That a conjectural critic should often be mistaken, cannot be wonderful, either to others or himself, if it be considered, that in his art there is no system, no principal and axiomatical truth, that regulates subordinate positions. His chance of error is renewed at every attempt; an oblique view of the passage, a slight misapprehension of a phrase, a casual inattention to the parts connected, is sufficient to make him not only fail, but fail ridiculously; and when he succeeds best, he produces perhaps but one reading of many probable, and he that suggests another will always be able to dispute his claims.

It is an unhappy state, in which danger is hid under pleasure. The allurements of emendation are scarcely resistible. Conjecture has all the joy and all the pride of invention, and he that has once started a happy change, is too much delighted to consider what objections may rise against it.

many, after all my efforts, I have retreated, and confessed the repulse. I have not passed over with affected superiority what is equally difficult to the reader and to myself, but, where I could not instruct him, have owned my ignorance. I might easily have accumulated a mass of seeming learning upon easy scenes; but it ought not to be imputed to negligence, that, where nothing was necessary, nothing has been done, or that, where others have said enough, I have said no more.

Notes are often necessary, but they are necessary evils. Let him that is yet unacquainted with the powers of Shakspeare, and who desires to feel the highest pleasure that the drama can give, read every play, from the first scene to the last, with utter negligence of all his commentators. When his fancy once on the wing, let it not stoop at correction or explanation. When his attention is strongly engaged, let it disdain alike to turn aside to the name of Theobald and of Pope. Let him read on through brightness and obscurity, through integrity and corruption; let him preserve his comprehension of the dialogue and his interest in the fable. And when the pleasures of novelty have ceased, let him attempt exactness, and read the commentators.

Particular passages are cleared by notes, but the general effect of the work is weakened. The mind is refrigerated by interruption; the thoughts are diverted from the principal subject; the reader is weary, he suspects not why; and at last throws away the book which he has too diligently studied.

Parts are not to be examined till the whole has been surveyed; there is a kind of intellectual remoteness necessary for the comprehension of any great work in its full design and in its true proportions; a close approach shows the smaller niceties, but the beauty of the whole is discerned no longer.

Yet conjectural criticism has been of great use in the learned world; nor is it my intention to depreciate a study, that has exercised so many mighty minds, from the revival of learning to our own age, from the bishop of Aleria to English Bentley. The critics of ancient authors have, in the exercise of their sagacity, many assistances, which the editor of Shakspeare is condemned to want. They are employed upon grammatical and settled languages, whose construction contributes so much to perspicuity, that Homer has fewer passages unintelligible than Chaucer. The words have not only a known regimen, but invariable quantities, which direct and confine the choice. There are commonly more manuscripts than one; and they do not often conspire in the same mistakes. Yet Scaliger could confess to Salmasius how little satisfaction his emendations gave him. Illudunt nobis conjectura nostra, quarum nos pudet, posteaquam in meliores codices incidimus. And Lipsius could complain, that critics were making faults by trying to remove them; Ut olim vitiis, ita nunc remediis laboratur. And, indeed, where mere conjecture is to be used, the emendations of Scaliger and Lipsius, notwithstanding their wonderful sagacity and erudition, are often vague and dis-it too. Those who accuse him to have wanted putable, like mine or Theobald's.

Perhaps I may not be more censured for doing wrong, than for doing little; for raising in the public expectations which at last I have not answered. The expectation of ignorance is indefinite, and that of knowledge is often tyrannical. It is hard to satisfy those who knew not what to demand, or those who demand by design, what they think impossible to be done. I have indeed disappointed no opinion more than my own; yet I have endeavored to perform my task with no slight solicitude. Not a single passage in the whole work has appeared to me corrupt, which I have not attempted to restore; or obscure, which I have not endeavoured to illustrate. In many I have failed, like others; and from

