ess, that he distinguishes even the nests ne martins had built under the projecting its roof. Romeo, standing in a garden, o the tops of fruit-trees gilded by the moon. logue speaker to the Second Part of King V., expressly shews the spectators, "this aten hold of ragged stone," in which nberland was lodged. Iachimo takes the act inventory of every article in Imogen's mber, from the silk and silver of which estry was wrought, down to the Cupids port her andirons. Had not the inside partment, with its proper furniture, been ted, how ridiculous must the action of have appeared! He must have stood out of the room for the particulars supbe visible within it. In one of the parts Henry VI., a cannon is discharged a tower; and conversations are held in very scene from different walls, turrets, ements. Indeed, must not all the huthe mock play in the Midsummer Night's ave failed in its intent, unless the aubefore whom it was performed were ed to be gratified by the combination of mbellishments requisite to give effect to ic representation, and could therefore the absurdity of those shallow contrind mean substitutes for scenery, which ised by the ignorance of the clowns? one respect do I perceive any material e between the mode of representation ne of Shakspeare and at present. In the female parts were performed by his custom, which must in many cases erially injured the illusion of the scene, others of considerable advantage. It the stage with a succession of youths educated to the art, and experienced e parts appropriate for their age. It question appears to be set at rest by the extracts of expenses from the Book of e oldest that exists, in the office of the f the Imprest. The Cullorer, William r gold, sylver, and sundry other cullers by , in painting the houses that served for and players at the coorte, with their prod necessaries incident, &c., 134. 16s. Id. for patternes, and for leaves of trees, and ishing, 4 reams, 24s. ane, the lynnen dealer, for canvas to paynte for the players, and other properties, as great hollow trees, and such other, twenty 122. n Lyzarde, for syze, cullers, pottes, nayles, Is, used and occupied upon the payntinge cities, one villadge, one countrey house, nent, nine axes, a braunche, lillyes, and a Christmas three holidays, 4l. 15s. 8d.' re several other references to paynting thes of canvas, which were evidently ore nor less than moveable canvass scenes. WELL'S Shakspeare, vol. iii. p. 364-409. rst woman who appeared in a regular a public stage, performed the part of Des obviated the necessity of obtruding performers before the public in parts that were unsuited to their time of life. When the lad had become too tall for Juliet, he was prepared to act, and was most admirably calculated in age to assume, the character of the ardent Romeo: when the voice had the 'mannish crack,' that rendered the youth unfit to appear as the representative of the gentle Imogen, he was skilled in the knowledge of the stage, and capable of doing justice to the princely sentiments of Arviragus or Guiderius. Such then was the state of the stage when Shakspeare entered into its service, in the double capacity of actor and author. As an author, though Dryden says, that 'Shakspeare's own muse his Pericles first bore,'t it is most probable that Titus Andronicus was the earliest dramatic effort of his pen. Shakspeare arrived in London about the year 1587, and according to the date of the latter play, as intimated by Ben Jonson, in his introduction to Bartholomew Fair,§ we find it to have been produced immediately after his arrival. That Titus Andronicus is really the work of Shakspeare, it would be a defiance to all contemporary evidence to doubt. It was not only printed among his works by his friends, Heminge and Condell, but is mentioned as one of his tragedies by an author,|| who appears to have been on such terms of intimacy with him, as to have been admitted to a sight of his MS. sonnets. Against this testimony, the critics have nothing to oppose but the accumulated horrors of its plot; the stately march of its versification; and the dissimilarity of its style from the other efforts of Shakspeare's genius. It does not strike me that these arguments are sufficient to lead us to reject the play as the composition of our great dramatist. He was, perhaps, little more than three-and-twenty years of age when it was composed. The plays lection of our poet's works; but this may have proceeded from forgetfulness, and it was only by an afterthought, that Troilus and Cressida escaped a similar fortune. How far Pericles, as originally written, was, or was not, worthy the talents of Shakspeare, we have no means of judging. The only editions of this tragedy that have come down to us, are three spurious quartos, of which the text was printed from copies taken by illiterate persons during representation, and published without any regard to the property or the