WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE. amass; but he could not combine and arrange. and their recurrence in cases were their aid seems Like a weak soldier under heavy armour, he is to be unnecessary. Mr. Singer and I may occaoppressed by his means of safety and triumph.sionally differ in our opinions respecting the text, He sinks beneath his knowledge, and cannot pro- which he has adopted: but, in these instances of fitably use it. The weakness of his judgment de- our dissent, it is fully as probable that I may be prived the result of his industry of its proper effect. wrong as he. I feel, in short, confident, on the He acts on a right principle of criticism: but, ig-whole, that Mr. Singer is now advancing, not to norant of its right application, he employs it for claim, (for to claim is inconsistent with his modesty,) the purposes of error. He was not, in short, but to obtain a high place among the editors of formed of the costly materials of a critic; and no Shakspeare; and to have his name enrolled with abour, against the inhibition of Nature, could the names of those who have been the chief benefashion him into a critic. His page is pregnant factors of the reader of our transcendent Poet. with information: but it is thrown into so many involutions and tangles, that it is lighter labour to work it out of the original quarry than to select it amid the confusion in which it is thus brought to your hand. If any copy of indisputable authority had been in existence, Malone would have produced a fac-simile of it, and would thus, indeed, have been an admirable editor of his author, for not a preposition, a copulative, a particle, a comma to be found in his original, would have been out of its place in his transcript. Shakspeare could be discovered; and something But no such authentic copy of more than diligence and accuracy was required in his editor: and to nothing more than diligence and accuracy could Malone's very humble and circumscribed abilities aspire. Attaching, therefore, fic- whence they were offered to him; from Italian titious authority to some of the earlier copies, he novels; from histories; from old story-books; Shakspeare took his stories from any quarter, followed them with conscientious precision; and, from old plays; and even from old ballads. In one disclaiming all emendatory criticism, he rejoiced in instance, and in one alone, no prototype has been his fidelity to the errors of the first careless or illi- found for his fiction; and the whole of The Temterate transcriber, He closed the long file of the pest," from its first moving point to the plenieditors of Shakspeare. editor or commentator has hitherto appeared to offspring of his wonderful imagination.* But although no formal tude of its existence, must be admitted to be the supply the place left vacant by Malone, yet does whence soever he drew the first suggestion of his the importance of our bard continue to excite the story, or whatever might be its original substance, man of talents to write in his cause, and to refresh he soon converts it into an image of ivory and the wreath of fame, which has hung for two centu- gold, like that of the Minerva of Phidias; and then, ries on his tomb. On this occasion I must adduce beyond the efficacy of the sculptor's art, he breathes the name of Skottowe, a gentleman who has recently into it the breath of life. This, indeed, is spoken gratified the public with a life of Shakspeare, invol- only of his tragedies and comedies: for his histories, ving a variety of matter respecting him, in a style as they were first called, or historical dramas, are eminent for its compression and its neatness. To transcripts from the page of Hall or Hollingshead; Mr. Skottowe I must acknowledge my especial and, in some instances, are his workings on old obligations, for not infrequently relieving me from plays, and belong to him no otherwise than as he the prolixities and the perplexities of Malone; and imparted to them the powerful delineation of chasometimes for giving to me information in a com-racter, or enriched them with some exquisite scenes. pendious and lucid form, like a jewel set in the rich simplicity of gold. These pieces, however, which affect not the comWhen I speak of Malone as the last of the editors the chronicler or of the elder dramatist, follow the of Shakspeare, I speak, of course, with reference current of events, as it flows on in historic succesbination of a fable; but, wrought upon the page of to the time at which I am writing, when no later sion, must be made the first subjects of our reeditor has shown himself to the world. But when marks; and we will then pass to those dramas, I am placed before the awful tribunal of the Public, which are more properly and strictly his own. To a new Editor of our great dramatist will stand by these historical plays, then, whatever may be their my side: who, whilst I can be only a suppliant for original materials, the power of the Poet has compardon, may justly be a candidate for praise. With municated irresistible attraction; not, as Samuel Mr. SINGER, the editor in question, I am personally Johnson would wish us to believe, "by being not unacquainted; and till a period, long subsequent to long soft or pathetic without some idle conceit