisoners are discovered in their turret-chamber, looking out on the palace-garden, which the lady afterwards enters. They speak [35:1]in a highly animated strain of that world from which they are secluded, and find themes of consolation for the hard lot which had overtaken them. The dialogue is in many respects admirable. [Sidenote: The verse of Act II. scene i. has the characteristics of Fletcher: double endings, end-stopt lines, vague images,] It possesses much eloquence of description, and the character of the language is smooth and flowing; the versification is good and accurate, frequent in double endings, and usually finishing the sense with the line; and one or two allusions occur, which, being favourites of Fletcher's, may be in themselves a strong presumption of his authorship; the images too have in some instances a want of distinctness in application or a vagueness of outline, which could be easily paralleled from Fletcher's acknowledged writings. [Sidenote: but romantic;] The style is fuller of allusions than his usually is, but the images are more correct and better kept from confusion than Shakspeare's; some of them indeed are exquisite, but rather in the romantic and exclusively poetical tone of Fletcher, than in the natural and universal mode of feeling which animates Shakspeare. [Sidenote: slack dialogue.] The dialogue too proceeds less energetically than Shakspeare's, falling occasionally into a style of long-drawn disquisition which Fletcher often substitutes for the quick and dramatic conversations of the great poet. [Sidenote: II. i. one of the finest scenes that Fletcher ever wrote.] On the whole, however, this scene, if it be Fletcher's, (of which I have no doubt,) is among the very finest he ever wrote; and there are many passages in which, while he preserves his own distinctive marks, he has gathered no small portion of the flame and inspiration of his immortal friend and assistant. In the following speeches there are images and phrases, which are either identically Fletcher's, or closely resemble his, and the whole cast both of versification and idiom is strictly his:--

[Sidenote: Act II. scene i. Fletcher's.]

_Palamon._ Oh, cousin Ar|cite! Where is Thebes now? where is our noble coun|try? Where are our friends and kindreds? Never more Must we behold those comforts; never see The hardy youths strive in the games of hon|our, Hung with the painted favours of their la|dies, Like tall ships under sail; then start among | them, And as an east wind leave them all behind | us Like lazy clouds, while Palamon and Ar|cite, Even in the wagging of a wanton leg, Outstript the people's praises, won the gar|lands, [37:1]Ere they have time to wish them ours. Oh, nev|er Shall we two exercise, like twins of hon|our, Our arms again, and feel our fiery hors|es Like proud seas under us! our good swords now, (Better the red-eyed god of war ne'er wore,) Ravish'd our sides, like age must run to rust, And deck the temples of the gods that hate | us: These hands shall never draw them out like light|ning To blast whole armies more.

[Sidenote: Picture fully wrought out.]

[Sidenote: Romantic, pathetic sketch.]

_Arcite._ ... The sweet embraces of a loving wife, Loaden with kisses, arm'd with thousand cu|pids, Shall never clasp our necks: no issue know | us; No figures of ourselves shall we e'er see, To glad our age, and like young eagles teach | them Boldly to gaze against bright arms, and say, "Remember what your fathers were, and con|quer." --The fair-eyed maids shall weep our banishments, And in their songs curse ever-blinded For|tune, Till she for shame see what a wrong she has done To youth and Nature.--This is all our world: We shall know nothing here but one anoth|er,-- Hear nothing but the clock that tells our woes; The vine shall grow, but we shall never see | it: Summer shall come, and with her all delights, But dead-cold winter must inhabit here | still!

_Palamon._ 'Tis too true, Arcite! To our Theban hounds, That shook the aged forest with their ech|oes, No more now must we halloo; no more shake Our pointed javelins, whilst the angry swine Flies like a Parthian[37:2] quiver from our rag|es, Struck with our well-steel'd darts....

In this scene there is one train of metaphors which is perhaps as characteristic of Fletcher as any thing that could be produced. [Sidenote: Lines from II. i. on page 38, of slow orderly development of ideas, markt by Fletcher's characteristics.] It is marked by a slowness of association which he often shews. Several allusions are successively introduced; but by each, as it appears, we are prepared for and can anticipate the next; we see the connection of ideas in the poet's mind through which the one has sprung out of the other, and that all are but branches, of which one original thought is the root. [Sidenote: No leap to the end, and off with a fresh bound, like Shakspere.] All this is the work of [37:3]a less fertile fancy and a more tardy understanding than Shakspeare's: he would have leaped over many of the intervening steps, and, reaching at once the most remote particular of the series, would have immediately turned away to weave some new chain of thought:--

[Sidenote: All workt out thro' every step.]

_Arcite._ ... What worthy bless|ing Can be, but our imaginatiöns May make it ours? and here, being thus togeth|er, We are an endless mine to one anoth|er: We are one another's wife, ever beget|ting New births of love; we are fathers, friends, acquaint|ance; We are, in one another, families; I am your heir and you are mine; this place Is our inheritance; no hard oppress|or Dare take this from us....

But the contentment of the prison is to be interrupted. The fair Emilia appears beneath, walking in the garden "full of branches green," skirting the wall of the tower in which the princes are confined. She converses with her attendant, and Palamon from the dungeon-grating beholds her as she gathers the flowers of spring. He ceases to reply to Arcite, and stands absorbed in silent ecstasy.

_Arcite._ Cousin! How do you, sir? Why, Palamon!

_Palamon._ Never till now I was in prison, Ar|cite.

_Arcite._ Why, what's the matter, man?

_Palamon._ Behold and won|der: By heaven, she is a goddess;

_Arcite._ Ha!

_Palamon._ Do rev|erence; She is a goddess, Arcite!

The beauty of the maiden impresses Arcite no less violently than it previously had his kinsman; and he challenges with great heat a right to love her. [Sidenote: The sharp and spirited quarrel between the Kinsmen, not Shakspere's.] An animated and acrimonious dialogue ensues, in which Palamon reproachfully pleads his prior admiration of the lady, and insists on his cousin's obligation to become his abettor instead of his rival. It is spirited even to excess; and probably Shakspeare would have tempered, or abstained from treating so sudden and perhaps unnatural an access of anger and jealousy, and so utter an abandonment to [38:1]its vehemence, as that under which the fiery Palamon is here represented as labouring.

[Sidenote: Act II. scene i. Fletcher's.]

_Palamon._ If thou lovest her, Or entertain'st a hope to blast my wish|es, Thou art a traitor, Arcite, and a fel|low False as thy title to her. Friendship, blood, And all the ties between us, I disclaim, If thou once think upon her!

_Arcite._ Yes, I love | her! And, if the lives of all my name lay on | it, I must do so. I love her with my soul; If that will lose thee, Palamon, farewell! I say again I love, and, loving her I am as worthy and as free a lov|er, And have as just a title to her beau|ty, As any Palamon, or any liv|ing That is a man's son!

_Palamon._ Have I call'd thee friend!

. . . . .

_Palamon._ Put but thy head out of this window more, And, as I have a soul, I'll nail thy life to't!

_Arcite._ Thou dar'st not, fool: thou canst not: thou art fee|ble: Put my head out? I'll throw my body out, And leap the garden, when I see her next, And pitch between her arms to anger thee.

[Sidenote: Fletcher has left out Chaucer's making the Knights 'sworn brethren.']

In transferring his story from Chaucer, the poet has here been guilty of an oversight. The old poet fixes a character of positive guilt on Arcite's prosecution of his passion, by relating a previous agreement between the two cousins, by which either, engaging in any adventure whether of love or war, had an express right to the co-operation of the other. Hence Arcite's interference with his cousin's claim becomes, with Chaucer, a direct infringement of a knightly compact; while in the drama, no deeper blame attaches to it, than as a violation of the more fragile rules imposed by the generous spirit of friendship.

In the midst of the angry conference, Arcite is called to the Duke to receive his freedom; and Palamon is placed in stricter confinement, and removed from the quarter of the tower overlooking the garden.

[Sidenote: Act II. scene ii. (Weber, sc. iii. Littledale) is Fletcher's.]

In the second scene of this act, Arcite, wandering in the [39:1]neighbourhood of Athens, soliloquizes on the decree which had banished him from the Athenian territory; and, falling in with a band of country people on their way to games in the city, conceives the notion of joining in the celebration under some poor disguise, in the hope of finding means to remain within sight of his fancifully beloved mistress. [Sidenote: Act II. scene ii. iii. (Weber, sc. iii. iv. Littledale),] Neither this scene, nor the following, in which the jailor's daughter meditates on the perfections of Palamon, and intimates an intention of assisting him to escape, have any thing in them worthy of particular notice.

[Sidenote: Act II. scene iv. (Weber, sc. v. Littledale),]

In the fourth scene, Arcite, victorious in the athletic games, is crowned by the Duke, and preferred to the service of Emilia.

[Sidenote: Act II. scene v. (Weber, sc. vi. Littledale), are all Fletcher's.]

In the last scene of the second act, the jailor's daughter announces that she has effected Palamon's deliverance from prison, and that he lies hidden in a wood near the city, the scenery of which is prettily described.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Act III. scene i. is Shakspere's.]

Nothing in the Third Act can with confidence be attributed to Shakspeare, except the first scene. This opening scene is laid in the wood where Palamon has his hiding-place. Arcite enters; and a monologue, describing his situation and feelings, is, as in Chaucer, overheard by Palamon, who starts out of the bush in which he had crouched, and shakes his fettered hands at his false kinsman. [Sidenote: Arcite's first speech has Shakspere's clear images, and familiar dress, nervous expression, &c.] A dialogue of mutual reproach ensues; and Arcite departs with a promise to return, bringing food for the outcast, and armour to fit him for maintaining, like a knight, his right to the lady's love. The commencing speech of Arcite has much of Shakspeare's clearness of imagery, and of the familiarity of dress which he often loves to bestow upon allusion; it has also great nerve of expression and calmness of tone, with at least one play on words which is quite in his manner, and one (perhaps more) of his identical phrases. The text seems faulty in one part.

[Sidenote: Act III. sc. i. is Shakspere's.]

[Sidenote: Shaksperean phrases.]

[Sidenote: Shakspere phrase.]

_Arcite._ The Duke has lost Hippolita: each took A several laund. This is a solemn rite They owe bloom'd May, and the Athenians pay|it _To the heart of ceremony_. Oh, queen Emil|ia! Fresher than May, sweeter Than her _gold buttons_ on the boughs, or all [40:1]The enamell'd knacks o' the mead or garden! Yea, We challenge too the bank of any nymph, That makes the stream seem flowers!--Thou,--oh jew|el _O' the wood, o' the world_,--hast likewise blest a place With thy sole presence. In thy rumina|tion That I, poor man, might eftsoons come between, And chop on some cold thought!--Thrice blessed chance, To drop on such a mistress! Expecta|tion Most guiltless of | it.| Tell me, oh lady For|tune, (Next after Emily my sovran,) how far I may be proud. She takes strong note of me, Hath made me near her, and this beauteous morn, (The primest of all the year,) presents me with A brace of horses; two such steeds might well Be by a pair of kings back'd, in a field That their crowns' titles tried. Alas, alas! Poor cousin Palamon, poor prisoner!... ... If Thou knew'st my mistress breathed on me, and that I _cared_ her language, lived in her eye, oh coz, What passion would enclose thee!

There is great spirit, also, in what follows. Some phrases, here again, are precisely Shakspeare's; and several parts of the dialogue have much of his pointed epigrammatic style. The massive accumulation of reproaches which Palamon hurls on Arcite is, in its energy, more like him than his assistant; and the opposition of character between Palamon and his calmer kinsman, is well kept up; but the dialogue cannot be accounted one of the best in the play.

[Sidenote: Shaksperean string of epithets.]

_Palamon._ ... Oh, thou most perfid|ious That ever gently look'd! The void'st of hon|our That e'er bore gentle token! Falsest cous|in That ever blood made kin! call'st thou her thine? I'll prove it in my shackles, in these hands Void of appointment, that thou liest, and art A very thief in love, a chaffy lord, Not worth the name of villain!--Had I a sword, And these house-clogs away!

[Sidenote: Shaksperean word-play.]

_Arcite._ _Dear cousin Pal|amon!_

_Palamon._ _Cozener Arcite!_ give me language such As thou hast shewed me feat.

_Arcite._ Not finding in [41:1]The circuit of my breast, any gross stuff To form me like your _blazon_, holds me to This gentleness of answer. 'Tis your pas|sion That thus mistakes; the which, to you being en|emy, Cannot to me be kind....

[Sidenote: Act III. scene ii.]

In the second scene, the only speaker is the jailor's daughter, who, having lost Palamon in the wood, begins to shew symptoms of unsettled reason. There is some pathos in several parts of her soliloquy, but little vigour in the expression, or novelty in the thoughts.

[Sidenote: Act III. scene iii.]

The third scene is an exchange of brief speeches between the two knights. Arcite brings provisions for his kinsman, and the means of removing his fetters, and departs to fetch the armour. [Sidenote: is probably Fletcher's, and not Shakspere's.] In most respects the scene is not very characteristic of either writer, but leans towards Fletcher; and one argument for him might be drawn from an interchange of sarcasms between the kinsmen, in which they retort on each other, former amorous adventures: such a dialogue is quite like Fletcher's men of gaiety; and needless degradation of his principal characters, is a fault of which Shakspeare is not guilty. You may be able, hereafter, to see more distinctly the force of this reason. The scene contains one strikingly animated burst of jealous suspicion and impatience.

_Arcite._ Pray you sit down then; and let me entreat | you, By all the honesty and honour in | you, No mention of this woman; 'twill disturb | us; We shall have time enough.

_Palamon._ Well, sir, I'll pledge | you.

. . . . .

_Arcite._ Heigh-ho!

_Palamon._ For Emily, upon my life!--Fool, Away with this strained mirth!--I say again, That sigh was breathed for Emily. Base cous|in, Darest thou break first?

_Arcite._ You are wide.

_Palamon._ By heaven and earth, There's nothing in thee honest!...

[Sidenote: Act III. scenes iv. v.]

In the next two scenes, placed in the forest, the jailor's daughter has reached the height of frenzy. [Sidenote: Gerrold has no spark of humour.] She meets the country[42:1]men who had encountered Arcite, and who are now headed by the learned and high-fantastical schoolmaster Gerrold, a personage who has the pedantry of Shakspeare's Holofernes, without one solitary spark of his humour. They are preparing a dance for the presence of the duke, and the maniac is adopted into their number, to fill up a vacancy. The duke and his train appear,--the pedagogue prologuizes,--the clowns dance,--and their self-satisfied Coryphaeus apologizes and epiloguizes. [Sidenote: Act III. scene iv. v. Fletcher's.] Some of Fletcher's very phrases and forms of expression have been traced in these two scenes.

[Sidenote: Act III. scene vi.]

We have then, in the sixth and last scene of this act, the interrupted combat of the two princes. [Sidenote: Fletcher's, not Shakspere's.] The scene is a spirited and excellent one; but its tone is Fletcher's, not Shakspeare's. [Sidenote: Has not Shakspere's grasp of imagery.] The raillery and retort of the dialogue is more lightly playful than his, and less antithetical and sententious; and though there are fine images, they are not seized with the grasp which Shakspeare would have given, sometimes harsh, but always at least decided. Some of the illustrations have been quoted (page 17). The knightly courtesy with which the princes arm each other is well supported; and their dignity of greeting before they cross their swords, is fine, exceedingly fine. Nothing can be more beautifully conceived than the change which comes over the temper of the generous Palamon, when he stands on the verge of mortal battle with his enemy. [Sidenote: Fletcher's sweet versification and romantic phraseology.] His usual heat and impatience give place to the most becoming calmness. The versification is very sweet, and the romantic air of the phraseology is very much Fletcher's, especially towards the end of the following quotation.

_Palamon._ My cause and honour guard | me.

(_They bow several ways, then advance and stand._)

_Arcite._ And me my love; Is there aught else to say?

_Palamon._ This only, and no more: Thou art mine aunt's | son, And that blood we desire to shed is mu|tual; In me, thine; and in thee, mine. My sword Is in my hand, and, if thou killest me, The gods and I forgive thee! If there be A place prepared for those that sleep in hon|our, I wish his weary soul that falls may win | it! Fight bravely, cous|in;| give me thy noble hand!

_Arcite._ Here, Palamon; this hand shall never more [43:1]Come near thee with such friendship.

_Palamon._ I commend | thee.

_Arcite._ If I fall, curse me, and say I was a cow|ard; For none but such dare die in these just tri|als. Once more farewell, my cousin.

_Palamon._ Farewell, Ar|cite. (_They fight._)

[Sidenote: Act III. scene vi.]

The combat is interrupted by the approach of the Duke and his court; and Palamon, refusing to give back or conceal himself, appears before Theseus, and declares his own name and situation, and the presumptuous secret of Arcite. [Sidenote: is in Fletcher's style.] The scene is good, but in the flowing style of Fletcher, not the more manly one of Shakspeare. [Sidenote: Death-penalty for the losing knight, a good addition to Chaucer.] The sentence of death, which the duke, in the first moments of his anger, pronounces on the two princes, is recalled on the petition of Hippolita and her sister, on condition that the rivals shall meantime depart, and return within a month, each accompanied by three knights, to determine in combat the possession of Emilia; and death by the block is denounced against the knights who shall be vanquished. Some of these circumstances are slight deviations from Chaucer; and the laying down of the severe penalty is well imagined, as an addition to the tragic interest, giving occasion to a very impressive scene in the last act.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Act IV. all Fletcher's.]

The Fourth Act may safely be pronounced wholly Fletcher's. [Sidenote: Wants all the leading features of Shakspere's style.] All of it, except one scene, is taken up by the episodical adventures of the jailor's daughter; and, while much of it is poetical, it wants the force and originality, and, indeed, all the prominent features of Shakspeare's manner, either of thought, illustration, or expression. There are conversations in which are described, pleasingly enough, the madness of the unfortunate girl, and the finding of her in a sylvan spot, by her former wooer; but when the maniac herself appears, the tone and subjects of the dialogue become more objectionable.

[Sidenote: Act IV. scene ii.]

In the second scene of this act, the only one which bears reference to the main business of the piece, Emilia first muses over the pictures of her two suitors, and then hears from a messenger, in presence of Theseus and his attendants, a description, (taken in [44:1]its elements from the Knightes Tale,) of the warriors who were preparing for the field along with the champion lovers. [Sidenote: Emilia's soliloquy on the pictures, not Shakspere's.] In the soliloquy of the lady, while the poetical spirit is well preserved, the alternations of feeling are given with an abruptness and a want of insight into the nicer shades of association, which resemble the extravagant stage effects of the 'King and No King,' infinitely more than the delicate yet piercing glance with which Shakspeare looks into the human breast in the 'Othello'; the language, too, is smoother and less powerful than Shakspeare's, and one or two classical allusions are a little too correct and studied for him. [Sidenote: Act IV. scene ii. Fletcher's.] One image occurs, not the clearest or most chastened, in which Fletcher closely repeats himself:--

[Sidenote: His description of Arcite, paralleld in his _Philaster_.]

What a brow, Of what a spacious majesty, he car|ries! Arched like the great-eyed Juno's, but far sweet|er,-- Smoother than Pelop's shoulder. Fame and Hon|our, Methinks, from hence, as from a promontor|y Pointed in Heaven, should clap their wings, and sing To all the under-world, the loves and fights Of gods and such men near them.[45:1]

[Sidenote: Act V. is Shakspere's,]

In the Fifth Act we again feel the presence of the Master of the Spell. Several passages in this portion are marked by as striking tokens of his art as anything which we read in 'Macbeth' or 'Coriolanus.' The whole act, a very long one, may be boldly attributed to him, with the exception of one episodical scene.

[Sidenote: except scene iv. (Weber: sc. ii. Littledale).]

The time has arrived for the combat. Three temples are exhibited, as in Chaucer, in which the rival Knights, and the [45:2]Lady of their Vows, respectively pay their adorations. One principal aim of their supplications is to learn the result of the coming contest; but the suspense is kept up by each of the Knights receiving a favourable response, and Emilia a doubtful one. [Sidenote: Act V. sc. ii.[45:3] (i. L.) is lower in key.] [Sidenote: Act V. sc. i. iii. (Weber: both i. Littledale) are Shakspere's all through.] Three scenes are thus occupied, the second of which is in somewhat a lower key than the other two; but even in it there is much beauty; and in the first and third the tense dignity and pointedness of the language, the gorgeousness and overflow of illustration, and the reach, the mingled familiarity and elevation of thought, are admirable, inimitable, and decisive. From these exquisite scenes there is a temptation to quote too largely.

