CHAPTER XI.

OBSERVATIONS ON _KING JOHN_; ON _ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL_; ON _KING HENRY THE FIFTH_; ON _MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING_; ON _AS YOU LIKE IT_; ON _MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR_; ON _TROILUS AND CRESSIDA_; ON _HENRY THE EIGHTH_; ON _TIMON OF ATHENS_; ON _MEASURE FOR MEASURE_; ON _KING LEAR_; ON _CYMBELINE_; ON _MACBETH_.—DISSERTATION ON THE _POPULAR BELIEF IN WITCHCRAFT_ DURING THE AGE OF SHAKSPEARE, AND ON HIS MANAGEMENT OF THIS SUPERSTITION IN THE TRAGEDY OF _MACBETH_.

We are well aware, that, to many of our readers, the chronological discussion incident to a new arrangement, will be lamented as tedious and uninteresting; the more so, as nothing absolutely certain can be expected as the result. That this part of our subject, therefore, may be as compressed as possible, we shall, in future, be very brief in offering a determination between the decisions of the two previous chronologers, reserving a somewhat larger space for the few instances in which it may be thought necessary to deviate from both.

Of the plays enumerated by Meres, in September, 1598, only two remain to be noticed in this portion of our work, namely, _King John_ and _Love's Labour's Wonne_:—

16. KING JOHN: 1598. Mr. Chalmers having detected some allusions in this play to the events of 1597, in addition to those which Mr. Malone had accurately referred to the preceding year, it becomes necessary, with the former of these gentlemen, to assign its production to the spring of 1598.[419:A]

If _King John_, as a whole, be not entitled to class among the very first rate compositions of our author, it can yet exhibit some scenes of superlative beauty and effect, and two characters supported with unfailing energy and consistency.

The bastard Faulconbridge, though not perhaps a very amiable personage, being somewhat too interested and worldly-minded in his conduct to excite much of our esteem, has, notwithstanding, so large a portion of _the very spirit of Plantagenet_ in him, so much heroism, gaiety, and fire in his constitution, and, in spite of his vowed accommodation to the times[420:A], such an open and undaunted turn of mind, that we cannot refuse him our admiration, nor, on account of his fidelity to John, however ill-deserved, our occasional sympathy and attachment. The alacrity and intrepidity of his daring spirit are nobly supported to the very last, where we find him exerting every nerve to rouse and animate the conscience-stricken soul of the tyrant.

In the person of Lady Constance, _Maternal Grief_, the most interesting passion of the play, is developed in all its strength; the picture penetrates to the inmost heart, and seared must those feelings be, which can withstand so powerful an appeal; for all the emotions of the fondest affection, and the wildest despair, all the rapid transitions of anguish, and approximating phrenzy, are wrought up into the scene with a truth of conception which rivals that of nature herself.

The innocent and beauteous Arthur, rendered doubly attractive by the sweetness of his disposition and the severity of his fate, is thus described by his doating mother:—

"But thou art fair, and at thy birth, dear boy! Nature and fortune join'd to make thee great: Of Nature's gifts thou may'st with lillies boast, And with the half-blown rose."[420:B]

When he is captured, therefore, and imprisoned by John, and, consequently, sealed for destruction, who but Shakspeare could have done justice to the agonising sorrows of the parent? Her invocation to death, and her address to Pandulph, paint maternal despair with a force which no imagination can augment, and of which the tenderness and pathos have never been exceeded:—

"Death, death:—O amiable lovely death!— Come, grin on me; and I will think thou smil'st,— —————————————— Misery's love, O, come to me!—— —— Father cardinal, I have heard you say, That we shall see and know our friends in heaven: If that be true I shall see my boy again; For, since the birth of Cain, the first male child, To him that did but yesterday suspire, There was not such a gracious creature born. But now will canker sorrow eat my bud, And chase the native beauty from his cheek, And he will look as hollow as a ghost; As dim and meagre as an ague's fit; And so he'll die; and, rising so again, When I shall meet him in the court of heaven I shall not know him: therefore never, never Must I behold my pretty Arthur more.

_Pand._ You hold too heinous a respect of grief.

_Const._ He talks to me, that never had a son.

_K. Phi._ You are as fond of grief, as of your child.

_Const._ Grief fills the room up of my absent child. Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me; Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words, Remembers me of all his gracious parts, Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form; Then, have I reason to be fond of grief? Fare you well: had you such a loss as I, I could give better comfort than you do.— I will not keep this form upon my head, (_Tearing off her head-dress._ When there is such disorder in my wit. O lord! my boy, my Arthur, my fair son! My life, my joy, my food, my all the world! My widow-comfort, and my sorrow's cure!"[421:A] [_Exit._

Independent of the scenes which unfold the striking characters of Constance and Faulconbridge, there are two others in this play which may vie with any thing that Shakspeare has produced; namely, the scene between John and Hubert, and that between Hubert and Arthur. The former, where the usurper obscurely intimates to Hubert his bloody wishes, is conducted in so masterly a manner, that we behold the dark and turbulent soul of John lying naked before us in all its deformity, and shrinking with fear even from the enunciation of its own vile purpose; "it is one of the scenes," as Mr. Steevens has well observed, "to which may be promised a lasting commendation. Art could add little to its perfection; and time itself can take nothing from its beauties."[422:A]

The scene with Hubert and the executioners, where the hapless Arthur supplicates for mercy, almost lacerates the heart itself; and is only rendered supportable by the tender and alleviating impression which the sweet innocence and artless eloquence of the poor child fix with indelible influence on the mind. Well may it be said, in the language of our poet, that he who can behold this scene without the gushing tribute of a tear,

"Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils;— Let no such man be trusted."

As for the character of John, which, from its meanness and imbecillity, seems not well calculated for dramatic representation, Shakspeare has contrived, towards the close of the drama, to excite in his behalf some degree of interest and commiseration; especially in the dying scene, where the fallen monarch, in answer to the enquiry of his son as to the state of his feelings, mournfully exclaims,—

"Poison'd,—ill fare;—dead, forsook, cast off."

17. ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL: 1598. There does not appear any sufficient reason for altering the date assigned to this play by Mr. Malone, whom we have, therefore, followed in preference to Mr. Chalmers, who has fixed on the succeeding year; a decision to which we have been particularly induced, independent of other circumstances, by the apparent notice of this drama by Meres, under the title of _Love's Labour's Wonne_, an appellation which very accurately applies to this, but to no other of our author's productions with any similar degree of pertinency. We have reason, therefore, to conclude, as nothing has hitherto been brought forward to invalidate the assumption, that Meres's title was the original designation of this comedy, and was intended by the poet as a counter-title to _Love's Labour's Lost_. What induced him to dismiss the first, and to adopt the present proverbial appellation, cannot positively be ascertained; but the probability is, as Mr. Malone has remarked, that the alteration was suggested in consequence of the adage itself being found in the body of the play.[423:A]

The noblest character in this comedy, which, though founded on a story somewhat too improbable, abounds both in interest and entertainment, is the good old _Countess of Rousillon_. Shakspeare seems to have drawn this portrait _con amore_, and we figure to ourselves for this amiable woman, a countenance beaming with dignity, sweetness, and sensibility, emanations from a heart which had ever responded to the impulses of love and charity. In short, her maternal affection for the gentle Helen, her piety, sound sense, and candour, call for our warmest reverence and esteem, which accompany her to the close of the representation, and follow her departure with regret.[423:B]

Helen, the romantic, the love-dejected Helen, must excite in every feeling bosom a high degree of sympathy; patient suffering in the female sex, especially when resulting from ill-requited attachment, and united with modesty and beauty, cannot but be an object of interest and commiseration, and, in the instance before us, these are admirably blended in

————————— "a maid too virtuous For the contempt of empire,"

but who, unfortunately, has to struggle against the prejudices of birth, rank, and unfeeling pride, in the very man who is the object of her idolatry, and who, even after the most sacred of bonds should have cemented their destiny, flies with scorn from her embraces.

If in the infancy of her passion the error of indiscretion be attributable to Helen, how is it atoned for by the most engaging humility, by the most bewitching tenderness of heart: "Be not offended," she tells her noble patroness,

"Be not offended; for it hurts not him, That he is lov'd of me: I follow him not By any token of presumptuous suit; Nor would I have him, till I do deserve him; Yet never know how that desert should be— ——————————— thus, Indian-like, Religious in mine error, I adore The sun, that looks upon his worshipper, But knows of him no more."[424:A]

But when the wife of Bertram, with a resignation and self-devotedness worthy of the highest praise, she deserts the house of her mother-in-law, knowing that whilst she is sheltered there her husband will not return, how does she, becoming thus an unprotected wanderer, a pilgrim _bare-foot plodding the cold ground_ for him who has contemned her, rise to the tone of exalted truth and heroism!

—————————— "Poor lord! is't I That chase thee from thy country, and expose Those tender limbs of thine to the event Of the none-sparing war? and is it I That drive thee from the sportive court, where thou Wast shot at with fair eyes, to be the mark Of smoky muskets?—— ———————— No, come thou home, Rousillon:— ——————————— I will be gone: My being it is, that holds thee hence: Shall I stay here to do't? no, no, although The air of paradise did fan the house, And angels offic'd all: I will be gone; That pitiful rumour may report my flight, To consolate thine ear. Come, night,— For, with the dark, poor thief, I'll steal away."[425:A]

It was necessary, in order to place the character of Helen in its most interesting point of view, that Bertram should be represented as arrogant, profligate, and unfeeling; a coxcomb who to family-consequence hesitates not to sacrifice all that is manly, just, and honourable. The picture is but too true to nature, and, since the poet found such a delineation essential to the construction of his story, he has very properly taken care, though Bertram, out of tenderness to the Countess and Helena, meets not the punishment he merits, that nothing in mitigation of his folly should be produced.

To the comic portion of this drama too much praise can scarcely be given; it is singularly rich in all that characterises the wit, the drollery, and the humour of Shakspeare. The Clown is the rival of Touchstone in _As You Like It_; and Parolles, in the power of exciting laughter and ludicrous enjoyment, is only secondary to Falstaff.

18. KING HENRY THE FIFTH: 1599. The chorus at the commencement of the fifth act, and the silence of Meres, too plainly point out the era of the composition of this play, to admit of any alteration depending on the bare supposition of subsequent interpolation, or on allusions too vague and general to afford any specific application.

No character has been pourtrayed more at length by our poet than that of Henry the Fifth, for we trace him acting a prominent part through three plays. In _Henry the Fourth_, until the battle of Shrewsbury, we behold him in all the effervescence of his mad-cap revelry; occasionally, it is true, affording us glimpses of the native mightiness of his mind, but first bursting upon us with heroic splendour on that celebrated field. In every situation, however, he is evidently the darling offspring of his bard, whether we attend him to the frolic orgies in Eastcheap, to his combat with the never-daunted Percy, or, as in the play before us, to the immortal plains of Agincourt.

The fire and animation which inform the soul of Henry when he rushes to arms in defence of his father's throne, are supported with unwearied vigour, with a blaze which never falters, throughout the whole of his martial achievements in France. Nor has Shakspeare been content with representing him merely in the light of a noble and chivalrous hero, he has endowed him with every regal virtue; he is magnanimous, eloquent, pious, and sincere; versed in all the arts of government, policy, and war; a lover of his country and of his people, and a strenuous protector of their liberties and rights.

Of the various instances which our author has brought forward for the exemplification of these virtues and acquirements, it may be necessary to notice two or three. Thus the detection of the treason of Cambridge, Gray, and Scroop, who had conspired to assassinate Henry previous to his embarkation, exhibits a rich display of the mental greatness and emphatic oratory of this warlike monarch. After reprobating the treachery of Cambridge and Gray, he suddenly turns upon Scroop, who had been his bosom-friend, with the following pathetic and soul-harrowing appeal:—

——————————————— "But What shall I say to thee, lord Scroop!— Thou, that didst bear the key of all my counsels, That knew'st the very bottom of my soul!— May it be possible, that foreign hire Could out of thee extract one spark of evil, That might annoy my finger?— O, how hast thou with jealousy infected The sweetness of affiance!— —————————— I will weep for thee; For this revolt of thine, methinks, is like Another fall of man."[426:A]

Nor can we forbear distinguishing the dismissal of these traitors, as a striking example of magnanimity, and of justice tempered with dignified compassion:—

"God quit you in his mercy!—— Touching our person, seek we no revenge; But we our kingdom's safety must so tender, Whose ruin you three sought, that to her laws We do deliver you. Get you therefore hence, Poor miserable wretches, to your death: The taste whereof, God, of his mercy, give you Patience to endure, and true repentance Of all your dear offences!"[427:A]

In the fourth act, what a masterly picture of the cares and solicitudes of royalty is drawn by Henry himself, in his noble soliloquy on the morning of the battle, especially towards the close, where he contrasts the gorgeous but painful ceremonies of a crown with the profitable labour and the balmy rest of the peasant, who

——————————— "from the rise to set, Sweats in the eye of Phœbus, and all night Sleeps in Elysium!"

But the prayer which immediately follows is unrivalled for its power of impression, presenting us with the most lively idea of the amiability, piety, and devotional fervour of the monarch:—

"O God of battles! steel my soldiers' hearts! —————————— Not to-day, O Lord, O not to-day, think not upon the fault My father made in compassing the crown! I Richard's body have interred anew; And on it have bestow'd more contrite tears, Than from it issued forced drops of blood. Five hundred poor I have in yearly pay, Who twice a day their _wither'd_ hands hold up Toward heaven, to pardon blood; and I have built Two chantries, where the sad and solemn priests Sing still for Richard's soul."[427:B]

Of the _picturesque force_ of an epithet, there is not in the records of poetry a more remarkable instance than what is here produced by the adoption of the term _withered_, through which the scene starts into existence with a boldness of relief that vies with the noblest creations of the pencil.

The address to Westmoreland, on his wishing for more men from England, is a fine specimen of military eloquence, possessing that high tone of enthusiasm and exhilaration, so well calculated to inflame the daring spirit of the soldier. It is in perfect keeping with the historical character of Henry, nor can we agree with Dr. Johnson in thinking that its reduction "to about half the number of lines," would have added, either to its force or weight of sentiment[428:A]; so far, indeed, are we from coalescing with this decision, that we feel convinced not a clause could be withdrawn without material injury to the animation and effect of the whole.

Instances of the same impressive and energising powers of elocution, will be found in the King's exhortation to his soldiers before the gates of Harfleur[428:B]; in his description of the horrors attendant on a city taken by storm[428:C]; and in his replies to the Herald Montjoy[428:D]; all of which spring naturally from, and are respectively adapted to the circumstances of the scene.