reputation of the author, to impose on the curiosity of the public. The Pericles of Shakspeare may have been a splendid composition, and yet not have shewn so in the garbled editions of the booksellers. We may estimate the injuries that Pericles received, by the injuries which we know were inflicted upon Hamlet on its first issuing, after such a process, from the press. In the first edition of Hamlet, 1603, there is scarcely a trace of the beauty and majesty of Shakspeare's work. Long passages, and even scenes, are misplaced; grammar is set wholly at defiance; half lines frequently omitted, so as to destroy the sense; and sentences brought together without any imaginable connexion. Sometimes the tran which at the time had possession of the stage, of which very few had been written, and not above fifteen are extant, supposing Andronicus to have been produced in 1589, were all of the same bombastic and exaggerated character; and the youthful poet naturally imitated the popular manner, and strove to beat his contemporaries with their own weapons. However tiresome the tragedy may be to us, it was a great favourite at its first appearance. It was full of barbarities that shock the refined taste; but these formed a mode of exciting the interest of the audience which was very commonly had recourse to by the play-writers of the age, and from which Shakspeare never became fully weaned, even at a period when his judgment was matured; as we may learn from the murder of Macduff's children, the hamstringing of Cassio, and the plucking out the eyes of Gloucester. The versification and language of the play, are certainly very different from those of Othello, of Hamlet, of Macbeth, or Lear. The author had not yet acquired that facility of composition for which he was afterwards distinguished. He wrote with labour, and left in every line the trace of the labour with which he wrote. He had not yet discovered (and it was he who eventually made the disco-scriber caught the expression, but lost the sentivery), that the true language of nature and of passion is that which passes most directly to the heart but it is not with the works of his experienced years, that this 'bloody tragedy' should be compared; if it be, we certainly should find a difficulty in admitting that writings of such opposite descriptions, could be the effusions of the same intellect; but, compare this tragedy with the other works of his youth, and the difficulty vanishes. Is it improbable that the author of the Venus and Adonis, and the Rape of Lucrece, should, on turning his attention to the stage, produce as heavy and monotonous a performance as the Titus Andronicus? I have been rather more diffuse upon this subject, than the nature of the present notice would appear to warrant, because it affords the means of ascertaining the time when Shakspeare commenced writer for the stage. If Titus Andronicus be really his, as I suppose, he became an author immediately on finding himself in the service of the theatre. His first play, though we now despise and reject it, was the best play that had been presented to the public; and immediately placed him in the first ranks of the profession, and among the principal supports of the company to which he was attached. Pericles, if the work of Shakspeare, was prooably his next dramatic production. Dryden has most unequivocally attributed this play to Shakspeare, and he was also commended as its author, in 1646, by S. Shepherd, in a poem called Time displayed. It is true that it was omitted by Heminge and Condell, in their col ment; and huddled the words together, without any regard to the meaning or no-meaning that they might happen to convey. at other times he remembered the sentiment, but lost the expression; and considered it no presumption to supply the lines of Shakspeare with doggerel verses of his own. Such were, for the most part, the early quarto impressions of our author's plays: and it is not difficult to conceive, that Pericles, which seems to have suffered more than any other play in passing through the ignorant and negligent hands of the transcriber and the printer might have been originally the work of Shakspeare, without retaining in its published form any distinguishing characteristics of the magic hand that framed it. To attempt tracing the literary life of our great dramatist were a work of unprofitable toil. I have given in the appendix (No. 2.) the list of his plays, according to the order in which Chalmers, Malone, and Dr. Drake, suppose them to have been composed : but the grounds of their conjectures are so uncertain, that little reliance can be placed in them, and all we really know upon the subject, is what we learn from Meres, that previously to the year 1598, that is, within twelve years after his attaching himself to the theatre, Shakspeare had not only published his two poems, the Venus and Adonis, and the Rape of Lucrece; but had