[Sidenote: Act V. scene i.]

In the first scene, Theseus ushers the Kinsmen and their Knights into the Temple of Mars, and leaves them there. After a short and solemn greeting, the Kinsmen embrace for the last time, Palamon and his friends retire, and Arcite and his remain and offer up their devotions to the deity of the place. [Sidenote: Spirit and Language Shakspere's.] A fine seriousness of spirit breathes through the whole scene, and the language is alive with the most magnificent and delicate allusion. In Arcite's prayer the tone cannot be mistaken. [Sidenote: His reflection on Fortune and strife.] The enumeration of the god's attributes is coloured by all that energetic depth of feeling with which Shakspeare in his historical dramas so often turns aside to meditate on the changes of human fortune and the horrors of human enmity.[46:1]

. . . . .

_Theseus._ You valiant and strong-hearted enemies, You royal germane foes, that this day come To blow the nearness out that flames between | ye,-- Lay by your anger for an hour, and dove|-like, Before the holy altars of your Help|ers (The all-feard Gods) bow down your stubborn bod|ies! Your ire is more than mortal: so your help | be!

. . . . .

[Sidenote: Shakspere phrases.]

_Arcite._ ... Hoist | we Those sails that must these vessels port even where The Heavenly Limiter pleases!

. . . . .

[46:2]Knights, kinsmen, lovers, yea, my sacrifi|ces! True worshippers of Mars, whose spirit in you Expels the seeds of fear, and the apprehen|sion Which still is father of it,--go with me Before the god of our profession. There Require of him the hearts of lions, and _The breath of tigers, yea the fierceness too, Yea the speed also!_ to go on I mean, Else wish we to be snails. You know my prize Must be draggd out of blood: Force and great Feat Must put my garland on, where she will stick The queen of flowers; our intercession then Must be to him that makes the camp _a ces|tron Brimmd with the blood of men_: give me your aid, And bend your spirits towards him!

(_They fall prostrate before the statue._)

[Sidenote: Shakspere's own work,]

Thou mighty one! that with thy power has turn'd Green Neptune into purple,--whose approach Comets prewarn,--_whose havock in vast field Unearthèd skulls proclaim_,--whose breath blows down The teeming Ceres' foyson,--who dost pluck _With hand armipotent from forth blue clouds_ The masoned turrets,--that both mak'st and break'st The stony girths of cities;--me, thy pup|il, Young'st follower of thy drum, instruct this day With military skill, that to thy laud I may advance my streamer, and by thee Be styled the lord o' the day: Give me, great Mars, Some token of thy pleasure!

(_Here there is heard clanging of armour, with a short thunder, as the burst of a battle; whereupon they all rise and bow to the altar._)

[Sidenote: Shakspere again.]

Oh, great Corrector of enormous times! _Shaker of o'er rank states!_ Thou grand Decid|er Of dusty and old ti|tles;|--_that heal'st with blood The earth when it is sick_, and cur'st the world O' the pleurisy of people! I do take Thy signs auspiciously, and in thy name To my design march boldly. Let us go! (_Exeunt._)

[Sidenote: Palamon's prayer in V. ii (i. L.) not equal to V. i. or iii. (i. L.), but is yet clearly Shakspere's.]

The passionate and sensitive Palamon has chosen the Queen of Love as his Patroness, and it is in her Temple that, in the [47:1]second scene, he puts up his prayers. This scene is not equal to the first or third, having the poetical features less prominently brought out, while the tone of thought is less highly pitched, and also less consistently sustained. But it is distinctly Shakspeare's. The rugged versification is his, and the force of language. [Sidenote: Even the incompetent old husband bit is his.] One unpleasing sketch of the deformity of decrepit old age, which need not be quoted, is largely impressed with his air of truth, and some personifications already noticed are also in his manner.

[Sidenote: Act V. scene ii. (Weber; i. Littledale) is Shakspere's.]

[Sidenote: A Shakspere touch.]

_Palamon._ Our stars must glister with new fire, or be To-day extinct: our argument is love!

. . . . . (_They kneel._)

Hail, sovereign Queen of Secrets! who hast pow|er To call the fiercest tyrant from his rage To weep unto a girl!--that hast the might Even with an eye-glance to choke Mars's drum, And turn the alarm to whis|pers!|... What gold-like pow|er Hast thou not power upon? To Phoebus thou Add'st flames hotter than his: the heavenly fires Did scorch his mortal son, thou him: The Hunt|ress All moist and cold, some say, began to throw Her bow away and sigh. Take to thy grace Me thy vowd soldier,--who do bear thy yoke As 'twere a wreath of roses, yet is heav|ier Than lead itself, stings more than net|tles:-- I have never been foul-mouthed against thy law; ... I have been harsh To large confessors, and have hotly askt | them If they had mothers: _I_ had one,--a wom|an, And women 'twere they wronged.... Brief,--I am To those that prate and have done,--no compan|ion; To those that boast and have not,--a defi|er; To those that would and cannot,--a rejoi|cer! Yea, him I do not love, that tells close offices The foulest way, nor names concealments in The boldest language: Such a one I am, And vow that _lover never yet made sigh Truer than I_....

(_Music is heard, and doves are seen to flutter: they fall upon their faces._)

[48:1]I give thee thanks For this fair token!...

[Sidenote: Emilia's Prayer is surely Shakspere's.]

Emilia's Prayer in the Sanctuary of the pure Diana, forming the third scene, is in some parts most nervous, and the opening is inexpressibly beautiful in language and rhythm. Several ideas and idioms are identically Shakspeare's.

[Sidenote: Act V. scene iii. (Weber; i. Littledale) Shakspere's]

_Emilia._ (_Kneeling before the altar._) Oh, sacred, shadowy, cold, and constant Queen! _Abandoner of revels!_ mute, contemplative, Sweet, solitary, white as chaste, and pure As wind-fanned snow!--who to thy _female knights_ Allow'st no more blood than will make a blush, Which is there order's robe!--I here, thy priest, Am humbled 'fore thine altar. Oh, vouchsafe, With that thy rare _green eye_,[49:1] which never yet Beheld thing maculate, look on thy virg|in! And,--sacred silver Mistress!--lend thine ear, (Which ne'er heard scurril term, into whose port Ne'er entered wanton sound,) to my petit|ion Seasoned with holy fear!--This is my last Of vestal office: [49:2]I'm bride-habited, But maiden-heart|ed.| A husband I have, appoint|ed, But do not know him; out of two I should Chuse one, and pray for his success, but I Am guiltless of election of mine eyes.[49:2]

. . . . .

(_A rose-tree ascends from under the altar, having one rose upon it._)

See what our general of ebbs and flows Out from the bowels of her holy al|tar With sacred act advances! But one rose? If well inspired, this battle shall confound Both these brave knights, and I a virgin flow|er Must grow alone unplucked.

(_Here is heard a sudden twang of instruments, and the rose falls from the tree._)

[49:3]The flower is fallen, the tree descends!--oh, mis|tress, Thou here dischargest me: I shall be gath|ered, I think so; but I know not thine own will; Unclasp thy mystery!--I hope she's pleased; Her signs were gracious. (_Exeunt._)

[Sidenote: Act V. scene iv. (Weber; ii. Littledale) is stuff.]

The fourth scene, in which the characters are the jailor's daughter, her father and lover, and a physician, is disgusting and imbecile in the extreme. It may be dismissed with a single quotation:

_Doctor._ What stuff she utters!

[Sidenote: Act V. scene v. (Weber; iii. Littledale). Its strangeness.]

The fifth scene is the Combat, the arrangement of which is unusual. Perhaps there is nothing in every respect resembling it in the circle of the English drama. Theseus and his court cross the stage as proceeding to the lists; Emilia pauses and refuses to be present; the rest depart, and she is left. She then, the prize of the struggle, the presiding influence of the day, alone occupies the stage: within, the trumpets are heard sounding the charge, and the cries of the spectators and tumult of the encounter reach her ears; one or two messengers recount to her the various changes of the field, till Arcite's victory ends the fight. The manner is admirable in which the caution, which rendered it advisable to avoid introducing the combat on the stage, is reconciled with the pomp of scenic effect and bustle. [Sidenote: Shakspere's hand is in it.] The details of the scene, with which alone we have here to do, make it clear that Shakspeare's hand was in it. The greater part, it is true, is not of the highest excellence; but the vacillations of Emilia's feelings are well and delicately given, some individual thoughts and words mark Shakspeare, there is a little of his obscure brevity, much of his thoughtfulness legitimately applied, and an instance or two of its abuse. The strong likeness to him will justify some quotations.

In the following lines Theseus is pleading with Emilia for her presence in the lists:--

[Sidenote: Shakspere.]

_Theseus._ You must be there: This trial is as 'twere in the night, and you The only star to shine.

[Sidenote: Shakspere.]

[50:1]_Emilia._ I am extinct. There is but envy in that light, which shews The one the other. Darkness, which ever was The dam of Horror, who does stand accursed Of many mortal millions, may even now, By casting her black mantle over both That neither could find other, get herself Some part of a good name, and many a mur|der Set off whereto she's guilty.[50:2]

. . . . .

One good description is put into the mouth of Emilia after she is left alone:--

[Sidenote: Act V. scene v. (Weber; or sc. iii. Littledale). Shakspere's hand in it.]

[Sidenote: Shakspere.]

_Emilia._ Arcite is gently visaged; yet his eye Is like an engine bent, or a sharp weap|on In a soft sheath: Mercy and manly Cour|age Are bedfellows in his visage. Palamon Has a most menacing aspect: his brow Is graved, and seems to bury what it frowns | on; Yet sometimes 'tis not so, but alters to The quality of his thoughts: long time his eye Will dwell upon his object: melanchol|y Becomes him nobly; so does Arcite's mirth: But Palamon's sadness is a kind of mirth, So mingled, as if mirth did make him sad, And sadness mer|ry:| those darker humours that Stick unbecomingly on oth|ers,| on him Live in fair dwelling.

After several alternations of fortune in the fight, she again speaks thus of the two:

... [51:1]Were they metamor|phosed Both into one--oh why? there were no wom|an Worth so composed a man! their single share, Their nobleness peculiar to them, gives The prejudice of dispar|ity,| value's shortness, To any lady breathing....

(_Cornets: a great shout, and cry_, Arcite, victory!)

[51:2]_Servant._ The cry is Arcite and victory! Hark, Arcite, vic|tory! The combat's consummation is proclaimed By the wind instruments.

[Sidenote: Shakspere touch.]

[Sidenote: Shakspere reflection.]

_Emilia._ Half-sights saw That Arcite was no babe: god's-lid! _his rich|ness_ _And costliness of spirit looked through |him_: | it could No more be hid in him than fire in flax, Than humble banks can go to law with wa|ters That drift winds force to raging. I did think Good Palamon would miscarry; yet I knew | not Why I did think | so.| _Our Reasons are net proph|ets When oft our Fancies are._ They're coming off: Alas, poor Palamon!

Theseus enters with his attendants, conducting Arcite, as conqueror, and presents him to Emilia as her husband. Arcite's situation is a painful one, and is well discriminated: he utters but a single grave sentence.

_Theseus._ (_To Arcite and Emilia._) Give me your hands: Receive you her, you him: be plighted with A love that grows as you decay!

_Arcite._ Emily! To buy you I have lost what's dearest to | me, Save what is bought; and yet I purchase cheap|ly, As I do rate your value.

. . . . .

[Sidenote: Shakspere touch.]

_Theseus._ (_To Arcite._) Wear the gar|land With joy that you have won. For the subdued,-- Give them our present justice, _since I know Their lives but pinch them_. Let it here be done. The sight's not for our seeing: go we hence Right joyful, with some sorrow!--Arm your prize: I know you will not lose | her.| Hippolita, I see one eye of yours conceives a tear, The which it will deliv|er.|

_Emilia._ Is this, winning? Oh, all you heavenly powers! where is your mer|cy? But that your wills have said it must be so, And charge me live to comfort this unfriend|ed, This miserable prince, that cuts away A life more worthy from him than all wom|en, I should and would die too.

[52:1]_Hippolita._ Infinite pity, That four such eyes should be so fixed on one, That two must needs be blind for't. (_Exeunt._)

[Sidenote: Act V. scene vi. (Weber; sc. iv. Littledale) is clearly Shakspere's.]

The authorship of the last scene admits of no doubt. The manner is Shakspeare's, and some parts are little inferior to his very finest passages. Palamon has been vanquished, and he and his friends are to undergo execution of the sentence to which the laws of the combat subjected them. The depth of the interest is now fixed on these unfortunate knights, and a fine spirit of resigned melancholy inspires the scene in which they pass to their deaths.[52:2]

(_Enter Palamon and his knights, pinioned; jailor, executioner, and guard._)

_Palamon._ There's many a man alive that hath outlived The love of the people; yea, in the self-same state [53:1]Stands many a father with his child; some com|fort We have by so considering. We expire,-- And not without men's pity;--to live still, Have their good wishes. We prevent [53:2]The loathsome misery of age, beguile The gout and rheum, that in lag hours attend For grey approachers. We come towards the gods Young and unwarped, not halting under crimes Many and stale; that sure shall please the gods [53:3]Sooner than such, to give us nectar with | them,-- For we are more clear spir|its!|...

_2 Knight._ Let us bid farewell; And with our patience anger tottering for|tune, Who at her certain'st reels.

_3 Knight._ Come, who begins?

_Palamon._ Even he that led you to this banquet shall Taste to you all....

. . . . .

Adieu, and let my life be now as short As my leave-taking. (_Lies on the block._)

If we were in a situation to give due effect to the supernatural part of the story, the miserable end of Palamon would affect us with a mingled sense of pity and indignation. He has been promised success by the divinity whom he adored, and yet he lies vanquished with the uplifted axe glittering above his head. Both the drama and Chaucer's poem assume the existence of such feelings on our part, and hasten to remove the cause of them. [Sidenote: Chaucer's celestial agency to work out the plot.] A way is devised for reconciling the contending oracles; and the catastrophe which effects that end, is, in the old poet, anxiously prepared by celestial agency.[53:4] Arcite has got the victory in the field, as his warlike divinity had promised him; and an evil spirit is raised for the purpose of bringing about his death, that the votary of the Queen of Love may be allowed to enjoy the gentler meed which his protectress had pledged herself to bestow. These supernal intrigues are, in the play, no more than hinted at in the way of metaphor.

A cry is heard for delay of the execution; Perithous rushes in, ascends the scaffold, and, raising Palamon from the block, announces the approaching death of Arcite, with nearly the same circumstances as in the poem. While he rode townwards from the lists, on a black steed which had been the gift of Emily, he had been thrown with violence, and now lies on the brink of dissolution. [Sidenote: Description of Arcite's mishap is bad, but Shakspere's.] The speech which describes Arcite's misadven[54:1]ture has been much noticed by the critics, and by some lavishly praised. With deference, I think it decidedly bad, but undeniably the work of Shakspeare. [Sidenote: Over-labourd, involvd, hard, yet Shakspere's, with his words and thoughts.] The whole manner of it is that of some of his long and over-laboured descriptions. It is full of illustration, infelicitous but not weak; in involvement of sentence and hardness of phrase no passage in the play comes so close to him; and there are traceable in one or two instances, not only his words, but the trains of thought in which he indulges elsewhere, especially the description of the horse, which closely resembles some spirited passages in the Venus and Adonis. It is needless to quote any part of this speech.

[Sidenote: End of the _Two Noble Kinsmen_.]

The after-part of this scene, which ends the play, contains some forcible and lofty reflection, and the language is exceedingly vigorous and weighty. In Chaucer, the feelings of the dying Arcite are expressed at much length, and very touchingly; in the play, they are dispatched shortly, and the attention continued on Palamon, who had been its previous object:--

(_Enter Theseus, Hippolita, Emilia, Arcite in a chair._)

_Palamon._ Oh, miserable end of our alli|ance! The gods are mighty!--Arcite, if thy heart, Thy worthy, manly heart, be yet unbro|ken, Give me thy last words. I am Palamon, One that yet loves thee dying.

_Arcite._ Take Emil|ia, And with her all the world's joy. Reach thy hand: Farewell! I've told my last hour. I was false, But never treacherous: Forgive me, cous|in! One kiss from fair Emilia!--'Tis done: Take her.--I die!

_Palamon._ Thy brave soul seek Elys|ium!

. . . . .

[Sidenote: Shakspere.]

_Theseus._ _His part is played; and, though it were too short, He did it well._ Your day is lengthened, and The blissful dew of heaven does arrose | you: The powerful Venus well hath graced her al|tar, And given you your love; our master Mars Hath vouched his oracle, and to Arcite gave The grace of the contention: So the de|ities Have shewed due justice.--Bear this hence.

_Palamon._ Oh, cous|in! That we should things desire, which do cost | us [55:1]The loss of our desire! that nought could buy Dear love, but loss of dear love!

[Sidenote: Shakspere.]

_Theseus._ ... Palamon! Your kinsman hath confessed, the right o' the la|dy Did lie in you: for you first saw her, and Even then proclaimed your fancy. He restord | her As your stolen jewel, and desired your spir|it To send him hence forgiven! The gods my jus|tice Take from my hand, and they themselves become The executioners. Lead your lady off: And call your lovers from the stage of death, Whom I adopt my friends.--A day or two Let us look sadly, and give grace unto The funeral of Arcite; in whose end, The visages of bridegrooms we'll put on, And smile with Palamon; for whom, an hour, But one hour since, I was as dearly sor|ry, As glad of Arcite; and am now as glad, As for him sorry.--Oh, you _heavenly charm|ers_! What things you make of us! For what we lack, We laugh; for what we have, are sorry still; Are children in some kind.--Let us be thank|ful For that which is, and with you leave disputes That are above our question.--Let us go off, And bear us like the time! (_Exeunt omnes._)

You have now before you an outline of the subject of this highly poetical drama, with specimens which may convey some notion of the manner in which the plan is executed. But detached extracts cannot furnish materials for a just decision as to the part which Shakspeare may have taken even in writing the scenes from which the quotations are given. If I addressed myself to one previously unacquainted with this drama, I should be compelled to request an attentive study of it from beginning to end. [Sidenote: Two authors wrote _The Two Noble Kinsmen_.] Such a perusal would convince the most sceptical mind that two authors were concerned in the work; it would be perceived that certain scenes are distinguished by certain prominent characters, while others present different and dissimilar features. [Sidenote: Fletcher was one.] If we are to assume that Fletcher wrote parts of the play, we must admit that many parts of it were written by another person, and we have only to inquire who that other was. [Sidenote: The other was Shakspere.] Without recurring to any external presump[56:1]tions whatever, I think there is enough in most or all of the parts which are evidently not Fletcher's, to appropriate them to the great poet whose name, in this instance, tradition has associated with his. Even in the passages which have been here selected, you cannot but have traced Shakspeare's hand frequently and unequivocally. The introductory views which I slightly suggested to your recollection, may have furnished some rules of judgment, and cleared away some obstacles from the path; and where I have failed in bringing out distinctly the real points of difference, your own acute judgment and delicate taste must have enabled you to draw instinctively those inferences which I have attempted to reach by systematic deduction.

[Sidenote: Fletcher easily distinguisht from Shakspere.]