or my completion of the little task which I had under- contemptible equivocation:" not "by checking taken, I had not seen a line of his Shakspearian and blasting terror and pity, as they are rising in illustrations. But, deeming it right to obtain some the mind, with sudden frigidity," but by the strongknowledge of the gentleman, who was bound on est exertions of the highest poetry; and by comthe same voyage of adventure, in the same vessel manding, with the royalty of genius, every avenue with myself, I have since read the far greater part to the human heart. For the truth of what we of his commentary on my author; and it would be assert, we will make our appeal to the frantic and unjust in me not to say, that I have found much in it soul-piercing lamentations of Constance in "King to applaud, and very litttle to censure. Mr. Singer's John;" to the scene between that monarch and antiquarian learning is accurate and extensive: his Hubert; and between Hubert and young Arthur; critical sagacity is considerable; and his judgment to the subsequent scene between Hubert and his generally approves itself to be correct. He enters murderous sovereign, when the effects of the reon the field with the strength of a giant; but with ported death of Arthur on the populace are dethe diffidence and the humility of a child. We scribed, and the murderer quarrels with his agent. sometimes wish, indeed, that his humility had been to the scene, finally, in which the king dies, and less: for he is apt to defer to inferior men, and to which concludes the play. be satisfied with following when he is privileged to lead. His explanations of his author are frequently happy; and sometimes they illustrate a passage, which had been left in unregarded darkness by the commentators who had preceded him. The sole fault of these explanatory notes (if such) indeed can be deemed a fault) is their redundancy; summer Night's Dream" with animation, and the least attractive with dra-1 inimitable effect; and in the minor parts of the exmatic interest. Of "Richard II." we may say with Mr. Skottowe, that, "though it is an exquisite poem, it is an indifferent play." But in the drama which, in its historic order, succeeds to it, we receive an ample compensation for any failure of the dramatist in "Richard II." In every page of "Henry IV.," both the serious and the comic, Shakspeare "is himself again;" and our fancy is either elevated or amused without the interruption of a single discordant or uncharacteristic sentiment. Worcester, indeed, says, "And 'tis no little reason bids us speed and is thus guilty of a quibble; an offence of which The succeeding play of "Henry V." bears noble testimony to the poetic and the dramatic supremacy of Shakspeare: to the former, more especially in its three fine choruses, one of them serving as the prologue to the play, one opening the third act, and one describing the night preceeding the battle of Agincourt: to the latter, in every speech of the King's, and in the far greater part of the remaining dialogue, whether it be comic or tragic. "Henry V.," however, is sullied with some weak and silly scenes; and, on the whole, is certainly inferior in dramatic attraction to its illustrious predecessor. But it is a very fine production, and far-far above the reach of any other English writer, who has been devoted to the service of the stage. ecution of the drama, there is nothing among all the creations of poetry more splendid and terrific than the dream of Clarence. But this noble effort of the tragic power is not altogether faultless. Some of its scenes, as not promoting the action of the drama, are superfluous and even tedious; and the violation of history, for the purpose of introducing the deposed queen, Margaret, upon the stage, may reasonably be censured. I am not certain, however, that I should be satisfied to resign her on the requisition of truth. Her curses are thrilling, and their fulfilment is awful. Shakspeare, as it may be remarked, has accumulated uncommitted crimes on the head of the devoted Richard. By the historian, this monarch is cleared of the deaths of Clarence and of Anne, his wife to the latter of whom he is said to have approved himself an affectionate husband; whilst the murder of Clarence is imputed to the intrigues of the relations of his sister-in-law, the queen. His hand certainly did not shed the blood of the pious Henry; and even his assassination of the two illegitimate sons of his brother, Edward, is supported by very questionable evidence, for there is reason to think that the eldest of these young princes walked at his uncle's coronation; and that the youngest escaped to meet his death, under the name of Perkin Warbeck, from the hand of the first Tudor. But the scene of Shakspeare has stamped deeper and more indelible deformity on the memory of the last sovereign of the house of York, than all the sycophants of the Tudors had been able to impress; or than all that the impartiality, and the acute research of the modern historian have ever had the power to erase. We are certain that Richard possessed a lawful title to the throne which he filled: that he was a wise and,patriotic sovereign: that his death was a calamity to his country, which it surrendered to a race of usurpers and tyrants, who trampled on its liberties, and stained its soil with much innocent and rich blood:-to that cold-blooded murderer Of "Henry VI.," that drum and trumpet thing, as and extortioner, Henry VII.