the fuperiority of his genius over the hiftorians of the times than the following inftance. The learned Sir Thomas More, in his history of Crook'd-Back Richard, tells, with the garrulity of an old nurse, the current stories of this king's deformity, and the monftrous appearances of his infancy, which he seems with fuperftitious credulity to believe, to have been the omens and prognostics of his future villany. Shakespear, with a more philofophic turn of mind, confiders them, not as prefaging, but as inftigating his cruel ambition, and finely accounts in the following speeches for the afperity of his temper, and his fierce and unmitigated defire of dominion, from his being by his perfon difqualified for the fofter engagements of society, GLOUCESTER. Well, fay there is no kingdom then for Richard; What other pleasure can the world afford? I'll make my heaven on a lady's lap; E 3 And And deck my body in gay ornaments, And 'witch fweet ladies with my words and looks. Oh monstrous fault to harbour fuch a thought! I'll make my heav'n to dream upon the crown, [Henry VI. Act 3d, Scene 3d. GLOUCESTER. The midwife wonder'd, and the woman cry'd, That I should fnarl, and bite, and play the dog : And that word, love, which grey-beards call divine, And not in me: I am myself alone. [Henry VI. Act 5th, Scene 7th. Our author, by following minutely the chronicles of the times, has embarraffed his drama's with too great a number of perfons and events. The hurley-burley of these plays recommended them to a rude illiterate audience, who, as he fays, loved a noise of targets. His poverty, and the low condition of the ftage (which at that time was not frequented by perfons of rank) obliged him to this complaifance; and unfortunately he had not been tutored by any rules of art, or informed by acquaintance with just and regular drama's. Even the politer fort by reading E 4 reading books of chivalry, which were the polite literature of the times, were accuftomed to bold adventures and achievements. In our northern climates heroic adventures pleased more than the gallant dialogue, where love and honour dispute with all the fophiftry of the fchools, and one knows not when the conteft would end, if heraldry did not step in and decide the point, as in the foliloquy of the Infanta in the Cid. L'INFANTE. T'écouterai-je encor, refpect de ma naissance? T'écouterai-je, amour, dont la douce puiffance Dois-tu prêter obéiffance? Rodrigue, ta valeur te rend digne de moi; 1 Mais pour être vaillant tu n'es pas fils de roi. Nor is this rule, that a princefs can love only the son of a king, a mere Spanish punto; you shall hear two Spartan virgins, daugh 1 ters. ters of Lyfander, fpeaking the fame language, ELPINICE. Cotys eft roi, ma fæur; & comme fa couronne Parle fuffifamment pour lui, Affuré de mon cœur que fon trône lui donne, This lady then proceeds to queftion her fifter concerning her inclination for her lover Spitridates, and urges in his favour; ELPINICE. Car enfin, Spitridate a l'entretien charmant, A tant de qualités s'il joignait un vrai zéle. . . To which the other anfwers, AGLATIDE. Ma fæur, il n'eft pas roi comme l'eft votre amant. The Queen of the Lufitanians, in the famous play of Sertorius, fpeaks thus to that Roman general; Agefilaus of Corneille. VIRITATE. |