In truth, a question of this sort is infinitely more easy of decision where Fletcher is the author against whose claims Shakspeare's are to be balanced, than it could be if the poet's supposed assistant were any other ancient English dramatist. If a drama were presented to us, where, as in some of Shakspeare's received works, he had taken up the ruder sketch of an older poet, and exerted his skill in altering and enlarging it, it would be very difficult indeed to discriminate between the original and his additions. [Sidenote: Shakspere's Histories: their fault.] He has often, especially in his earlier works, and in his histories more particularly, much of that exaggeration of ideas, and that strained and labouring force of expression, which marked the Hercules-like infancy of the English Drama. [Sidenote: Marlowe.] [Sidenote: Marlowe's magnificence like Shakspere sometimes.] The stateliness with which Marlowe paces the tragic stage, and the magnificence of the train of solemn shews which attend him like the captives in a Roman procession of triumph, bear no distant likeness to the shape which Shakspeare's genius assumes in its most lofty moods. And with those also who followed the latter, or trode side by side with him, he has many points of resemblance or identity. [Sidenote: Jonson.] [Sidenote: Massinger.] [Sidenote: Middleton.] Jonson has his seriousness of views, his singleness of purpose, his weight of style, and his "fulness and frequency of sentence;" Massinger has his comprehension of thought, giving birth to an involved and parenthetical mode of construction; and Middleton, if he possesses few of his other qualities, has much of his precision and straightforward earnestness of expression.[57:1] In examining isolated passages with the view of ascertaining whether they were written by Shakspeare or by any of those other [57:2]poets, we should frequently have no ground of decision but the insecure and narrow one of comparative excellence. [Sidenote: Fletcher and Shakspere contrasted.] [Sidenote: They differ in _kind_.] When Fletcher is Shakspeare's only competitor, we are very seldom driven to adopt so doubtful a footing; we are not compelled to reason from difference in _degree_, because we are sensible of a striking dissimilarity in _kind_. [Sidenote: Fletcher.] [Sidenote: Shakspere.] [Sidenote: Fletcher.] [Sidenote: Shakspere.] [Sidenote: Fletcher.] [Sidenote: Shakspere.] [Sidenote: Fletcher.] [Sidenote: Shakspere.] We observe ease and elegance of expression opposed to energy and quaintness; brevity is met by dilation, and the obscurity which results from hurry of conception has to be compared with the vagueness proceeding from indistinctness of ideas; lowness, narrowness, and poverty of thought, are contrasted with elevation, richness, and comprehension: on the one hand is an intellect barely active enough to seek the true elements of the poetical, and on the other a mind which, seeing those finer relations at a glance, darts off in the wantonness of its luxuriant strength to discover qualities with which poetry is but ill fitted to deal; in the one poet we behold that comparative feebleness of fancy which willingly stoops to the correction of taste, and in the other, that warmth, splendour, and quickness of imagination, which flows on like the burning rivers from a volcano, quenching all paler lights in its spreading radiance, and destroying every barrier which would impede or direct its devouring course. You will remark that certain passages or scenes in this play are attributed to Shakspeare, not because they are superior to Fletcher's tone or manner, but because they are unlike it. [Sidenote: Shakspere's work unlike Fletcher's.] It may be true that most of these possess higher excellence than Fletcher could have easily reached; but this is merely an extrinsic circumstance, and it is not upon it that the judgment is founded. [Sidenote: Test between Shakspere and Fletcher.] These passages are recognized as Shakspeare's, not from possessing in a higher degree those qualities in which Fletcher's merit lies, but from exhibiting other qualities in which he is partially or wholly wanting, and which even singly, and still more when combined, constitute a style and manner opposite to his.

Indeed, since Fletcher is acknowledged to stand immeasurably lower than Shakspeare, the excellence of some passages might perhaps in itself be no unfair reason for refusing to the inferior poet the credit of their execution. But an analysis of the means by which the excellence is produced places us beyond [58:1]the necessity of resorting, in the first instance at least, to this general ground of decision, which must, however, be taken into view, when we have been able to assume a position which entitles us to take advantage of it. [Sidenote: Shakspere's external qualities in the _Two Noble Kinsmen_.] [Sidenote: Are they imitations?] In many parts of this play we find those external qualities which form Shakspeare's distinguishing characteristics, not separately and singly present, but combined most fully and most intimately; and it is consequently indisputable that we have, either Shakspeare's own writing, or a faithful and successful imitation of it. [Sidenote: Imitation of Shakspere difficult.] It is not easy to perceive with perfect clearness why it is that imitation of Shakspeare is peculiarly difficult; but every one is convinced that it is far more so than in the case of any other poet whatever. [Sidenote: Why it is so.] The range and opposition of his qualities, the rarity and loftiness of the most remarkable of these, and still more, the coincident operation of his most dissimilar powers, make it next to impossible, even in short and isolated passages, to produce an imitation which shall be mistaken for his original composition: but there is not even a possibility of success in an attempt to carry on such an imitation of him throughout many entire scenes. [Sidenote: Given, his outside dress, ask whether his spirit is inside it.] Where the external qualities of a work resemble his, the question of his authorship can be determined in no other way than by inquiring whether the essential elements, and the spirit which animates the whole, are his also; and that inquiry is not one for logical argument; it can be answered only by reflection on the effect which the work produces on our own minds. [Sidenote: The poetic sense alone can judge.] The dullest eye can discriminate the free motions of the living frame from the convulsed writhings which art may excite in the senseless corpse; the nightly traveller easily distinguishes between the red and earthy twinkling of the distant cottage-lamp, and the cold white gleam of the star which rises beyond it;--and with equal quickness and equal certainty the poetical sense can decide whether the living and ethereal principle of poetry is present, or only its corporeal clothing, its dead and inert resemblance. [Sidenote: By the emotion it creates, must Shakspere's work be judgd.] The emotion which poetry necessarily awakens in minds qualified as the subjects of its working, is the only evidence of its presence, and the measure and index of its strength. If we can read with coldness and indifference the drama which we are now examining, we must pronounce it to [59:1]be no more than a skilful imitation of Shakspeare; but we must acknowledge it as an original if the heart burns and the fancy expands under its influence,--if we feel that the poetical and dramatic spirit breathes through all,--and if the mind bows down involuntarily before the powers of whose presence it is secretly but convincingly sensible. [Sidenote: And his part of _The Two Noble Kinsmen_ witnesses for itself.] I cannot have a doubt that the parts of this work which I have pointed out as Shakspeare's will the more firmly endure this trial, the more closely and seriously they are revolved and studied.

[Sidenote: Shakspere's share of _The Two Noble Kinsmen_.]

The portions of the drama which, on such principles as these, have been set down as Shakspeare's, compose a large part of its bulk, and embrace most of the material circumstances of the story. [Sidenote: Act I.] [Sidenote: Act III. sc. i.] [Sidenote: Act V. except scene iv.] They are,--the First Act wholly,--one scene out of six in the Third,--and the whole of the Fifth Act, (a very long one,) except one unimportant scene. These parts are not of equal excellence, but the grounds on which a decision as to their authorship rests, seem to be almost equally strong with regard to each.

We have as yet been considering these scenes as so many separate pieces of poetry; and they are valuable even in that light, not less from their intrinsic merit than as being the work of our greatest poet. If it be true merely that Shakspeare has here executed some portions of a plan which another had previously fixed on and sketched, the drama demands our zealous study, and is entitled to a place among Shakspeare's works. An examination of separate details cannot enable us to form any more specific opinion as to the part which he may have taken in its composition.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Is the design of _The Two Noble Kinsmen_ Shakspere's?]

But there is a further inquiry on which we are bound to enter, whatever its result may be,--whether it shall allow us to attribute to Shakspeare a wider influence over the work, or compel us to limit his claim to the subsidiary authorship, which only we have yet been able to establish for him. We must now endeavour to trace the design of the work to its origin; we must look on the parts in their relation to the whole, and investigate the qualities and character of that whole which the parts compose. Such an analysis is essential to an appreciation of the real merit of the drama, and suggests views of far-greater inte[60:1]rest than any which offer themselves in the examination of isolated passages. And it is likewise necessary as a part of the inquiry which is our object, not merely because it may tend to strengthen or modify the decisions which we have already formed, but because it will allow us to determine other important questions which we have had no opportunity of treating. [Sidenote: Yes, it is.] It will justify us, if I mistake not, in pronouncing with some confidence, that this drama owes to Shakspeare much more than the composition of a few scenes,--that he was the poet who chose the story, and arranged the leading particulars of the method in which it is handled.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: The tragic-comic underplot not Shakspere's.]

Before we enter the extensive and interesting field of inquiry thus opened to us, it may be well that I explain the reasons which seem distinctly to exclude from Shakspeare's part of the work one considerable portion of it,--the whole of the tragi-comic under-plot. I have as yet assigned no ground of rejection, but inferiority in the execution; but there are other reasons, which, when combined with that, remove all uncertainty. Slightly as this subordinate story has been described, enough has been said to point out remarkable imitations of Shakspeare, both in incident and character. [Sidenote: Fletcher's borrowings in the underplot, from Shakspere.] The insane maiden is a copy of Ophelia, with features from 'Lear'; the comments of the physician on her sickness of the mind, are borrowed in conception from 'Macbeth'; the character of the fantastic schoolmaster is a repetition of the pedagogue in 'Love's Labour Lost'; and the exhibition of the clowns which he directs, resemble scenes both in that play and in the 'Midsummer Night's Dream.' All these circumstances together, or even one of them by itself, are enough to destroy the notion of Shakspeare's authorship. The likeness which is found elsewhere to Shakspeare's style, (and which is far closer in those other parts of the play than it is here,) is an argument, as I have shewn, in favour of his authorship; the likeness here in character and incident is even a stronger one against it. [Sidenote: Shakspere doesn't imitate himself in character as he does in style.] In neither of these latter particulars does Shakspeare imitate himself as he does in style. In some of his earlier plays indeed we may trace the rude outlines of characters, chiefly comic, which he was afterwards able to develope with [61:1]greater distinctness and more striking features; but though the likeness, in those cases, were nearer and more frequent than it is, the transition from the rude block to the finished sculpture is the allowable and natural progress of genius. [Sidenote: He doesn't reproduce a figure badly.] The bare reproduction of a figure or a scene already drawn with clearness and success, stands in a very different situation; and, even if it should be nearly equal to the original in actual merit, it creates a strong presumption of its being no more than the artifice of an imitator. Where the inferiority of the execution is palpable, the doubt is raised into certainty. [Sidenote: Shakspere could not have turned his Ophelia into the Jailer's daughter of _The Two Noble Kinsmen_.] In the case before us, it is impossible to receive the idea of Shakspeare sitting down in cold blood to imitate the Ophelia, and to transfer all the tenderness of her situation to a new drama of a far lower tone, in which also it should occupy only a subordinate station. He could not have been guilty of this; he neither needed it, nor would have done it of free will; and, therefore, I could not have believed it to be his, though the execution had been far better than it is. [Sidenote: This Daughter is an utter failure.] But the inferiority is decided; the imitation produces neither vigour of style nor depth of feeling; in short, Shakspeare, if he had made the attempt, could not have failed so utterly. [Sidenote: The Schoolmaster is not Shakspere's.] The comic parts are only subservient to the serious portion of this story; and if Shakspeare did not write the leading part, he was still less likely to have written the accessory; but, besides, the imitation is equally unsuccessful; and the original of the schoolmaster is said to have been a personal portrait, which was very unlikely to have been repeated by the first painter after the freshness of the jest was gone. I have been the more anxious to place in its true light the question as to this part of the drama, because, on its seeming likeness to Shakspeare, Steevens founds an ingenious hypothesis, by which he endeavours to account for the origin of the tradition as to Shakspeare's concern in the play. That this is a designed imitation of Shakspeare is abundantly clear; and it is not difficult to see why it is an unsuccessful one. [Sidenote: Fletcher's designd imitation of Shakspere.] Fletcher possesses much humour, but it is of a cast very unlike Shakspeare's, and very unfit to harmonise with it, or to qualify him for the imitation which he has here attempted. Why he made the attempt, we shall be able to discover only when the freaks of caprice, and of poetical caprice, [62:1]the wildest of all, shall be fully analyzed and fully accounted for. [Sidenote: The underplot not Shakspere's.] All that I have to prove is, that this portion of the work is not, and could not have been, Shakspeare's.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Shakspere's choice of subjects for his Plays.]

I have said that I consider as his, both the selection of the plot, and much of its arrangement. [Sidenote: He differs from his chief contemporaries and successors.] As to the Choice of the Subject, my position is, that in this particular, Shakspeare stands in unequivocal opposition to Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, and those others, contemporary with him, or a little his juniors, with whom his name is generally associated. I can easily shew that this opposition to the newer school in the choice of stories exists in Shakspeare individually; and this would be enough for my purpose; but I will go a little farther than I am called on, because I conceive him to share that opposition with some other poets, and because views open to us from this circumstance, which are of some value for the right understanding of his characteristics. [Sidenote: He belongs to the old school.] I say then, that in the choice of subjects particularly, as well as in other features, Shakspeare belongs to a school older than that of Fletcher, and radically different from it. [Sidenote: Shakspere took old stories; new poets new ones.] The principle of the contrariety in the choice of subjects between the older and newer schools, is this: the older poets usually prefer stories with which their audience must have been previously familiar; the newer poets avoid such known subjects, and attempt to create an adventitious interest for their pieces, by appealing to the passion of curiosity, and feeding it with novelty of incident. [Sidenote: Early Plays founded on] The early writers may have adopted their rule of choice from a distrust in their own skill: but they are more likely to have been influenced by reflecting on the inexperience of their audience in theatrical exhibitions. [Sidenote: History and Tales of Chivalry.] By insisting on this quality in their plots, they hampered themselves much in the choice of them; and the subjects which offered themselves to the older among them, were mainly confined to two classes, history and the chivalrous tales, being the only two cycles of story with which, about the time of Shakspeare's birth, any general familiarity could be presumed. That such were the favourite themes of the infant English drama is abundantly clear, even from the lists of old lost dramas which have been preserved to us. [Sidenote: Classical fables and foreign novels.] By the time when Shakspeare stepped into [63:1]the arena, the zeal for translation had increased the stock of popular knowledge by the addition of the classical fables and the foreign modern novels; and his immediate precursors, some of whom were men of much learning, had especially availed themselves of the former class of plots. [Sidenote: Plots of Shakspere's successors.] If, passing over Shakspeare, we glance at the plots of Fletcher, Jonson, or others of the same period, we find, among a great diversity of means, a search for novelty universally set on foot. Jonson is fond of inventing his plots; Beaumont and Fletcher usually borrow theirs; but neither by the former nor the latter were stories chosen which were familiar to the people, nor in any instance perhaps do they condescend to use plots which had been previously written on. [Sidenote: Beaumont and Fletcher's.] Where Beaumont and Fletcher do avail themselves of common tales, they artfully combine them with others, and receive assistance from complexity of adventure in keeping their uniform purpose in view. [Sidenote: Historical Drama grew obsolete.] The historical drama was regarded by the new school as a rude and obsolete form; and there are scarcely half a dozen instances in which any writer of that age, but Shakspeare, adopted it later than 1600. Historical subjects indeed wanted the coveted charm, as did also the Romantic and the Classical Tales, both of which shared in the neglect with which the Chronicles were treated. [Sidenote: Plots were got from foreign novels and invention.] The Foreign Novels, and stories partly borrowed from them, or wholly invented, were almost the sole subjects of the newer drama, which has always the air of addressing itself to hearers possessing greater dramatic experience and more extended information than those who were in the view of the older writers.

[Sidenote: Shakspere belongs to the older class of dramatists.]

Shakspeare, in point of time, stood between these two classes: does he decidedly belong to either, or shew a leaning, and to which? He unequivocally belongs to the older class; or rather, the opposition to the newer writers assumes in him a far more decided shape than in any of his immediate forerunners; for in them are found numerous exceptions to the rule, in him scarcely one. He returns, in fact, to more than one of the principles of the old school, which had begun in his time to fall into disuse. [Sidenote: Compare his Histories, narrative chorus long rymed passages,] The external form of some of his plays, particularly his histories, is quite in the old taste. The narrative chorus is the most observable remnant of antiquity; and the long rhymed pas[64:1]sages frequent in his earlier works, are abundant in the older writers: Peele uses them through whole scenes, and Marlowe likewise to excess. [Sidenote: jesters, and choice of known stories.] His continual introduction of those conventional characters, his favourite jesters, is another point of resemblance to the ruder stage. [Sidenote: He's of the school of Lodge and Greene.] And his choice of subjects, when combined with the peculiarities of economy just noticed, as well as others, clearly appropriates him to the school of Lodge, Greene, and those elder writers who have left few works and fewer names. His Historical Plays are the perfection of the old school, the only valuable specimens of that class which it has produced, and the latest instance in which its example was followed; and he has had recourse to the Classical story for such subjects as approached most nearly to the nature of his English Chronicles. [Sidenote: Of new novel stories,] And you must take especial note, that, even in the class of subjects in which he seems to coincide with the new school,--I mean his Plots borrowed from Foreign Novels,--he assumes no more of conformity than its appearance, while the principle of contrariety is still retained. [Sidenote: Shakspere chose the most widely known.] The new writers preferred untranslated novels, and, where they chose translated ones, disguised them till the features of the original were lost: Shakspeare not only uses translated tales--(this indeed from necessity)--and closely adheres to their minutest circumstances, but in almost every instance he has made choice of those among them which can be proved to have been most widely known and esteemed at the time. Most of his plots founded on fanciful subjects, whether derived from novels or other sources, can be shewn to have been previously familiar to the people. [Sidenote: 6 Plays of Shakspere founded on well-known stories.] The story of 'Measure for Measure' had been previously told; that of 'As you Like It', he might have had from either of two popular collections of tales; the fable of 'Much Ado about Nothing' seems to have been widely spread, and those of 'All's Well that Ends Well', and 'The Winter's Tale'; 'Romeo and Juliet' appears in at least one collection of English novels, and in a poem which enjoyed much popularity. These are sufficient as examples; but a still more remarkable circumstance is this. [Sidenote: 12 on subjects of former Plays.] In repeated instances, about twelve in all, Shakspeare has chosen subjects on which plays had been previously written; nay more, on the sub[65:1]jects which he has so re-written, he has produced some of his best dramas, and one his very masterpiece. 'Julius Cæsar' belongs to this list; '_Lear_' does so likewise; and 'HAMLET.' Is not that a singular fact? I can use it at present only as a most valuable proof that the view which I take is an accurate one. But Shakspeare has also, oftener than once, applied to the chivalrous class of subjects, which was exclusively peculiar to the older school. Its tales indeed bore a strong likeness to his own most esteemed subjects of study; for, amidst all their extravagancies and inconsistencies, the Gothic romances and poems, the older of them at all events, professed in form to be chronicles of fact, and in principle to assume historical truth as their groundwork. [Sidenote: 3 on Classical subjects turned into romances.] 'Pericles' is founded on one of the most popular romances of the middle ages, which had been also versified by Gower, the second father of the English poetical school. The characters in 'The Midsummer Night's Dream' are classical, but the costume is strictly Gothic, and shews that it was through the medium of romance that he drew the knowledge of them; and the 'Troilus and Cressida' presents another classical and chivalrous subject, which Chaucer had handled at great length, also invested with the richness of the romantic garb and decoration.

[Sidenote: Shakspere chose the story of the _Two Noble Kinsmen_.]

Fletcher and Shakspeare being thus opposed to each other in their choice of subjects, what qualities are there in the Plot of The Two Noble Kinsmen, which may appropriate the choice of it to either? In the first place, it is a chivalrous subject,--a classical story which had already been told in the Gothic style. [Sidenote: Fletcher would neither have chosen Chaucer's classical story for his plot,] The nature of the story then could have been no recommendation of it to Fletcher. He has not a single other subject of the sort; he has even written one play in ridicule of chivalrous observances; and the sarcasm of that humorous piece[66:1], both in the general design and the particular references, is aimed solely at the prose romances of knight-errantry, a diseased and posthumous off-shoot from the parent-root, whose legitimate and ancient offspring, the metrical chronicles and tales, he seems neither to have known nor cared for. [Sidenote: nor an old story,] Secondly, this story must have been unacceptable to Fletcher, because it was a fa[66:2]miliar one in England. This fact is perhaps sufficiently proved by its being the subject of that animated and admirable poem of Chaucer, which Dryden has pronounced little inferior to the Iliad or Æneid; but it is still more distinctly shewn by a third fact, which completely clenches the argument against Fletcher's choice of it as a subject. [Sidenote: nor one on which two 16th-century plays had been written.] No fewer than two plays had been written on this story before the end of the sixteenth century; the earlier of the two, the Palamon and Arcite of Edwards, acted in 1566, and printed in 1585, and another play called by the same name, brought on the stage in 1594.[66:3]

[Sidenote: Fletcher didn't choose the subject of _The Two Noble Kinsmen_.]