Nor, amid all the dangers and unparalleled achievements of the Fifth Henry, do we altogether lose sight of the frank and easy gaiety which distinguished the Prince of Wales. His winning condescension in sympathising with the cares and pleasures of his soldiers, display the same kindness and affability of temper, the same love of raillery and humour, reminiscences, as it were, of his youthful days, and which, in his intercourse with Williams and Fluellin, produce the most pleasing and grateful relief.

These touches of a frolic pencil are managed with such art and address, that they derogate nothing from the dignity of the monarch and the conqueror; what may be termed the truly comic portion of the play, being carried on apart from any immediate connection with the person of the sovereign.

As the events of warfare and the victories of Henry form the sole subjects of the serious parts of this piece, it was necessary for the sake of variety and dramatic effect, and in order to satisfy the audience of this age, that comic characters and incidents should be interspersed; and, though we are disappointed in not seeing Falstaff, according to the poet's promise, again on the scene, we once more behold his associates, Bardolph, Pistol, and Hostess Quickly, pursuing their pleasant career with unfailing eccentricity and humour. The description of the death of Falstaff by the last of this fantastic trio, is executed with peculiar felicity, for while it excites a smile verging on risibility, it calls forth, at the same time, a sigh of pity and regret.

Of the general conduct of this play, it may be remarked, that the interest turns altogether upon the circumstances which accompany a single battle; consequently the poet has put forth all his strength in colouring and contrasting the situation of the two armies; and so admirably has he succeeded in this attempt, by opposing the full assurance of victory, on the part of the French, their boastful clamour, and impatient levity, to the conscious danger, calm valour, and self-devotedness of the English, that we wait the issue of the combat with an almost breathless anxiety.

And, in order that the heroism of Henry might not want any decoration which poetry could afford, the epic and lyric departments have been laid under contribution, for the purpose of supplying what the very confined limits of the stage, then in the infancy of its mechanism, had no means of unfolding. A preliminary chorus, therefore, is attached to each act, impressing vividly on the imagination what could not be addressed to the senses, and adding to a subject, in itself more epic than dramatic, all the requisite grandeur and sublimity of description.

19. MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING: 1599. The allusion, in the opening scene of this comedy, to a circumstance attending the campaign of the Earl of Essex in Ireland, during the summer of 1599, which was first noticed by Mr. Chalmers, and which seems corroborated by the testimony of Camden and Moryson[430:A], has induced us to adopt the chronology dependent on this apparent reference, the only note of time, indeed, which has hitherto been discovered in the play.

This very popular production which appears to have originally had the title of _Benedick and Beatrice_[430:B], and is, in its leading incidents, to be traced to one of the tales of Bandello[430:C], possesses, both with respect to its fable and characters, a vivacity, richness, and variety, together with a happiness of combination, which delight as much as they astonish.

The two plots are managed with uncommon skill; the first, involving the temporary disgrace and the recognition of Hero, includes a vast range of emotions, and abounds both in pathos and humour. The accusation of the innocent Hero by the man whom she loved, and at the very moment too, when she was about to be united to him for life, excites a most powerful impression; but is surpassed by the scene which restores her to happiness, where Claudio, supposing himself about to be united, in obedience to the will of Leonato, to a relation of his former beloved, and, as he concludes, deceased mistress, on unveiling the bride, beholds the features of her whom he had injured, and whom he had lamented as no more.

It is no small proof of the ingenuity of our poet, that through the means by which the iniquity practised against Hero is developed, we are furnished with a fund of the most ludicrous entertainment; the charge of Dogberry to the Watch, and the arrest and examination of Conrade and Borachio, throwing all the muscles of risibility into action.

Nor is the second plot in any respect inferior to the first; indeed, there is reason to believe, that, to the masterly delineations of Benedick and Beatrice, "the most sprightly characters that Shakspeare ever drew," and to their mutual entrapment in the meshes of love, a great part of the popularity which has ever accompanied this comedy, is in justice to be ascribed. Fault, however, has been found with the mode by which the reciprocal affection of these sworn foes to love has been secured: "the second contrivance," observes Mr. Steevens, "is less ingenious than the first:—or, to speak more plainly, the same incident is become stale by repetition. I wish some other method had been found to entrap Beatrice, than that very one which before had been successfully practised on Benedick[431:A];" an objection which has been censured with some severity by Schlegel, who justly remarks, that the drollery of this twice-used artifice "lies in the very symmetry of the deception."[431:B] It may be added, that the conversation of the gentleman and the wit, in Shakspeare's days, may be pretty well ascertained from the part of Benedick in this play, and from that of Mercutio in _Romeo and Juliet_; both presenting us, after some allowance for a licence of allusion too broad for the decorum of the present day, with a favourable picture of the accomplishments of polished society in the reign of Elizabeth.

20. AS YOU LIKE IT: 1600. Though this play, with the exception of the disguise and self-discovery of Rosalind, may be said to be destitute of plot, it is yet one of the most delightful of the dramas of Shakspeare. There is something inexpressibly wild and interesting both in the characters and in the scenery; the former disclosing the moral discipline and the sweets of adversity, the purest emotions of love and friendship, of gratitude and fidelity, the melancholy of genius, and the exhilaration of innocent mirth, as opposed to the desolating effects of malice, envy, and ambition; and the latter unfolding, with the richest glow of fancy, landscapes to which, as objects of imitation, the united talents of Ruysdale, Claude, and Salvator Rosa, could alone do justice.

From the forest of Arden, from that wild wood of oaks,

——————— "whose boughs were moss'd with age, And high tops bald with dry antiquity,"

from the bosom of sequestered glens and pathless solitudes, has the poet called forth lessons of the most touching and consolitory wisdom. Airs from paradise seem to fan with refreshing gales, with a soothing consonance of sound, the interminable depth of foliage, and to breathe into the hearts of those who have sought its shelter from the world, an oblivion of their sorrows and their cares. The banished Duke, the much-injured Orlando, and the melancholy Jaques, lose in meditation on the scenes which surround them, or in sportive freedom, or in grateful occupation, all corrosive sense of past affliction. Love seems the only passion which has penetrated this romantic seclusion, and the sigh of philosophic pity, or of wounded sensibility, (the legacy of a deserted world,) the only relique of the storm which is passed and gone.

Nothing, in fact, can blend more harmoniously with the romantic glades, and magic windings of Arden, than the society which Shakspeare has placed beneath its shades. The effect of such scenery, on the lover of nature, is to take full possession of the soul, to absorb its very faculties, and, through the charmed imagination, to convert the workings of the mind into the sweetest sensations of the heart, into the joy of grief, into a thankful endurance of adversity, into the interchange of the tenderest affections; and find we not here, in the person of the Duke, the noblest philosophy of resignation; in Jaques, the humorous sadness of an amiable misanthropy; in Orlando, the mild dejection of self-accusing humility; in Rosalind and Celia, the purity of sisterly affection, whilst love in all its innocence and gaiety binds in delicious fetters, not only the younger exiles, but the pastoral natives of the forest. A day thus spent, in all the careless freedom of unsophisticated nature, seems worth an eternity of common-place existence!

The nice discrimination of Shakspeare and his profound knowlege of human nature are no where more apparent than in sketching the character of Jaques, whose social and confiding affections, originally warm and enthusiastic, and which had led him into all the excesses and credulities of thoughtless attachment, being blighted by the desertion of those on whom he had fondly relied, have suddenly subsided into a delicately blended compound of melancholy, misanthropy, and morbid sensibility, mingled with a large portion of benevolent though sarcastic humour. The selfishness and ingratitude of mankind are, consequently, the theme of all his meditations, and even tinge his recreations with the same pensive hue of moral invective. We accordingly first recognise him in a situation admirably adapted to the nurture of his peculiar feelings, laid at length

"Under an oak, whose antique root peeps out Upon the brook that brawls along the wood,"

and assimilating the fate of an unfortunate stag, who had been wounded by the hunters, and who

"Stood on the extremest verge of the swift brook, Augmenting it with tears,"

to the too common lot of humanity:—

"_Duke._ But what said Jaques? Did he not moralize this spectacle?

_Lord._ O yes, into a thousand similes. First, for his weeping in the needless stream; _Poor deer_, quoth he, _thou mak'st a testament As worldings do, giving the sum of more To that which had too much._ Then, being there alone, Left and abandoned of his velvet friends; _'Tis right_, quoth he; _thus misery doth part The flux of company._ Anon, a careless herd, Full of the pasture, jumps along by him, And never stays to greet him. _Ay_, quoth Jaques, _Sweep on, you fat and greasy citizens; 'Tis just the fashion: wherefore do you look Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there?_"[434:A]

As might be imagined, music, the food of melancholy as well as of love, is the chief consolation of Jaques; he tells Amiens, who, on finishing a song, had objected to his request of singing again, that it would make him melancholy. "I thank it. More, I pr'ythee more. I can suck melancholy out of a song, as a weasel sucks eggs: More, I pr'ythee, more[434:B];" and we can well conceive with what exquisite pleasure he listened to the subsequent song of the same nobleman:

"Blow, blow, thou winter wind, Thou art not so unkind As man's ingratitude; Thy tooth is not so keen, Because thou art not seen, Although thy breath be rude.— Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky, Thou dost not bite so nigh As benefits forgot; Though thou the waters warp, Thy sting is not so sharp As friend remember'd not."[434:C]

From this interesting and finely shaded character, the result of a false estimate of what is to be expected from human nature and society, much valuable instruction may be derived; but as a similar delineation will soon occur in the person of Timon, we shall defer what may be required upon this subject to a subsequent page.

21. MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR: 1601. It does not appear to us that Mr. Chalmers has succeeded in his endeavours to set aside the general tradition relative to this comedy, as recorded by Mr. Rowe, who says, that Queen Elizabeth "was so well pleased with the admirable character of Falstaff in _The Two Parts of Henry the Fourth_, that she commanded Shakspeare to continue it for one play more, and to show him in love."[435:A] Rowe adopted this from Dennis, who mentions it as the tradition of his time; and has also related, that being "eager to see it acted," she ordered it "to be finished in _fourteen days_[435:B]," and was highly gratified by the representation.

A tradition of the seventeenth century thus general in its diffusion, and particular in its circumstances, cannot, and ought not, to be shaken by the mere observations that "she (the Queen) was certainly too feeble in 1601 to think of such toys," and that at this time "she was in no proper mood for such fooleries[435:C];" more especially when we recollect, that at this very period, she was guilty of fooleries greatly more extravagant and out of character, than that of commanding a play to be written. At a "mask at Blackfriars, on the marriage of Lord Herbert and Mrs. Russel," relates Lord Orford, on the authority of the Bacon Papers, "eight lady maskers chose eight more to dance the measures. Mrs. Fritton, who led them, went to the Queen, and wooed her to dance. Her Majesty asked, what she was? 'AFFECTION,' she said. 'AFFECTION!' said the Queen;—'_AFFECTION is false._'—Yet her majesty rose and _danced_.—She was then SIXTY-EIGHT![435:D]" If, at the age of SIXTY-EIGHT, she was not _too feeble to dance_, nor _too wise to fancy herself in love_, we may easily conceive, that she had both _strength_ and _inclination_ to attend and to enjoy a play!

Another objection of the same critic to the probability of this tradition, turns upon the extraordinary assumption, that it was not within the omnipotence of Elizabeth "to bring Falstaff to _real life_, after being _positively as dead as nail in door_[436:A];" as if Falstaff had ever possessed a _real_ existence, and the Queen had been expected to have occasioned his _bodily_ resurrection from the dead. In accordance with this supposed impossibility, impossible only in this strange point of view, we are further told, that "whatever a capricious Queen might have wished to have seen, the audience would not have borne to see the _dead_ knight on the _living_ stage;" thus again confounding the _dramatic_ death of an _imaginary_ being, with the physical dissolution incident to material nature! Surely Shakspeare had an unlimited control over the creatures of his own imagination, and had he reproduced the fat knight in half-a-dozen plays, after the death which he had already assigned him in _Henry the Fifth_, who, provided he had supported the merit and consistency of the character, would have charged him with a violation of probability? When Addison killed Sir Roger de Coverley, in order, as tradition says, to prevent any one interfering with the unity of his sketch, he could only be certain of the non-resumption of his imaginary existence in the very work which had detailed his decease; for if Addison himself, or any of his contemporaries, had reproduced Sir Roger, in a subsequent periodical paper, with the same degree of skill which had accompanied the first delineation, would it have been objected as a sufficient condemnation of such a performance, that the knight had been previously dispatched?

We see no reason, therefore, for distrusting the generally received tradition, and have, accordingly, placed the _Merry Wives of Windsor_, with Mr. Malone, after the three plays devoted to _Henry the Fourth_, and _Fifth_.

In this very entertaining drama, which unfolds a vast display of incident, and a remarkable number of well-supported characters, we are presented with an almost unrivalled instance of pure domestic comedy, and which furnishes a rich draught of English minds and manners, in the middle ranks of society, during one of the most interesting periods of our annals.

Shakspeare has here achieved, perhaps, the most difficult task which can fall to the lot of any writer; that of resuscitating a favourite and highly-wrought child of the imagination, and, with a success equal to that which attended the original production, re-involving him in a series of fresh adventures. Falstaff has not lost, in this comedy, any portion of his former power of pleasing; he returns to us in the fulness of his strength, and we immediately enter, with unabated avidity and relish, into a further developement of his inexhaustible stores of humour, wit, and drollery.

The self-delusion of Sir John, who conceives himself to be an object of love, and the incongruities, absurdities, and intrigues, into which this monstrous piece of vanity plunges him, form, together with the secondary plot of Fenton and Anne Page, the richest tissue of incident and stratagem that ever graced a stage. The mode, also, in which the two intrigues are interwoven, the happy termination of the second, arising out of the contrivance which brings about the issue of the first, has a just claim to praise both for its invention and execution.

To the comic characters which had formerly been associated with the exploits of the Knight, and which, as accessories or retainers, accompany him in this play, some very laughable and grotesque additions are to be found in the persons of _Slender_, _Sir Hugh Evans_, and _Dr. Caius_, who are deeply implicated in the fable, and who, by the most ludicrous exhibitions of rustic simplicity, provincial accent, and broken English, contribute in a high degree to the variety and hilarity of the scene.

22. TROILUS AND CRESSIDA: 1601. That this play was written and acted before the decease of Queen Elizabeth, is evident from the manner in which it is entered on the Stationers' Books, being registered on February 7. 1602-3, "_as acted by my Lord Chamberlen's men_[437:A]," who, in the year of the accession of King James, obtained a licence for their theatre, and were denominated "_his majesty's servants_."