-to that monster of it has happily been called by a man of genius, who cruelty and lust, his ferocious son: to the sangui ranged himself with the advocates of Shakspeare, Inary and ruthless bigot, Mary: to the despotic and shall not take any notice on the present occasion, as the three parts of this dramatized history are nothing more than three old plays, corrected by the hand of Shakspeare, and here and there illustrious with the fire-drops which fell from his pen. Though we consider them, therefore, as possessing much attraction, and as disclosing Shakspeare in their outbreaks of fine writing, and in their strong characteristic portriature, we shall now pass them by to proceed without delay to their dramatic successor, His next task was one of yet greater difficulty:"Richard III." Of "Richard II.," fine as it oc- to smooth down the rugged features of the eighth casionally is in poetry, and rich in sentiment and Henry, and to plant a wreath on the brutal and pathos, we have remarked that, with reference to blood-stained brow of the odious father of Elizathe other productions of its great author, it was low beth. This task he has admirably executed, and in the scale of merit. In "Richard II." he found without offering much violation to the truth of hisan insufficient and an unawakening subject for history. He has judiciously limited his scene to that genius, and it acted drowsily, and as if it were half asleep but in the third Richard there was abundant excitement for all its powers; and the victim of Tudor malignity and calumny rushes from the scene of our mighty dramatist in all the black efficiency of the demoniac tyrant. Besides Sir Thomas More's history of Richard of Gloster, our Poet had the assistance, as it seems, of a play upon the same subject, which had been popular before he began his career upon the stage. Adhering servilely neither to the historian nor to the old dramatist, Shakspeare contented himself with selecting from each of them such parts as were suited to his purpose; and with the materials thus obtained, compounded with others supplied by his own invention, he has produced a drama, which cannot be read in the closet, or seen in its representation on the stage without the strongest agitation of the mind. The character of Richard is drawn with * The late Mr. Maurice Morgann; who wrote an lanwery essay on the dramatic character of Falstaff. unamiable Elizabeth; the murderess of a suppliant queen, of kindred blood, who had fled to her for protection. Such was the result of Bosworth's field, preceded, as it was on the stage of Shakspeare, by visions of bliss to Richmond, and by visions of terror to Richard. But Shakspeare wrote with all the prejudices of a partisan of the Tudors; and at a time also when it was still expedient to flatter that detestable family. period of the tyrant's reign in which the more disgusting deformities of his character had not yet been revealed-to the death of Catharine, the fail of Wolsey, and the birth of Elizabeth: and the crowned savage appears to us only as the generous, the munificent, the magnanimous monarch, striking down the proud, and supporting with a strong arm the humble and the oppressed. But the whole pathos and power of the scene are devoted to Catharine and Wolsey. On these two characters the dramatist has expended all his force; and our pity is inseparably attached to them to the last moment of their lives. They expire, indeed, bedewed with our tears. Of this, the last of Shakspeare's dramatic histories, it may be remarked that it is writ ten in a style different from that of its predeces sors that it is less interspersed with comic scenes; that in its serious parts its diction is more stately and formal; more elevated and figurative: that its figures are longer and more consistently sustained: that it is more rich in theatric exhibition, or in the spectacle, as Aristotle calls it, and by whom it is regarded as a component part of the drama. To any attentive reader these distinguishing characters of the dramatic history of Henry VIII. must be sufficiently obvious; and we can only wonder that the same mind should produce such fine pieces as those of "Henry IV.," " Richard III.," and "Henry VIII.," each written with a pen appropriate to itself, and the last with a pen not employed in any other instance. "facies non omnibus una; Nec diversa tamen." To illustrate what I mean, let us contemplate Portia, Desdemona, Imogen, Rosalind, Beatrice, Cordelia, and Ophelia. They are equally amiable and affectionate women; equally faithful and attached as wives, as friends, as daughters: two of them, also, are noted for the poignancy and sparkle of their wit: and yet can it be said that any one of If we were to pause in this stage of our progress, them can be mistaken for the other; or that a single we might confidently affirm that we had suggested speech can with propriety be transferred from the to the minds of our readers such a mass of poetic lips of her to whom it has been assigned by her and dramatic genius as would be sufficient to excite dramatic creator? They