already written Titus Andronicus, King John, Richard the • Palladis Tamia, or Second Part of Wit's Common Place Book, by Francis Meres, and printed at London, 1598. Second, Henry the Fourth, Richard the Third, Romeo and Juliet, The Midsummer Night's Dream," Two Gentlemen of Verma, The Comedy of Errors, The Love's Labour Lost, The Love's Labour Won,* and The Merchant of Venice. He had also written a great number of his Sonnets, and the minor pieces of poetry which were collected and printed by Jaggart, in 1599, under the somewhat affected title of the Passionate Pilgrim. After this, we have no means of ascertaining the succession in which the plays of Shakspeare were composed. Very early in his dramatic career, he appears to have attained to a principal share in the direction and emoluments of the theatres to which he was attached. His name stands second in the fist of proprietors of the Globe, and Blackfriars, in the license granted to them by James the First in 1603: and his industry in supporting these establishments was indefatigable. Besides the plays which were entirely of his own composition, or which he so completely rewrote as to make them his own, he seems to have been frequently engaged in revising, and adding to, and remodelling, the works of others. This task, however beneficial to the interests of his theatre, and necessary to give attraction to the pieces themselves, was viewed with an eye of jealousy by the original authors; and Robert Greene, in his Groatsworth of Wit, himself a writer for the stage, in admonishing his fellowdramatists to abandon their pursuit, and apply themselves to some more profitable vocation, refers them to this part of our author's labours with no little asperity. Trust them not (i. e. the players), for there is an upstart crow beautified with our feathers, that with his tyger's heart wrapt in a player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank-verse as the best of you; and being an absolute Johannes factotum, is in his own conceit the only Shak-scene in a country.' This sarcasm, however, was nothing more than the unwarranted effusion of a dissolute and disappointed spirit. Greene was a bad man. The pamphlet from which the above passage is extracted was published after his death by Henry Chettle; and the editor, after he had given it to the world, was so satisfied of the falsehood of the charges insinuated against our author, that he made a public apology for his indiscretion in the preface to a subsequent pamphlet of his own, entitled, Kind Hart's Dreame; lamenting that he had not omit • There is no such play extant as Love's Labour Won. Dr. Farmer supposes this to have been another name for All's Well that Ends Well. + As was the case with Henry the Sixth; and probably many other plays that have not come down ted, or at least moderated, what Greene had written against Shakspeare, and adding, 'I am as sorry as if the original fault had been my fault; because myself have seen his demeanour, no less civil than he excelleth in the qualitie he professes: besides divers of worship have reported his uprightness of deuling, which argues his honestie, and his facetious grace in writing, that approves his art.' It may be conceived from the abundance of his works, of which, perhaps, very many have been lost, that our author's facility of composition must have been extremely great; and, on this point, we have the contemporary testimony of his sincere, kind-hearted, generous, and much slandered friend, Ben Jonson, who writes in his Discoveries, I remember the players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakspeare, that in writing (whatsoever he penned) he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, Would he had blotted out a thousand! which they thought I had not told posterity a malevolent speech. this, but for their ignorance, who chose that circumstance to commend their friend by, wherein he most faulted; and to justify mine own candour, for I loved the man, and do honour his memory, on this side idolatry, as much as any. He was, indeed, honest, and of an open and free nature, had an excellent fancy, brave notions, and gentle expressions; wherein he flowed with that felicity, that sometimes it was necessary he should be stopped: Sufflaminandus erat, as Augustus said of Haterius. His wit was in his own power; would the rule of it had been so too Many times he fell into those things which could not escape laughter; as when he said, in the person of Cæsar, one speaking to him, 'Cæsar, thou dost me wrong.' 'Cæsar did never wrong, but with just cause,'t 'and such like, which were ridiculous. But he redeemed his vices with his virtues; there was ever more in him to be praised than to be pardoned.'