It is not very grateful to consider how little the succession of editors has added to this author's power of pleasing. He was read, admired, studied, and imitated, while he was yet deformed with all the improprieties which ignorance and neglect could accumulate upon him; while the reading was yet not rectified, nor his allusions understood; yet then did Dryden pronounce, that Shakspeare was the "man, who, of all modern, and perhaps ancient, poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. All the images of nature were still present to him, and he drew them not laboriously, but luckily; when he describes any thing, you more than see it, you feel

learning, give him the greater commendation:
he was naturally learned: he needed not the
spectacles of books to read nature: he looked
inwards, and found her there. I cannot say he
is every where alike; were he so, I should do him
injury to compare him with the greatest of man-
kind. He is many times flat and insipid; his
comic wit degenerating into clenches, his serious
swelling into bombast. But he is always great
when some great occasion is presented to him;
no man can say, he ever had a fit subject for his
wit, and did not then raise himself as high above
the rest of poets,

'Quantam lenta solent inter viburna cupressi.'"
It is to be lamented that such a writer should

works unworthy to be preserved, which the critics of following ages were to contend for the fame of restoring and explaining.

want a commentary; that his language should | become obsolete, or his sentiments obscure. But it is vain to carry wishes beyond the condition of human things; that which must happen to all, Among these candidates of inferior fame, I am has happened to Shakspeare, by accident and now to stand the judgment of the public; and time; and more than has been suffered by any wish that I could confidently produce my comother writer since the use of types, has been suf-mentary as equal to the encouragement which I fered by him, through his own negligence of fame, or perhaps by that superiority of mind, which despised its own performances, when it compared them with its powers, and judged those

have had the honour of receiving. Every work of this kind is by its nature deficient, and I should feel little solicitude about the sentence, were it to be pronounced only by the skilful and the learned.

GENERAL OBSERVATIONS

ON THE

PLAYS OF SHAKSPEARE.

TEMPEST.

Ir is observed of "The Tempest," that its plan is regular; this the author of "The Revisal" thinks, what I think too, an accidental effect of the story, not intended or regarded by our author. But whatever might be Shakspeare's intention in forming or adopting the plot, he has made it instrumental to the production of many characters diversified with boundless invention, and preserved with profound skill in nature, extensive knowledge of opinions, and accurate observation of life. In a single drama are here exhibited princes, courtiers, and sailors, all speaking in their real characters. There is the agency of airy spirits, and of an earthly goblin; the operations of magic, the tumults of a storm, the adventures of a desert island, the native effusion of untaught affection, the punishment of guilt, and the final happiness of the pair for whom our passions and reason are equally interested.

TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA.

"Titus Andronicus:" and it will be found more credible, that Shakspeare might sometimes sink below his highest flights, than that any other should rise up to his lowest.

MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR.

Mr. Rowe, that it was written at the command Of this play there is a tradition preserved by of queen Elizabeth, who was so delighted with the character of Falstaff, that she wished it to be diffused through more plays; but suspecting that it might pall by continued uniformity, directed the poet to diversify his manner by showing him in love. No task is harder than that of writing to the ideas of another. Shakspeare knew what the queen, if the story be true, seems not to have known, that by any real passion of tenderness, the selfish craft, the careless jollity, and the lazy luxury of Falstaff must have suffered so much abatement, that little of his former cast would have remained. Falstaff could not love, but by ceasing to be Falstaff. He could only counterfeit love, and his profession could be prompted, the poet approached as near as he could to the not by the hope of pleasure, but of money. Thus work enjoined him; yet having perhaps in the former plays completed his own idea, seems not to have been able to give Falstaff all his former power of entertainment.

number of the personages, who exhibit more This comedy is remarkable for the variety and characters appropriated and discriminated, than perhaps can be found in any other play.