It also appears, from some entries in Mr. Henslowe's Manuscript, that a drama on this subject, at first called _Troyelles and Cresseda_, but, before its production, altered in its title to "_The Tragedy of Agamemnon_," was in existence anterior to Shakspeare's play, and was licensed by the Master of the Revels, on the 3rd of June, 1599.[438:A]

From these premises we have a right to infer that our poet's _Troilus and Cressida_ was written between June, 1599, and February, 1603, and, accordingly, our two chronologers have thus placed it; Mr. Malone in 1602, and Mr. Chalmers in 1600. But it appears to us, for reasons which we shall immediately assign, that its more probable era is that of 1601.

It has been correctly observed by the Commentators, that an incident in our author's _Troilus and Cressida_, is ridiculed in an anonymous comedy, entitled _Histriomastix_, "which, though not printed till 1610, must have been written before the death of Queen Elizabeth, who, in the last act of the piece, is shadowed, under the character of Astræa, and is spoken of as then living."[438:B]

We cannot avoid thinking it somewhat extraordinary that when Mr. Malone recorded this circumstance, it did not occur to him, that, by placing the composition of Shakspeare's play in 1602, he allowed scarcely any time to the author of _Histriomastix_ for the composition of his work. In order that a parody or burlesque may be successful, it is necessary that the production ridiculed, should have acquired a certain degree of celebrity, and however well received by the court, before which it was at first chiefly performed, this drama of our author may have been, some time must have elapsed ere it could have acquired a sufficient degree of notoriety for the purpose of successful satire. But if Shakspeare wrote his _Troilus and Cressida_ in 1602, and had even completed it by the middle of the year, scarcely nine months could intervene between this completion and the death of the Queen in March, 1603; and during this short interval, the play of our poet must have been acted, and celebrated so repeatedly and so highly, as to have excited the pen of envy and burlesque, and the comedy of _Histriomastix_ must have been written and performed; a space certainly much too inadequate for these effects and results, more particularly if we are allowed to conclude, what most probably was the case, that the anonymous comedy was finished some months anterior to the decease of Elizabeth.

On the other hand, it would seem that Mr. Chalmers, by approximating the date of Shakspeare's play too closely to that of the elder drama, may be taxed with a similar error. That our poet was in the habit of adopting subjects which had been previously rendered popular on the stage, has been acknowledged by all his commentators, and that his attention was first attracted to the fable under consideration, by the play exhibited on Mr. Henslowe's theatre, there can be little doubt. But this production, we find, was not licensed by the Master of the Revels until June, 1599, and as popularity attached to the performance would be necessary to stimulate Shakspeare to remodel the subject, we can scarcely conceive him, both on this account, and from a motive of delicacy to a rival theatre, to have commenced the composition of his _Troilus and Cressida_ before the beginning of 1601.

It was at this period then, that our bard, excited by the success of the prior attempt in 1599, turned his attention to the subject; and, referring to his Chaucer, to Caxton's Translation of the _Recuyles or Destruction of Troy_, from _Raoul le Fevre_, and to the first seven books of Chapman's Homer, for the materials of his story, presented us with the most singular, and, in some respects, the most striking, of his productions.

This play is, indeed, a most perfect _unique_ both in its construction and effect, appearing to be a continued sarcasm on the _tale of Troy divine_, an ironical copy, as it were, of the great Homeric picture. Whether this was in the contemplation of Shakspeare, or whether it might not, in a great measure, flow from the nature of the Gothic narratives to which he had recourse, may admit of some doubt. As Homer, however, was in part before him, in the excellent version of Chapman, it appears to us, that it certainly was his design to expose the follies and absurdities of the Trojan war; the despicable nature of its origin, and the furious discords which protracted its issue. In doing this he has stripped the Homeric characters of all their epic pomp; he has laid them naked to the very heart, but he has, at the same time, individualised them, with a pencil so keen, powerful, and discriminating, that we become more intimately acquainted with them, as mere men, from the perusal of this play, than from all the splendid descriptions of the Greek poet.

This unparalleled strength and distinctness of characterisation, as unfolded in the play before us, has been admirably painted by Mr. Godwin. "The whole catalogue," he observes, "of the _Dramatis Personæ_ in the play of _Troilus and Cressida_, so far as they depend upon a rich and original vein of humour in the author, are drawn with a felicity which never was surpassed. The genius of Homer has been a topic of admiration to almost every generation of men since the period in which he wrote. But his characters will not bear the slightest comparison with the delineation of the same characters as they stand in Shakspeare. This is a species of honour which ought by no means to be forgotten when we are making the eulogium of our immortal bard, a sort of illustration of his greatness which cannot fail to place it in a very conspicuous light. The dispositions of men perhaps had not been sufficiently unfolded in the very early period of intellectual refinement when Homer wrote; the rays of humour had not been dissected by the glass, or rendered perdurable by the pencil, of the poet. Homer's characters are drawn with a laudable portion of variety, and consistency; but his Achilles, his Ajax, and his Nestor are, each of them, rather a species than an individual, and can boast more of the propriety of abstraction, than of the vivacity of a moving scene of absolute life. The Achilles, the Ajax, and the various Grecian heroes of Shakspeare, on the other hand, are absolute men, deficient in nothing which can tend to individualise them, and already touched with the Promethean fire that might infuse a soul into what, without it, were lifeless form. From the rest perhaps the character of Thersites deserves to be selected, (how cold and school-boy a sketch in Homer,) as exhibiting an appropriate vein of sarcastic humour amidst his cowardice, and a profoundness and truth in his mode of laying open the foibles of those about him, impossible to be excelled.

"Shakspeare possessed, no man in higher perfection, the true dignity and loftiness of the poetical afflatus, which he has displayed in many of the finest passages of his works with miraculous success. But he knew that no man ever was, or ever can be, always dignified. He knew that those subtler traits of character which identify a man, are familiar and relaxed, pervaded with passion, and not played off with an external eye to decorum. In this respect the peculiarities of Shakspeare's genius are no where more forcibly illustrated than in the play we are here considering. The champions of Greece and Troy, from the hour in which their names were first recorded, had always worn a certain formality of attire, and marched with a slow and measured step. No poet, till this time, had ever ventured to force them out of the manner which their epic creator had given them. Shakspeare first supplied their limbs, took from them the classic stiffness of their gait, and enriched them with an entire set of those attributes, which might render them completely beings of the same species with ourselves."[441:A]

The great defect of this play, which, in other respects, is highly entertaining and instructive, and abounding in didactic morality, expressed with the utmost beauty, vigour, and boldness of diction, is a want of attachment for its characters. If we set aside Hector, who seems to have been the favourite hero with Shakspeare, and his Gothic authorities, there is not a person in the drama, for whom we feel any sympathy or interest; the Grecian chiefs, though varied and coloured in the highest style of relief, are any thing but amiable, and of the persons involved in the love-intrigue, two are proverbially infamous, whilst the forsaken Troilus appears in too tame and inefficient a light to call forth any share of admiration or regret.

23. KING HENRY THE EIGHTH: 1602. Few of the plays of Shakspeare have occasioned more difference of opinion, with regard to the era of their production, than this historical drama. Mr. Malone contends that it was written in 1601 or 1602, and that, after having lain by for some years unacted, on account of the costliness of its exhibition, it was revived in 1613, under the title of _All is True_, with new decorations, and a new prologue and epilogue; and that this revival took place on the very day, being St. Peter's, on which the Globe Theatre was burnt down, occasioned, it is said, by the discharge of some small pieces, called chambers, on King Henry's arrival at Cardinal Wolsey's gate at Whitehall, one of which, being injudiciously managed, set fire to the thatched roof of the theatre. He also joins with Dr. Johnson and Dr. Farmer in conceiving, that the prologue, and even some part of the dialogue, were, on this occasion, written by Ben Jonson, to whom he also ascribes the conduct and superintendence of the representation.[442:A]

Mr. Chalmers, on the contrary, believes that this piece was neither represented nor written before 1613, and that its first appearance on the stage was the night of the conflagration above-mentioned. He reprobates the folly of supposing "that Ben Jonson, _who was in perpetual hostility with Shakspeare_, made _adycyons_ to _Henry VIII._, or even wrote the prologue for our poet."[442:B]

And, lastly, Mr. Gifford declares it to be his conviction that the tragedy of our poet was produced in 1601; but that, on the supposed revival of it in 1613, neither the prologue was written by Jonson, nor the play by Shakspeare, the piece then performed being a _new play_, called _All is Truth_, constructed, indeed, on the history of Henry the Eighth, and, like that, full of shows, but not the composition of our author. He has here likewise, as every where else, very successfully combated the prejudice and credulity of the commentators, in their perpetual assumption of the enmity of Jonson to Shakspeare.[443:A]

For the arguments by which these conflicting opinions are maintained, we must refer to the respective writings of the combatants, our limits only permitting us to state and briefly to support one or two circumstances which, in our view of them, seem irresistibly to prove, that, in the first place, the play performed on the 29th of June, 1613, was _Shakspeare's tragedy of Henry the Eighth_; and, secondly, that it was _his tragedy revived_, with a new name, and with a _new prologue, both emanating from himself_.

Now, if the prologue which has always accompanied our author's drama from its first publication in 1623, _manifestly_ and _repeatedly allude_ to the _title_ of the play which was represented on the 29th of June, 1613, and which we know to have been founded on the history of King Henry the Eighth, can there be a stronger proof of their identity, or a more satisfactory reply to the query of Mr. Gifford, who asks, who would have recognised _Henry the Eighth_ under the name of _All is Truth_? (or rather, as he should have said, _All is True_?) than what these intimations afford? That they have, indeed, been noticed both by Mr. Tyrwhitt and Mr. Malone, as alluding to the title in question, is true; but they appear to us so important and decisive, as to merit being brought forward more distinctly, especially as they have escaped Mr. Gifford's attention. We shall therefore transcribe them, being convinced that not accident but design dictated their insertion:—

—————————— "Such, as give Their money out of hope they may believe, May here find _truth_ too."

——————————— "Gentle readers, know, To rank _our chosen truth_ with such a show As fool and fight is," &c.—

"To make that only _true_ we now intend."

That the play represented at the Globe in 1613, was merely a _revived_ play, wants no other proof than the following:—In a MS. letter of Tho. Lorkin to Sir Tho. Puckering, dated _London, this last of June, 1613_, Lorkin tells his friend, that "No longer since than YESTERDAY, while Bourbage his companie were acting at the Globe _THE play of Hen. VIII._ and there shooting of certayne chambers in way of triumph, the fire catched," &c.[444:A]

We would now enquire if it were possible that any rational person writing from London to his friend in the country, concerning a _new_ play which had been performed, for the first time, but the day before the date of his letter, could make use of language such as this? Must he not necessarily have said, _A play, or A new play, called Hen. VIII._? And does not the phraseology which he has adopted, namely, "_THE play of Hen. VIII._," evidently imply that the piece had been long known?

So decidedly, in our opinion, do these two circumstances prove, that it was _Shakspeare's Henry the Eighth REVIVED_, which was performed at the Globe Theatre on St. Peter's day, 1613, that we no longer hesitate a moment in admitting, with the principal commentators, that this tragedy was originally written but a short time anterior to the death of Elizabeth, to whom some elegant and appropriate praise is offered; and that the compliment to James the First, rather forcibly introduced into the closing scene, was composed by our poet expressly for the revival of 1613; admissions which not only seem warranted by the internal evidence of the play, but almost necessarily flow from the establishment of the two inferences for which we have contended.

There is much reason to conclude that, in the long interval between the death of Queen Elizabeth, and the year 1613, our author's _Henry the Eighth_ had never been performed; and it is further probable that, on this account, and in consequence of its receiving a _new_ name, a _new_ prologue and epilogue, and _new_ decorations of unprecedented splendour, the players might, as Mr. Malone has suggested, have called it in the bills of that time a _new_ play[445:A]; an epithet which we find Sir Henry Wotton has adopted, when describing the accident at the Globe Theatre, and which, if writing in haste, or with less attention to the history of the stage than occurs in the letter of Mr. Lorkin, he might, from similar causes, naturally be expected to repeat.[445:B]

In adjusting the chronology of this play Mr. Malone has remarked, that Shakspeare, having produced so many plays in the preceding years, "it is not likely that _King Henry the Eighth_ was written _before_ 1601. It might, perhaps, with _equal propriety_, be ascribed to 1602."[445:C] We have fixed upon the latter date, for this obvious reason, that our enquiries, having led us to supply the preceding year with two plays, it has been thought more consonant to probability to assign it to the less occupied period of 1602. It appears to us, therefore, to have been composed about a twelvemonth previous to the death of the Queen, an event which occurred in March, 1603.

It need scarcely be added, that, from Mr. Gifford's complete refutation of the slander which has been so long indulged in against the character of Ben Jonson, we utterly disbelieve that this calumniated poet had any concern in the revival of _Henry the Eighth_.

The entire interest of this tragedy turns upon the characters of _Queen Katharine_ and _Cardinal Wolsey_; the former being the finest picture of suffering and defenceless virtue, and the latter of disappointed ambition, that poet ever drew. The close of the second scene of the third act, which describes the fall of Wolsey, and the whole of the second scene of the fourth, which paints the dying sorrows and devout resignation of the persecuted Queen, have, as lessons of moral worth, a never-dying value; and of the latter, especially, it may without extravagance be said, that, in its power of exciting sympathy and compassion, it stands perfectly unrivalled by any dramatic effort of ancient or of modern time.

24. TIMON OF ATHENS: 1602. The existence of a manuscript play on this subject, to which our author has been evidently indebted, ought, in the absence of all other direct testimony, to be considered as our guiding star. Here, says Mr. Malone, our poet "found the faithful steward, the banquet scene, and the story of Timon's being possessed of great sums of gold which he had dug up in the woods: a circumstance which he could not have had from Lucian, there being then no translation of the dialogue that relates to this subject[446:A];" and, in another place he remarks, that this manuscript comedy "appears to have been written after Ben Jonson's _Every Man out of his Humour_, (1599,) to which it contains a reference; but I have not discovered the precise time when it was composed. If it were ascertained, it might be some guide to us in fixing the date of our author's _Timon of Athens_, which I suppose to have been posterior to this anonymous play."[446:B]

Now Mr. Steevens, who accurately inspected the manuscript play, tells us that it appears to have been written about the year 1600[446:C], whilst Mr. Chalmers has brought forward several intimations which, he thinks, prove, that Shakspeare's drama was written during the reign of Elizabeth.[446:D]

These statements, it is obvious, bring the subject into a small compass; for as the anonymous comedy must have been composed after 1599, referring, as it does, to a drama of that date, and as some incidents in Shakspeare's Timon are evidently founded upon it, whilst the death of Elizabeth took place in March, 1603, the play of our poet must necessarily, if Mr. Chalmers's intimations be relied upon, have been completed in the interim.

