celebrated scene between Hamlet and his mother, she thus addresses him. Alas, how is't with you? That you do bend your eye on vacancy, Sala 2005g "Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep disois "And, as the sleeping soldiers in the alarm, Your bedded hair, like life in excrements, Starts up, and stands on and stands on end.Whereon do you do you look? 910 “ Ham. On hiin! on him! look you, how pale he glares ! "His form and cause conjoin'd, preaching to stones, "Would make them capable. Do not look upon me, My stern effects: then what I have to do "Will want true colour; tears perchance for blood." Can it be imagined that he would have attributed confident that these lines to Hamlet, unless he was in his own part he could give efficacy to that piteous action of the Ghost, which he has so forcibly desso scribed? or that the preceding lines spoken by the Queen, and the description of a tragedian in King Richard III. could have come from the pen of an ordinary actor? "Rich. Come, cousin, can'st thou quake and change thy colour?i "Murther thy breath in middle of a word? "And then again begin, and stop again, "As if thou wert distraught, and mad with terror? Buck. Tut, I can counterfeit the deep tragedian; 66 At any time, to grace my stratagems." I do not, however, believe, that our poet played parts of the first rate, though he probably distinguished himself by whatever he performed. If the names of the actors prefixed to Every Man in his Humour were arranged in the same order as the persons of the drama, he must have represented Old Knowell; and if we may give credit to an anecdote related in a former page, he was the Adam in his own As You Like It. Perhaps he excelled in representing old men. The following contemptible lines written by a contemporary, about the year 1611, might lead us to suppose that he also acted Duncan in Macbeth, and the parts of King Henry the Fourth, and King Henry the Sixth : "To our English Terence, Mr. William Shakespeare. "Some say, good Will, which I in sport do sing, "And been a king among the meaner sort. "And honesty thou sow'st, which they do reape, Another traditionary anecdote, relating to our author's dramatic performances, is thus recorded in the MSS. of Mr. Oldys. "One of Shakspeare's younger brothers, who lived to a good old age, even some years, as I compute, after the restoration of King Charles II. would in his younger days come to London to visit his brother Will, as he called him, and be a spectator of him as an actor in some of his own plays. This custom, as his brother's fame enlarged, and his dramatick entertainments grew the greatest support of our principal, if not of all our theatres, he continued, it seems, so long after his brother's death, as even to the latter end of his own life. The curiosity at this time of the most noted actors [exciting them] to learn something from him of his brother, &c. they justly held him in the highest veneration. And it may be well believed, as there was besides a kinsman and descendant of the family, who was then a celebrated actor among them, [Charles Hart 5. See Shakspeare's Will.] this opportunity made them greedily inquisitive into every little circumstance, more especially in his dramatick character, which his brother could relate of him. But he, it seems, was so stricken in years, and possibly his memory so weakened with infirmities, (which might make him the easier pass for a man of weak intellects), that he could give them but little light into their enquiries; and all that could be recollected from him of his brother Will. in that station was, the faint, general, and almost lost ideas he had of having once seen him act a part in one of his own comedies, wherein being to personate a 5 Charles Hart.] Mr. Charles Hart the player was born, I believe, about the year 1630, and died in or about 1682. If he was a grandson of Shakspeare's sister, he was probably the son of Michael Hart, her youngest son, of whose marriage or death there is no account in the parish register of Stratford, and therefore I suspect he settled in London. [Charles Hart died in August, 1683, and was buried at Stanmore the 20th of that month. Lysons's Environs of London, vol. iii. p. 400. REED.] decrepit old man, he wore a long beard, and appeared so weak and drooping and unable to walk, that he was forced to be supported and carried by another person to a table, at which he was seated among some company, who were eating, and one of them sung a song." See the character of Adam, in As You Like It, Act II. Sc. ult. Mr. Oldys seems to have studied the art of "marring a plain tale in the telling of it;" for he has in this story introduced circumstances which tend to diminish, instead of adding to, its credibility. Male dum recitas, incipit esse tuus. From Shakspeare's not taking notice of any of his brothers or sisters in his will, except Joan Hart, I think it highly probable that they were all dead in 1616, except her, at least all those of the whole blood; though in the register there is no entry of the burial of his brother Gilbert, antecedent to the death of Shakspeare, or at any subsequent period; but we know that he survived his brother Edmund. The truth is, that this account of our poet's having performed the part of an old man in one of his own comedies, came originally from Mr. Thomas Jones, of Tarbick, in Worcestershire, who has been already mentioned (see p. 138), and who related it from the information, not of one of Shakspeare's brothers, but of a relation of our poet, who lived to a good old age, and who had seen him act in his youth. Mr. Jones's informer might have been Mr. Richard Quiney, who lived in London, and died at Stratford in 1656, at the age of 69; or Mr. Thomas Quiney, our poet's son-in-law, who lived, I believe, till 1663, and was twenty-seven years old when his father-inlaw died; or some one of the family of Hathaway. Mr. Thomas Hathaway, I believe Shakspeare's brother-in-law, died at Stratford in 1654-5, at the age of 85. There was a Thomas Jones, an inhabitant of Stratford, who between the years 1581 and 1590 had four sons, Henry, James, Edmund, and Isaac: some one of these, it is probable, settled at Tarbick, and was the father of Thomas Jones, the relater of this anecdote, who was born about the born about the year 1613. If any of Shakspeare's brothers lived till after the Restoration, and visited the players, why were we not informed to what player he related it, and from what player Mr. Oldys had his account? The fact, I believe, is, he had it not from a player, but from the above-mentioned Mr. Jones, who likewise communicated the stanza of the ballad on Sir Thomas Lucy, which has been printed in a former page. |