It is thus, I think, proved almost to demonstration, that the person who chose this subject was not Fletcher; and what has been already said, even without the specific evidence of individual passages, creates a strong probability that the choice was made by Shakspeare rather than by any other dramatic poet of his time. If the question be merely one between the two writers,--if, assuming it to be proved that Shakspeare wrote parts of the play, we have only to ask which of the two it was that chose the subject,--we can surely be at no loss to decide. [Sidenote: Shakspere's study of chivalrous poetry.] But the presumption in Shakspeare's favour may be elevated almost into absolute certainty, while, at the same time, some important qualities of his will be illustrated,--if we inquire what was the real extent to which he attached himself to the study of the chivalrous poetry, from which this subject is taken, and the influence which that study was likely to have had, and did actually exercise on his writings.

If, being told that a dramatic poet was born in England in the latter half of the sixteenth century, whose studies, for all effectual benefit which they could have afforded him, were limited to his own tongue, we were asked to say what course his acquisitions were likely to have taken, our reply would be ready and unhesitating. English literature was of narrow extent before the time in question, and, according to the invariable progress of mental culture, had been evolved first in those finer branches which issue primarily from the ima[67:1]gination and affections, and appeal for their effect to the principles in which they have their source. [Sidenote: Shakspere certain to have first studi'd, and been influenct by, our old narrative poets,] Poetry had reached a vigorous youth, history was in its infancy, philosophy had not come into being. Had the field of study been wider, it was to poetry in an especial manner that a poet had to betake himself for an experience and skill in his art, and in the language which was to be its instrument. And it was almost solely to the narrative poets that Shakspeare had to appeal for aid and guidance; for preceding writers in the dramatic walk could teach him little. They could serve as beacons only, and not examples, and he had to search in other mines for the materials to rear his palace of thought. [Sidenote: who were of the Gothic school.] But the English poetical writers who preceded him are all more or less impressed with the seal of the Gothic school, and the most noted among them belong to it essentially. Chaucer, Lydgate, and Gower, to more than one of whom Shakspeare is materially indebted, were the heads of a sect whose subjects and form of composition were varied only as the various forms and subjects of the foreign romantic writers. [Sidenote: Britain the mother of much fine chivalrous poetry.] The rhymed romance, the metrical vision, the sustained allegorical narrative or dialogue, were but differing results of the same principle, and forms too of its original development; for Britain was the mother and nurse of much of the finest chivalrous poetry, as well as the scene where some of its most fascinating tales are laid. It is true that English poetry before the time of Elizabeth presents but few distinguished names; but there is a world of unappropriated treasures of the chivalrous class of poetry, which are still the delight of those who possess the key to their secret chambers, and were the archetypes of the earlier poets of that prolific age. It is important to recollect, that among the poets who adorn that epoch, the narrative preceded the dramatic. [Sidenote: Spenser belongs to the Gothic school.] Spenser belongs, in every view, to the romantic or Gothic school; the heroic Mort d'Arthur was the rule of his poetical faith; and it was that school, headed by him, which Shakspeare, on commencing his course and choosing his path, found in possession of all the popularity of the day. [Sidenote: Shakspere too.] Every thing proves that he allowed himself to be guided by the prevailing taste. His early poems belong in design to Spenser's school, and their style is [68:1]often imitative of his. In his dramas he has many points of resemblance to the older chivalrous poets, besides his occasional adoption of their subjects. His respect for Gower is shewn by the repeated introduction of his shade as the speaker in his choruses[68:2]; and particular allusions and images, borrowed from Gothic usages and chivalrous facts, occur at the first blush to the recollection of every one. But there is a more widely spread influence than all this. [Sidenote: Shakspere's mistakes and] Many of his most faulty peculiarities are directly drawn from this source, and his innumerable misrepresentations or mistakes are not so truly the fruit of his own ignorance, as the necessary qualities of the class of poets to which he belonged, shared with him by some of the greatest poetical names which modern Europe can cite. [Sidenote: anomalies, those of his Gothic school.] In this situation are indeed almost all the irregularities and anomalies which have furnished the unbelievers in the divinity of his genius with objects of contemptuous abuse;--his creation of geographies wholly fictitious,--his anachronisms in facts and customs,--his misstatements of historical detail,--his dukes and kings in republics,--his harbours in the heart of continents, and his journies over land to remote islands,--his heathenism in Christian lands and times, and his bishops, and priests, and masses, _in partibus infidelium_. [Sidenote: Chaucer and Spenser had the like.] We may censure him for these irregularities if we will; but it is incumbent on us to recollect that Chaucer and Spenser must bear the same sentence: and if the faults are considered so weighty as to shut out from our notice the works in which they are found, the early literature, not of our own country only, but of the whole of continental Europe, must be thrown aside as one mass of unworthy fable.

In truth, Shakspeare, in throwing himself on a style of thought and a track of study which exposed him to such errors, did no more than retire towards those principles which not only were the sources of poetry in his own country, but are the fountains from which, in every nation, her first draughts of inspiration are drunk. [Sidenote: Poetry is first a falsifying of History,] Poetry in its earlier stages is universally neither more nor less than a falsifying of history. The decoration of the Real is an exertion of the fancy which marks an age elder than the creation of the purely Ideal; it is an effort more successful than the [69:1]attempt which follows it, and the wholly fictitious has always the appearance of being resorted to from necessity rather than choice. Cathay is an older and fitter seat of romance than Utopia; and the historical paladins and soldans are characters more poetical than the creatures of pure imagination who displaced them. [Sidenote: and has Ignorance as her ally.] [Sidenote: Her errors depend on the kind of her small knowledge.] But this walk of poetry is one in which she never can permanently linger; her citadel indeed is real existence partially comprehended, but she is unable to defend the fortress after knowledge has begun to sap its outworks; she needs ignorance for her ally while she occupies the domain of history, and when that companion deserts her, she unwillingly retreats on the Possible and Invented[69:2], where she has no enemy to contest her possession of the ground.--While however she does continue in her older haunt, she must sometimes wander out of her imperfectly defined path, and her errors will depend, both in kind and in amount, on the amount and kind of her knowledge. That the qualities of poetical literature, in every nation, are dependent on the number and species of those experiences from which in each particular case the art receives its materials, is indeed too evident to need illustration; but some curious inferences are deducible from an application of this truth to the contrast which is found between the poetical literature of modern Europe, and that older school which has been called the classical. [Sidenote: And hence come distinctive qualities of the Greek and Modern school.] The inherent excellencies of the ancient Greek poetry may yet remain to be accounted for from other causes; but this one principle was adequate to produce the most distinguishing qualities of the pagan literature, while it is distinctly the very same principle, acting in different circumstances, which has given birth to the opposite character of the modern school of invention. [Sidenote: Middle-Age knowledge of vast extent, but never thorough.] During the period which witnessed the gradual rise of that anomalous fabric of poetry, from whose prostrate fragments the perfected literature of Christian Europe has been erected, knowledge (I am uttering no paradox) was of vast extent; it embraced many different ages and many distant regions: but it was also universally imperfect; much was known in part, but nothing wholly. [Sidenote: So it invested History with incongruous attributes.] Hence proceeded the specific difference of that widely-spread form of poetical invention, namely, the super-abundance and incongruity of attributes with which [70:1]it invested historical truth; and it is not very difficult to discover why many of those attributes have never thoroughly amalgamated with the principal mass. The various sources from which the materials of the romantic poetry were drawn, present themselves at once to every mind. [Sidenote: Early modern poets invented a national and original literature,] By the peculiar state of their knowledge, and the rude activity of spirit which was its consequence, the early poets of modern Europe were prepared to invent a species of literature which should be strictly national in its subjects, and in its essential parts wholly original. That new branch was exposed, however, to modifications of various kinds. One temptation to introduce foreign elements, by which its authors were assailed, was singularly strong, and can scarcely in any other instance have operated on a literature arising in circumstances otherwise so favourable to originality, as those in which they were placed. [Sidenote: but, knowing classics badly,] That temptation was offered by the imperfect acquaintance with the classical authors which formed one part of their scattered and ill-reconciled knowledge. [Sidenote: grafted on their own works excrescences from classical literature,] They were influenced by this cause, as they could not have failed to be; and the representations of feelings, habits, and thought, which they borrowed from this source, being in their nature dissimilar to the constituent parts of the system to which they were adjected, never could have harmonised with these, and, under any circumstances, must have always continued to be excrescences. Other elements of the new system were naturally neither evil in themselves, nor inconsistent with the principles with which it was attempted to combine them, but have assumed the aspect of deformity and incongruity solely from incidental and extraneous causes. [Sidenote: and on History, fictions and mistakes.] The fictions and mistakes which the ignorance of those fathers of our modern poetical learning superinduced on history ancient and modern, and on every thing which related to the then existing state either of the material world or of human society, were allowable ornaments, so long as knowledge afterwards acquired did not stamp on them the brand of falsehood; but the moment that the falsity was exposed, and the charm of possible existence broken, those adjuncts lost their empire over the imagination, and with it their appearance of fitness as materials for mental activity. [Sidenote: Supernaturalism of the Romantic Poets only believable by superstition.] In supernatural invention, the early romantic poets [71:1]were still more unfortunate; for when they endeavoured to colour with imaginary hues the awful outlines of the true faith, they attempted a conjunction of holiness with impurity, an identification of the spirit with the flesh, a marriage between the living and the dead; the purer essence revolted from the union, and the human mind could acquiesce in imagining it only while it remained bound in the darkness and fetters of religious corruption. [Sidenote: Characteristics of early Greek poetry.] Turn now to the Grecian poetry, and mark how closely the same principles have operated on it, although the difference of the circumstances has made the result different. [Sidenote: its tendency to orientalism;] The first Grecian inventors were, it is true, protected in a great measure from the influence of any foreign literature, simply by the ignorant rudeness of those ages of the world during which their task was performed; and even here I have no doubt that an influence not very dissimilar did actually operate; for there seems to be good reason for supposing that, if we had before us the wild songs of such bards as the Thracian Orpheus, or the old Musæus, we should find them strongly marked by that orientalism towards which the later Greek poetry which remains to us betrays so continual a tendency. In other respects, the spirit in which the Greeks formed their poetical system was identical with our own. [Sidenote: its falsification of History,] Their elder poets falsified historical facts, invented or disguised historical characters, and framed erroneous representations of the past in time and the distant in place, no otherwise than did the romantic fabulists; and the classical inventors continued to have sufficient faith placed in their fictions, merely because knowledge advanced too slowly to allow detection of their falsity so long as the literature of the nation continued to exist for it as a present possession. [Sidenote: its treatment of Religion.] With their religious belief, again, every attractive invention harmonised, and every splendid addition was readily incorporated as a consistent part; where all was false, a falsity the more was unperceived or uncensured, and where sublimity and beauty were almost the only objects sought, they were gladly accepted from whatever quarter or in whatever shape they came.

[Sidenote: Shakspere, for his stories and form, left his own time, and delighted in the past.]

So far as these considerations seem to elucidate the principles on which Shakspeare proceeded, they do so by exhibiting him as withdrawing from his own times as to his subjects and the ex[72:1]ternal form of his works, though not as to their animating spirit,--as placing himself delightedly amidst the rude greatness of older poetry and past ages, and viewing life and nature from their covert, as if he had sat within a solitary and ruined aboriginal temple, and looked out upon the valley and the mountains from among those broken and massive columns, whose aspect gave majesty and solemnity to the landscape which was beheld through their moss-grown vistas. [Sidenote: Thence his faults.] So far as these views have any force as a defence of faults detected in the great poet, that defence is founded on the consideration that the errors were unavoidable consequences of the system which produced so much that was admirable, and that they were shared with him by those whom he followed in his selection of subjects and form of writing. So far as all that has been said on this head has a close application to the main subject of our inquiry, its sum is briefly this. [Sidenote: Summary of reasons why Shakspere chose the plot of _Two Noble Kinsmen_.] [Sidenote: He went back to the school of Chaucer and Spenser; which Milton, after, sought.] [Sidenote: Shakspere's love of old poems.] An argument arises in favour of Shakspeare's choice of the plot of this drama, from its general qualities, as a familiar and favourite story, and one of a class which had been frequently used by the older dramatists; that argument receives additional strength from the fact of this individual subject having been previously treated in a dramatic form; and it is rendered almost impregnable when we consider the subject particularly as a chivalrous story, and as belonging and leading us back to that native school to which Shakspeare, though in certain respects infected by the exotic taste of the age, yet in essentials belonged,--the wilderness in which Chaucer had opened up the well-head of poetry, where Gower and Lydgate had drunk freely, and Sackville had more sparingly dipped his brow,--the paradise through which Spenser had joyfully wandered with the heavenly Una,--the patriarchal forest into which afterwards Milton loved to retire from his lamp-lighted chamber, to sleep at the foot of some huge over-hanging oak, and dream of mailed knights riding by his resting-place, or fairy choirs dancing on the green hillocks around,--the enchanted rose garden where Shakspeare himself gathered those garlands of beauty, which he has described as adding glory even to his thoughts of love.

[73:1]When in the chronicle of wasted time I see description of the fairest wights, _And beauty making beautiful old ryme_ In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights; Then in the blazon of sweet beauty's best, Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow, I see this antique pen would have expresst Even such a beauty as you master now.

_Sonnet 106._

In the Arrangement of the Plot also there are circumstances which point emphatically to Shakspeare's agency. [Sidenote: Shakspere seen in the simplicity of the plot.] One strong argument is furnished by a very prominent quality of the plot as it is managed,--its simplicity. [Sidenote: He relied on the execution of the parts, not the complication of the whole.] This quality is like him, as being in this case the result of a close adherence to the original story; but it is also like him in itself, since the arrangement of all his works indicates the operation of a principle tending to produce it, namely, a reliance for dramatic effect on the execution of the parts rather than on the mechanical perfection or complication of the whole. His contemporaries, in their own several ways, bestowed extreme care on their plots. [Sidenote: Beaumont and Fletcher's plots depend more on surprise and incident.] With Beaumont and Fletcher, hurry, surprise, and rapid and romantic revolution of incident are the main object, rather than tragic strength or even stage effect: their plays would furnish materials for extended novels, and are often borrowed from such without concentration or omission. Shakspeare's comparative poverty of plot is not approached by them even in their serious plays, and the lively stir of their comic adventures is the farthest from it imaginable. [Sidenote: B. Jonson's plots admirably constructed.] Jonson's plots are constructed most elaborately and admirably: one or two of them are without equal for skill of conduct and pertinency and connection of parts. This cautious and industrious poet never confided in his own capability of making up for feebleness of plan by the force of individual passages; and his distrust was well judged, for the abstract coldness of his mind betrays itself in every page of his dialogue, and his scenes need all their beauty of outline to conceal the frigidity of their filling up. Ford and Massinger agree much in their choice of plots, both preferring incidents of a powerfully tragic nature: but their modes of management are widely different. [Sidenote: Ford's gloomy plots softened by tenderness and regret.] Ford, on the gloom of whose stories glimpses [74:1]of pathos fall like moonlight, delights, when he comes to work up the details of his tragic plan, in softening it down into the most dissolving tenderness; at his bidding tears flow in situations where we listen rather to hear Agony shriek, or look to behold Terror freezing into stone; his emotion is not the rising vehemence of present passion, but the anguish, subsiding into regret, which lingers when suffering is past, and suggests ideas of eventual resignation and repose;--his verse is like the voice of a child weeping itself to sleep. [Sidenote: Massinger's stage effect by situations, and tragic design.] [Sidenote: His coldness of expression.] Massinger crowds adventure upon adventure, and his situations are wound up to the height of unmixed horror; for stage effect and tragic intensity, some of them, as for example the last scene in 'The Unnatural Combat', and the celebrated one in 'The Duke of Milan', are unequalled in the modern drama, and worthy of the sternness of the antique; but it is in the design alone that the tragic spirit works; the colouring of the details is cold as monumental marble; the pomp of lofty eloquence apes the simplicity of grief, or silence is left to interpret alike for sorrow or despair. To the carefulness in outlining the plan and devising situations, thus shewn in different ways, Shakspeare's manner is perfectly alien. [Sidenote: Shakspere's great aim to bring out character and feeling.] He never exhausts himself in framing his plots, but reserves his strength for the great aim which he had before him, the evolution of human character and passion, a result which he relied on his own power to produce from any plot however naked. He does not want variety of adventure in many of his plays; but he has it only where his novel or chronicle gave it to him: he does not reject it when it is offered, but does not make the smallest exertion to search for it. [Sidenote: Shakspere's plays with no plot:] Some of his plays, especially his comedies, have actually no plot, and those, too, the very dramas in which his genius has gained some of its most mighty victories. [Sidenote: _The Tempest._] 'The Tempest' is an instance: what is there in it? A ship's company are driven by wreck upon an island; they find an old man there who had been injured by certain of them, and a reconciliation takes place. [Sidenote: _As You Like It._] The only action of 'As You Like It' is pedestrian; if the characters had been placed in the forest in the first scene, the drama would have been then as ripe for its catastrophe as it is in the last. [Sidenote: _Midsummer Night's Dream_ has no plot.] 'The Midsummer Night's Dream' relates a midnight stroll in a wood; and the unreal na[75:1]ture of the incidents is playfully indicated in its name. It is from no stronger materials than those three frail threads of narrative that our poet has spun unrivalled tissues of novel thought and divine fancy. And, as in his lighter works he is careless of variety of adventure, so in his tragic plays he does not seek to heap horrors or griefs one upon another in devising the arrangement of his plots. [Sidenote: In the plots of Shakspere's Tragedies, details and character are the main things.] In this latter class of his works, the skill and force with which the interest is woven out of the details of story and elements of character, make it difficult for us to see how far it is that we are indebted to these for the power which the scene exerts over us. But with a little reflection we are able to discover, that there is scarcely one drama of his, in which, from the same materials, situations could not have been formed, which should have possessed in their mere outline a tenfold amount of interest and tragic effect to those which Shakspeare has presented to us. [Sidenote: He could have made more striking effect out of _Hamlet_, Acts IV. & V. 4.] 'Hamlet' offers, especially in the two last acts, some remarkable proofs of his indifference to the means which he held in his hands for increasing the tragic interest of his situations, and of the boldness with which he threw himself on his own resources for the creation of the most intense effect out of the slenderest outline. [Sidenote: _Othello_, Act III.] But no example can shew more strikingly his independence of tragic situation, and his power of concocting dramatic power out of the most meagre elements of story, than the third act of the Othello. It contains no more than the development and triumph of the devilish design which was afterwards to issue in murder and remorse; and other writers would have treated it in no other style than as necessary to prepare the way for the harrowing conclusion. In the Moor's dialogues with Iago, the act of vengeance, ever and anon sternly contemplated, and darkening all with its horror, is yet but one ingredient in the misery of the tale. [Sidenote: So in the end of _Lear_,] These scenes are a tragedy in themselves, the story of the most hideous revolution in a noble nature; and their catastrophe of wretchedness is complete when the tumult of doubt sinks into resolved and desolate conviction,--when the Moor dashes Desdemona from him, and rushes out in uncontrollable agony.--Read also the conclusion of Lear, and learn the same lesson from the economy of that most touching scene. [Sidenote: all is left clear for the one group, the father and his dead child.] The horrors which have gathered so thickly [76:1]throughout the last act, are carefully removed to the background, and free room is left for the sorrowful groupe on which every eye is turned. The situation is simple in the extreme; but how tragically moving are the internal convulsions for the representation of which the poet has worthily husbanded his force! Lear enters with frantic cries, bearing the body of his dead daughter in his arms; he alternates between agitating doubts and wishing unbelief of her death, and piteously experiments on the lifeless corpse; he bends over her with the dotage of an old man's affection, and calls to mind the soft lowness of her voice, till he fancies he can hear its murmurs. Then succeeds the dreadful torpor of despairing insanity, during which he receives the most cruel tidings with apathy, or replies to them with wild incoherence; and the heart flows forth at the close with its last burst of love, only to break in the vehemence of its emotion,--commencing with the tenderness of regret, swelling into choking grief, and at last, when the eye catches the tokens of mortality in the dead, snapping the chords of life in a paroxysm of agonised horror.