In this play there is a strange mixture of knowledge and ignorance, of care and negligence. The versification is often excellent, the allusions are learned and just; but the author conveys his heroes by sea from one inland town to another in the same country; he places the emperor at Milan, and sends his young men to attend him, but never mentions hím more; he makes Protheus, after an interview with Silvia, say he has only seen her picture; and, if we may credit the Whether Shakspeare was the first that proold copies, he has, by mistaking places, left his duced upon the English stage the effect of lanscenery inextricable. The reason of all this confusion seems to be, that he took his story from guage distorted and depraved by provincial or novel, which he sometimes followed, and some- foreign pronunciation, I cannot certainly decide. This mode of forming ridiculous characters can times forsook, sometimes remembered, and some- confer praise only on him, who originally discotimes forgot. That this play is rightly attributed to Shak-vered it, for it requires not much of either wit or speare, I have little doubt. If it be taken from wholly from the player, but its power in a skiljudgment; its success must be derived almost him, to whom shall it be given? This question ful mouth, even he that despises it, is unable to may be asked of all the disputed plays, except resist.

a

Mr. Heath, who wrote a Revisal of Shakspeare's action begins and ends often before the concluThe conduct of this drama is deficient: the text, published in 8vo. circa 1760.

sion, and the different parts might change places | The story has been published in English, and I without inconvenience; but its general power, that power by which all works of genius shall finally be tried, is such, that perhaps it never yet had reader or spectator, who did not think it too soon at an end.

MEASURE FOR MEASURE.

There is perhaps not one of Shakspeare's plays more darkened than this, by the peculiarities of its author, and the unskilfulness of its editors, by distortions of praise, or negligence of transcription.

The novel of "Giraldi Cynthio," from which Shakspeare is supposed to have borrowed this fable, may be read in "Shakspeare Illustrated," elegantly translated, with remarks, which will assist the inquirer to discover how much absurdity Shakspeare has admitted or avoided.

have epitomized the translation. The translator is of opinion, that the choice of the caskets is borrowed from a tale of Boccace, which I have likewise abridged, though I believe that Shakspeare must have had some other novel in view.

Of "The Merchant of Venice," the style is even and easy, with few peculiarities of diction, or anomalies of construction. The comic part raises laughter, and the serious fixes expectation. The probability of either one or the other story cannot be maintained. The union of two ac tions in one event is in this drama eminently happy. Dryden was much pleased with his own address in connecting the two plots of his Spanish Friar," which yet, I believe, the critic will find excelled by this play.

AS YOU LIKE IT.

I cannot but suspect that some other had new- Of this play the fable is wild and pleasing. I modelled this novel of Cynthio, or written a story know not how the ladies will approve the faci which in some particulars resembled it, and that lity with which both Rosalind and Celia give Cynthio was not the author whom Shakspeare away their hearts. To Celia much may be forimmediately followed. The emperor, in Cyn- given for the heroism of her friendship. The thio, is named Maximine; the duke, in Shak-character of Jacques is natural and well preserv speare's enumeration of the persons of the drama, ed. The comic dialogue is very sprightly, with is called Vincentio. This appears a very slight less mixture of low buffoonery than in some remark; but since the duke has no name in the other plays: and the graver part is elegant and play, nor is ever mentioned but by his title, why harmonious. By hastening to the end of his should he be called Vincentio among the persons, work, Shakspeare suppressed the dialogue be but because the name was copied from the story, tween the usurper and the hermit, and lost an and placed superfluously at the head of the list opportunity of exhibiting a moral lesson in which by the mere habit of transcription? It is there- he might have found matter worthy of his highfore likely, that there was then a story of Vin- est powers. centio, duke of Vienna, different from that of Maximine, emperor of the Romans.

Of this play, the light or comic part is very natural and pleasing, but the grave scenes, if a few passages be excepted, have more labour than elegance. The plot is rather intricate than artful. The time of the action is indefinite; some time, we know not how much, must have elapsed between the recess of the duke, and the imprisonment of Claudio; for he must have learned the story of Mariana in his disguise, or he delegated his power to a man already known to be corrupted. The unities of action and place are sufficiently preserved.

LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST.