Indeed the only argument on the other side for fixing the date of this play in 1609, is built upon the supposition that Shakspeare commenced the study of Plutarch in 1605, and that having once availed himself of this historian for one of his plays, he was induced to proceed, until _Julius Cæsar_, _Anthony and Cleopatra_, _Timon_, and _Coriolanus_, had been written in succession.[447:A] But, as it has been clearly ascertained by Mr. Chalmers, that Shakspeare was perfectly well acquainted with Plutarch when he wrote his Hamlet[447:B], this supposition can no longer be tenable.

We have fixed on the year 1602 rather than 1601, for the era of the composition of our author's play, as it is equally susceptible of the illustration adduced by Mr. Chalmers, allows more scope for the production of the elder drama, and, at the same time, more opportunity to our poet to have become familiar with a comedy which, there is reason to think, from its pedantic style, was never popular, and certainly never was printed.

_Timon of Athens_ is an admirable satire on the folly and ingratitude of mankind; the former exemplified in the thoughtless profusion of Timon, the latter in the conduct of his pretended friends; it is, as Dr. Johnson observes, "a very powerful warning against that ostentatious liberality, which scatters bounty, but confers no benefits, and buys flattery, but not friendship."[447:C]

But the mighty reach of Shakspeare's mind is in this play more particularly distinguishable in his delineation of the species and causes of misanthropy, and in the management of the delicate shades which diversify its effects on the heart of man. Timon and Apemantus are both misanthropes; but from very different causes, and with very different consequences, and yet they mutually illustrate each other.

The misanthropy of Timon arises from the perversion of what would otherwise have been the foundation of his happiness. He possesses great goodness and benevolence of heart, an ardent love of mankind, a spirit noble, enthusiastic, and confiding, but these are unfortunately directed into wrong channels by the influence of vanity, and the thirst of distinction. Rich in the amplest means of dispensing bounty, he receives, in return, such abundant praise, especially from the least deserving and the most designing, that he becomes intoxicated with adulation, craving it, at length, with the avidity of an appetite, and preferring the applause of the world to the silent approval of his own conscience.

The immediate consequence of this delusion is, that he seeks to bestow only where celebrity is to follow; he does not fly to succour poverty, misfortune, and disease, in their sequestered haunts, but he showers his gifts on poets, painters, warriors, and statesmen, on men of talents or of rank, whose flattery, either from genius or from station, will find an echo in the world. The next result of beneficence thus abused, is that Timon possesses numerous _nominal_ but no _real_ friends, and, when the hour of trial comes, he is, to a man, deserted in his utmost need. It is then, that having no estimate of friendship but what reposed on the characters who have left him bare to the storm, and concluding that the rest of mankind, compared with those whom he had selected, are rather worse than better, he gives loose to all the invective which deceived affection and wounded vanity can suggest; feeling, as it were, an abhorrence of, and an aversion to, his species, in proportion to the keenness of his original sensibility, and the agony of his present disappointment.

The inherent goodness of Timon on the one hand, and his avarice of praise and flattery on the other, are vividly brought out through the medium of his servants, and of the Cynic Apemantus. The true criterion, indeed, of the worth of any individual, is best found in the estimation of his household, and we entertain a high sense of the value of Timon's character, from the attachment and fidelity of his dependants. They, in their humble intercourse with their master, have intimately felt the native benevolence of his disposition, and, to the disgrace of those who have revelled in his bounty, are the only sympathizers in his fate. They call to mind his generous virtues:—

"Poor honest lord, brought low by his own heart; Undone by goodness!"

is the exclamation of his faithful steward; nor are the inferior domestics less sensible of his worth:—

"_1 Serv._ So noble a master fallen!—and not One friend, to take his fortune by the arm!—

_3 Serv._ Yet do our hearts wear Timon's livery, That see I by our faces."[449:A]

When Flavius visits his master in his seclusion, and with the most disinterested views and the most heart-felt commiseration, offers him his wealth and his attendance, Timon starts back with amazement bordering on distraction, afflicted and aghast at the recognition, when too late, of genuine friendship, and self-convicted of injustice towards his fellow-creatures:—

"Had I a steward so true, so just, and now So comfortable? It almost turns My dangerous nature wild.[449:B] Let me behold Thy face.—Surely, this man was born of woman.— Forgive my general and exceptless rashness, Perpetual-sober gods! I do proclaim One honest man,—mistake me not,—but one; No more, I pray,—and he is a steward.— How fain would I have hated all mankind, And thou redeem'st thyself!"[449:C]

If the constitutional goodness of Timon is to be inferred from the conduct of his domestics, the errors which overshadowed it are most distinctly laid open by the unsparing invective of Apemantus. The misanthropy of this character is not based, like Timon's, on the wreck of the noblest feelings of our nature, on the milk of human kindness turned to gall, but springs from the vilest of our passions, from envy, hatred, and malice. He is born a beggar, and his pride is to continue such, while his sole occupation, his pleasure and his choice, is to drag forth the vices, and calumniate the virtues of humanity. For this task he possesses, in the powers of his intellect, the utmost efficiency, and seems, indeed, to have been introduced by the poet for the express purpose of unfolding the conduct of Timon. The two characters, in fact, reciprocally anatomise each other, and with a depth and minuteness which leaves nothing undetected.

The lust of flattery and distinction which burns in the bosom of Timon, finds, even in the height of his prosperity, a sharp, and therefore a wholesome reprover in Apemantus, who tells the Athenian to his face, that "he that loves to be flattered, is worthy of the flatterer," at the same time exposing his limitless and ill-bestowed bounty in the strongest terms; but no good man would choose the hour of adversity and overwhelming distress for a still bitterer torrent of taunts and reproaches, at a period when nothing but additional misery could accrue from the experiment. Such, however, is the object of Apemantus, in his visit to the cave of Timon, and accordingly he experiences the reception which his motives so richly deserve:—

"_Tim._ Why dost thou seek me out?

_Apem._ To vex thee.

_Tim._ Always a villain's office, or a fool's. Dost please thyself in't!

_Apem_. Ay.

_Tim._ What! a knave too?"

immediately after which, the unhappy Timon proceeds, with admirable discrimination, to contrast himself and his persecutor; a description which, for strength and severity, as well as truth of censure, has never been exceeded:—

"_Tim._ Thou art a slave, whom Fortune's tender arm With favour never clasp'd; but bred a dog. Had'st thou like us, from our first swath, proceeded The sweet degrees that this brief world affords To such as may the passive drugs of it Freely command, thou would'st have plung'd thyself In general riot; melted down thy youth In different beds of lust; and never learn'd The icy precepts of respect, but follow'd The sugar'd game before thee. But myself, Who had the world as my confectionary; The mouths, the tongues, the eyes, and hearts of men At duty, more than I could frame employment; That numberless upon me stuck, as leaves Do on the oak, have with one winter's brush Fell from their boughs, and left me open, bare For every storm that blows;—I, to bear this, That never knew but better, is some burden: Thy nature did commence in sufferance, time Hath made thee hard in't. Why should'st thou hate men? They never flatter'd thee: What hast thou given? If thou wilt curse,—thy father, that poor rag, Must be thy subject; who, in spite, put stuff To some she-beggar, and compounded thee, Poor rogue hereditary. Hence! be gone!— If thou hadst not been born the worst of men, Thou hadst been a knave, and flatterer."[451:A]

In revenge for this correct, but tremendous picture of himself, Apemantus, shortly afterwards, presents Timon with a miniature of his own character, so faithfully condensed, that it comprises, in about a dozen words, the entire history of his life; the indiscriminate generosity of his early, and the extravagant misanthropy, of his latter days:—

"The middle of humanity thou never knewest, but the extremity of both ends."[451:B]

The widely different fate of these two characters, is, likewise, decisive of the opposite origin and nature of their misanthropical conduct. Timon, that

—————————————— "monument, And wonder of good deeds evilly betow'd,"[452:A]

dies broken-hearted, a martyr to self-delusion, and to the ingratitude of mankind; whilst Apemantus, wrapped up in constitutional apathy, travels on unscathed, a general and unfeeling railer on the frailty of his species.

25. MEASURE FOR MEASURE: 1603. Mr. Malone's reasons for placing the composition of this play towards the close of 1603, appear to us perfectly unshaken by the arguments which Mr. Chalmers has brought forward for the purpose of referring it to the subsequent year. The validity of the alteration which this gentleman wishes to establish, turns almost altogether on the cogency of the following statement:—"Claudio," he says, "complains of '_the neglected act being enforced against him_.' Isabella laments her being the sister of one Claudio, condemned, on the _act of fornication_, to lose his head. Now, the act which was thus alluded to, though not with the precision of an Old Bailey solicitor, 'was the statute to restrain all persons from marriage, until their former wives, and former husbands be dead,' for which such persons, so offending, were to _suffer death_, as in cases of felony. It was against this act, then, which did not operate till after the end of the session, on the 7th of July, 1604, that Shakspeare's satire was levelled."[452:B]

But this very act, it seems from Mr. Chalmers's reference, was passed in the second year of James the First, and how, therefore, could Claudio's complaint of a "_neglected_ act being enforced against him," apply to a statute thus recently issued, and whose operation had only just commenced? The objection is insurmountable, and Claudio's allusion was most assuredly to the act formerly passed on this subject in the first year of Edward the Sixth.

The primary source of the fable of _Measure for Measure_, is to be traced to the fifth novel of the eighth decade of the Ecatommithi of Giraldi Cinthio, which was repeated in the tragic histories of Belle Forest; but Shakspeare's immediate original was the play of _Promos and Cassandra_ of George Whetstone, published in 1578, and of which the argument, as given by the author, has been annexed by Mr. Steevens to Shakspeare's production. On this elder drama, and on Shakspeare's improvements on its plot, the following pertinent remarks have been lately made by Mr. Dunlop:—"The crime of the brother," he observes, speaking of Whetstone's comedy, "is softened into seduction: Nor is he actually executed for his transgression, as a felon's head is presented in place of the one required by the magistrate. The king being complained to, orders the magistrate's head to be struck off, and the sister begs his life, even before she knows that her brother is safe. Shakspeare has adopted the alteration in the brother's crime, and the substitution of the felon's head. The preservation of the brother's life by this device might have been turned to advantage, as affording a ground for the intercession of his sister; but Isabella pleads for the life of Angelo before she knows her brother is safe, and when she is bound to him by no tie, as the Duke does not order him to marry Isabella. From his own imagination Shakspeare had added the character of Mariana, Angelo's forsaken mistress, who saves the honour of the heroine by being substituted in her place. Isabella, indeed, had refused, even at her brother's intercession, to give up her virtue to preserve his life. This is an improvement on the incidents of the novel, as it imperceptibly diminishes our sense of the atrocity of Angelo, and adds dignity to the character of the heroine. The secret superintendence, too, of the Duke over the whole transaction, has a good effect, and increases our pleasure in the detection of the villain. In the fear of Angelo, lest the brother should take revenge 'for so receiving a dishonoured life, with ransom of such shame,' Shakspeare has given a motive to conduct which, in his prototypes, is attributed to wanton cruelty."[454:A]

Of _Measure for Measure_, independent of the comic characters which afford a rich fund of entertainment, the great charm springs from the lovely example of female excellence in the person of Isabella. Piety, spotless purity, tenderness combined with firmness, and an eloquence the most persuasive, unite to render her singularly interesting and attractive. To save the life of her brother, she hastens to quit the peaceful seclusion of her convent, and moves, amid the votaries of corruption and hypocrisy, amid the sensual, the vulgar, and the profligate, as a being of a higher order, as a ministering spirit from the throne of grace. Her first interview with Angelo, and the immediately subsequent one with Claudio, exhibit, along with the most engaging feminine diffidence and modesty, an extraordinary display of intellectual energy, of dexterous argument, and of indignant contempt. Her pleadings before the lord deputy are directed with a strong appeal both to his understanding and his heart, while her sagacity and address in the communication of the result of her appointment with him to her brother, of whose weakness and irresolution she is justly apprehensive, are, if possible, still more skilfully marked, and add another to the multitude of instances which have established for Shakspeare an unrivalled intimacy with the finest feelings of our nature.

The page of poetry, indeed, has not two nobler passages to produce, than those which paint the suspicions of Isabella as to the fortitude of her brother, her encouragement of his nascent resolution, and the fears which he subsequently entertains of the consequences of dissolution:—

"_Isab._ O, I do fear thee, Claudio; and I quake, Lest thou a feverous life should'st entertain, And six or seven winters more respect Than a perpetual honour. Dar'st thou die? The sense of death is most in apprehension; And the poor beetle, that we tread upon, In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great As when a giant dies.

_Claud._ Why give you me this shame? Think you I can a resolution fetch From flowery tenderness? If I must die, I will encounter darkness as a bride, And hug it in mine arms.

_Isab._ There spake my brother; there my father's grave Did utter forth a voice!"[455:A]

On learning the terms which would effect his liberation, his astonishment and indignation are extreme, and he exclaims with vehemence to his sister,—

"Thou shalt not do't;"

but no sooner does this burst of moral anger subside, than the natural love of existence returns, and he endeavours to impress Isabella, under the wish of exciting her to the sacrifice demanded for his preservation, with the horrible possibilities which may follow the extinction of this state of being, an enumeration which makes the blood run chill:—

"_Claud._ O Isabel!

_Isab._ What says my brother?

_Claud._ Death is a fearful thing.

_Isab._ And shamed life a hateful.

_Claud._ Ay, but to die, and go we know not where; To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot; This sensible warm motion to become A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice; To be imprison'd in the viewless winds, And blown with restless violence round about The pendent world; or to be worse than worst Of those, that lawless and incertain thoughts Imagine howling!—'tis too horrible! The weariest and most loathed worldly life, That age, ach, penury, and imprisonment Can lay on nature, is a paradise To what we fear of death.