Oh, thou wilt come no more; Never, never, never, never, never! --Pray you, undo this button: Thank you, Sir.-- Do you see this?--_Look on her--look_--HER LIPS! _Look there! Look there!_

The application here of the differences thus pointed out is easy enough. Fletcher either would not have chosen so bare a story, or he would have treated it in another guise. [Sidenote: Incidents of _The Two Noble Kinsmen_ story] The incidents which constitute the story are neither many nor highly wrought: they are only the capture of the two knights,--their becoming enamoured of the lady,--the combat which was to decide their title to her,--and the death of Arcite after it. And no complexity of minor adventures is inserted to disturb the simplicity so presented. [Sidenote: wouldn't have suited Fletcher.] In all this there is nothing which Fletcher could have found sufficient to maintain that continuity and stretch of interest which he always thought necessary. [Sidenote: He'd have added to 'em.] He would have invented accessory circumstances, he would have produced new characters, or thrust the less important person[77:1]ages who now fill the stage, further into the foreground, and more constantly into action: the one simple and inartificial story which we have, possessing none of his mercurial activity of motion, and scarcely exciting a feeling of curiosity, would have been transformed into a complication of intrigues, amidst which the figures who occupy the centre of the piece as it stands, would have been only individuals sharing their importance with others, and scarcely allowed room enough to make their features at all distinguishable.

[Sidenote: Shakspere's handling seen in certain scenes of _The Two Noble Kinsmen_.]

In the management of particular scenes of this play, likewise, certain circumstances are observable, which, separately, seem to go a certain length in establishing Shakspeare's claim to the arrangement, and have considerable force when taken together. [Sidenote: Act I. scene ii. design'd by Shakspere.] The second scene of the first act would appear to have been sketched by him rather than Fletcher, from its containing no activity of incident, and serving no obvious purpose but the development of the character and situation of the two princes; a mode of preparation not at all practised by Fletcher. [Sidenote: Act I. scene iii. also. And] Neither does any consequence flow from the beautiful scene immediately following; a circumstance which points out Shakspeare as having arranged the scene, and would strengthen the evidence of his having written the dialogue, if that required any corroboration. [Sidenote: Act V. scenes i. ii. iii. [? Emilia with the pictures.]] The bareness and undiversified iteration of situation in the first three scenes of the last act form one presumption against the devising of those scenes by Fletcher. [Sidenote: Act V. scene v. also designd by Shakspere.] The economy of the fifth scene of that act, in which Emilia, left alone on the stage, listens to the noise of the combat, is also, to me, strongly indicative of Shakspeare. The contrivance is unusual, but extremely well imagined. I do not recollect an instance in Fletcher bearing the smallest likeness to it, or founded on any principles at all analogous to that which is here called into operation. In Shakspeare, I think we may, in more than one drama, discover something which might have given the germ of it. [Sidenote: Shakspere's expedients for avoiding spectacles; in] He has not only in his historical plays again and again regretted the insufficiency of the means possessed by his stage, or any other, for the representation of such spectacles; but in several of those plays he has devised expedients for avoiding them. In 'Henry V.' we have the battle of Azincour; but the only encounter of [78:1]the opposite parties is that of Pistol and the luckless Signor Dew. [Sidenote: _1 Henry IV._,] In 'the first part of Henry IV.' he has shewn an unwillingness to risk the effect even of a single combat; for in the last scene of that play, where prince Henry engages Hotspur, the spectator's attention is distracted from the fight between them, by the entrance of Douglas, and his attack on the prudent Falstaff. [Sidenote: _Richard II._,] In 'Richard II.' the lists are exhibited for the duel of Bolingbroke and Norfolk, which is inartificially broken off at the very last instant by the mandate of the king. [Sidenote: Emilia in _Two N. K._ I. v., like Lady Macbeth in II. ii. of _Macbeth_.] But a more deeply marked likeness to the spirit in which the scene in 'The Two Noble Kinsmen' is arranged, meets us in Lady Macbeth watching and listening while her husband perpetrates the murder, like a bad angel which delays its flight only till it be assured that the whispered temptation has done its work. And in this combat scene, even the ancient and artless expedient used, of relating important events by messengers brought in for that sole end, and having no part in the action, may be noticed as belonging to an older form of the drama than Fletcher's, and as being very frequently practised by Shakspeare himself.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: The motives of the play of _The Two N. K._]

In quitting our cursory examination of the qualities which distinguish the mechanical arrangement of the play, we may advert to the mode in which those influences are conceived which give motion to the incidents of the story, and regulate its progress. [Sidenote: Dramatic art defin'd.] The dramatic art is a representation of human character in action; and action in human life is prompted by passion, which the other powers of the mind serve only to guide, to modify, or to quell. In the conception of the passions which are chiefly operative in this drama, there seems to be much that is characteristic of a greater poet than Fletcher. [Sidenote: In _The Two N. K._ the moving passions are Love and Jealousy.] In the first place, the passions which primarily originate the action of the piece are simple; they are Love and Jealousy; the purest and most disinterested form of the one, and the noblest and most generous which could be chosen for the other. [Sidenote: This conception is Shakspere's.] The conception is Shakspeare's in its loftiness and magnanimity; and it is his also as being a direct appeal to common sympathies, modified but slightly by partial or fugitive views of nature. [Sidenote: The keeping close to the leading motives, is Shakspere's doing.] But it also resembles him in the singleness and coherence of design with [79:1]which the idea is seized and followed out. It cannot be necessary that I should specifically exemplify the closeness with which those ruling passions are brought to bear on the leading circumstances of the story from first to last. And it is almost equally superfluous to remind you, how far any such adherence to that unity of impulse, operates as evidence in a question between the two poets whom we have here to compare. [Sidenote: Fletcher's inability to work a character out, to keep one passion always in the front.] Fletcher, in common with other poets of all ranks inferior to the highest, is unable to preserve any one form of passion or of character skilfully in the foreground: he may seem occasionally to have proposed to himself the prosecution of such an end, but he either degenerates into the exhibition of a few over-wrought dramatic contrasts, or loses his way altogether amidst the complicated adventures with which he incumbers his stories. [Sidenote: Shakspere's definite purpose and keeping to it.] This inability to keep sight of an uniform design, is in truth one striking argument of inferiority; and the clearness with which Shakspeare conceives a definite purpose, and the fixedness with which he pursues it, go very far to unravel the great secret of his power. [Sidenote: His relying on the emotion he puts into his characters.] I have already pointed out to you, perhaps without necessity, wherein it is that his strength of passion consists; that it is not in the incidents of his fable, but in his mode of treating the incidents; that he will not rely on mere vigour or skill of outline in his stage-grouping, for that influence which he is conscious of being always able to acquire more worthily, by the beauty and emotion which he breathes into the organic formation of the living statuary of the scene; that he refuses to sacrifice to the meretricious attraction of strained situations or entangled incidents, the internal and self-supporting strength of his historical pictures of the heart, or the unflinching accuracy of his demonstrations of the intellectual anatomy. [Sidenote: Shakspere's unity of purpose, seen in his conception, and his carrying this out.] In a similar way you will look for his unity of purpose, not in the mechanical economy of his plots, but in the elementary conception of his characters, and in his developement of the principles of passion under whose suggestions those characters act. [Sidenote: Shakspere's conception of character, and method of developing it.] He chooses as the subject of his delineation some mightily and truly conceived impersonation of human attributes, inconsistent it may be in itself, but faithful to its prototype as being inconsistent according to the rules which guide inconsistency in our enigmati[80:1]cal mental constitution; for the exhibition of the character so imagined he devises some chain of events by which its internal springs of action may be brought into play; and he traces the motion and results of those spiritual impulses with an undeviating steadiness of design, which turns aside neither to raise curiosity nor to gratify a craving for any other mean excitement. Some singular instances of Shakspeare's fine judgment in clinging to one great design, are furnished by the 'Othello.' [Sidenote: Desdemona's murder compard with Annabella's (by Ford).] The death of Desdemona has been compared with the murder of Annabella, a scene (evidently drawn from it) in a drama of Ford's on a story which makes the flesh creep. [Sidenote: Ford's above Shakspere's in pathos.] Some have pronounced Ford's scene superior in pathos to Shakspeare's: I think it is decidedly so. The tender mournfulness of the language and few images is exquisite, and the sweet sad monotonous melody of the versification is indescribably affecting. Is it from weakness that Shakspeare has not given to the death of his gentle lady an equally strong impress of pathos? No. He was not indeed susceptible of the feminine abandonment of Ford; but he was equal to a manly tone of feeling, fitted to excite a truer sympathy. [Sidenote: Why? Because of Shakspere's self-restraint.] He has refused to stretch the chords of feeling to the utmost in favour of Desdemona; and his refusal has a design and meaning in it. [Sidenote: The mind of Othello is the centre of Shakspere's play,] There is anguish in the scene, and the most utter yielding to overpowering sorrow; but it is the Moor who feels those emotions, and it is the exhibition of his mind which is the leading end of this scene, as of the rest of the drama. [Sidenote: and the pathos of Desdemona's death must be kept down.] The suffering lady is but an inferior actor in the scene; her situation is brought out with perfect skill and genuine tenderness, so far as it is consistent with the first object and illustrative of it; but its expression is arrested at the point where its further developement would have marred the effect of the scene as a whole, and broken in on its pervading spirit. Ford had no such aim in view; and the very scene of his which is so beautiful in itself, loses almost all its force when regarded as a part of the play in which it is inserted.

These principles of Shakspeare's could be traced as influencing the drama of the 'Two Noble Kinsmen,' even if there were nothing farther to shew their effect than what has been already [81:1]noticed. But their power is displayed still more admirably in a second quality in the mode of conception, less open to notice, but breathing actively through all. There is skill in the mental machinery which gives motion to the story; but there is even greater art in the application of a hidden influence, which controls the action of the moving power, and equalizes its effects. [Sidenote: Shakspere's art in subduing all _The Two Noble Kinsmen_ to one Friendship.] That secret principle is Friendship, the operation of which is shewn most distinctly in the Kinsmen, guiding every part of their behaviour except where their mutual claim to Emilia's love comes into operation, never extinct even there, though its effect be sometimes suspended, and awakening on the approach of Arcite's death, with a warmth which is natural as well as touching. [Sidenote: Love of Friends the leading idea of _The Two Noble Kinsmen_.] But this feeling has a farther working: Love of Friends is in truth the leading idea of the piece: the whole drama is one sacrifice on the altar of one of the holiest influences which affect the mind of man. Palamon and Arcite are the first who bow down before the shrine, but Theseus and Perithous follow, and Emilia and her sister do homage likewise. [Sidenote: The harmony of its parts, an idea beyond Fletcher.] This singular harmony of parts was an idea perfectly beyond Fletcher's reach; and the execution of it was equally unfit for his attempting. The discrimination, the delicate relief, with which the different shades of the affection are elaborated, is inimitable. The love of the Princesses does not issue in action; it is a placid feeling, which gladly contemplates its own likeness in others, or turns back with memory to the vanished hours of childhood: with Theseus and his friend, the passion is exhibited dimly, as longing for exertion, but not gifted with opportunity; and in the Kinsmen, it bursts out into full activity, quelling all but the one omnipotent passion, and tempering and purifying even it. With this exception, you will not look for much of Shakspeare's skill in delineating character. [Sidenote: Not much of Shakspere's characterization in _The Two Noble Kinsmen_.] The features of the two Princes are aptly enough distinguished; but neither in them, nor in any of the others, is there an approach to his higher efforts. You will recollect that in his acknowledged works those finer and deeper pryings into character have place only in few instances; and that the greater number of his dramas depend for their effect chiefly on other causes, some of which are energetic in this very play.

[82:1]While you successively inspected particular passages in this play, your attention was necessarily called both to the character of its imaginative portions, and to the tone of reflection which is so frequently assumed in it. [Sidenote: Whose is the ruling temper of _The Two Noble Kinsmen_?] The drama having been now put entirely before you, I shall wish you to ponder its ruling temper as a whole, and to determine whether that temper is Fletcher's, or belongs to a more thoughtful, inquisitive, and solemn mind. [Sidenote: Seek in it the mind of its author.] When you institute such a reconsideration, I shall be desirous that you contemplate the internal spirit of the work from a loftier and more commanding station than that which you formerly occupied; and I shall crave you to view its elements of thought and feeling less as the qualities of a literary work, than as the signs and results of the mental constitution of its author. [Sidenote: The duty of our reverence for Shakspere, the Star of Poets, being intelligent.] I cannot regard as altogether foreign to our leading purpose any inquiry which may hold out the promise of illustrating the characteristics of Shakspeare even slightly, and of teaching us to mingle a more active discernment in the reverence with which we look up to the Star of Poets from the common level of our unendowed humanity. You will therefore have the patience to accompany me in the suggestion of some queries as to the character of his mode of thinking, and the way in which his reflective spirit and his poetical qualities of mind are combined and influence each other. We may be able to perceive the more distinctly the real character both of his intellect and his poetical faculty, if you will consent that our investigation shall set out from a point which you may be inclined to consider somewhat more remote than is altogether necessary. [Sidenote: We'll treat 1. the true functions of Poetry, 2. its true province.] It is to be desired that we should have clearly in our view, first, the true functions of the poetical faculty, and, secondly, the province in poetical invention which legitimately belongs to the imagination, properly so called. Sound conclusions on both these points are indispensable to sound criticism on individual specimens of the poetical art; and when we attempt to reason on particular cases, without having those conclusions placed prominently in view at the outset, the vagueness of ordinary language makes us constantly liable to lose sight of their true grounds and distinctions. The laying down of such principles at the institution of an inquiry into the poetical character of a great [82:2]poet, is therefore in no degree less useful, than the inculcating of familiar truths is in the instructions of religious and moral teachers; the end in each of the cases being, not the establishing of new principles, but the placing of known and admitted ones in an aspect which shall render them influential; and the necessity in each, arising from the danger which exists lest the principles, acknowledged in the abstract, should in practice be wholly disregarded.

[Sidenote: Contrast of the Arts of Poetry and Design, in Lessing's _Laocoon_.]

We can in no way discover the real character and objects of the Poetical Art so easily as by contrasting it with the Arts of Design; and the materials for such a comparison are afforded by the Laocoon of Lessing. [Sidenote: The Greeks subordinated Expression to Beauty.] The principles established in that admirable essay will scarcely be now disputed, and may be fairly enough summed up in the following manner.[83:1]--A study of the Grecian works of art convinces us, that "among the ancients Beauty was the presiding law of those arts which are occupied with Form;" that, to that supreme object, the Greek artists sacrificed every collateral end which might be inconsistent with it; and that, in particular, they expressed the external signs of mental commotion and bodily suffering, to no farther extent than that which allowed Beauty to be completely preserved. [Sidenote: And all Design must do the same, because] Now, that this subordination of Expression to Beauty is a fundamental principle of art, and not a mere accidental quality of Grecian art individually, is proved by considering the peculiar constitution and mechanical necessities of art. Its representations are confined to a single instant of time; and that one circumstance imposes on it two limitations, which necessarily produce the characteristic quality of the Grecian works. [Sidenote: 1. the expression must be caught before the highest passion is attaind;] First, "the expression must never be selected from what may be called the _acme_ or transcendent point of the action;" and that because, the power of the arts of design being confined to the arresting of a single point in the developement of an action, it is indispensable that they should select a point which is in the highest degree significant, and most fully excites the imagination; a condition [83:2]which is fulfilled only by those points in an action in which the action moves onward, and the passion which prompts it increases; and which is not fulfilled in any degree by the highest stage of the passion and the completion of the action. [Sidenote: 2. because the expression must not be that of a momentary feeling.] [Sidenote: But Poetry is not bound by the limits of the Fine Arts.] [Sidenote: It can seize passion at its height.] Secondly, a limitation is imposed as to the choice of the proper point in the onward progress of the action: for art invests with a motionless and unchanging permanence the point of action which it selects; and consequently any appearance which essentially possesses the character of suddenness and evanescence is unfit to be its subject, since the mind cannot readily conceive such transitory appearances as stiffened into that monumental stability.--Since it is by the limitation of the Fine Arts to the representation of a single instant of time that the two limitations in point of expression are imposed, and since Poetry is not subject to that mechanical limitation, but can describe successively every stage of an action, and every phasis of a passion, it follows that this latter art is not fettered by the limitation in expression, which is consequent on the physical limitation of the other; and hence the exhibition of passion in its height is as allowable in poetry as it is inadmissible in the arts of design. [Sidenote: Beauty is but one of its many resources.] And since the whole range and the whole strength of human thought, action, and passion, are thus left open to the poet as subjects of his representation, it follows likewise, that Beauty "can never be more than one amongst many resources, (and those the slightest,) by which he has it in his power to engage our interest for his characters."