§ But Shakspeare was not only an author but an actor. In this union of the two professions he was not singular; his friend Ben Jonson resemWith respect to the merits of bled him in this. Shakspeare as a performer, there has existed some doubt. From the expression used in and so the speech ends with a defective line. The Know, Casar doth not wrong, but with just cause; The line was attacked by the formidable criticism ef REN JONSON's Discoveries. Rowe's Life, it would appear that he had been but indifferently skilled in the inferior half of his double vocation, and never attempted any parts superior to the Ghost in Hamlet; but the words of Chettle, speaking of him as 'one excellent in the qualitie he professes,' confirm the account of Aubrey, that he did act exceedingly well.' That he understood the theory of his profession is manifest from the invaluable instructions which he has written, for the use of all future actors, in the third act of Hamlet. His class of characters was probably not very extensive. If the names of the performers prefixed to the early editions of Every Man in his Humour were arranged in the same order as the persons of the drama, which was most probably the case, he was the original representative of Old Knowell; and an anecdote preserved by Oldys would also make it appear that he played Adam in As you like it. One of Shakspeare's brothers, who lived to a good old age, even some years after the restoration of Charles the Second, 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 dramatic 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. See Shakspeare's Will). This opportunity made them greedily inquisitive into every little circumstance, more especially in his dramatic 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 inquiries; 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 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.'t From this it would appear, that the class of characters to which the histrionic exertions • Gilbert. ✦ REED's Shakspeare, vol. i. 122. of Shakspeare were confined, was that of elderly persons; parts, rather of declamation than of passion. With a countenance which, if any one of his pictures is a genuine resemblance of him, we may adduce that one as our authority for esteeming capable of every variety of expression; with a knowledge of the art that rendered him fit to be the teacher of the first actors of his day, and to instruct Joseph Taylor in the character of Hamlet, and John Lowine in that of King Henry the Eighth ; with such admirable qualifications for pre-eminence, we must infer that nothing but some personal defect could have reduced him to limit the exercise of his powers, and even in youth assume the slow and deliberate motion, which is the characteristic of old age. In his minor poems we, perhaps, trace the origin of this direction of his talents. It appears from two places in his Sonnets, that he was lamed by some accident. In the 37th sonnet he writes 'So I made lame by Fortune's dearest spite.' And, in the 89th, he again alludes to his infirmity, and says 'Speak of my lameness, and I straight will halt.' This imperfection would necessarily have rendered him unfit to appear as the representative. of any characters of youthful ardour, in which rapidity of movement or violence of exertion was demanded; and would oblige him to apply his powers to such parts as were compatible with his measured and impeded action. Malone has most inefficiently attempted to explain away the palpable meaning of the above lines; and adds, 'If Shakspeare was in truth lame, he had it not in his power to halt occasionally for this or any other purpose. The defect must have been fixed and permanent.' Not so. Surely, many an infirmity of the kind may be skilfully concealed; or only become visible in the moments of hurried movement. Either Sir Walter Scott or Lord Byron might, without any impropriety, have written the verses in question. They would have been applicable to either of them. Indeed the lameness of Lord Byron was exactly such as Shakspeare's might have been; and I remember as a boy, that he selected those speeches for declamation, which would not constrain him to the use of such exertions, as might obtrude the defect of his person into notice. Shakspeare's extraordinary merits, both as an author and as an actor, did not fail of obtaining for him the fame and the remuneration that they deserved. He was soon honoured by the patronage of the young Lord Southampton, one of the most amiable and accomplished noblemen of the court of Elizabeth, and one of the earliest ↑ Roscius Anglicanus, commonly called, Downes the Prompter's Book. of our national drama. To this disned person our author dedicated, 'the first his invention,'t the poem of Venus and in 1593. This was within five years hakspeare arrived in London; and, in the ng year, he inscribed the Rape of Lucrece same nobleman, in terms which prove that riers imposed by difference of condition come gradually levelled, and that, between young men, the cold and formal interof the patron and the client had been exchanged for the