_Isab._ Alas! alas!"[456:A]

"It is difficult to decide," remarks Mr. Douce, "whether Shakspeare is here alluding to the pains of hell or purgatory. May not the whole be a mere poetical rhapsody, originating in the recollection of what he had read in books of Catholic divinity? for it is very certain, that some of these were extremely familiar to him."[456:B]

Of our author's predilection for the imposing exterior, and fanciful, but often sublime, reveries of the Roman Catholic religion, we have already taken some notice; and, in reference to the very interesting part which the Duke assumes in this play, under the disguise of a monk, it is the observation of the learned and eloquent Schlegel, "that Shakspeare, amidst the rancour of religious parties, takes a delight in painting the condition of a monk, and always represents his influence as beneficial. We find in him none of the black and knavish monks, which an enthusiasm for the protestant religion, rather than poetical inspiration, has suggested to some of our modern poets. Shakspeare merely gives his monks an inclination to busy themselves in the affairs of others, after renouncing the world for themselves; with respect, however, to pious frauds, he does not represent them as very conscientious. Such are the parts acted by the monk in _Romeo and Juliet_, and another in _Much Ado about Nothing_, and even by the Duke, whom, contrary to the well-known proverb, the cowl seems really to make a monk."[456:C]

26. KING LEAR: 1604. Both the chronologers have assigned to this tragedy the date of 1605; but it appears to us more probable that its production is to be attributed to the close of the year 1604. It certainly was written between the publication of Harsnet's _Declaration of Popish Impostures_, in 1603, and the Christmas of 1606; for Shakspeare undoubtedly borrowed, as the commentators have justly observed, the fantastic names of several spirits from the above mentioned work, whilst in the entry of Lear on the Stationers' Registers, on the 26th of November, 1607, it is expressly recorded to have been played, during the preceding Christmas, before His Majesty at Whitehall.

It is from the following facts, as established by Mr. Chalmers, together with two or three additional circumstances, that we have been induced to throw back a few months the era of the composition of this play. "Lear is ascertained," observes Mr. Chalmers, "to have been written, after the month of October, 1604; say the commentators: (or rather says Mr. Malone) For, King James was proclaimed King _of Great Britain_, on the 24th of October, 1604; and, it is evident, that Shakspeare made a minute change in an old rhyming saw:—

———————————— "Fy, fa, fum, I smell the blood of an _English_ man;"

which Shakspeare, with great attention to the times, changed, in the following manner:—

"His word was still, Fie, foh, fum, I smell the blood of a _British_ man."

But, the fact is, that there was issued from Greenwich a royal proclamation, on the 13th of May, 1603; declaring that, till a compleat union, the King held, and esteemed, the two realms, as _presently_ united, and as one kingdom; and, the poets, Daniel and Drayton, who wrote gratulatory verses, on his accession, spoke of the two kingdoms, as united, thereby, into one realm, by the name of Britain; and of the inhabitants of England and Scotland, as one people, by the denomination of British." And he then adds, in a note: "Before King James arrived at London, Daniel offered to him 'A Panegyrike congratulatory, delivered to the King's most excellent Majesty at Burleigh-Harrington in Rutlandshire;' which was printed, in 1603, for Blount, with a Defence of Rhime:—

"Lo here the glory of a greater day Than _England_ ever heretofore could see In all her days. ———— ———— ———— And now she is, and now in peace therefore _Shake hands with union_, O thou mightie state, Now thou art all _great Britain_, and no more, _No Scot, no English_ now, nor no debate."[458:A]

We see here, that even before James took possession of his capital, poetry had adopted the very language which Shakspeare has used in his Lear: and that, as early as the 13th of May, 1603, a proclamation had been issued, declaratory of the King's resolution to hold and esteem the two realms as united, and as forming but one kingdom.

These two events, therefore, were of themselves, a sufficient ground for the alteration which our bard thought proper to introduce, and which, if it occurred, as we suppose, anterior to the definitive proclamation of October, 1604, must have been considered, by the monarch, as the greater compliment, on that very account.

A strong additional argument in favour of this chronology, may be drawn from the attempt made in 1605, to impose on the public the old play of _King Leir_ for the successful drama of our author. This production, which had been entered at Stationers' Hall in 1594, was, with this view, re-entered on the Stationers' books on the 8th of May, 1605, and the entry terminates with these words, "as it was _lately_ acted."[458:B]

Now, as it was intended that the expression _lately_ should be referred, by the reader, to our author's play, for which this was meant to be received, it follows, as an almost necessary consequence, from the common acceptation of the term, that the _Lear_ of Shakspeare had been acted some months anteriorly, and was not then actually performing, an inference which agrees well with the date which we have adopted, but cannot be made to accord with Mr. Malone's supposition of Shakspeare's tragedy appearing in April, 1605, and the spurious claimant in May, when there is every reason to conclude that our poet's drama was then nightly, or, at least, weekly delighting the public.

Another circumstance in support of the era which we have chosen for this play, is to be derived from the consideration, that, in Mr. Malone's arrangement, _Cymbeline_ is assigned, and, in our opinion, correctly assigned, to the year 1605, while, in consequence of the removal of _The Winter's Tale_ to the epoch of 1613, a change founded on apparently substantial grounds, the year 1604 is left perfectly open to the admission for which we contend.

To the numerous sources mentioned by the [459:A]commentators, whence Shakspeare may have drawn the materials of his _Lear_, is to be added the celebrated French Romance, entitled _Perceforest_, which, next to the _Gesta Romanorum_, and the _History of Geoffrey of Monmouth_, is the oldest authority extant. The story of King Leyr, as here related, corresponds, in all its leading features, with the fable of our poet.[459:B]

Of this noble tragedy, one of the first productions of the noblest of poets, it is scarcely possible to express our admiration in adequate terms. Whether considered as an effort of art, or as a picture of the passions, it is entitled to the highest praise. The two portions of which the fable consists, involving the fate of Lear and his daughters, and of Gloster and his sons, influence each other in so many points, and are blended with such consummate skill, that whilst the imagination is delighted by diversity of circumstances, the judgment is equally gratified in viewing their mutual co-operation towards the final result; the coalescence being so intimate, as not only to preserve the necessary unity of action, but to constitute one of the greatest beauties of the piece.

Such, indeed, is the interest excited by the structure and concatenation of the story, that the attention is not once suffered to flag. By a rapid succession of incidents, by sudden and overwhelming vicissitudes, by the most awful instances of misery and destitution, by the boldest contrariety of characters, are curiosity and anxiety kept progressively increasing, and with an impetus so strong, as nearly to absorb every faculty of the mind and every feeling of the heart.

Victims of frailty, of calamity, or of vice, in an age remote and barbarous, the actors in this drama are brought forward with a strength of colouring, which, had the scene been placed in a more civilised era, might have been justly deemed too dark and ferocious, but is not discordant with the earliest heathen age of Britain. The effect of this style of characterisation is felt occasionally throughout the entire play, but is particularly visible in the delineation of the vicious personages of the drama, the parts of Goneril, Regan, Edmund, and Cornwall being loaded, not only with ingratitude of the deepest dye, but with cruelty of the most savage and diabolical nature; they are the criminals, in fact, of an age where vice may be supposed to reign with lawless and gigantic power, and in which the extrusion of Gloster's eyes might be an event of no infrequent occurrence.

Had this mode of casting his characters in the extreme, been applied to the remainder of the _Dramatis Personæ_, we should have lost some of the finest lessons of humanity and wisdom that ever issued from the pen of an uninspired writer; but, with the exception of a few coarsenesses, which remind us of the barbarous period to which the story is referred, and of a few incidents rather revolting to credibility, but which could not be detached from the original narrative, the virtuous agents of the play exhibit the manners and the feelings of civilisation, and are of that mixed fabric which can alone display a just portraiture of the nature and composition of our species.

The characters of Cordelia and Edgar, it is true, approach nearly to perfection, but the filial virtues of the former are combined with such exquisite tenderness of heart, and those of the latter with such bitter humiliation and suffering, that grief, indignation, and pity are instantly excited. Very striking representations are also given of the rough fidelity of Kent, and of the hasty credulity of Gloster; but it is in delineating the passions, feelings, and afflictions of Lear, that our poet has wrought up a picture of human misery which has never been surpassed, and which agitates the soul with the most overpowering emotions of sympathy and compassion.

The conduct of the unhappy monarch having been founded merely on the impulses of sensibility, and not on any fixed principle or rule of action, no sooner has he discovered the baseness of those on whom he had relied, and the fatal mistake into which he had been hurried by the delusions of inordinate fondness and extravagant expectation, than he feels himself bereft of all consolation and resource. Those to whom he had given all, for whom he had stripped himself of dignity and power, and on whom he had centered every hope of comfort and repose in his old age, his inhuman daughters, having not only treated him with utter coldness and contempt, but sought to deprive him of all the respectability, and even of the very means of existence, what in a mind so constituted as Lear's, the sport of intense and ill-regulated feeling, and tortured by the reflection of having deserted the only child who loved him, what but madness could be expected as the result? It was, in fact, the necessary consequence of the reciprocal action of complicated distress and morbid sensibility; and, in describing the approach of this dreadful infliction, in tracing its progress, its height, and subsidence, our poet has displayed such an intimate knowledge of the workings of the human intellect, under all its aberrations, as would afford an admirable study for the enquirer into mental physiology. He has also in this play, as in that of Hamlet, finely discriminated between real and assumed insanity, Edgar, amidst all the wild imagery which his imagination has accumulated, never touching on the true source of his misery, whilst Lear, on the contrary, finds it associated with every object, and every thought, however distant or dissimilar. Not even the Orestes of Euripides, or the Clementina of Richardson, can, as pictures of disordered reason, be placed in competition with this of Lear; it may be pronounced, indeed, from its truth and completeness, beyond the reach of rivalry.

Of all the miseries incident to humanity the apprehension of approaching loss of reason is, perhaps, the most dreadful. Lear, on discovering the ingratitude of his eldest daughter, feels compunction for his treatment of the youngest: "I did her wrong," he exclaims, and such is the violence of the shock and the keenness of his sufferings, that, even in this first conflict of resentment and sorrow, he deprecates this heaviest of calamities:—

"O let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven!"[462:A]

But when Regan, following the example of her sister, inflicts upon him still greater dishonour, the fearful assurance is intimately felt, and he predicts its visitation in positive terms:—

—————————— "You think, I'll weep; No, I'll not weep:— I have full cause of weeping; but this heart Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws, Or ere I'll weep.—_O, fool, I shall go mad!_"[462:B]

Nothing can impress us with a more tremendous idea of this awful state of mind, than the feelings of Lear during his exposure to the tempest. What, under other circumstances, would have been shrunk from with alarm and pain, is now unfelt, or only so, as a relief from deeper horrors:—

"_Lear._ Thou think'st 'tis much, that this contentious storm Invades us to the skin: so 'tis to thee; But _where the greater malady is fix'd, The lesser is scarce felt_. Thoud'st shun a bear: But if thy flight lay toward the raging sea, Thoud'st meet the bear i' the mouth. When the mind's free, The body's delicate: _the tempest in my mind Doth from my senses take all feeling else, Save what beats there_.—Filial ingratitude! Is it not as this mouth should tear this hand, For lifting food to't?—But I will punish home:— No, I will weep no more.—In such a night To shut me out!—Pour on; I will endure: In such a night as this! O Regan, Goneril!— Your old kind father, whose frank heart gave all,— O, that way madness lies; let me shun that; No more of that,—

_Kent._ Good my lord, enter here.

_Lear._ Pr'ythee, go in thyself; seek thine own ease; _This tempest will not give me leave to ponder On things would hurt me more_."[463:A]

It is at the close of this scene that the misfortune which he has dreaded so much, overtakes him: "his wits," as Kent observes, "begin to unsettle;" but it is not a total dereliction of intellect: Lear is neither absolutely delirious, nor maniacal; but he labours under that species of hallucination which leaves to the wretched sufferer a sense of his own unhappiness: a state of being, beyond all others, calculated to awaken the most thrilling sensations of pity.

A picture of more terrible grandeur or of wilder sublimity, than what occurs, during the exposure of the aged monarch to the impetuous fury of the storm, was never imagined. Every thing conspires to render it unparalleled in its powers of impression. On a night, when the conflicting elements of fire, air, and water, deafen nature itself with their uproar; on a night,

———— "wherein the cub-drawn bear would couch, The lion and the belly-pinched wolf Keep their fur dry,"[464:A]

is the miserable old king driven out by his unnatural daughters, to wander over a bleak and barren heath in search of shelter, destitute of even common necessaries, a very beggar on the bounty of his former subjects, and accompanied only by his fool, and the faithful though banished Kent. It is with difficulty that they persuade him to take refuge from the storm; at length, he yields, at the same time addressing the fool in terms which, perhaps more than any other lines in the play, unveil the native goodness of his heart:—

————————————— "Come, your hovel, _Poor Fool and knave, I have one part in my heart That's sorry yet for thee_."[464:B]

No sooner, however, has the fool entered this hovel, than he returns horror-struck, followed by Edgar, who rushes on the heath, an almost naked maniac, and exclaiming,

"Away! the foul fiend follows me!— Through the sharp hawthorn blows the cold wind."[464:C]

The dialogue which now ensues between these extraordinary characters is, of itself, a proof of the boundless expansion of the poet's mind. The torrent of agonizing grief and resentment which flows from Lear, abandoned by his daughters, verging towards insanity, and aware of its approach; the wild exuberance of fancy which thrills in the phrenzied accents of Edgar, who, under the disguise of a madman tormented by demons, is flying from death threatened by a father; and the quaint mixture of wisdom, pleasantry, and satire in the language of the honest fool, who yet heightens, while he means to alleviate the distresses of his master, are elements of mental strife which harmonise with, and add a kind of illimitable horror to the storm which howls around.

Nor inferior to this in merit, though of a totally different cast, is the scene in which the exhausted monarch, having been lulled to sleep through the effects of an opiate, is awakened by the sound of music, whilst Cordelia, hanging over him, with an almost breathless anxiety, at length ventures to address him. The language of the poor old man, in the moment of partial reminiscence, is, beyond any other effort of human composition, simple and affecting:—

"_Cor._ How does my royal lord? How fares your majesty?

_Lear._ You do me wrong, to take me out of the grave:— Thou art a soul in bliss; but I am bound Upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears Do scald like molten lead.

_Cor._ Sir, do you know me?

_Lear._ You are a spirit, I know; when did you die?—

_Cor._ O, look upon me, sir, And hold your hands in benediction o'er me:— No, sir, you must not kneel.

_Lear._ Pray, do not mock me: I am a very foolish fond old man, Fourscore and upward; and, to deal plainly, I fear, I am not in my perfect mind. Methinks, I should know you, and know this man; Yet I am doubtful: for I am mainly ignorant What place this is; and all the skill I have Remembers not these garments; nor I know not Where I did lodge last night: Do not laugh at me; For, as I am a man, I think this lady To be my child Cordelia.

_Cor._ And so I am, I am.

_Lear._ Be your tears wet? Yes, 'faith. I pray, weep not: If you have poison for me, I will drink it. I know, you do not love me; for your sisters Have, as I do remember, done me wrong: You have some cause, they have not.