It will be remarked, that the purport of Lessing's reasoning, so far as he has in express terms carried it, is no more than to demonstrate the important truth, that the Fine Arts are confined by certain limits to which Poetry is not subject. His elucidation of the principles of poetry is purely incidental and negative. His reasoning seems however necessarily to infer certain further consequences, the examination of which has a tendency to cast additional light on the true end and character of the poetical art: and it is for this reason rather than from any difficulty lying in the way of those implied results, that I wish now to direct your notice to their nature, and the grounds on which [84:1]their soundness rests. [Sidenote: Design must represent Form of permanent feelings.] Lessing's second canon does not assume the arts of design as pursuing any further end than their original and obvious one, the Representation of Form: it simply directs that only those appearances of form shall be represented which admit of being conceived as permanent. [Sidenote: The object of Art, a true representation of the Beautiful.] And as the feelings which art desires to awaken are pleasurable, and as forms, considered merely _as_ forms, give pleasure only when they are beautiful, art would thus be regarded as proposing for its object nothing beyond a Representation of the Beautiful, and Verisimilitude in that representation. The first rule of limitation however implies a great deal more: it looks to forms, not as such, but as tokens significant of certain qualities not inherent in their own nature: for the quality which it requires to be possessed by works of art, is a capability of exciting the imagination to frame for itself representations of human action and passion; and in this view, those feelings which the qualities of form considered as such are calculated to arouse, are no more than an accidental part of the impression which the representation makes. It appears, therefore, that art _may_ pursue two different ends,--the excitement of the feeling which Beauty inspires, and the excitement of the feeling which has its root in human Sympathy; and the question at once occurs,--Is each of these purposes of art equally a part of its original and proper province? [Sidenote: May it also try to excite feelings inconsistent with the Beautiful, as Poetry does?] Or, since it is sufficiently clear that the effects which the last-mentioned canon contemplates as produced by the fine arts, are effects which are also produced by poetry, (whether its sole effects or not, it is immaterial to this question to settle,) the question may be put in another form:--Is it to be believed, that the arts of design, which have admittedly for one purpose the reproduction of the Beautiful in form, have also as an equally proper and original purpose the framing of representations of form calculated to affect the mind with feelings different from the feeling of the Beautiful,--these feelings being identically the same with those which are at least the most obvious effects of poetry? [Sidenote: No.] Reasons crowd in upon the mind, evincing that the question must be answered by an unqualified negative. The production of poetical effects cannot have been an _original_ purpose of the fine arts, which certainly were brought into existence [85:1]by the love of Beauty; and the production of those effects is plainly also an exertion in which the fine arts overstep their limits, and wander into the region which belongs of right to the poetical art, and to it alone. [Sidenote: Expression in Painting and Sculpture is a borrowd quality.] That Expression in painting and sculpture is an extraneous and borrowed quality, is made almost undeniably evident by this one consideration, that it requires, as we have seen, to be always kept subdued, and allowed to enter only partially into the composition of the work. [Sidenote: That Fine Art is admired most when it has most expression, only shows that] And, again, it is no argument against that position, to say that the strongest and most general interest and admiration are excited by those works of art in which expression is permitted to go the utmost length which the physical limits of the art permit. [Sidenote: Poetry stirs men more than pure Art does.] For the universality of this preference only proves, that the feelings of our common humanity influence more minds than does the pure love of the beautiful; and the greater strength of the feeling produced by expression, only evinces that poetry, which works its effect by means of that quality, is a more powerful engine than the sister-art for stirring up the depths of our nature. And it may be quite true that those works of art which confine themselves to the attempt to move the calmer feeling due to Beauty, are the truest to their own nature and proper aim, although an endeavour to unite with that the attainment of higher purposes may be admissible, and in some instances highly successful. I apprehend that although an art should propose as its main end the production of one particular effect, it does not follow that its effects should be confined to the production of that alone, if its physical conditions permit the partial pursuit of others. [Sidenote: Fine Art _may_ borrow from its loftier sister, Poetry,] More especially, if an art should admit of uniting, to a certain extent, with its own peculiar and legitimate end, the prosecution of another loftier than the first, surely we might expect to find such an art occasionally taking advantage of the license; and yet its doing so would not compel us to say, that both these are its proper and original purposes. [Sidenote: but Classic Art very rarely does, and rightly.] And the fact is, that the attempt is seldom made; for very few works of classical art exist in which the union of the two principles is tried, the end sought being usually the representation of beauty, and that alone. In no way, however, can the radical difference and opposition between the two qualities be evinced so satisfactorily as by a comparison [86:1]of the effects which they severally produce on the mind. [Sidenote: Expression belongs to Poetry. It excites.] [Sidenote: Poetry stirs men.] Expression, the poetical element, gives rise to a peculiar activity of the soul, a certain species of reflective emotion, which, it is true, is easily distinguishable from underived passion, and does not necessarily produce like it a tendency to action, but which yet essentially partakes of the character of mental commotion, and is opposed to the idea of mental inactivity. [Sidenote: Beauty soothes them.] The feeling which Beauty awakens is of a character entirely opposite. The contemplation of the Beautiful begets an inclination to repose, a stillness and luxurious absorption of every mental faculty: thought is dormant, and even sensation is scarcely followed by the perception which is its usual consequence. [Sidenote: Look at the Venus de Medici.] It is with this softness and relaxation of mind that we are inspired when we look on such works as the Venus de Medici, in which beauty is sole and supreme, and expression is permitted to be no farther present than as it is necessary as an indication of the internal influence of soul, that so those sympathies may be awakened, without whose partial action even beauty itself possesses no power. [Sidenote: When ancient art stirs you, as in the] If we turn to those few works of ancient art, in which the opposite element is admitted, we are conscious that the soul is differently acted upon, and we may be able by reflection to disentangle the ravelled threads of feeling, and distinguish the mental changes which flow upon and through each other like the successive waves on the sea-beach. [Sidenote: Apollo and] In contemplating the Apollo, for instance, a feeling akin to the poetical, or rather identical with it, is awakened by the divine majesty of the statue; and upon the quiet and self-brooding luxury with which the heart is filled by the perfect beauty of the youthful outlines, there steals a more fervent emotion which makes us proud to look on the proud figure, which makes us stand more erect while we gaze, and imitate involuntarily that godlike attitude and expression of calm and beautiful disdain. [Sidenote: Laocoon,] [Sidenote: it is by their having left their own ground, and taken that of Poetry, Expression.] Or look to the wonderful Laocoon, in which the abstract feeling of beauty is even more deeply merged in the human feeling of the pathetic,--that extraordinary groupe, in which continued meditation arouses more and more actively the emotion of sympathy, while we view the dark and swimming shadows of the eyes, the absorbed and motionless agony of the mouth, and the tense torture of the iron muscles of [87:1]the body. It is impossible to conceive that an art can propose to itself, as originally and properly its own, two ends so difficult of reconcilement and so different in the qualities by which they are brought about. [Sidenote: Lastly, Fine Art appeals to sight.] [Sidenote: Poetry never does.] Finally, the Plastic Arts offer form directly to the sense of sight, whereas it is very doubtful whether poetry can convey, even indirectly, any visual image. [Sidenote: If Fine Art rightly includes Expression, then it has Beauty too; while Poetry, which can't express Beauty directly, has to give up part of its province, Expression, to Art, which can't use it fully.] Consequently, the result of admitting Expression as a primary and legitimate end of the arts of form, would be to ascribe to them an innate and underived capability of presenting directly to the senses both beauty and the wide circle of human action and feeling; while the genius of Poetry, by her nature shut out from direct representation of the beautiful, whose shadows she can evoke only through the agency of associated ideas, would have even her own kingdom of thought and passion, her power as the great interpreter of mind, shared with her by a rival, whom the decision would acknowledge indeed as possessing a right to the divided empire, but who is disqualified by the nature of her instruments from exercising that sovereignty to the full. [Sidenote: Poetry rather lends its help to its narrower ally, Art.] And, on the other hand, by the acknowledgment that the arts of form are not properly a representation of human action or human passion, and that when they aim at becoming so, they attempt a task which is above and beyond their sphere, and in which their success can never be more than partial, Poetry is exhibited in an august and noble aspect, as stooping to lend a share in her broad and lofty dominion to another art of narrower scope, which is so enabled to gain over the mind an influence of transcending its own unassisted capacities.

[Sidenote: The aims of Poetry:]

If you shall be able to think this excursive disquisition justifiable, it will be because it insensibly leads us to perceive what truly is the legitimate and sole end of the Poetical Art, and because it thus clears the way for one or two elementary propositions regarding the functions of the Poetical Faculty. [Sidenote: 1. not to represent Beauty to the eye, but only to the mind.] First, we perceive that poetry does not aim at the representation of visual beauty. I do not say that beauty may not form the subject of poetry: my meaning is, that the poet can depict it poetically in no way except by indicating its effects on the mind. When poetry mistakingly attempts to represent beauty by its external form, its failure to affect the mind is signal and complete, and must be [88:1]so, even supposing it to be possible that the picture should be so full and accurate that the painter might sketch from it. The reason of this is perhaps discoverable. [Sidenote: Contrast of the effects of Beauty and Expression, of Fine Art and Poetry, on the mind.] Such a description cannot affect the mind with the poetical sentiment, because it does not represent to the imagination those qualities by which it is that the poetical effect is produced; and if it were to move the mind at all, it must be with those feelings which beauty excites when it is seen corporeally present. It fails to operate even this effect, and why? Beauty of form affects the mind through the intervention of sense; and the perception of the sensible qualities of form is followed instantaneously and necessarily by the pleasurable emotion. [Sidenote: Beauty gives pleasure, rest, absorption.] This mental process is involuntary, and the nature of the sentiment excited implies inactivity and absorption of the mind. [Sidenote: Poetry stirs the Imagination, the Will, disturbs the passiveness that Beauty produces.] When however the imagination is called on to combine into a connected whole the scattered features which words successively present, an effort of the will is necessary: and the failure in the pleasurable effect appears to be adequately accounted for (independently of any imperfection in the result of the combination) by the inconsistency of this degree of mental activity with the inert frame of mind which is requisite for the actual contemplation and enjoyment of the beautiful. [Sidenote: It can't produce an image by sight, but only by association.] When, again, the poet represents beauty in the method chalked out for him by the nature of his art, it is quite impossible that he can convey any distinct visual image; for he represents the poetical qualities by indicating them as the causes which produce some particular temper or frame of mind: and as every mind has its distinctive differences of association, a truly poetical picture is not realised by any two minds with precisely similar features. [Sidenote: Its effect is opposite to that of Beauty of Form.] And the mood of mind to which this representation gives birth, is radically opposite to the other; it is active, sympathetic, and even reflective: we seem, as it were, to share the feeling with others, to derive an added delight from witnessing the manner in which they are affected, or even to have the original passive sentiment of pleasure entirely swallowed up in that energetic emotion.[89:1] [Sidenote: 2. Poetry's true subject is Mind, and not external nature,] Secondly, the true subject of poetry is [90:1]Mind. Its most strictly original purpose is that of imaging mind _directly_, by the representation of humanity as acting, thinking, or suffering; it presents images of external nature only because the weakness of the mind compels it; and it is careful to represent sensible images solely as they are acted on by mind. [Sidenote: except as tinged with thought and feeling.] When it makes the description of external nature its professed end, it in truth does not represent the sensible objects themselves, but only exhibits certain modes of thought and feeling, and characterises the sensible forms no farther than as the causes which produce them. [Sidenote: 3. Poetry is analytical; it perceives, discriminates.] Thirdly, The most characteristic function of the poetical faculty is _analytical_; it is essentially a _perception_, a power of discovery, analysis, and discrimination. An object having been presented to it by the imagination, it discovers, and separates from the mass of its qualities, those of them which are calculated to affect the mind with that emotion which is the instrumental end of poetry. [Sidenote: Its combinations depend on its first analysis.] Coincidently with the perception and discovery of the qualities, it perceives and experiences the peculiar effect which each particular quality produces; and, lastly, it sets forth and represents those resulting moods of mind, indicating at the same time what those qualities of the object are through which they are excited. Its task of combination is no more than consequent on this process, and supposes each step of it to have been previously gone through. [Sidenote: 4. Poetry depends on the power and accuracy of its perception of the poetical qualities in its materials.] Fourthly, It follows, (and this is the result which makes the inquiry important,) that the poetical faculty is measured by the strength and accuracy with which it perceives the poetical qualities of those objects which the imagination suggests as its materials, and not by the number of the ideas so presented. [Sidenote: Of imagination or Imagery.] A forgetfulness of this truth has occasioned more misapprehension and [90:2]false criticism than any other error whatever; and we are continually in danger of the mistake, from the extension of meaning which use has attached to the word imagination, that term being commonly employed to designate the poetical faculty. This extended application is perhaps unavoidable; but it is on that account the more necessary to guard against the misconception always likely to arise from the original signification of the word, which we can never discard entirely from the mind in using it in a secondary sense.--You do not need to be reminded how completely the history of the poetical art evinces, that these positions, whether expressly acquiesced in or not, have been invariably acted on in the judgments which the world has pronounced in particular cases. [Sidenote: Describing forms by their outsides, is not Poetry.] [Sidenote: They must be shown as exciting changes of Mind.] The inadequacy of a representation of forms by their external attributes to constitute poetical pictures, could be instanced from every bad poem which has ever been written; and the great truth, that the external world is exhibited poetically only by being represented as the exciting cause of mental changes, has been illustrated in no age so singularly as in our own. [Sidenote: Wordsworth declares that all outward objects can do this, and become sentient existences.] The writings of Wordsworth in particular have stretched the principle to the utmost extent which it can possibly sustain; demanding a belief that all external objects are poetical, because all can interest the human mind; establishing the reasonableness of the assumption by the boldest confidence in the strength and delicacy with which the poetical perception can trace the qualities which awaken that interest, and the progress of the feeling itself; and applying the poetical faculty to the transforming of every object of sense into an energetic, and as it were sentient, existence. [Sidenote: Mere wealth of imagery is of little worth.] And attention is especially due to the decision which has always recognized, as the rule of poetical excellence, the operation of some power independent of mere wealth of imagination, ranking this latter quality as one of the lowest merits of poetry. [Sidenote: The greatest poets use the fewest images,] We are apt to forget that those minds whose conceptions have been the most strongly and truly poetical, are by no means those whose poetical ideas have been the most abundant; that an overflow of poetical images has been coincident with an intense perception of their most efficient poetical relations only in a few rare instances; and that it is precisely where the highest elements of the poetical are most active that [91:1]the imagination is usually found to offer the fewest images as the materials on which the poetical faculty should work. [Sidenote: witness Dante, Alfieri.] It is enough to name Dante, or, a still more singular instance, Alfieri. [Sidenote: Their intensity is their secret.] In both cases the poetical influence rests on the intensity of the one simple aspect of grandeur or passion in which a character is presented, and in both that simplicity is unrelieved and undecorated by any fulness of imagery.[91:2]

[Sidenote: Application of these principles to the Drama.]

These fundamental principles of the poetical art possess a closer application to Dramatic Poetry than to any other species. [Sidenote: The Passions are the chief subjects of Poetry.] All poetry being directly or indirectly a representation of human character; and human character admitting of appreciation only by an exhibition of its results in action; and action being prompted by the passionate impulses of the mind, which its reflective faculties only modify or stay; it follows that the Passions are the leading subjects of Poetry, which consequently must be examined in the first instance with a view to its strength and accuracy as a representation of the working and results of that department of the mind. The nature of the dramatic art allows this rule to be applied to it with the greatest strictness. [Sidenote: They work more alone in the Drama than elsewhere.] The drama is the species which presents the essential qualities of poetry less mingled with foreign adjuncts than they are in any other species; and there seems to be a cause, (independent of its mechanical necessities,) enabling it to dispense with those decorations which abound in other kinds of poetry. The acted drama presents its picture of life directly to the senses, and permits the imagination, without any previous exertion, to proceed at once to its proper task of forming its own combinations from the sensible forms thus offered to it; and even when the drama is read, the office of the imagination in representing to itself the action and the characters of the piece, is an easy one, and performed without the necessity of great activity of mind. [Sidenote: In Epic and other poetry relying only on words, the effort to turn them into a picture hinders their prompt action.] On the other hand, in the epic, or any other species of poetry which represents action by [92:1]words, and not by an imitation of the action itself, the imagination has at first to form, from the successively presented features of the poetical description, a picture which shall be the exciting cause of the poetical impression: this supposes considerable energy of thought, and the necessity of relief from that exertion seems to have suggested the introduction of images of external nature and the like, on which the fancy may rest and disport itself. [Sidenote: Didactic poetry is not true poetry, but sermons in verse.] Those classes of poetry which are either partially or wholly didactic, cannot receive a strict application of the principles of the pure art; because they are not properly poetry, but attempts to make poetical forms serve purposes which are not poetical.

[Sidenote: Shakspere again.]

Our journey has at length conducted us to Shakspeare, of many of whose peculiar qualities we have been gaining scattered glimpses in our progress. [Sidenote: He takes to Drama, because it's the noblest and truest form of Poetry, the likest the mind of man.] We remark him adopting that species of poetry which, necessarily confined by its forms, is yet the noblest offspring of the poetical faculty, and the truest to the purposes of the poetical art, because it is the most faithful and impressive image of the mind and state of man. [Sidenote: And there he sits enthrond.] We find him seated like an eastern sovereign amidst those who have adopted this highest form of poetry; and we cannot be contented that, in reverentially acknowledging his worthiness to fill the throne, we should render him only a hasty and undiscerning homage. [Sidenote: But why?] A discrimination of the particular qualities by which his sway is mainly supported, is rendered the more necessary by that extraordinary union of qualities, which has made him what he is, the unapproached and the unapproachable.--We are accustomed to lavish commendations on his vast Imagination. [Sidenote: What does his _Imagination_ mean?] Before we can perceive what rank this quality of his deserves to hold in an estimate of his character, we must understand precisely what the quality is which we mean to praise. [Sidenote: his wealth of imagery?] If the term used denotes merely the abundance of his illustrative conceptions, it expresses what is a singular quality, especially as co-existent with so many other endowments, but useful only as furnishing materials for the use of the poetical power. [Sidenote: of fancy, of conception?] If the word is meant to call attention to the strength and delicacy with which his mind grasps and embodies the poetical relations of those overflowing conceptions, (still considered simply as illustrative or decorative,) [93:1]the quality indicated is a rare and valuable gift, and is especially to be noted in an attempt to trace a likeness to his manner. [Sidenote: No.] Still however it is but a secondary ground of desert; it is even imperfectly suited for developement in dramatic dialogue, and it frequently tempts him to quit the genuine spirit and temper of his scene. [Sidenote: Does Shakspere's imagination mean the grandeur or loveliness he has given some of his characters?] If, again, in speaking of the great poet's imagination, we have regard to the poetical character of many of his leading conceptions, to the ideal grandeur or terror of some of his preternatural characters, or even to the romantic loveliness which he has thrown, like the golden curtains of the morning, over the youth and love of woman,--we point out a quality which is admirable in itself, and almost divine in its union with others so opposite, a quality to which we are glad to turn for repose from the more severe portions of his works,--but still an excellence which is not the most marked feature of his character, and which he could want without losing the essential portion of his identity. [Sidenote: No.] [Sidenote: We could give up Miranda, Ariel, Juliet, Romeo, and yet leave the true, the highest Shakspere behind, in Richard, Macbeth, Lear, Hamlet.] We could conceive, (although the idea is sacrilege to the genius and the altar of poetry,) we could conceive that 'The Tempest' had remained unwritten, that Miranda had not made inexperience beautiful by the spell of innocence and youth, that the hideous slave Caliban had never scowled and cursed, nor Ariel alighted on the world like a shooting-star,--we could dismiss alike from our memories the moon-light forest in which the Fairy Court revel, and the lurid and spectre-peopled ghastliness of the cave of Hecate,--we could in fancy remove from the gallery of the poet's art the picture which exhibits the two self-destroyed lovers lying side by side in the tomb of the Capulets,--and we could discard from our minds, and hold as never having been invented by the poet, all which we find in his works possessing a character similar to these scenes and figures;--and yet we should leave behind that which would support Shakspeare as having pursued the highest ends of his art, and as having attained those ends more fully than any other who ever followed them: Richard would still be his; Macbeth would think and tremble, and Lear weep and be mad; and Hamlet would still pore over the riddle of life, and find in death the solution of its mystery. [Sidenote: These show his Imagination, the force with which he throws himself into their characters.] If it is to such characters as these last that we refer when we speak of the poet's power of imagina[94:1]tion, and if we wish to designate by the word the force with which he throws himself into the conception of those characters, then we apprehend truly what the sphere is in which his greatness lies, although we either describe the whole of a most complicated mental process by naming a single step of it, or load the name of that one mental act with a weight of meaning which it is unfit to bear.

[Sidenote: Shakspere's supremacy lies in his characterization.]

It is here, in his mode of dealing with human character, that Shakspeare's supremacy confessedly lies; and the conclusions which we have reached as to the great purpose of poetry, allow us easily to perceive how excellence in this department justifies the universal decision, which places at the summit of poetical art the poet who is pre-eminently distinguished by it. [Sidenote: Why is his the best?] What is there in Shakspeare's view of human character which entitles him to this high praise? [Sidenote: How is he true to Nature and imagination?] His truth of painting is usually specified as the source of his strength; in what sense is he true to nature? Is that faithfulness to nature consistent with any exercise of the imagination in the representation of character? And how? And again, how does his reflective temper of mind harmonize with or arise out of the view of human life which he takes?

[Sidenote: Poetry (or Drama) represent passions.]