In this play, which all the editors have concurred to censure, and some have rejected as unworthy of our poet, it must be confessed that there are many passages mean, childish, and vulgar; and some which ought not to have been exhibited, as we are told they were, to a maiden queen. But there are scattered through the whole many sparks of genius; nor is there any play that has more evident marks of the hand of Shakspeare.

MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM.

Wild and fantastical as this play is, all the parts in their various modes are well written, and give the kind of pleasure which the author designed. Fairies in his time were much in fashion; common tradition had made them familiar, and Spenser's poem had made them great.

MERCHANT OF VENICE.

It has been lately discovered, that this fable is taken from a story in the "Pecorone" of Giovanni Fiorentino, a novelist, who wrote in 1378.

TAMING OF THE SHREW.

that they can hardly be called two without inOf this play the two plots are so well united, jury to the art with which they are interwoven. of a double plot, yet is not distracted by unconThe attention is entertained with all the variety nected incidents.

eminently sprightly and diverting. At the marThe part between Katharine and Petruchio is riage of Bianca, the arrival of the real father, The whole play is very popular and diverting. perhaps, produces more perplexity than pleasure.

ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL.

This play has many delightful scenes, though not sufficiently probable, and some happy characters, though not new, nor produced by any deep knowledge of human nature. Parolles is a boaster and a coward, such as has always been the sport of the stage, but perhaps never raised more laughter or contempt than in the hands of Shakspeare.

I cannot reconcile my heart to Bertram ; a man noble without generosity, and young without truth; who marries Helen as a coward, and leaves her as a profligate: when she is dead by his unkindness, sneaks home to a second mar

rage, is accused by a woman whom he has
dismissed to happiness.
wronged, defends himself by falsehood, and is

before of Mariana and Angelo, and, to confess
The story of Bertram and Diana had been told
the truth, scarcely merited to be heard a second

time.

TWELFTH NIGHT.

This play is in the graver part elegant and easy, and in some of the lighter scenes exqui sitely humorous. Ague-cheek is drawn with

great propriety, but his character is, in a great measure, that of natural fatuity, and is therefore not the proper prey of a satirist. The soliloquy of Malvolio is truly comic; he is betrayed to ridícule merely by his pride. The marriage of Olivia, and the succeeding perplexity, though well enough contrived to divert on the stage, wants credibility, and fails to produce the proper instruction required in the drama, as it exhibits no just picture of life.

WINTER'S TALE.

The story of this play is taken from "The pleasant History of Dorastus and Fawnia," written by Robert Greene.

This play, as Dr. Warburton justly observes, is, with all its absurdities, very entertaining. The character of Autolycus is very naturally conceived, and strongly represented.

MACBETH.

KING HENRY IV. PART II.

I fancy every reader, when he ends this play, cries out with Desdemona, "O most laine and impotent conclusion!" As this play was not, to our knowledge, divided into acts by the author, I could be content to conclude it with the death of Henry the Fourth.

In that Jerusalem shall Harry die.

These scenes, which now make the fifth act of "Henry the Fourth," might then be the first of "Henry the Fifth :" but the truth is, that they When these plays were represented, I believe do unite very commodiously to either play. they ended as they are now ended in the books; whole series of action, from the beginning of but Shakspeare seems to have designed that the "Richard the Second," to the end of "Henry the Fifth," should be considered by the reader as one work, upon one plan, only broken into parts by the necessity of exhibition.

This play is deservedly celebrated for the propriety of its fictions, and solemnity, grandeur, None of Shakspeare's plays are more read and variety of its action, but it has no nice dis- than the "First and Second Parts of Henry the criminations of character; the events are too Fourth." Perhaps no author has ever in two great to admit the influence of particular dispo- plays afforded so much delight. The great events sitions, and the course of the action necessarily are interesting, for the fate of kingdoms depend determines the conduct of the agents. upon them; the slighter occurrences are divertThe danger of ambition is well described:ing, and, except one or two, sufficiently proand I know not whether it may not be said, in defence of some parts which now seem improbable, that in Shakspeare's time it was necessary to warn credulity against vain and illusive dictions.

pre

The passions are directed to their true end. Lady Macbeth is merely detested; and though the courage of Macbeth preserves some esteem, yet every reader rejoices at his fall.