_Cor._ No cause, no cause.—

_Lear._ You must bear with me; Pray now, forget and forgive: I am old and foolish."[466:A]

27. CYMBELINE: 1605. This play, if not, in the construction of its fable, one of the most perfect of our author's productions, is, in point of poetic beauty, of variety and truth of character, and in the display of sentiment and emotion, one of the most lovely and interesting. Nor can we avoid expressing our astonishment at the sweeping condemnation which Johnson has passed upon it; charging its fiction with folly, its conduct with absurdity, its events with impossibility; terming its faults too evident for detection, and too gross for aggravation.[466:B]

Of the enormous injustice of this sentence, nearly every page of _Cymbeline_ will, to a reader of any taste or discrimination, bring the most decisive evidence. That it possesses many of the too common inattentions of Shakspeare, that it exhibits a frequent violation of costume, and a singular confusion of nomenclature, cannot be denied; but these are trifles light as air, when contrasted with its merits, which are of the very essence of dramatic worth, rich and full in all that breathes of vigour, animation, and intellect, in all that elevates the fancy, and improves the heart, in all that fills the eye with tears, or agitates the soul with hope and fear.

In possession of excellences, vital as these must be deemed, cold and fastidious is the criticism that, on account of irregularities in mere technical detail, would shut its eyes upon their splendour. Nor are there wanting critics of equal learning with, and superior taste to Johnson, who have considered what he has branded with the unqualified charge of "confusion of manners," as forming, in a certain point of view, one of the most pleasing recommendations of the piece. Thus Schlegel, after characterising _Cymbeline_ as one of Shakspeare's most wonderful compositions, adds,—"He has here connected a novel of Boccacio with traditionary tales of the ancient Britons reaching back to the times of the first Roman Emperors, and _he has contrived, by the most gentle transitions, to blend together into one harmonious whole the social manners of the latest times with the heroic deeds, and even with appearances of the gods_."[467:A] It may be also remarked, that, if the unities of time and place be as little observed in this play, as in many others of the same poet, unity of character and feeling, the test of genius, and without which the utmost effort of art will ever be unavailing, is uniformly and happily supported.

Imogen, the most lovely and perfect of Shakspeare's female characters, the pattern of connubial love and chastity, by the delicacy and propriety of her sentiments, by her sensibility, tenderness, and resignation, by her patient endurance of persecution from the quarter where she had confidently looked for endearment and protection, irresistibly seizes upon our affections; and when compelled to fly from the paternal roof, from

"A father cruel, and a step-dame false, A foolish suitor to a wedded lady, That hath her husband banished,"

she is driven to assume, under the name of Fidele, the disguise of a page, we follow her footsteps with the liveliest interest and admiration.

The scenes which disclose the incidents of her pilgrimage; her reception at the cave of Belarius; her intercourse with her lost brothers, who are ignorant of their birth and rank, her supposed death, funeral rites, and resuscitation, are wrought up with a mixture of pathos and romantic wildness, peculiarly characteristic of our author's genius, and which has had but few successful imitators. Among these few, stands pre-eminent the poet Collins, who seems to have trodden this consecrated ground with a congenial mind, and who has sung the sorrows of Fidele in strains worthy of their subject, and which will continue to charm the mind and soothe the heart "till pity's self be dead."

When compared with this fascinating portrait, the other personages of the drama appear but in a secondary light. Yet are they adequately brought out, and skilfully diversified; the treacherous subtlety of Iachimo, the sage experience of Belarius, the native nobleness of heart, and innate heroism of mind, which burst forth in the vigorous sketches of Guiderius and Arviragus, the temerity, credulity, and penitence of Posthumus, the uxorious weakness of Cymbeline, the hypocrisy of his Queen, and the comic arrogance of Cloten, half fool and half knave, produce a striking diversity of action and sentiment.

Of this latter character, the constitution has been thought so extraordinary, and involving elements of a kind so incompatible, as to form an exception to the customary integrity and consistency of our author's draughts from nature. But the following passage from the pen of an elegant female writer, will prove, that this curious assemblage of frequently opposite qualities, has existed, and no doubt did exist in the days of Shakspeare:—"It is curious that Shakspeare should, in so singular a character as Cloten, have given the exact prototype of a being whom I once knew. The unmeaning frown of the countenance; the shuffling gait; the burst of voice; the bustling insignificance; the fever and ague fits of valour; the froward tetchiness; the unprincipled malice; and, what is most curious, those occasional gleams of good sense, amidst the floating clouds of folly which generally darkened and confused the man's brain; and which, in the character of Cloten, we are apt to impute to a violation of unity in character; but in the some time Captain C——n, I saw that the portrait of Cloten was not out of nature."[468:A]

Poetical justice has been strictly observed in this drama; the vicious characters meet the punishment due to their crimes, while virtue, in all its various degrees, is proportionably rewarded. The scene of retribution, which is the closing one of the play, is a master-piece of skill; the developement of the plot, for its fullness, completeness, and ingenuity, surpassing any effort of the kind among our author's contemporaries, and atoning for any partial incongruity which the structure or conduct of the story may have previously displayed.

28. MACBETH: 1606. We have now reached what may justly be termed the greatest effort of our author's genius; the most sublime and impressive drama which the world has ever beheld.

Than the conception of the character of Macbeth, it is scarcely possible to conceive a picture more original and grand? Too great and good to fall beneath the common temptations to villany, Shakspeare has called in the powers of supernatural agency, and seizing upon ambition as the vulnerable part of his hero's character, and placing him between the suggestions of hell on one side, and those of his fiend-like wife on the other, he has, in conformity to the letter of the traditions which were before him, brought about a catastrophe, which, as he has conducted it, is the most awful on dramatic record. For, whilst the influence of the world unknown throws a dread solemnity over the principal incidents, the volition of Macbeth remains sufficiently free to enable the poet to bring into full play the strongest passions of the human breast.

Originally brave, magnanimous, humane, and gentle,

——— "not without ambition; but without The illness should attend it,"

and wishing to do that holily which he would highly; fully sensible also of the enormous ingratitude and guilt which he should incur by the assassination of the monarch who had loaded him with honours, and who was moreover his kinsman and his guest, the struggle would necessarily have terminated on the side of virtue, had not the predictions of the weird sisters, in part, instantly accomplished, and assuming the form therefore of inevitable destiny, concealed from his bewildered senses the eternal truth, that not from fate, but from his own agency alone could spring the commission of a crime, whose very suggestion had at first filled him with horror. But even this delusion, which seemed for a time to deaden the sense of responsibility, would have failed in its effect, had not the ferocious and sarcastic eloquence of Lady Macbeth been called in to its aid: dazzled by the splendour with which she clothes the expected issue of the deed; indignant at the charge of cowardice, to which she artfully imputes his irresolution, and allured by the means which she has planned as a security from detection, he, at length, rushes into the snare.

No sooner, however, has the assassination of Duncan been perpetrated, than the virtuous principles which had slumbered in the bosom of Macbeth rise up to accuse and condemn him. Conscience-stricken, and recoiling with horror from the atrocity of his own deed, he becomes the victim of the most agonising remorse; he feels deserted both by God and man, and unable even to deprecate the wrath which night and day pursues him:

"I have done the deed:—Did'st thou not hear a noise?— There's one did laugh in his sleep, and one cried, _Murder!_ That they did wake each other: I stood and heard them.— One cried, _God bless us!_ and, _Amen!_ the other; As they had seen me with these hangman's hands Listening their fear. I could not say, Amen, When they did say, God bless us.— But wherefore could not I pronounce, Amen? I had most need of blessing, and Amen Stuck in my throat.— Methought I heard a voice cry, _Sleep no more! Macbeth doth murder sleep._— Still it cry'd, _Sleep no more!_ to all the house; _Glamis hath murdered sleep_; and therefore Cawdor Shall sleep no more, Macbeth shall sleep no more."[470:A]

To this dread of vengeance from offended heaven, is soon added the apprehension of punishment from mankind, his keen abhorrence of his own iniquity leading him to paint, in the strongest colours, the detestation and resentment which it must have incurred from others. This fear of retaliation from his fellow-creatures, together with the awful prospect of retribution in another world, produce a complete revolution in his character; he is exhibited distrustful, treacherous, and cruel, sweeping from existence, without pity or hesitation, all whose talents, virtues, sufferings, or pretensions seem to endanger a life, of which, though hourly becoming more wretched and depraved, he anticipates the close with horror and dismay.

To the very last, the contest is kept up with tremendous energy, between the native vigour of a brave mind, and the debilitating effects of a guilty, and, therefore, a fear-creating conscience. The lesson is, beyond every other, salutary and important, as it proves that the dominion of one perverted passion subjugates to its own depraved purposes the very principles of virtue itself; the sensibility of Macbeth to his own wickedness, giving birth to terrors which urge him on to reiterated murder, and finally to irretrievable destruction.

The management of the fable of Macbeth presents us with a remarkable instance of the profound art of Shakspeare, in condensing into one representation, and with an uninterrupted progress of the action, an extensive and closely concatenated series of events, forming a perfect cycle of influential incidents and passions, on a scale commensurate with that of nature, and for which it were in vain to look, where the unrelaxing unities of time and place have imposed their fetters on the poet. "Let any one, for instance," observes Schlegel, "attempt to circumscribe the gigantic picture of Macbeth's murder, his tyrannical usurpation, and final fall, within the narrow limits of the unity of time, and he will then see, that, however many of the events which Shakspeare successively exhibits before us in such dread array, he may have placed anterior to the commencement of the piece, and made the subject of after recital, he has altogether deprived it of its sublimity of import. This drama, it is true, comprehends a considerable period of time: but in the rapidity of its progress, have we leisure to calculate this? We see, as it were, the fates weaving their dark web on the bosom of time; and the storm and whirlwind of events, which impel the hero to the first daring attempt, which afterwards lead him to commit innumerable crimes to secure the fruits of it, and drive him at last, amidst numerous perils, to his destruction in the heroic combat, draw us irresistibly along with them. Such a tragical exhibition resembles the course of a comet, which, hardly visible at first, and only important to the astronomic eye, when appearing in the heaven in a nebulous distance, soon soars with an unheard of and perpetually increasing rapidity towards the central point of our system, spreading dismay among the nations of the earth, till in a moment, with its portentous tail, it overspreads the half of the firmament with flaming fire."[472:A]

But, in fact, as hath been remarked by the same admirable critic, _Macbeth_, in its construction, bears a striking affinity to the celebrated trilogy of Æschylus, which included the _Agamemnon_, the _Choephoræ_, and the _Eumenides_, or _Furies_, pieces which were successively represented in one day. "The object of the first is the murder of Agamemnon by Clytemnestra, on his return from Troy. In the second, Orestes avenges his father by killing his mother: _facto pius et sceleratus eodem_. This deed, although perpetrated from the most powerful motives, is repugnant however to natural and moral order. Orestes as a Prince was, it is true, entitled to exercise justice even on the members of his own family; but he was under the necessity of stealing in disguise into the dwelling of the tyrannical usurper of his throne, and of going to work like an assassin. The memory of his father pleads his excuse; but although Clytemnestra has deserved death, the blood of his mother still rises up in judgment against him. This is represented in the Eumenides in the form of a contention among the gods, some of whom approve of the deed of Orestes, while others persecute him, till at last the divine wisdom, under the figure of Minerva, reconciles the opposite claims, establishes a peace, and puts an end to the long series of crimes and punishments which desolated the royal house of Atreus.

"A considerable interval takes place between the period of the first and second pieces, during which Orestes grows up to manhood. The second and third are connected together immediately in the order of time. Orestes takes flight after the murder of his mother to Delphi, where we find him at the commencement of the Eumenides.

"In each of the two first pieces, there is a visible reference to the one which follows. In Agamemnon, Cassandra and the chorus prophesy, at the close, to the arrogant Clytemnestra and her paramour Ægisthus, the punishment which awaits them at the hands of Orestes. In the Choephoræ, Orestes, immediately after the execution of the deed, finds no longer any repose; the furies of his mother begin to persecute him, and he announces his resolution of taking refuge in Delphi.

"The connection is therefore evident throughout, and we may consider the three pieces, which were connected together even in the representation, as so many acts of one great and entire drama. I mention this as a preliminary justification of Shakspeare and other modern poets, in connecting together in one representation a larger circle of human destinies, as we can produce to the critics who object to this the supposed example of the ancients."[473:A]

To these observations of M. Schlegel, the following excellent remarks have been added by a writer in the Monthly Review:—"Shakspeare's Macbeth," says this critic, "bears a close resemblance to this trilogy of Æschylus, which gives, in three distinct acts, a history of the house of Agamemnon. In Macbeth, also, are three acts or deeds, distinct from each other, and separated by long intervals of time; namely, the regicide of Duncan, the murder of Banquo, and the fall of Macbeth; the first serving to shew how he attained his elevation, the second how he abused it, and the third how he lost it. A chorus of supernatural beings, (the witches of Shakspeare operate like the furies of Æschylus,) in both these tragic poems, hovers over the fate of the hero; and, by impressing on the spectator the consciousness of an irresistible necessity, all the extenuation which the atrocities could admit is introduced. Criticism, in comparing the master-pieces of these master-poets, may be permitted to hesitate, but not to draw stakes. To the plot or fable of Shakspeare must be allowed the merit of possessing, in the higher degree, wholeness, connection, and ascending interest. The character of Clytemnestra may be weighed without disparagement against that of Lady Macbeth: but all the other delineations are superior in our Shakspeare; his characters are more various, more marked, more consistent, more natural, more intuitive. The style of Æschylus, if distinguished for a majestic energetic simplicity, greatly preferable to the mixt metaphors and puns of Shakspeare, has still neither the richness of thought nor the versatility of diction which we find displayed in the English tragedy."[474:A]