are all known to us as the the general interest of an intellectual and literary children of one family, with a general resemblance, people. But we are yet only in the vestibule which and an individual discrimination. Benedict and opens into the magnificence of the palace, where Mercutio are both young men of high birth; of Shakspeare is seated on the throne of his great-known valour; of playful wit, delighting itself in ness. The plays, which we have hitherto been pleasantry and frolic: yet are they not distinguished considering, are constructed, for the most part, beyond the possibility of their being confounded? with materials not his own, supplied either by the So intimately conversant is our great dramatist arcient chronicler, or by some preceding drama- with the varieties of human nature, that he scatters tist; and are wrought up without any reference to character, as a king on his accession scatters gold, nat essential portion of a drama, a plot or fable. among the populace; and there is not one, perhaps, But when he is disengaged from the incumbrances of his subordinate agents, who has not his peculiar to which he had submitted in his histories, he as- features and a complexion of his own. So mighty sumes the full character of the more perfect dra- is our Poet as a dramatic creator, that characters matist; and discovers that art, for which, equally of the most opposite description are thrown in equal with the powers of his imagination, he was cele- perfection and with equal facility from his hand. brated by Ben Jonson. In some of his plays, in- The executive decision of Richard; the meditative deed, we acknowledge the looseness with which his inefficiency of Hamlet; the melancholy of Jaques, fable is combined, and the careless hurry with which which draws subjects of moral reflection from every he accelerates its close: but in the greater triumphs object around him; and the hilarity of Mercutio, of his genius, we find the fable artificially planned which forsakes him not in the very act of dying; and solidly constructed. In "The Merchant of the great soul of Macbeth, maddened and bursting Venice," in "Romeo and Juliet," in "Lear," in under accumulated guilt; and "the unimitated and 'Othello," and, above all, in that intellectual won- inimitable Falstaff," (as he is called by S. Johnson, der, "The Tempest," we may observe the fable in the single outbreak of enthusiasm extorted from managed with the hand of a master, and contribu-him by the wonders of Shakspeare's page) revell ting its effect, with the characters and the dialogue, to amuse, to agitate, or to surprise. In that beautiful pastoral drama, "As You Like It," the sudden disappearance of old Adam from the scene has been a subject of regret to more than one of the commentators: and Samuel Johnson wishes that the dialogue between the hermit, as he calls him, and the usurping duke, the result of which was the conversion of the latter, had not been omitted on the stage. But old Adam had fulfilled the purposes of his dramatic existence, and it was, therefore, properly closed. He had discovered his honest attachment to his young master, and had experienced his young master's gratitude. He was brought into a place of safety; and his fortunes were now blended with those of the princely exiles of the forest. There was no further part for him to act; and he passed naturally from the stage, no longer the object of our hopes or our fears. On the subject of S. Johnson's wish respecting the dialogue between the old religious man and the guilty duke, we may shortly remark, that nothing could have been more undramatic than the intervention of such a scene of dry and didactic morality, at such a crisis of the drama, when the minds of the audience were heated, and hurrying to its approaching close. Like Felix in the sacred history, the royal criminal might have trembled at the lecture of the noly man but the audience, probably, would have been irritated or asleep. No! Shakspeare was not so ignorant of his art as to require to be instructed in it by the author of Irene. But it was in the portraiture of the human mind: in the specific delineation of intellectual and moral man, that the genius of Shakspeare was pre-eminently conspicuous. The curious inquisition of his eye into the characters, which were passing beneath its glance, cannot be made too much the subject of our admiration and wonder. He saw them not only under their broad distinctions, when they became obvious to the common observer; but he beheld them in their nicer tints and shadings, by which they are diversified, though the tone of their Feneral colouring may be the same. ing in the tavern at Eastcheap, or jesting on the field of Shrewsbury, are all the creatures of one plastic intellect, and are absolute and entire in their kind. Malignity and revenge constitute the foundation on which are constructed the two very dissimilar characters of Shylock and Iago. But there is something terrific and even awful in the inexora bility of the Jew, whilst there is nothing but meanness in the artifices of the Venetian standardbearer. They are both men of vigorous and acuto understandings: we hate them both; but our ha tred of the former is mingled with involuntary respect; of the latter our detestation is