Poetry, as we have seen, and dramatic poetry more strictly than any other species, must be judged primarily as a representation of passion and feeling; and when it is defective as such, it has failed in its proper end. Its prosecution of that end, however, is subject to two important limitations. [Sidenote: But 1. it must show human nature entirely, both its moving and hindering forces; man's mind as well as his passions; 2. it must do this impressively, must have a high standard of character.] First, if it is to be in any sense a _true_ representation of human action, it must represent human nature not partially, but entirely; it must exhibit not only the moving influences which produce action, but also the counteracting forces which in real life always control it. It must be a mirror of the intellectual part of the human mind, as well as of the passionate. Secondly, if, possessing the first requisite, truth, it is to be also an _impressive_ representation, (that is, such a representation as shall effect the ends of poetical art,) it must set up an ideal and elevated standard to regulate its choice of the class of intellectual endowment which is to form the foundation of the characters which it portrays. [Sidenote: Ben Jonson faild in (2), the other Elizabethans in (1).] We discover the cause of Jonson's inferiority in his failure in obedience to the latter of these rules, though he scrupulously complied with [95:1]the first: we discover the prevailing defect of all the other dramatic writers of that period, to consist in their neglect even of the first and subsidiary rule, which involved a complete disregard to the other.--These latter have, as well as Shakspeare, been proposed as models, from their close imitation of nature. [Sidenote: Shakspere's contemporaries don't imitate Nature, they distort it, give Passion, and no Reason.] The merit of truth to nature belongs to them only in a very confined sense. They seize one oblique and partial aspect of human character, and represent it as giving a true and direct view of the whole; they are the poets of the passions, and no more; they have failed to shadow forth that control which the calmer principles of our nature always exert over the active propensities. Their excellence consequently is to be looked for only in scenes which properly admit the force of unchecked passion, or of passions conflicting with each other; and in those scenes where the more thoughtful spirit ought to work, we must be prepared to meet either exaggeration of feeling or feebleness of thought, either the operation of an evil principle, or, at best, a defect of the good one. [Sidenote: They like to show the mind in delirium.] Even in their passionate scenes, the vigour of the drawing is the merit oftener than the faithfulness of the portrait; they delight to figure the human mind as in a state of delirium, with the restraining forces taken off, and the passions and the imagination boiling, as if the brain were maddened by opiates or fever. Fierce and exciting visions come across the soul in such a paroxysm; and in the intensity of its stimulated perceptions, it gazes down into the abysses of nature, with a profound though transitory quickness of penetration. It is a high merit to have exhibited those partial views of nature, or even this exaggerated phasis of the mind; and the praise is shared by no dramatic school whatever; (for the qualities of the ancient are different;) but it must not be assumed that the drama fulfils its highest purposes, by representations so partial, so distorted, or so disproportioned. [Sidenote: They are poets of impulse.] As these poets of impulse bestowed no part of their attention on the intellect in any view, they produced their peculiar effect, such as it was, without any attempt at that higher task of selection and elevation in intellectual character for which the universality of views which they wanted must always serve as the foundation. [Sidenote: Ben Jonson as broad in aim as Shakspere.] They had accordingly little scope for the due introduction of reflection in their works; and their turn of mind inclined them little to [96:1]search for it when it did not naturally present itself.--Jonson resembled Shakspeare in wideness of aim: he is most unlike him in the method which he adopted in the pursuit of his end. [Sidenote: Ben Jonson tried at truth to nature,] The two stood alone in their age and class, as alone aiming at truth to nature in any sense; both wished to read each of the opposite sides of the scroll of human character: but the one read correctly the difficult writing in which intellectual character is traced, while the other misapprehended and misinterpreted its meaning, and even allowed the eagerness with which he perused this perplexing page, to withdraw his attention from the more easy meaning of the other. [Sidenote: but drew individuals only, portraits of reality, but no types,] The fault of his characters as intellectual beings, is that they are individuals and no more; faithful or grotesque portraits of reality, they are not touched with that purple light which affords insight into universal relations and hidden causes. [Sidenote: not poetic creations.] His failure is shewn by its effect: his characters are not so conceived as to lead the mind to the comprehension of anything beyond their own individual peculiarities, or to elevate it into that region of active and conceptive contemplation into which it is raised by the finest class of poetry: he exhibited reality as reality, and not in its relation to possibility; he even diverges into the investigation of causes, instead of seeing them at a glance, and indicating them by effects; he anatomised human life, and hung up its dry bones along the walls of his study.

In the close obedience which Shakspeare rendered to each of these two canons, borne in upon his mind by the instantaneous suggestions of his happy genius, we may discover the origin of his tremendous power. [Sidenote: Shakspere's power lay in subordinating Fancy and Passion to Intellect.] To commence at the point where his adherence to the first and subsidiary rule is most slightly manifested, it is to be noticed, that his works are marked throughout by a predominance of the qualities of the understanding over the fancy and the passions. This is not true of the fundamental conception of the work, nor of the relations by which his characters are united into the dramatic groupes; in these particulars the poetical faculty is allowed to work freely: but it is after the initial steps have been taken under her guidance, that the rule is committed to the sterner power of intellect. The stir of fancy often breaks through the restraints which hold it in check; the warmth of feeling effervesces very unfrequently. [Sidenote: All his characters have quiet good sense.] [Sidenote: Shakspere's shrewdness in his minor scenes.] The poet's personages [97:1]are all more or less marked by an air of quiet sense, which is extremely unusual in poetry, and incompatible with the unnecessary or frequent display of feeling; and accordingly, his less important scenes, whether they be gay or serious, occupied in the business of the drama, or devoted to an exchange of witty sallies, possess, where they aim at nothing higher, at least a degree of intellectual shrewdness, which very often savours of worldly coldness. [Sidenote: His soberness gives force to his passion.] Viewed merely as increasing the effect of his passionate scenes, this prevailing sobriety of tone gives him an incalculable advantage: passion in his works bursts out when it is let loose, like the spring of a mastiff unchained. [Sidenote: Shakspere's sober rationality.] It is of this quality, his sober rationality, that we are apt to think when we acknowledge his truth of representation; and the excellence is indispensable to truth in any sense, because the want of it gives birth to imperfection and distortion of views; but I apprehend that it is to his aiming at a higher purpose that we have to look for the genuine source of his power. [Sidenote: But he didn't reproduce the bare reality.] While we mark the gradual rise of the intellectual element of poetical character upwards from its lowest stage, we are in truth approximating to a rule which issues in something beyond a bare and unselected reproduction of reality. [Sidenote: Poetry aims at general truth, brings out the relation of one mind to universal nature; it idealizes and ennobles realities.] Poetry aims at representing the whole of man's nature; and yet a picture of human character, embracing all its features, but neither skilfully selecting its aspect nor majestically combining its component parts, would not effect the ends of poetry: for that art contemplates not individual but general truth, not that which is really produced, but that which may be conceived without doing violence to acknowledged principles; instead of presenting a bare portraiture of mental changes, it exhibits them in an aspect which teaches their relation to the system of universal nature; it is seemingly conversant with facts, but it imperceptibly hints at causes; it aims at exciting the imagination to frame pictures for itself, and for that reason, if for no other, it must be permitted to idealize and ennoble the individual realities from which its materials are collected. [Sidenote: A Painting pictured a soldier in the midst of foes, yet showd him alone.] The mode in which poetry affects the mind is illustrated by the description which we read of a certain ancient painting. That piece represented a young soldier surrounded by several enemies and desperately defending himself; but his own figure alone was [98:1]admitted into the field of view, and the motions and place of his unseen enemies were indicated solely by the life, energy, and significance of the attitude in which he was drawn. Shakspeare's attachment to truth of representation never tempted him to forget the true purpose of his art. [Sidenote: Shakspere is true to nature in Poetry's way.] [Sidenote: His characters are not monsters of evil,] While he is true to nature by attempting the treatment of his whole subject, he is true to it in the manner and with the restrictions which the nature of poetry requires; he is true to principles which admit of being conceived as producing effects, not to effects individually observed as resulting; the creatures of his conception possess no qualities which unfit them for exciting the mind as poetical character should excite it; they are not repulsive by the unexampled and unatoned for congregation of evil qualities, not mean by the absence of lofty thought, not devoid of poetical significance by confining the imagination to the qualities by which they are individually marked. [Sidenote: nor are they above the influence of evil.] You will particularly remark, that, while he had to bring out the features of his characters by subjecting them to tragic and calamitous events, he was careful not to figure them as unsusceptible of the influence of those external evils. [Sidenote: Brutus is his one stoical character.] The lofty view which he took of human nature did indeed admit the idea of a resistance to calamity, and a triumph over it, based on internal and conscious grandeur; but this is an aspect in which he does not present the human mind; the stoical Brutus is the only character in which he has attempted such a conception, which he has there developed but partially. But while he was contented, even in his noblest characters, to represent passion in all its strength and directed towards its usual objects, he had open to him sources of tragic strength unknown to those poets who describe passion only. Where passion alone is represented, no spectacle is so agitating as the conflict of contending passions; and the narrowness of such views of nature permits that tragic opposition to be no further exhibited. [Sidenote: Shakspere dealt not with the conflict of Passions only, but with the strife between the Passions and the Reason,] Shakspeare had before him a wider field of contrast--the conflict between the passions and the reason--a struggle between powers inspired with deadly animosity, and each, as he conceived them, possessed of gigantic strength. [Sidenote: convulsing the whole being of man.] He has worthily represented that terrible encounter, engaging every principle and faculty of the soul, and shaking the whole kingdom of man's being with [99:1]internal convulsions. It is in such representations that his power is mainly felt; and his pictures are at the same time truest to nature and most faithful to the ends of tragic art, by the subjugation of the intellectual principle which is the catastrophe of the strife. The reason is assaulted by calamity from without, and borne down by an host of rebellious feelings attacking it internally. [Sidenote: Characters showing this mental strife, are specially dear to Shakspere.] It is to the delineation of such characters as afford scope for this exhibition of mental commotion that Shakspeare has especially attached himself: the thoughtful and reflective in character is at once his favourite resort, and the field of his triumph.

[Sidenote: He chose the intellectual and reflective in character.]

The poet's selection of the intellectual and reflective in character, as the subject of his art, is thus indicated as his guiding principle, to whose operation all other principles and rules are but subservient. The reflective element however is in excess with Shakspeare, and its undue prevalence is not destitute of harmony with the principle which produces its legitimately moderated effects. [Sidenote: He's a Gnomic Poet.] He is a Gnomic Poet; and he is so, because he is emphatically the poet of man. [Sidenote: The solemnity of meditation is thro' all his soul.] He pauses, he reflects, he aphorizes; because, looking on life and death as he looked on them, viewing the nature of man from so lofty a station, and with a power of vision so far-reaching, so acute, and so delicate, it was impossible but the deepest solemnity of meditation should diffuse itself through all the chambers of his soul. [Sidenote: He makes his people hint the principles beneath the shews.] His enunciations of general truth are often serious and elevated even in his gayer works; and where the scene denied him an opportunity of introducing these in strict accordance with the business of the drama, he makes his personages, as it were, step out of the groupe, to meditate on the meanings of the scene, to hold a delicately implied communication with the spectator, and to hint the general maxims and principles which lurk beneath the tragic and passionate shews. He has gone beyond this: he has brought on the stage characters whose sole task is meditation, whose sole purpose in the drama is the suggesting of high and serious reflection. [Sidenote: Jaques, in _As You Like It_, is like a Greek chorus, which] Jaques is the perfection of such a character; and the office which he discharges bears more than a fanciful likeness in conception to the task of the ancient chorus. [Sidenote: gave the key-note to the audience.] That forgotten appendage of the Grecian drama originated indeed from incidental causes; but, being continued as a part of the dramatic plan, [100:1]it had a momentous duty assigned to it: it suggested, it interpreted, it sympathised, it gave the key-note to the reflections of the audience. [Sidenote: The highest art made Shakspere insert his reflective passages in his plays.] A profound sense of the highest purposes and responsibilities of the art prompted this employment of the choral songs; and no way dissimilar was the impression which dictated to Shakspeare the introduction of the philosophically cynical lover of nature in that one play, and the breaks of reflection so frequent with him in many others.--It is worthy of remark, that this spirit of penetrating thought, ranging from every-day wisdom to philosophical abstraction, never becomes morose or discontented.[101:1] Man is a selfish being, but not a malignant one; yet the acts resulting from the two dispositions are often very similar, and it is the error of the misanthrope to mistake the one for the other. [Sidenote: Shakspere never made the misanthrope's mistake.] [Sidenote: His sarcasm did not spring from envy.] Shakspeare's well-balanced mind was in no danger of this mistake; his keen-sightedness often makes him sarcastic, but the sarcasm forced on a mind which contrasts the poorness of reality with the splendours of imagination, is of a different temper from that which is bred from lowness of thought and fretful envy. [Sidenote: _Timon's_ sternness is softened by tenderness.] Shakspeare has devoted one admirable drama to the exhibition of the misanthrophic spirit, as produced by wrongs in a noble heart; but the sternness which is the master-note of that work is softened by the most beautiful intervals of redeeming tenderness and good feeling. [Sidenote: _Troilus_ is Shakspere's only bitter play.] The only work of his evidently written in ill humour with mankind, is the Troilus, which, both in idea and execution, is the most bitter of satires.

The application of the distinctive qualities of Shakspeare's tone of thought to the spirit of 'The Two Noble Kinsmen', is a task for your own judgment and discrimination, and would not be aided by suggestions of mine. I have stated the result to which I have been led by such an application; and I am confident that you will be able to reach the same conclusion by a path which may be shorter than any which I could clear for you. In connection however with this inquiry, I would direct your attention to one other truth possessing a clear application here. [Sidenote: Shakspere's thoughtfulness a Moral distinction.] Shakspeare's thoughtfulness goes the length of becoming a Moral distinction and excellence. [Sidenote: His part of _The Two Noble Kinsmen_ is of higher tone, and purer, than Fletcher's.] That such a difference does exist between Shakspeare and Fletcher, is denied by no one; and the moral tone of this play, in those parts which I have [101:2]ventured to call Shakspeare's, is distinctly a higher one than Fletcher's. It is uniform and pure, though the moral inquisition is less severe than Shakspeare's often is. [Sidenote: Massinger and Ben Jonson too more moral than Fletcher.] If Massinger or Jonson had been the poet alleged to have written part or the whole of the work, it would have been difficult to draw any inference from this circumstance by itself; but when the question is only between Shakspeare and Fletcher, even an abstinence from gross violation or utter concealment of moral truth is an important element in the decision; and the positively high strain here maintained is a very strong argument in favour of the purer writer.

[Sidenote: Are Johnson, &c. right in condemning Shakspere's morality.]

I am tempted, however, to carry you somewhat further on this head, because I must confess that I cannot see the grounds on which Johnson and others have rested their sweeping condemnation of Shakspeare's morality. There is, it must be admitted, much to blame, but there is also something worthy of praise; and praise on this score is what Shakspeare has scarcely ever received. [Sidenote: He admits licentiousness] He has been charged with licentiousness, and justly; but even in this particular there are some circumstances of palliation, besides the equivocal plea of universal example, and the doubt which exists whether most of his grosser dialogues are not interpolations. [Sidenote: and coarse speech.] Mere coarseness of language may offend the taste, and yet be so used as to give no foundation for any heavier charge. [Sidenote: But who can be tainted by Othello's words?] There surely never was a mind which could receive one evil suggestion from the language wrung from the agonized Othello. Even where this excuse does not hold, Shakspeare preserves one most important distinction quite unknown to his contemporaries. [Sidenote: Shakspere's contemporaries make their heroes loose livers.] By them, looseness of dialogue is introduced indifferently anywhere in the play, licentiousness of incident is admitted in any part of the plot, and debauchery of life is attributed without scruple to those persons in whom interest is chiefly meant to be excited. [Sidenote: He doesn't,] It may be safely stated that Shakspeare almost invariably follows a rule exactly opposite. His inferior characters may be sometimes gross and sensual; his principal personages scarcely ever are so: these he refuses to degrade needlessly, by attributing to them that carelessness of moral restraint of which Fletcher's men of pleasure are so usually guilty. [Sidenote: except in two plays.] There are only two plays[102:1] in which he [102:2]has violated this rule, exclusively of some unguarded expressions elsewhere.

But the language which has been held on this question would lead us to believe that his guilt extends further,--that he is totally insensible to any moral distinctions, and blind to moral aims and influences. [Sidenote: Most of Shakspere's contemporaries made pleasure the law of their heroes' lives.] Of most dramatic writers of his time this charge is too true. Their characters act because they will, not because they ought,--for happiness, and not from duty:--the lowness of their aim may be disguised, but it is inherent, and cannot be eradicated. We might read every work of Fletcher's without discovering (if we were ignorant of the fact before) that there exists for man any principle of action loftier in its origin than his earthly nature, or more extended in its object than the life which that nature enjoys. But nothing of this is true as to Shakspeare. [Sidenote: Shakspere's morality not of the loftiest, not like Milton's and] That his morality is of the loftiest sort cannot be asserted. [Sidenote: Michel Angelo's.] He does not, like Milton, look out on life at intervals from the windows of his sequestered hermitage, only to turn away from the sight and indulge in the most fervent aspirations after immortal purity, and the deepest adoration of uncreated power; nor does he grovel in the dust with that ascetic humiliation and religious sense of guilt which overcame the strong spirit of Michel Angelo. But he shares much of the solemnity of moral feeling which possesses all great minds, though in him its influence was restrained by external causes. [Sidenote: He was in the world, and often of it,] He moves in the hurried pageant of the world, and sometimes wants leisure to moralize the spectacle; and even when he does pause to meditate, the world often hangs about his heart, and he thinks of life as men in action are apt to think of it. [Sidenote: but evil, to him, was evil, moral law was always shown supreme. Note the general moral truth in his Tragedies.] But moral truth, seldom lost sight of, is never misrepresented: evil is always described as being evil: the great moral rule, though often stated as inoperative, is always acknowledged as binding. Read carefully any of his more lofty tragedies, and ponder the general truths there so lavishly scattered; and you will find that an immense proportion of those apophthegms have a moral bearing, often a most solemn and impressive one. [Sidenote: Even in Comedy his reflections are moral.] Even in his lighter plays there is much of the same spirit: in all he is often thoughtful, and he is never long thoughtful without becoming morally didactic. This is much in any poet, and especially in a drama[103:1]tist, who exhibits humanity directly as active, and is under continual temptations to forget what action tempts men to forget in real life. [Sidenote: Shakspere right in letting evil prevail, so long as he shows it evil.] His neglect of duly distributing punishment and reward is no moral fault, so long as moral truth is kept sight of in characterizing actions, while that neglect is borrowed closely from reality. And the same thing is true of his craving wish for describing human guilt, and darkening even his fairest characters with the shadows of weakness and sin. [Sidenote: Dramatic poetry is truest when it shows man most the slave of evil.] The poetry which depicts man in action is then unfortunately truest when it represents him as most deeply enslaved by the evil powers which surround him. [Sidenote: Shakspere bared man's soul,] Different poets have proceeded to different lengths in the degree of influence which they have assigned to the evil principle: most have feared to draw wholly aside the veil which imagination always struggles to keep before the nakedness of man's breast; and Shakspeare, by tearing away the curtain with a harsher hand, has but enabled himself to add a tremendously impressive element of truth to the likeness which his portrait otherwise bears to the original. [Sidenote: and probed it to its depth.] [Sidenote: This is why we hold to him.] His view of our state and nature is often painful; but it is its reality that makes it so; and he would have wanted one of his strongest holds on our hearts if he had probed them less profoundly; it is by his unflinching scrutiny of mortal infirmity that he has forged the very strongest chain which binds us to his footstool. [Sidenote: He durst not paint good triumphant over evil, because he knew in life it was not so.] He reverences human nature where it deserves respect: he knows man's divinity of mind, and harbours and expresses the loftiest of those hopes which haunt the heart like recollections: he represents worthily and well the struggle between good and evil, but he feared to represent the better principle as victorious: he had looked on life till observation became prophetical, and he could not fable that as existing which he sorrowfully saw could never be. [Sidenote: Macbeth, Othello, Hamlet, sink under their temptations.] The milk of human kindness in the bosom of Macbeth is turned to venom by the breath of an embodied fiend; the tempered nobility and gentleness of the Moor are made the craters through which his evil passions blaze out like central fires; and in the wonderful Hamlet, hate to the guilty pollutes the abhorrence of the crime,--irresolution waits on consciousness,--and the misery of doubt clings to the solemnity of meditation. [Sidenote: And so do we.] This is an awful representation of the human soul; but is it [104:1]not a true one? [Sidenote: Man's history is written in blood and tears.] [Sidenote: Shakspere's view of life the fittest to give us to the truth.] The sibylline volume of man's history is open before us, and every page of it is written in blood or tears. And not only are such views of human fate the truest, but they are those which are most fitted to arouse the mind to serious, to lofty, even to religious contemplation,--to guide it to the fountains of moral truth,--to lead it to meditations on the dark foundations of our being,--to direct its gaze forward on that great journey of the soul, in which mortal life is but a single step.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Analogy of this inquiry.]