kinder familiarity of hip. The first address is respectful; the affectionate. When this intimacy began eare was in his twenty-seventh, and Lord mpton in his twentieth year; a time of en the expansion of our kindness is not Led by any of those apprehensions and ons which, in after-life, impede the deent of the affections; and when, in the astic admiration of excellence, we hasten fellowship with it, and disregard every nent to free communication which may be d by the artificial distinctions of society. periority of Shakspeare's genius raised a level with his friend. Lord SouthampOwed the gifts of Nature to claim equal e with the gifts of Fortune; and the d present of a thousand pounds, which at poet received from him, was bestowed epted in the true spirit of generosity; as from one, who was exercising to its uses the power of his affluence, and reby one whose soul was large enough to the sense of obligation without any mixpetty shame or any sacrifice of indepenThe name of Henry Wriothesley, earl of mpton, should be dear to every Englishthe first patron-the youthful friendhor of the fortunes of Shakspeare. authority for believing that this magnifiesent was made-which is equivalent to five thousand pounds at the present day best that can be obtained respecting the of our author's life; that of Sir William ant. It was given,' he says, 'to complete ase.' Malone doubts the extent of the unificence-and what does he not doubt? s, no such purchase was ever made.'t a mere gratuitous assumption; for it is that Shakspeare had a very considerable y in two principal theatres, which must Lord Southampton and Lord Rutland came The court; the one doth but very seldome: s away the time in London, merely in going s every day.'-Rowland Whyte's Letter to ert Sidney, 1599. Sydney Papers, vol. ii. cation to Venus and Adonis. WELL'S Shakspeare, vol. ii. p. 480. Globe was, perhaps, worth about 500%; the iars somewhat more: but this was the least - portion of the concern. The scenery, the have been obtained by purchase, and could not have been obtained for an inconsiderable sum ;§ nor by any means that our author could of himself have procured, by the most indefatigable exertions of his talents and economy. At a timo when the most successful dramatic representation did not produce to ts author so much as twenty pounds, and generally little more than ten ; when, as an actor, his salary would have amounted to a mere trifle; and when, as we have before seen, the circumstances of his father could not have aided him by any supplies from home, it is only by adopting D'Avenant's statement, and admitting the munificence of Lord Southampton, that we can account for the sudden prosperity of Shakspeare. But, says Malone, it is more likely that he presented the poet with a hundred pounds in return for his dedications.' And this instance of liberality, which is so creditable to Shakspeare and his patron-to him who merited, and the high-spirited and noble youth who comprehended and rewarded his exalted merit-is to be discredited, because such an ardour of admiration does not square with the frigid views of probability entertained by the aged antiquarian in the seclusion of his closet! The The fortunes of Shakspeare were indeed rapid in their rise; but he did not selfishly monopolize the emoluments of his success. On being driven from Stratford, he left, as we have seen, a father in reduced circumstances, and a wife and children who were to be supported by his labours. We may confidently assert, on a comparison of facts and dates, that the spirit of Shakspeare was not of a niggard and undiffusive kind. course of his success is marked by the returning prosperity of his family. In 1578, his father was unable to pay, as a member of the corporation, his usual contribution of four-pence a-week to the poor; and in 1588, a distress was issued for the seizure of his goods, which his poverty rendered nugatory; for it was returned, Johannes Shakspeare nihil habet unde distributio potest levari. Yet, from this state of poverty, we find him within ten years rising with the fortunes of his child; cheered and invigorated by the first dawning of his illustrious son's prosperity; and in 1590, applying at the Herald's Office for a renewal of his grant of arms,++ and described as a Justice of the Peace, and one possessing lands and tenements to the amount of 5001. That this restoration of Mr. John Shak speare's affairs properties, and the dresses, must have been worth infinitely more. In Greene's Groate's worth of Wit, a player is introduced, boasting that his share in the stage apparel could not be sold for two hundred pounds. Shakspeare was also the purchaser of property at Stratford so early as 1597. GIFFORD'S Massinger, vol. i. p. 64. ¶ BOSWELL's Shakspeare, vol. ii. p. 478. Register of the Bailiff's Court of Stratford. They were originally granted to him in 1500 while high-bailiff of the town. a 2 |