made more intensely strong by its association with contempt. In his representation of madness, Shakspeare must be regarded as inimitably excellent; and the picture of this last degradation of humanity, with nature always for his model, is diversified by him at his pleasure. Even over the wreck of the human mind he throws the variegated robe of character. How different is the genuine insanity of Lear from the assumed insanity of Edgar, with which it is immediately confronted; and how distinct, again, are both of these from the disorder which prevails in the brain of the lost and the tender Ophelia. In one illustrious effort of his dramatic power, our Poet has had the confidence to produce two delineations of the same perversion of the human heart, and to present them, at once similar and dissimilar, to the examination of our wondering eyes. In Timon and Apemantus is exhibited the same deformity of misanthropy: but in the former it springs from the corruption of a noble mind, stricken and laid prostrate by the ingratitude of his species: in the latter, it is a noisome weed, germinating from a bitter root, and cherished by perverse cultivation into branching malignity. In each of them, as the vice has a different parentage, so has it a diversified aspect. With such an intimacy with all the fine and subtle workings of Nature in her action on the human heart, it is not wonderful that our great dramatist should possess an absolute control over the passions; and should be able to unlock the cell of each ages which are yet to come. The great Milton's imagination alone can be placed in competition with that of Shakspeare; and even Milton's must yield the palm to that which is displayed in "A Midsummer Night's Dream," and in the almost divine "Tempest." or But having sported a while with the fairies, "as on the sands with printless feet They chase the ebbing Neptune," "in the spiced Indian air, They dance their ringlets to the whistling wind," of them as the impulse of his fancy may direct. | the loftiest aspirations of the human mind in the When we follow Macbeth to the chamber of Duncan: when we stand with him by the enchanted caldron; or see him, under the infliction of conscience, glaring at the spectre of the blood-boltered Banquo in the possession of the royal chair, horror is by our side, thrilling in our veins, and bristling in our hair. When we attend the Danish prince to his midnight conference with the shade of his murdered father, and hear the ineffable accents of the dead, willing, but prohibited, " to tell the secrets of his prison-house," we are appalled, and our faculties are suspended in terror. When we see the faithful and the lovely Juliet awaking in the house of darkness and corruption with the corpse of her husband on her bosom: when we behold the innocent Desdemona dying by the hand, to which she the mighty Poet turns from their bowers, overwas the most fondly attached; and charging on canopied with luscious woodbine," and plants us herself, with her latest breath, the guilt of her mur- on "the blasted heath," trodden by the weird sis derer: when we witness the wretchedness of Lear, ters, the Fates of the north; or leads us to the contending with the midnight storm, and strewing dreadful cave, where they are preparing their inhis white locks on the blast; or carrying in his fernal caldron, and singing round it the incantations withered arms the body of his Cordelia murdered of hell. What a change, from all that is fascinain his cause, is it possible that the tear of pity ting, to all that is the most appalling to the fancy; should not start from our eyes and trickle down our and yet each of these scenes is the product of the cheeks? In the forest of Arden, as we ramble with same astonishing intellect, delighting at one time its accidental inmates, our spirits are soothed into to lull us on beds of roses, with the spirit of Or cheerfulness, and are, occasionally, elevated into pheus, and at another to curdle our blood by throwgaiety. In the tavern at Eastcheap, with the wittying at us the viper lock of Alecto. But to show and debauched knight, we meet with "Laughter holding both his sides;" and we surrender ourselves, willingly and delighted, to the inebriation of his influence. We could dwell for a long summer's day amid the fertility of these charming topics, if we were not called from them to a higher region of poetic enjoyment, possessed by the genius of Shakspeare alone, where he reigns sole lord, and where his subjects are the wondrous progeny of his own creative imagination. From whatever quarter of the world, eastern or northern, England may have originally derived her elves and her fairies, Shakspeare undoubtedly formed these little beings, as they flutter in his scenes, from an idea of his own; and they came from his hand, beneficent and friendly to man; immortal and invulnerable; of such corporeal minuteness as to lie in the bell of a cowslip; and yet of such power as to disorder the seasons; as "to bedim The noontide sun; call forth the mutinous winds: To this little ethereal people our Poet has assigned 66 66 "To answer his best pleasure, be it to fly, in contrast with this aerial being, the imagination his supreme command of the super-human world, our royal Poet touches the sepulchre