KING JOHN.

bable; the incidents are multiplied with wonderful fertility of invention, and the characters and the profoundest skill in the nature of man. diversified with the utmost nicety of discernment,

The prince, who is the hero both of the comic and tragic part, is a young man of great abilities and violent passions, whose sentiments are right, though his actions are wrong; whose virtues are obscured by negligence, and whose understanding is dissipated by levity. In his idle hours he is rather loose than wicked; and when the occaThe tragedy of "King John," though not sion forces out his latent qualities, he is great written with the utmost power of Shakspeare, without effort, and brave without tumult. The is varied with a very pleasing interchange of in-trifler is roused into a hero, and the hero again cidents and characters. The lady's grief is very reposes in the trifler. This character is great, affecting; and the character of the bastard con- original, and just. tains that mixture of greatness and levity which this author delighted to exhibit.

KING RICHARD II.

This play is extracted from the Chronicle of Hollinshed, in which many passages may be found which Shakspeare has, with very little alteration, transplanted into his scenes; particularly a speech of the bishop of Carlisle in defence of King Richard's unalienable right, and immunity from human jurisdiction.

Jonson, who, in his "Catiline and Sejanus," has inserted many speeches from the Roman historians, was perhaps induced to that practice by the example of Shakspeare, who had condescended sometimes to copy more ignoble writers. But Shakspeare had more of his own than Jonson, and if he sometimes was willing to spare his labour, showed by what he performed at other times, that his extracts were made by choice or idleness rather than necessity.

This play is one of those which Shakspeare has apparently revised; but as success in works of invention is not always proportionate to labour, it is not finished at last with the happy force of some other of his tragedies, nor can be said much to affect the passions, or enlarge the understanding.

Percy is a rugged soldier, choleric and quarrelsome, and has only the soldier's virtues, generosity and courage.

But Falstaff, unimitated, unimitable Falstaff, how shall I describe thee? Thou compound of sense and vice: of sense which may be admired, but not esteemed; of vice which may be despised, but hardly detested. Falstaff is a character loaded with faults, and with those faults which naturally produce contempt. He is a thief and a glutton, a coward and a boaster, always ready to cheat the weak, and prey upon the poor; to terrify the timorous, and insult the defenceless. At once obsequious and malignant, he satirizes in their absence those whom he lives by flattering. He is familiar with the prince only as an agent of vice, but of this familiarity he is so proud, as not only to be supercilious and haughty with common men, but to think his interest of importance to the duke of Lancaster. Yet the man thus corrupt, thus despicable, makes himself necessary to the prince that despises him, by the most pleasing of all qualities, perpetual gayety, by an unfailing power of exciting laughter, which is the more freely indulged, as his wit is not of the splendid or ambitious kind, but consists in easy scapes and sallies of levity, which make sport, but raise no envy. It must be ob

served, that he is stained with no enormous or sanguinary crimes, so that his licentiousness is not so offensive but that it may be borne for his mirth.

The moral to be drawn from this representation is, that no man is more dangerous than he that, with a will to corrupt, hath the power to please; and that neither wit nor honesty ought to think themselves safe with such a companion, when they see Henry seduced by Falstaff.

KING HENRY V.

This play has many scenes of high dignity, and many of easy merriment. The character of the king is well supported, except in his courtship, where he has neither the vivacity of Hal, nor the grandeur of Henry. The humour of Pistol is very happily continued: his character has perhaps been the model of all the bullies that have yet appeared on the English stage.

The lines given to the chorus have many admirers; but the truth is, that in them a little may be praised, and much must be forgiven: nor can it be easily discovered why the intelligence given by the chorus is more necessary in this play, than in many others where it is omitted. The great defect of this play is the emptiness and narrowness of the last act, which a very little diligence might have easily avoided.