The _supernatural machinery_ of this play, which forms one of its most striking features, is founded on a species of superstition that, during the life-time of Shakspeare, prevailed in England and Scotland in an unprecedented degree. _Witchcraft_ had attracted the attention of government under the reign of Henry the Eighth, in whose thirty-third year was enacted a Statute which adjudged all Witchcraft and Sorcery to be Felony without Benefit of Clergy; but, at the commencement of the reign of Elizabeth, the evil seems to have been greatly on the increase, for Bishop Jewel, preaching before the Queen, in 1558, tells her,—"It may please your Grace to understand that Witches and Sorcerers within these few last years are marvelously increased within your Grace's realm. Your Grace's subjects pine away, even unto the death, their colour fadeth, their flesh rotteth, their speech is benumbed, their senses are bereft, I pray God they never practise further then upon the subject."[475:A] How prevalent the delusion had become in the year 1584, we have the most ample testimony in the ingenious work of Reginald Scot, entitled "The Discoverie of Witchcraft," which was written, as the sensible and humane author has informed us, "in behalfe of the poore, the aged, and the simple[475:B];" and it reflects singular discredit on the age in which it was produced, that a detection so complete, both with regard to argument and fact, should have failed in effecting its purpose. But the infatuation had seized all ranks, with an influence which rivalled that resulting from an article of religious faith, and Scot begins his work with the observation, that "the fables of Witchcraft have taken so fast hold and deepe root in the heart of man, that fewe or none can, now adaies, with patience indure the hand and correction of God. For if any adversitie, greefe, sicknesse, losse of children, corne, cattell, or libertie happen unto them; by and by they exclaime uppon witches;—insomuch as a clap of thunder, or a gale of wind is no sooner heard, but either they run to ring bels, or crie out to burne witches[475:C];" and, in his second chapter, he declares "I have heard to my greefe some of the minesterie affirme, that they have had in their parish at one instant, xvij or xviij witches: meaning such as could worke miracles supernaturallie[475:D];" a declaration which, in a subsequent part of his book, he more particularly applies, when he informs us, that "seventeene or eighteene were condemned at once at St. Osees in the countie of Essex, being a whole parish, though of no great quantitie."[475:E]

The mischief, however, was but in progress, and received a rapid acceleration from the publication of the "Dæmonologie" of King James, at Edinburgh, in the year 1597. The origin of this very curious treatise was probably laid in the royal mind, in consequence of the supposed detection of a conspiracy of two hundred witches with Dr. Fian, "Register to the Devil," at their head, to bewitch and drown His Majesty, on his return from Denmark, in 1590. James attended the examination of these poor wretches with the most eager curiosity, and the most willing credulity; and, when Agnis Tompson confessed, that she, with other witches to the number just mentioned, "went altogether by sea, each one in her riddle, or sieve, with flaggons of wine, making merry and drinking by the way, to the kirk of North Berwick, in Lothian, where, when they had landed, they took hands and danced, singing all with one voice,—

"Commer[476:A] go ye before, commer goe yè, Gif ye will not go before, commer let me:"

and "that Geilis Duncane did go before them, playing said reel on a Jew's trump," James immediately sent for Duncane, and listened with delight to his performance of the witches' reel on the Jew's-harp!

On Agnis, however, asserting, that the Devil had met them at the Kirk, His Majesty could not avoid expressing some doubts; when, taking him aside, she "declared unto him the very words which had passed between him and his Queen on the first night of their marriage, with their answer each to other; whereat the King wondered greatly, and swore by the living God, that he believed all the Devils in Hell could not have discovered the same."[476:B]

That the particulars elicited from the confessions of these unfortunate beings, which, it is said, "made the King in a wonderful admiration," formed the basis of the Dæmonologie, may be, therefore, readily admitted. It is also to be deplored, that, weak and absurd as this production now appears to us, its effects on the age of its birth, and for a century afterwards, were extensive, and melancholy in the extreme. It contributed, indeed, more than any other work on the subject, to rivet the fetters of credulity; and scarcely had a twelvemonth elapsed from its publication, before its result was visible in the destruction, in Scotland, of not less than six hundred human beings at once, for this imaginary crime![477:A]

The succession of James to the throne of Elizabeth served but to propagate the contagion; for no sooner had he reached this country, than his Dæmonologie re-appeared from an English press, being printed at London, in 1603, in quarto, and with a Preface to the Reader, which commences by informing him of "the fearefull abounding at this time in this Countrey, of these detestable slaves of the Divel, the Witches, or enchanters[477:B];" a declaration which, during the course of the same year, was accompanied by a new statute against Witches, one clause of which enacts, that "Any one that shall use, practise, or exercise any invocation or conjuration of any evill or wicked spirit, or consult, covenant with, entertaine or employ, feede or reward, any evill or wicked spirit, to or for any intent or purpose; or take up any dead man, woman or child, out of his, her, or their grave, or any other place where the dead body resteth, or the skin, bone, or other part of any dead person, to be employed or used in any manner of witchcraft, sorcery, charme, or enchantment; or shall use, practise, or exercise any witchcraft, enchantment, charme, or sorcery, whereby any person shall be killed, destroyed, wasted, consumed, pined, or lamed, in his or her body, or any part thereof, such offenders, duly and lawfully convicted and attainted, shall suffer death."[478:A]

We cannot wonder if measures such as these, which stamped the already existing superstitions with the renewed authority of the law, and with the influence of regal argument and authority, should render a belief in the existence of witchcraft almost universal; fashion and interest on the one hand, and ignorance and fear on the other, mutually contributing, by concealing or banishing doubt, to disseminate error, and preclude detection.

Who those were who, at this period, had the misfortune to be branded with the appellation of Witches; what deeds were imputed to them, and what was the nature of their supposed compact with the Devil, are questions which will be most satisfactorily answered in the words of Reginald Scot, whose book is not only extremely scarce, but highly curious and entertaining; and two or three chapters from this copious treasury of superstition, with a very few comments from other sources, will exhaust this part of the subject.

"The sort of such as are said to be witches," writes Scot, "are women which be commonly old, lame, bleare-eied, pale, fowle, and full of wrinkles; poore, sullen, superstitious, and papists; or such as knowe no religion; in whose drousie minds the divell hath gotten a fine seat; so as, what mischeefe, mischance, calamitie, or slaughter is brought to passe, they are easilie persuaded the same is doone by themselves; imprinting in their minds an earnest and constant imagination thereof. They are leane and deformed, shewing melancholie in their faces, to the horror of all that see them. They are doting, scolds, mad, divelish, and not much differing from them that are thought to be possessed with spirits; so firme and stedfast in their opinions, as whosoever shall onelie have respect to the constancie of their words uttered, would easilie beleeve they were true indeed.

"These miserable wretches are so odious unto all their neighbors, and so feared, as few dare offend them, or denie them anie thing they aske: whereby they take upon them; yea, and sometimes thinke, that they can doo such things as are beyond the abilitie of humane nature. These go from house to house, and from doore to doore for a pot full of milke, yest, drinke, pottage, or some such releefe; without the which they could hardlie live: neither obtaining for their service and paines, nor by their art, nor yet at the divels hands (with whome they are said to make a perfect and visible bargaine) either beautie, monie, promotion, welth, worship, pleasure, honor, knowledge, learning, or any other benefit whatsoever.

"It falleth out many times, that neither their necessities, nor their expectation is answered or served, in those places where they beg or borrowe; but rather their lewdness is by their neighbors reproved. And further, in tract of time the witch wareth odious and tedious to her neighbors; and they againe are despised and despited of hir; so as sometimes she cursseth one, and sometimes another; and that from the maister of the house, his wife, children, cattell, &c. to the little pig that lieth in the stie. Thus in processe of time they have all displeased hir, and she hath wished evil luck unto them all; perhaps with cursses and imprecations made in forme. Doubtless (at length) some of hir neighbors die, or falle sicke; or some of their children are visited with diseases that vex them strangelie: as apoplexies, epilepsies, convulsions, hot fevers, wormes, &c. Which by ignorant parents are supposed to be the vengeance of witches. Yea and their opinions and conceits are confirmed and maintained by unskilfull physicians: according to the common saieng; _Inscitiæ pallium maleficium et incantatio_, Witchcraft and inchantment is the cloke of ignorance: whereas indeed evill humors, and not strange words, witches, or spirits are the causes of such diseases. Also some of their cattell perish, either by disease or mischance. Then they, uppon whom such adversities fall, weighing the fame that goeth upon this woman (hir words, displeasure, and cursses meeting so justly with their misfortune) doo not onlie conceive, but also are resolved, that all their mishaps are brought to passe by hir onelie means.

"The witch on the other side expecting hir neighbors mischances, and seeing things sometimes come to passe according to hir wishes, cursses, and incantations (for Bodin himself confesseth, that not above two in a hundred of their witchings or wishings take effect) being called before a Justice, by due examination of the circumstances is driven to see hir imprecations and desires, and hir neighbors harmes and losses to concurre, and as it were to take effect: and so confesseth that she (as a goddes) hath brought such things to passe. Wherein, not onelie she, but the accuser, and also the Justice are fowlie deceived and abused; as being thorough hir confession and other circumstances persuaded (to the injurie of Gods glorie) that she hath doone, or can doo that which is proper onelie to God himselfe.

"Another sort of witches there are, which be absolutelie cooseners: These take upon them, either for glorie, fame, or gaine, to doo any thing, which God or the divell can doo: either for fortelling things to come, bewraieng of secrets, curing of maladies, or working of miracles."[480:A]

To this chapter from Scot, which we have given entire, may be added the admirable description of the abode of a witch from the pen of Spenser, who, as Warton hath observed, copied from living objects, and had probably been struck with seeing such a cottage, in which a witch was supposed to live:—

"There in a gloomy hollow glen she found A little cottage built of stickes and reedes In homely wise, and wald with sods around; In which a Witch did dwell, in loathly weedes And wilful want, all carelesse of her needes; So choosing solitarie to abide Far from all neighbours, that her divelish deeds And hellish arts from people she might hide, And hurt far off unknowne whomever she envide."[480:B]

This very striking picture for ever fixed the character of the habitation allotted to a witch; thus in a singularly curious tract, entitled "Round about our Coal-Fire," published about the close of the seventeenth century, and which details, in a pleasing manner, the traditions of the olden time, as a source of Christmas amusement, it is said that "a Witch must be a hagged old woman, living in a little rotten cottage, under a hill, by a wood-side, and must be frequently spinning at the door: she must have a black cat, two or three broom-sticks, an imp or two, and two or three diabolical teats to suckle her imps."

Of the wonderful feats which the various kinds of witches were supposed capable of performing, Scot has favoured us with the following succinct enumeration: there are three sorts of witches he tells us, "one sort can hurt and not helpe, the second can helpe and not hurt, the third can both helpe and hurt. Among the hurtfull witches there is one sort more beastlie than any kind of beasts, saving wolves: for these usually devour and eate yong children and infants of their owne kind. These be they that raise haile, tempests, and hurtfull weather; as lightening, thunder, &c. These be they that procure barrennesse in man, woman, and beast. These can throwe children in waters, as they walke with their mothers, and not be seene. These can make horsses kicke, till they cast their riders. These can passe from place to place in the aire invisible. These can so alter the mind of judges, that they can have no power to hurt them. These can procure to themselves and to others, taciturnitie and insensibilitie in their torments. These can bring trembling to the hands, and strike terror into the minds of them that apprehend them. These can manifest unto others, things hidden and lost, and foreshew things to come; and see them as though they were present. These can alter men's minds to inordinate love or hate. These can kill whom they list with lightening and thunder. These can take away man's courage.—These can make a woman miscarrie in childbirth, and destroie the child in the mother's wombe, without any sensible means either inwardlie or outwardlie applied. These can with their looks kill either man or beast.—

"Others doo write, that they can pull downe the moone and the starres. Some write that with wishing they can send needles into the livers of their enemies. Some that they can transferre corne in the blade from one place to another. Some, that they can cure diseases supernaturallie, flie in the aire, and danse with divels. Some write, that they can plaie the part of _Succubus_, and contract themselves to _Incubus_.—Some saie they can transubstantiate themselves and others, and take the forms and shapes of asses, woolves, ferrets, cowes, asses, horsses, hogs, &c. Some say they can keepe divels and spirits in the likenesse of todes and cats.

"They can raise spirits (as others affirme), drie up springs, turne the course of running waters, inhibit the sune, and staie both day and night, changing the one into the other. They can go in and out at awger holes, and saile in an egge shell, a cockle or muscle shell, through and under the tempestuous seas.—They can bring soules out of the graves. They can teare snakes in pieces.—They can also bring to pass, that chearne as long as you list, your butter will not come; _especiallie, if either the maids have eaten up the creame; or the good-wife have sold the butter before in the market_."[482:A]

The only material accession which the royal James has made to this curious catalogue of the deeds of witchcraft, consists in informing us, that these aged and decrepid slaves of Satan "make pictures of waxe or clay, that by the roasting thereof, the persons that they beare the name of, may be continually melted or dried away by continuall sicknesse[482:B];" and his mode of explaining how the devil performs this marvel, is a notable instance both of his ingenuity and his eloquence. This deed he says "is verie possible to their master to performe: for although that instrument of waxe have no vertue in that turne doing, yet may he not very well, even by the same measure, that his conjured slaves melts that waxe at the fire, may hee not, I say, at these same times, subtily, as a spirit, so weaken and scatter the spirits of life of the patient, as may make him on the one part, for faintnesse, to sweat out the humour of his bodie, and on the other part, for the not concurrence of these spirits, which causes his digestion, so debilitate his stomache, that this humour radicall continually, sweating out on the one part, and no newe good sucke being put in the place thereof, for lacke of digestion on the other, he at last shall vanish away, even as his picture will doe at the fire? And that knavish and cunning workeman, by troubling him, onely at sometimes, makes a proportion, so neere betwixt the working of the one and the other, that both shall end as it were at one time."[483:A]

It remains to notice the nature of the compact or bargain, which witches were believed to enter into with their seducer, and the species of homage which they were compelled to pay him; and here again we must have recourse to Scot, not only as the most compressed, but as the most authentic detailer of this strange credulity of his times. "The order of their bargaine or profession," says he, "is double; the one solemne and publike; the other secret and private. That which is called solemne or publike, is where witches come together at certaine assemblies, at the times prefixed, and doo not onelie see the divell in visible forme; but confer and talke familiarlie with him. In which conference the divell exhorteth them to observe their fidelitie unto him, promising them long life and prosperitie. Then the witches assembled, commend a new disciple (whom they call a novice) unto him: and if the divell find that yoong witch apt and forward in renunciation of Christian faith, in despising anie of the seven sacraments, in treading upon crosses, in spetting at the time of the elevation, in breaking their fast on fasting daies, and fasting on sundaies: then the divell giveth foorth his hand, and the novice joining hand in hand with him, promiseth to observe and keepe all the divels commandements.

"This doone, the divell beginneth to be more bold with hir, telling hir plainlie, that all this will not serve his turne; and therefore requireth homage at hir hands: yea he also telleth hir, that she must grant him both hir bodie and soule to be tormented in everlasting fire; which she yeeldeth unto. Then he chargeth hir, to procure as manie men, women, and children also, as she can, to enter into this societie. Then he teacheth them to make ointments of the bowels and members of children, whereby they ride in the aire, and accomplish all their desires. So as, if there be anie children unbaptized, or not garded with the signe of the crosse, or orisons; then the witches may and doo catch them from their mothers sides in the night, or out of their cradles, or otherwise kill them with their ceremonies; and after buriall steale them out of their graves, and seeth them in a caldron, until their flesh be made potable. Of the thickest whereof they make ointments, whereby they ride in the aire; but the thinner potion they put into flaggons, whereof whosoever drinketh, observing certaine ceremonies, immediatelie becommeth a maister or rather a mistresse in that practise and facultie.