with his magic rod, and the sepulchre opens "its pond'rous and marble jaws," and gives its dead to "revisit the glimpses of the moon" The belief that the dead, on some awful occasions, were permitted to assume the semblance of those bodies, in which they had walked upon earth; or that the world of spirits was sometimes disclosed to the eye of mortality, has prevailed in every age of mankind, in the most enlightened as well as in the most dark. When philosophy had attained its widest extent of power, and had enlarged and refined the intellect, not only of its parent Greece, but of its pupil Rome, a spectre is recorded to have shaken the firmness of Dion, the scholar and the friend of Plato; and another to have assayed the constancy of the philosophic and the virtuous Brutus. In the superstitious age of our Elizabeth and of her Scottish successor, the belief in the existence of ghosts and apparitions was nearly universal; and when Shakspeare produced upon his stage the shade of the Danish sovereign, there was not, perhaps, a heart, amid the crowded audience, which did not palpitate with fear. But in any age, however little tainted it might be with superstitious credulity, would the ghost of royal Denmark excite an agita ting interest, with such awful solemnity is he intro duced, so sublimely terrible is his tale of woe, and such are the effects of his appearance on the persons of the drama, who are its immediate witnesses. We catch, indeed, the terrors of Horatio and the young prince; and if the illusion be not so strong as to seize in the first instance on our own minds, it acts on them in its result from theirs. The melancholy, which previously preyed on the spirits of the youthful Hamlet, was certainly heightened into insanity by this ghostly conference; and from this dreadful moment his madness is partly assumed, and partly unaffected. It is certain that no spectre, ever brought upon the stage, can be compared with this phantom, created by the power of Shakspeare. The apparition of the host, in "The Lover's Progress," by Fletcher, is too contemptible to be mentioned on this occasion: the spirit of Almanzor's mother, in "The Conquest of Granada," by Dryden, is not of a higher class; and even the ghost of Darius, in "The Persians," of the mighty and sublime Eschylus, shrinks into insig nificance before this of the murdered Majesty of Denmark. For his success, indeed, in this instance, Shakspeare is greatly indebted to the superior awfulness of his religion; and the use which he has made of the Romish purgatory must be regarded as supremely felicitous. When the imagination of instrument. The stream of passion, like a stream Shakspeare sported without control amid these of electricity, rushes from the actor to us, and wo creations of its own, it unquestionably lifted him are as unable as we are unwilling to resist it. Now high above any competition. As he plays with the it is this feeling, which constitutes the poetic profairies in their bowers of eglantine and woodbine; bability of what we see and hear, and which may er directs the operations in the magic cave; or calls be violated by an injudicious and lawless shifting of the dead man from the "cold obstruction" of the the scene. If our passions be interested by an tomb, "to make night hideous," he may challenge action passing at a place called Rome, it must the poets of every age, from that of Homer to the shock and chill them to have our attentions hurried present, and be fearless of the event. But either suddenly, without any reason for the discontinuance from his ignorance of them, which is not easily cre- of the action, to a place called Alexandria, separadible, or from his disregard to them, or rather, per-ted by the intervention of a thousand miles. Let haps, from his desire to escape from their yoke, he us suppose, then, that in the fulness of the scenic violates without remorse the dramatic unities of excitement, a friend at our elbow, with the impastime and place, contenting himself to preserve the sible fibre of a Johnson, were to shake us and to unity of action or design, without which, indeed, say, "What! are you mad? Know you not whers nothing worthy of the name of composition can you are? in Drury Lane theatre ? within a few exist. And who steps forward, in this instance of hundred yards of your own chambers in Lincoln's his licentious liberty, as the champion of Shak- Inn, and neither at Rome nor at Alexandria? and speare, but that very critic who brings such charges perceive you not that the old man whom you see against him as a poet and a dramatist, that, if they there on his knee, with his hands clenched, and his were capable of being substantiated, would overturn eyes raised in imprecation to heaven, is our old him from his lofty pedestal; and would prove the friend, Garrick, who is reciting with much propriety object of our homage, during two centuries, to be a some verses made by a man, long since in his little deformed image, which we had with the most grave? Yes! Garrick, with whom you conversed silly idolatry mistaken for a god? But Johnson's not many hours ago; and who, a few hours hence, defence of Shakspeare seems to be as weak as his will be talking with his friends, over a comfortable attack; though in either case the