KING HENRY VI. PART I.

Of this play there is no copy earlier than that of the folio in 1623, though the two succeeding parts are extant in two editions in quarto. That the second and third parts were published without the first, may be admitted as no weak proof that the copies were surreptitiously obtained, and that the printers of that time gave the public those plays, not such as the author designed, but such as they could get them. That this play was written before the two others, is undubitably collected from the series of events; that it was written and played before Henry the Fifth, is apparent, because in the epilogue there is mention made of this play, and not of the other parts: Henry the Sixth in swaddling bands crown'd king, Whose state so many had the managing

That they lost France, and made his England bleed,
Which oft our stage hath shown.

France is lost in this play. The two following
contain, as the old title imports, the contention
of the houses of York and Lancaster.

comprehensive views, and to draw his opinion from the general effect and spirit of the composition, which he thinks inferior to the other historical plays.

From mere inferiority nothing can be inferred; in the productions of wit there will be inequality. Sometimes judgment will err, and sometimes the matter itself will defeat the artist. Of every author's works one will be the best and one will be the worst. The colours are not equally pleasing, nor the attitudes equally graceful, in all the pictures of Titian or Reynolds.

Dissimilitude of style, and heterogeneousness of sentiment, may sufficiently show that a work does not really belong to the reputed author. But in these plays no such marks of spuriousness are fouud. The diction, the versification, and the figures, are Shakspeare's. These plays, considered without regard to characters and incidents, merely as narratives in verse, are more happily conceived, and more accurately finished, than those of "King John," "Richard II." or the tragic scenes of "Henry IV. and V." If we take these plays from Shakspeare, to whom shall they be given? What author of that age had the same easiness of expression and fluency of numbers?

Having considered the evidence given by the plays themselves, and found it in their favour, let us now inquire what corroboration can be gained from other testimony. They are ascribed to Shakspeare by the first editors, whose attestation may be received in questions of fact, however unskilfully they superintended their edition. They seem to be declared genuine by the voice of Shakspeare himself, who refers to the second play in his epilogue to Henry V." and apparently connects the first act of "Richard III." with the last of the third part of "Henry VI." If it be objected that the plays were popular, and that therefore he alluded to them as well known; it may be answered, with equal probability, that the natural passions of a poet would have disposed him to separate his own works from those of an inferior hand. And, indeed, if an author's own testimony is to be overthrown by speculative criticism, no man can be any longer secure of literary reputation.

Of these three plays I think the second the best. The truth is, that they have not sufficient variety of action, for the incidents are too often of the same kind; yet many of the characters are well discriminated. King Henry and his queen, king Edward, the duke of Gloucester, and the earl of Warwick, are very strongly and distinctly painted.

The second and third parts of "Henry VI." were printed in 1600. When "Henry V." was written, we know not, but it was printed likewise in 1600, and therefore before the publication of the first part: the first part of "Henry VI." The old copies of the two latter parts of had been often shown on the stage, and would "Henry VI." and of "Henry V." are so apcertainly have appeared in its place had the au-parently imperfect and mutilated, that there is thor been the publisher.

KING HENRY VI. PART III

The three parts of "Henry VI." are suspected, by Mr. Theobald, of being supposititious, and are declared, by Dr. Warburton, to be certainly not Shakspeare's. Mr. Theobald's suspicion arises from some obsolete words; but the phraseology is like the rest of our author's style, and single words, of which however I do not observe more than two, can conclude little.

Dr. Warburton gives no reason, but I suppose him to judge upon deeper principles and more

no reason for supposing them the first draughts of Shakspeare. I am inclined to believe them copies taken by some auditor who wrote down, during the representation, what the time would permit, then perhaps filled up some of his omissions at a second or third hearing, and when he had by this method formed something like a play, sent it to the printer.

KING RICHARD III.

This is one of the most celebrated of our author's performances; yet I know not whether it has not happened to him as to others, to be