Oftener than once in this inquiry, I have acted towards you like one who, undertaking to guide a traveller through a beautiful valley, should frequently lead him out of the beaten road to climb precipitous eminences, promising that the delay in the accomplishment of the journey should be compensated by the pleasure of extensive prospects over the surrounding region. Conduct like this would be excusable in a guide, if the person escorted had leisure for the divergence, and it would be incumbent on him if the acquisition of a knowledge of the country were one of the purposes of the journey; but in either case the labour of the ascents would be recompensed to the traveller, only if the landscapes presented were interesting and distinctly seen. [Sidenote: Aims of this treatise;] For similar reasons, my endeavour to propose wider views than the subject necessarily suggested, has, I conceive, been fully justifiable; but it is for you to decide whether the attempt has been so far successful as to repay your exertions in attending my excursive steps. [Sidenote: 1. from Shakspere's studies, to distinguish between him and his coevals.] The first of our lengthened digressions has allowed us to combine the known facts as to the kind and amount of Shakspeare's studies, and to draw from them certain conclusions, which I cannot think altogether valueless, as to some distinctions between him and his dramatic coevals, and as to the source of some peculiarities of his which have been visited with heavy censure. [Sidenote: 2. to trace the most characteristic qualities of his thought.] In the second instance in which we have branched off from the main argument, we have been led to reflect on the most characteristic qualities of the poet's mode of thought. [Sidenote: Shakspere's variety of faculty.] If there be any truth or distinctness in the hints which have been imperfectly and hastily thrown out on this head, your own mind will classify, modify, or extend them; and, never forgetting what is [105:1]the fundamental principle of the great poet's strength, you will regard that essential quality with the more lively admiration, when you discriminate the operations of the power from the working of those other principles which minister to it, and when you remark the number, the variety, the opposition of the mental faculties, which are all thus enlisted under the banners of the one intense and almost philosophical Perception of Dramatic Truth. [Sidenote: He, the stern inquisitor into man's heart,] That stern inquisition into the human heart, which the finest sense of dramatic perfection elevates into the ideal, and the richest fancy touches with poetical repose, will awaken in your mind a softened solemnity of feeling, like that under whose sway we have both wandered in the mountainous forests which skirt our native river; the continuous and gloomy canopy of the gigantic pines hanging over-head like a dungeon roof, while the green sward which was the pavement of the woodland temple, and the lines of natural columns which bounded its retiring avenues, were flooded with the glad illumination of the descending sunset. [Sidenote: the anxious searcher into truth, is yet the happiest creator of beauty: the 'maker' of Ric. III. and Iago as well as Juliet and Titania; of Macbeth as well as Hamlet.] We reflect with wonder that the most anxious of all poetical inquirers into truth, is also the most powerful painter of unearthly horrors, and the most felicitous creator of romantic or imaginary beauty; that the poet of Richard and Iago is also the poet of Juliet, of Ariel, and of Titania; that the fearfully real self-torture, the judicially inflicted remorse, of Macbeth, is set in contrast with the wildest figures which superstitious imagination ever conceived; that on the same canvas on which Hamlet stands as a personification of the Reason of man shaken by the assaults of evil within him and without, the gates of the grave are visibly opened, and the dead ascend to utter strange secrets in the ear of night. [Sidenote: His faculties early expanded consistently, and workt thro' all his life actively.] But even this union is less extraordinary than the regular and unparalleled consistency with which the poet's faculties early expanded themselves, and the full activity with which through life all continued to work. [Sidenote: Homer ebbd,] Even the dramatic soul of Homer ebbed like the sea, sinking in old age into the substitution of wild and minutely told adventure for the historical portraiture of mental grandeur and passionate strength. [Sidenote: Milton sank poetry in polemics.] The youth of Milton brooded over the love and loveliness of external nature; it was not till his maturity of years that he soared into the empyrean or descended sheer into the secrets of the abyss; and [106:1]advancing age brought weakness with it, and quenched in the morass of polemical disputation the torch which had flamed with sacred light. [Sidenote: Shakspere alone flowd full tide on.] [Sidenote: Experience came soon to him; Fancy abode with him to the end.] Shakspeare alone was the same from youth to age; in youth no imperfection, in age no mortality or decay; he performed in his early years every department of the task which he had to perform, and he laboured in it with unexhausted and uncrippled energies till the bowl was broken at the fountain; experience visited him early, fancy lingered with him to the last; the rapid developement of his powers was an indication of the internal strength of his genius; their steady continuance was a type and prognostic of the perpetual endurance of his sway. [Sidenote: Gloster (Ric. III.) was early, Shylock and Hamlet of middle time, Lear in ripe age, _The Tempest_, near his death.] The cold and fiendish Gloster was an early conception; the eager Shylock and the superhuman Hamlet were imagined simultaneously not long afterwards; the tenderness of Lear was the fruit of the poet's ripest age; and one of the closing years of his life gave birth to the savage wildness and the youthful and aerial beauty of 'The Tempest.'

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Are you convinc't that Shakspere wrote much of _The Two Noble Kinsmen_?]

Our last words are claimed by the proper subject of our inquiry. Have I convinced you that in the composition of 'The Two Noble Kinsmen', Shakspeare had the extensive participation which I have ascribed to him? It is very probable that my reasoning is in many parts defective; but I place so much confidence in the goodness of the cause itself, that I would unhesitatingly leave the question, without a word of argument, to be determined by any one, possessing a familiar acquaintance with both the poets whose claims are to be balanced, and an ordinarily acute discernment of their distinguishing qualities. [Sidenote: I'm sure the question needs only attention.] I am firmly persuaded that the subject needs only to have attention directed to it; and my investigation of it cannot have been a failure in every particular. [Sidenote: The external evidence doesn't include the internal.] The circumstances attending the first publication of the drama do not, in the most unfavourable view which can with any fairness be taken of them, exclude us from deciding the question of Shakspeare's authorship by an examination of the work itself: and it is unnecessary that the effect of the external evidence should be estimated one step higher. [Sidenote: Does that give all the play to Fletcher?] Do the internal proofs allot all to Fletcher, or assign any share to Shakspeare? [Sidenote: The Story is alien to Fletcher] The Story is ill-suited for the dramatic purposes [107:1]of the one poet, and belongs to a class of subjects at variance with his style of thought, and not elsewhere chosen by him or any author of the school to which he belonged; both the individual and the class accord with the whole temper and all the purposes of the other poet, and the class is one from which he has repeatedly selected themes. [Sidenote: Fletcher can't have chosen the subject of _The Two Noble Kinsmen_; nor was its plan his.] It is next to impossible that Fletcher can have selected the subject; it is not unlikely that Shakspeare may have suggested it; and if the execution of the plan shall be thought to evince that he was in any degree connected with the work, we can hardly avoid the conclusion that it was by him that the subject was chosen. The proof here, (which I think has not been noticed by any one before me,) seems to me to be stronger than in any other branch of the argument. [Sidenote: Its Scenical Arrangement is like Shakspere's.] The Scenical Arrangement of the drama offers points of resemblance to Shakspeare, which, at the very least, have considerable strength when they are taken together, and are corroborative of other circumstances. [Sidenote: Its Execution is, in great part, so like his,] The Execution of that large proportion of the drama which has been marked off as his, presents circumstances of likeness to him, so numerous that they cannot possibly have been accidental, and so strikingly characteristic that we cannot conceive them to be the product of imitation. [Sidenote: that many passages must be set down to him.] Even if it should be doubted whether Shakspeare chose the subject, or arranged any part of the plot, it seems to me that his claim to the authorship of these individual parts needs only examination to be universally admitted; not that I consider the proof here as stronger than that which establishes his choice of the plot, but because it is of a nature to be more easily and intuitively comprehended.

[Sidenote: Look at all the circumstances together,]

In forming your opinion, you will be careful to view the circumstances, not singly, but together, and to give each point of resemblance the support of the others. [Sidenote: and see whether the many probabilities do not make a certainty.] It may be that every consideration suggested may not affect your mind with equal strength of conviction; but numerous probabilities all tending the same way are sufficient to generate positive certainty: and it argues no imperfection in a result that it is brought out only by combined efforts. In those climates of the New World which you have visited, a spacious and lofty chamber receives a diffusive shower of light through a single narrow aperture, while in our cloudy region we can gather sufficient light for our apart[108:1]ments only by opening large and numerous windows: the end is not gained in the latter case without greater exertion than that which is required in the former, but it is attained equally in both; for the aspect of our habitations is not less cheerful than that of yours.

On the absolute merit of the work, I do not wish to anticipate your judgment. [Sidenote: Shakspere's part in _The Two Noble Kinsmen_, is but a sketch; yet it's better than some of his finisht works.] So far as Shakspeare's share in it is concerned, it can be regarded as no more than a sketch, which would be seen to great disadvantage beside finished drawings of the same master. Imperfect as it is, however, it would, if it were admitted among Shakspeare's acknowledged works, outshine many, and do discredit to none. It would be no unfair trial to compare it with those works of his in which he abstains from his more profound investigations into human nature, permitting the poetical world actively to mingle with the dramatic, and the radiant spirit of hope to embrace the sterner genius of knowledge. [Sidenote: Compare it with the _Midsummer Night's Dream_; the colouring and outline are from the same hand. But best, set it beside _Henry VIII._] We may call up before us the luxurious fancies of the 'Midsummer Night's Dream', or even the sylvan landscapes of the Forest of Ardennes, and the pastoral groupes which people it; and we shall gladly acknowledge a similar though harsher style of colouring, and a strength of contour indicating the same origin. But perhaps there is none of his works with which it could be so fairly compared as 'Henry VIII'. [Sidenote: It's more like that, and nearly as good.] In the tone of sentiment and imagination, as well as in other particulars, I perceive many circumstances of likeness, which it will gratify you to trace for yourself. The resemblance is more than a fanciful one, and the neglected play does not materially suffer by the comparison.

[Sidenote: _The Two Noble Kinsmen_ ought to be in every '_Shakspere's Works_.']

This drama will never receive the praise which it merits, till it shall have been admitted among Shakspeare's undoubted works; and, I repeat, it is entitled to insertion if any one of the conclusions to which I have attempted to lead you be sound,--if it be true that he wrote all, or most, or a few, of those portions of it, which more competent judges than I have already confidently ascribed to him. Farewell.

W. S.

_Edinburgh, March 1833._

[In his article on 'Recent Shaksperian Literature' in No. 144 of the _Edinburgh Review_, July, 1840, page 468, Prof. Spalding states that on Shakspere's taking part in _The Two Noble Kinsmen_, his "opinion is not now so decided as it once was."--F.]

FOOTNOTES:

[1:1] Locrine--Sir John Oldcastle--Lord Cromwell--The London Prodigal--The Puritan--The Yorkshire Tragedy.

[1:2] page 2

[2:1] page 3

[3:1] page 4

[4:1] "The Two Noble Kinsmen: presented at the Blackfriers, by the Kings Majesties servants, with great Applause: written by the memorable Worthies of their Time, Mr John Fletcher and Mr William Shakspeare, Gent. Printed at London by Tho. Cotes, for John Watersone; and are to be sold at the signe of the Crowne, in Pauls Church-yard: 1634."

[4:2] page 5

[5:1] Gifford's Massinger, vol. i. p. xv. [Moxon's ed. p. xxxix, and _B. and Fl._ i. xiii. The letter is from Nat. Field, Rob. Daborne, and Philip Massinger, to Henslowe the manager: "You know there is x. _l._ more at least to be receavd of you for the play. We desire you to lend us v _l._ of that, which shall be allowd to you. Nat. Field." "The money shall be abated out of the money remayns for _the play of Mr. Fletcher and ours_. Rob. Daborne."--F.]

[5:2] page 6

[6:1] page 7

[7:1] page 8

[8:1] Act II. Scene 4. The plucking of the roses.

[8:2] page 9

[9:1] page 10

[10:1] Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature. It would ill become me to carp at an author whom I have expressly to thank for much assistance in this inquiry, and to whom I am perhaps indebted for more than my recollection suggests. But it must be owned, that M. Schlegel's opinion loses somewhat of its weight from the fact, that he also advocates Shakspeare's authorship of some of Malone's plays, a decision in which it is neither desirable nor likely that the poet's countrymen should acquiesce.

[10:2] page 11

[11:1] Weber's Beaumont and Fletcher, vol. xiii., and Lamb, as there quoted.

[11:2] page 12

[12:1] Sonnet 76.

[12:2] page 13

[13:1] page 14

[13:2] There are numerous instances of both these effects in the play before us. "_Counter-reflect_ (a noun); _meditance_; _couch_ and _corslet_ (used as verbs); _operance_; _appointment_, for military accoutrements; _globy eyes_; _scurril_; _disroot_; _dis-seat_," &c. _Weber._

[14:1] page 15

[15:1] t. i. _mourn them ever_

[15:2] page 16

[15:3] _ownest_

[16:1] page 17

[17:1] page 18

[18:1] page 19

[19:1] Farmer's Essay on the Learning of Shakspeare.

[19:2] A singularly rich and energetic piece of colouring in this sort is near the beginning of the poem, commencing,

I have been wooed, as I entreat thee now, Even by the stern and direful God of War--

and extending through three stanzas.

[19:3] page 20

[20:1] page 21

[21:1] page 22

[22:1] page 23

[23:1] page 24

[24:1] The | is to show the double endings.

[24:2] page 25

[25:1] page 26

[26:1] page 27

[27:1] page 28

[28:1] page 29

[29:1] page 30

[29:2] Perhaps it is worth while to direct attention to this form of speech. Verbal names expressing the agent occur, it is true, in Fletcher and others, but they are in an especial manner frequent with Shakspeare, who invents them to preserve his brevity, and always applies them with great force and quaintness.

[29:3] Probably Fletcher would not have committed this false quantity.

[30:1] page 31

[30:2] 3 middle-rymes, _key_, _three_, _knee_.

[30:3] _in her eyes_

[31:1] page 32

[32:1] page 33

[33:1] page 34

[33:2] The remainder of this speech, an extremely fine one, has been quoted incidentally in page 26. Its richness of fancy is wonderful and most characteristic.

[34:1] page 35

[34:2] page 36

[35:1] page 37

[37:1] page 38

[37:2] This allusion is repeatedly found in Fletcher. Here the expression of it is defective in precision.

[37:3] page 39

[38:1] page 40

[39:1] page 41

[40:1] page 42

[41:1] page 43

[42:1] page 44

[43:1] page 45

[44:1] page 46

[45:1] In Philaster, Act IV. last scene.

Place me, some god, upon a Piramis, Higher than hill of earth, and lend a voice, Loud as your thunder, to me, that from thence I may discourse, to all the under world, The worth that dwells in him.

Shakspeare, too, was not the most likely person to have given the true meaning of the {boôpis potnia Hêrê}. I am not aware that either Hall or Chapman shewed him the way. Chapman in the First Book (v. 551) has it; "She with the cowes fair eyes, Respected Juno."

[45:2] page 47

[45:3] _2 N. K._, Act V. sc. i, ii, iii. Weber, are V. i. Littledale.

[46:1] This beautiful address has been spoken of already.

[46:2] page 48

[47:1] page 49

[48:1] page 50

[49:1] Romeo and Juliet:--Midsummer Night's Dream:--also in Don Quixote, Parte II. capit. xi.: "Los ojos de Dulcinea deben ser de _verdes esmeraldas_."

[49:2-49:2] This is the character of Emilia, by Chaucer and Shakspere, but not by Fletcher of IV. ii., and the author of V. v. (or iii. Littledale)--if he is not Fletcher--with their inconsistencies of Emilia's weak balancing of Palamon against Arcite, now liking one best, then the other, and being afraid that Palamon may get his _figure spoilt_! F. J. F.

[49:3] page 51

[50:1] page 52

[50:2] The thought here is frequent in Shakspeare's dramas: and the expression of it closely resembles some stanzas in the Lucrece, especially those beginning, "Oh, comfort-killing night!"

[51:1] Cp. Beatrice on Don John and Benedick, in _Much Ado_ II. i.

[51:2] page 53

[52:1] page 54

[52:2] It may be well to mention, that this scene contains allusions, extending through several lines, to the every-way luckless jailor's daughter. If I conceal the fact from you, you will, on finding it out for yourself, suspect that I consider it as making against my hypothesis, which assigns those episodical adventures to a different author from this scene. Be assured that I do not regard it in that light. It is plain that the underplot, however bad, has been worked up with much pains; and we can conceive that its author would have been loth to abandon it finally in the incomplete posture in which the fourth scene of this act left it. Ten lines in this scene sufficed to end the story, by relating the cure of the insane girl; and there can have been no difficulty in their introduction, even on my supposition of this scene being the work of the other author. If the two wrote at the same time, the poet who wrote the rest of the scene may have inserted them on the suggestion of the other; or if the drama afterwards came into the hands of that other, (which there seems some reason to believe,) he could easily insert them for himself. In any view these lines are no argument against my theory.

[53:1] ? Shakspere and one daughter.

[53:2] Cf. p. 54-5.

[53:3] page 55

[53:4] The description which we have read of Mars's attributes reminds one strongly and directly of the fine speech in the poem, where old Saturn, the god of time, enumerates his own powers of destruction. It is far from unlikely that the one passage suggested the other. The rich can afford to borrow.

[54:1] page 56

[55:1] page 57

[56:1] page 58

[57:1] Beaumont's style is unluckily not characterized. F.

[57:2] page 59

[58:1] page 60

[59:1] page 61

[60:1] page 62

[61:1] page 63

[62:1] page 64

[63:1] page 65

[64:1] page 66

[65:1] page 67

[66:1] The Knight of the Burning Pestle.

[66:2] page 68

[66:3] Weber's Beaumont and Fletcher. Henslowe MSS. published by Malone:--Boswell's Shakspeare, vol. iii. p. 303. [See Appx. I. to my Harrison _Forewords_.]

[67:1] page 69

[68:1] page 70

[68:2] N.B. The Gower choruses in _Pericles_ are NOT Shakspere's.--F.

[69:1] page 71

[69:2] With Knowledge comes the retreat to Invention.

[70:1] page 72

[71:1] page 73

[72:1] page 74

[73:1] page 75

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[80:1] page 82

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[83:1] It would be unfair not to state, that I quote and refer to the translation of the Laocoon published by Mr. De Quincey, in Blackwood's Magazine for November 1826; and that I am not otherwise acquainted with that or any other work of Lessing.

[83:2] page 86

[84:1] page 87

[85:1] page 88

[86:1] page 89

[87:1] page 90

[88:1] page 91

[89:1] The theory which, denying to the Beautiful any capacity of giving pleasure through its innate qualities, ascribes its effects exclusively to the associated ideas which the contemplation of it calls up, proceeds wholly on the assumption, that the sentiment awakened by Beauty when it is beheld bodily present, is the same with that which flows from a poetical description of it. If it be true (as I must believe it is) that the feelings in the two cases are essentially different, the hypothesis falls to the ground. Its maintainers seem in truth to have drawn their conclusions altogether from reflection on the effects produced by Beauty when it is represented in poetry, where association is undoubtedly the source of the enjoyment; and an attention to the working of the fine arts would have taught other inferences.

[90:1] page 92

[90:2] page 93

[91:1] page 94.

[91:2]

[Sidenote: Invention is making a _new_ thing out of a thing already made.]

Alfieri appears to have himself perceived accurately wherein it is that his power lies, when he says, with his usual self-reliance: "Se la parola 'invenzione' in tragedia si restringe al trattare soltanto soggetti non prima trattati, nessuno autore ha inventato meno di me." "Se poi la parola 'invenzione' si estende fino al _far cosa nuova di cosa già fatta_, io son costretto a credere che nessuno autore abba inventato piu di me."

[92:1] page 95

[93:1] page 96

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[101:1] ? in Jaques.

[101:2] page 104

[102:1] ? _All's Well_, Bertram; _Othello_, Cassio; _Meas. for Meas._ Claudio; _Ant. & Cleop._ Antony; _Timon_, Alcibiades.--F.

[102:2] page 105

[103:1] page 106

[104:1] page 107

[105:1] page 108

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[108:1] page 111

A FEW INSTANCES OF SHAKSPERE'S PECULIARITIES AS NOTED BY SPALDING.

=Repetition=, p. 12. 1. Prologue to _Henry V._:

'And at his heels, Leashed in like hounds, should famine, sword, and fire, Crouch for employment.'

Compare _Antony and Cleopatra_, Act I. scene iv.:

'Where thou slew'st, Hirtus and Pausa, consuls, at thy heel Did famine follow.'

2. _Macbeth_, Act V. scene vii.:

'They have tied me to a stake: I cannot fly, But, bear-like, I must fight the course';

and _Lear_, Act III. scene vii.:

'I am tied to the stake, and I must stand the course.'

=Conciseness verging on obscurity=, p. 13. _Macbeth_, Act I. scene iii.:

'Present fears are less than horrible imaginings: My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical, Shakes so my single state of man, that function Is smothered in surmise, and nothing is But what is not.'