want of power in supper, of the effects of his present mimickry?" the warrior is concealed under the glare of his If we should be thus addressed, (and a sudden shiftostentatious arms. It is unquestionable that, since ing of the scene may produce an equal dissipation the days of the patrician of Argos, recorded by of the illusion which delights us,) should we be Horace, who would sit for hours in the vacant thankful to our wise friend for thus informing our theatre, and give his applause to actors who were understanding by the interruption of our feelings? not there, no man, unattended by a keeper, ever Should we not rather exclaim with the Argive noble mistook the wooden and narrow platform of a stage of Horace, when purged by hellebore into his senses, for the fields of Philippi or Agincourt; or the painted canvass, shifting under his eye, for the palace of the Ptolemies or the Cesars; or the walk, which had brought him from his own house to the theatre, for a voyage across the Mediterranean to Alexandria; or the men and women, with whom he had probably conversed in the common intercourse of life, for old Romans and Grecians. Such a power of illusion, quite incompatible with any degree of sanity of mind, has never been challenged by any critic, as attached to poetry and the stage; and it is adduced, in his accustomed style of argument, by Johnson, only for the purpose of confounding his adversaries with absurdity, or of baffling them with ridicule. But there is a power of illusion, belonging to genuine poetry, which, without overthrowing the reason, can seize upon the imagination, and make it subservient to its purposes. This is asserted by Horace in that often cited passage: * "Ille per extentum funem mihi posse videtur Ire poeta, meum qui pectus inaniter angit, Irritat, mulcet falsis terroribus implet "Pol me occidisti cui sic extorta voluptas Et demptus per vim mentis gratissimus error." With the illusion of the poetic or dramatic imitation, established as an unquestionable truth in our minds, let us now turn and consider the dramatic unities in their origin and effect. The unity of action, indeed, may be thrown altogether from our notice; for, universally acknowledged to be essen tially necessary to the drama, and constituting what may be called its living principle, it has escaped from violation even by our lawless Poet himself. The drama, as we know, in Greece, derived its origin from the choral odes, which were sung at certain seasons before the altar of Bacchus. To these, in the first instance, was added a dialogue of two persons; and, the number of speakers being subsequently increased, a regular dramatic fable was, at length, constructed, and the dialogue usurped the prime honours of the performance. But the chorus, though degraded, could not be expelled from the Ut magus; et modo me Thebis modo ponit Athenis." scene, which was once entirely its own; and, consecrated by the regard of the people, it was forced Assisted by the scenery, the dresses of the actors, upon the acceptance of the dramatist, to act with it and their fine adaptation of the voice and counte- in the best manner that he could. It was stationed, nance to the design of the poet, this illusion becomes therefore, permanently on the stage, and made to so strong as intimately to blend us with the fictitious occupy its place with the agents who were to conpersonages whom we see before us. We know, duct the action of the fable. From the circumstance indeed, that we are seated upon benches, and are of its being stationary on the stage, it secured the spectators only of a poetic fiction: but the power, strict observance of the unity of place: for with a which mingles us with the agents upon the stage, is stage, which was never vacant, and consequently of such a nature that we feel, as it were, one inter- with only one scene, the Grecian dramatist could est with them: we resent the injuries which they not remove his agents whithersoever he pleased, in suffer, we rejoice at the good fortune which betides accommodation to his immediate convenience; them the pulses of our hearts beat in harmony on the spot, where the scene opened, he was conwith theirs; and as the tear gushes from their eyes, strained to retain them till the action of the drama it swells and overflows in ours. To account for was closed, and what could not consistently be this influence of poetic imitation, for this contagion acted was necessarily consigned to narration. This of represented passion belongs to the metaphysi- was a heavy servitude to the dramatist; but it had cian, the sole business of the critic is to remark and to reason from the fact. It is unquestionable that our imaginations are, to a certain extent, under the control of authentic poetry, and especially of that poetry which employs the scenic imitation for its ii 1. 128 but its compensations in uninterrupted feeling, and in the greater conservation of probability. To the unity of time, as time is more pliant to the imagination than place, the Grecian dramatist seems to have paid little if any regard. In the Agamemnon of Eschylus, the fire signals have only just anFuit haud ignobilis Argis, &c. Epis. lib. ii. Ep.nounced to Mycena the fall of Troy, when the herald arrives with the tidings of the victorious |