"Their homage with their oth and bargaine is received for a certeine terme of yeares; sometimes for ever. Sometimes it consisteth in the deniall of the whole faith, sometimes in part.—And this is doone either by oth, protestation of words, or by obligation in writing, sometimes sealed with wax, sometimes signed with blood, sometimes by kissing the divels bare buttocks.

"You must also understand, that after they have delicatlie banketted with the divell and the ladie of the fairies; and have eaten up a fat oxe, and emptied a butt of malmesie, and a binne of bread at some noble man's house, in the dead of the night, nothing is missed of all this in the morning. For the ladie _Sibylla_, _Minerva_, or _Diana_ with a golden rod striketh the vessel and the binne, and they are fully replenished againe." After mentioning that the bullock is restored in the same magical manner, he states it as an "infallible rule, that everie fortnight, or at the least everie moneth, each witch must kill one child at the least for hir part." He also relates from Bodin, that "at these magicall assemblies, the witches never faile to danse, and whiles they sing and danse, everie one hath a broome in hir hand, and holdeth it up aloft."[485:A]

To these circumstances attending the meetings of this unhallowed sisterhood, King James adds, that Satan, in order that "hee may the more vively counterfeit and scorne God, oft times makes his slaves to conveene in those very places, which are destinate and ordained for the conveening of the servants of God (I meane by churches):—further, witches oft times confesse, not only his conveening in the church with them, but his occupying of the pulpit."[485:B] For this piece of information James seems to have been indebted to the confessions of Agnis Tompson; but he also relates, that the devil, as soon as he has induced his votaries to renounce their God and baptism, "gives them his marke upon some secret place of their bodie, which remaies soare unhealed, whilst his next meeting with them, and thereafter ever insensible, however it be nipped or pricked by any;" a seal of distinction which, he tells us at the close of his treatise, is of great use in detecting them on their trial, as "the finding of their marke, and the trying the insensiblenes thereof," was considered as a positive proof of their craft. His Majesty, however, proceeds to mention another mode of ascertaining their guilt, terminating the paragraph in a manner not very flattering to his female subjects, or very expressive of his own gallantry. "The other is," he tells us, "their fleeting on the water: for as in a secret murther, if the dead carkasse bee at any time thereafter handled by the murtherer, it will gush out of blood, as if the blood were crying to the heaven for revenge of the murtherer, God having appointed that secret supernaturall signe, for triall of that secret unnaturall crime, so it appeares that God hath appointed (for a supernaturall signe of the monstrous impietie of Witches) that the water shall refuse to receive them in her bosome, that have shaken off them the sacred water of Baptisme, and wilfully refused the benefite thereof: No, not so much as their eyes are able to shed teares (threaten and torture them as you please) while first they repent (God not permitting them to dissemble their obstinacie in so horrible a crime) albeit the women-kind especially, be able otherwayes to shed teares at every light occasion when they will, yea, although it were dissemblingly like the Crocodiles."[486:A]

Such are the chief features of this gross superstition, as detailed by the writers of the period in which it most prevailed in this country. _Scot_ has taken infinite pains in collecting, from every writer on the subject, the _minutiæ_ of Witchcraft, and his book is expanded to a thick quarto, in consequence of his commenting at large on the particulars which he had given in his initiatory chapters, for the purpose of their complete refutation and exposure; a work of great labour, and which shows, at every step, how deeply this credulity had been impressed on the subjects of Elizabeth. _James_, on the other hand, though a man of considerable erudition, and, in some respects, of shrewd good sense, wrote in defence of this folly, and, unfortunately for truth and humanity, the doctrine of the monarch was preferred to that of the sage.

When such was the creed of the country, from the throne to the cottage; when even the men of learning, with few [486:B]exceptions, ranged themselves on the side of the Dæmonologie, it was highly judicious in Shakspeare, in his dramatic capacity, to adopt, as a powerful instrument of terror, the popular belief; popular both in his own time, and in that to which the reign of Macbeth is [487:A]referred. And, in doing this, he has shown not less taste than genius; for in the principal authorities to which he has had recourse for particulars; in the _Discoverie_ of _Scot_, in the _Dæmonologie_ of _James_, and even in the _Witch_ of _Middleton_, a play now allowed to have been anterior to his own drama, the ludicrous and the frivolous are blended, in a very large proportion, with that which is calculated to excite solemnity and awe. With exquisite skill has he separated the latter from the former, exalting it with so many touches of grandeur, and throwing round it such an air of dreadful mystery, that, although the actual superstition on which the machinery is founded, be no more, there remains attached to it, in consequence of passing through the mind of Shakspeare, such a portion of what is naturally inherent in the human mind, in relation to its apprehensions of the invisible world of spirits, such a sublime, though indistinct conception of powers unknown and mightier far than we, that nearly the same degree of grateful terror is experienced from the perusal or representation of _Macbeth_ in modern days, as was felt in the age of its production.

In the very first appearance, indeed, of the Weird Sisters to Macbeth and Banquo on the blasted heath, we discern beings of a more awful and spiritualised character than belongs to the vulgar herd of witches. "What are these," exclaims the astonished Banquo,—

——————————— "What are these, So wither'd, and so wild in their attire; That look not like the inhabitants o' the earth, And yet are on't? Live you? or are you aught That man may question? You seem to understand me, By each at once her choppy finger laying Upon her skinny lips:—

_Macb._ Speak, I charge you.

_Banq._ The earth hath bubbles, as the water has, And these are of them:—Whither are they vanish'd?

_Macb._ Into the air; and what seem'd corporal, melted As breath into the wind."

Even when unattended by any human witnesses, when supporting the dialogue merely among themselves, Shakspeare has placed in the mouths of these agents imagery and diction of a cast so peculiar and mysterious, as to render them objects of alarm and fear, emotions incompatible with any tendency towards the ludicrous. But when, wheeling round the magic cauldron, in the gloomy recesses of their cave, they commence their incantations, chanting in tones wild and unearthly, and heard only during the intervals of a thunder-storm, their metrical charm, while flashes of subterranean fire obscurely light their haggard features, their language seems to breathe of hell, and we shrink back, as from beings at war with all that is good. Yet is the impression capable of augmentation, and is felt to have attained its acmé of sublimity and horror, when, in reply to the question of Macbeth,

"How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags? What is't you do?"

they reply,—

"_A deed without a name._"

Much, however, of the dread, solemnity, and awe which is experienced in reading this play, from the intervention of the witches, is lost in its representation on the stage, owing to the injudicious custom of bringing them too forward on the scene; where, appearing little better than a group of old women, the effect intended by the poet is not only destroyed, but reversed. Their dignity and grandeur must arise, as evil beings gifted with superhuman powers, from the undefined nature both of their agency and of their external forms. Were they indistinctly seen, though audible, at a distance, and, as it were, through a hazy twilight, celebrating their orgies, and with shadowy and gigantic shape flitting between the pale blue flames of their cauldron and the eager eye of the spectator, sufficient latitude would be given to the imagination, and the finest drama of our author would receive in the theatre that deep tone of supernatural horror with which it is felt to be so highly imbued in the solitude of the closet.

FOOTNOTES:

[419:A] Chalmers's Supplemental Apology, p. 357.

[420:A] Vide Reed's Shakspeare, vol. x. p. 362.

"For he is but a bastard to the time, That doth not smack of observation," &c.

[420:B] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. x. p. 413. Act iii. sc. 1.

[421:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. x. pp. 451. 454-456. Act iii. sc. 4.

[422:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. x. p. 447. note 9.

[423:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ii. p. 290.

[423:B] "Of all the characters of Shakspeare," remarks Mr. Felton, "none more resemble his best female advocate (Mrs. Montagu) than the Countess of Rousillon."—Imperfect Hints, part i. p. 65.

[424:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. viii. pp. 248, 249. Act i. sc. 3.

[425:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. viii. pp. 313. 315. Act iii. sc. 2.

[426:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xii. pp. 336. 338, 339. Act ii. sc. 2.

[427:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xii. pp. 341, 342. Act ii. sc. 2.

[427:B] Ibid. vol. xii. pp. 438-441. Act iv. sc. 1.

[428:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xii. p. 456. note 5.

[428:B] Ibid. p. 366. et seq. Act iii. sc. 1.

[428:C] Ibid. p. 378. Act iii. sc. 3.

[428:D] Ibid. p. 404. et seq. 459. et seq.

[430:A] Supplemental Apology, p. 381.

[430:B] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. vi. p. 185.

[430:C] It is most probable that Shakspeare derived his materials from a version of Belleforest, who copied Bandello. The story forms the 22d tale of the first part of Bandello, and the 18th history of the 3d volume of Belleforest.

[431:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. vi. p. 182.

[431:B] Schlegel on Dramatic Literature, vol. ii. p. 166.

[434:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. viii. pp. 43, 44. Act ii. sc. 1.

[434:B] Ibid. p. 59. Act ii. sc. 5.

[434:C] Ibid. p. 76, 77. Act ii. sc. 7.

[435:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. i. p. 66.

[435:B] Epistle Dedicatory to _The Comical Gallant_, 1702.

[435:C] Supplemental Apology, pp. 320. 345.

[435:D] Royal and Noble Authors, apud Park, vol. i. p. 82.

[436:A] Supplemental Apology, p. 345.

[437:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ii. p. 127.

[438:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iii. p. 391.

[438:B] Ibid. vol. ii. p. 319.

[441:A] Life of Chaucer, vol. i. pp. 509-512. 8vo. edit.

[442:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ii. pp. 312. 316.

[442:B] Supplemental Apology, p. 446. et seq.

[443:A] The Works of Ben Jonson, by W. Gifford, Esq. 9 vols. 8vo. 1816. vol. i. p. cclxxii.

[444:A] MS. Harl. 7002.—Vide Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xv. p. 6.

[445:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ii. p. 317.

[445:B] Reliq. Wotton. p. 425.

[445:C] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ii. p. 312.

[446:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xix. p. 3.

[446:B] Ibid. vol. ii. pp. 355, 356.

[446:C] Ibid. vol. xix. p. 2.

[446:D] Supplemental Apology, p. 391.

[447:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ii. p. 354.

[447:B] Supplemental Apology, p. 394.

[447:C] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xix. p. 214. note.

[449:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xix. pp. 125-127.

[449:B] I conceive that by "_dangerous nature_" in this passage, is meant a nature, from acute sensibility and sudden misfortune, liable to be overpowered, to be thrown off its poize, and to suffer from mental derangement.

[449:C] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xix. pp. 182, 183.

[451:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xix. pp. 159-165. Act iv. sc. 3.

[451:B] Ibid. vol. xix. p. 166.

[452:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xix. p. 179.

[452:B] Supplemental Apology, pp. 411, 412.

[454:A] History of Fiction, vol. ii. 1st edit. pp. 367, 368.—See Mr. Douce's enumeration of the sources whence the plot of this play might have been extracted, in his Illustrations, vol. i. p. 152. et seq.

[455:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. vi. p. 298, 299. Act iii. sc. 1.

[456:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. vi. pp. 303-306. Act iii. sc. 1.

[456:B] Illustrations of Shakspeare, vol. i. p. 132., where several passages, which may have suggested the imagery in Claudio's description, are quoted.

[456:C] Lectures on Dramatic Literature, vol. ii. p. 169.

[458:A] Supplemental Apology, pp. 417, 418.

[458:B] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ii. p. 127.

[459:A] For these consult not only the Variorum edition of Shakspeare, but Mr. Chalmers's Supplemental Apology, and Mr. Douce's Illustrations. See also the story of Lear, from Caxton's Chronicle of 1480, extracted by Mr. Dibdin, in the British Bibliographer, vol. ii. p. 578.

[459:B] Warton tells us, that Perceforest was originally a metrical romance, and written about the year 1220. See his History of Poetry, vol. i. p. 464.

[462:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xvii. p. 381. Act i. sc. 5.

[462:B] Ibid. vol. xvii. p. 441. Act ii. sc. 4.

[463:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xvii. pp. 459-461. Act iii. sc. 4.

[464:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xvii. pp. 445, 446. Act iii. sc. 1.

[464:B] Ibid. p. 456. Act iii. sc. 2.

[464:C] Ibid. p. 463. Act iii. sc. 4.

[466:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xvii. pp. 564-567. Act iv. sc. 7.

[466:B] Ibid. vol. xviii. p. 649.

[467:A] Lectures on Dramatic Literature, vol. ii. p. 183.

[468:A] Letters of Anna Seward, vol. iii. p. 246.

[470:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. x. pp. 110, 111, 112. 114.

[472:A] Lectures on Dramatic Literature, vol. i. pp. 352, 353.

[473:A] Lectures on Dramatic Literature, vol. i. pp. 95, 96.

[474:A] Monthly Review, vol. lxxxi. p. 119, 120.

[475:A] Strype's Annals of Reformation, vol. i. p. 8. The apprehension expressed at the close of this quotation, was realised some years afterwards, when a Mrs. Dier was accused of conjuration and witchcraft, because the Queen had been "under excessive anguish _by pains of her teeth_: insomuch that she took no rest for divers nights."—Vide Strype's Annals, vol. iv. p. 7.

[475:B] Epistle to Sir Roger Manwood, p. 1.

[475:C] Discoverie of Witchcraft, chap. i. pp. 1, 2.

[475:D] Ibid. p. 4.

[475:E] Discourse of Divels and Spirits, p. 543.; annexed to the Discoverie of Witchcraft.

[476:A] Gossip.

[476:B] These extracts are taken from a pamphlet entitled, "Newes from Scotland," reprinted in the Gent. Magazine, vol. xlix. p. 449. See also Gent. Magazine, vol. vii. p. 556.

[477:A] See Nashe's Lenten Stuff, 1599, as quoted by Mr. Reed, in his Shakspeare, vol. x. p. 5. note.

[477:B] King James's Works, as published by James, Bishop of Winton, folio, 1616, p. 91.

[478:A] This act against witches was not repealed until the year 1736, being the ninth of George the Second!

[480:A] Discoverie of Witchcraft, book i. chap. 3. pp. 7-9.

[480:B] Todd's Spenser, vol. iv. pp. 480, 481. Faerie Queene, book iii.