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is unfavourable to her lover, and being be-. fides nopolitician, anfwers the emperor, that fhe does not understand state affairs: a cruel reply to a speech he could have no motive for making, but to display his wisdom and eloquence. The old warrior is more complaifant to her, for he enters into all the delicacies of her paffion, as if he had studied la carte du tendre*. To steal fo-much matter from Tacitus without imbibing one spark of his fpirit; to tranflate whole speeches yet preferve no likeness in the characters, is furely betraying a great deficiency of dramatic powers, and of the art of imitation. To represent the gay, luxurious, diffolute, ambitious Otho, the courtier of Nero, and the gallant of Poppea, as a mere Paftor Fido, who would die rather than be inconftant to his mistress, and is indifferent to empire but for her fake, is such a violation of historical truth, as is not to be endured. I pafs over the abfurd scene between the jealous ladies, the improbability of their treating the erful and haughty favorites of the emperor

*Roman de Clelio

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pow

with

with indignity, and Otho's thrice repeated` attempt to kill himself before his mistress's face, without the leaft reason why he should put an end to his life, or probability that the would fuffer him to do it. To make minute criticisms, where the great parts are fo defective, would be trifling.

Having obferved how poorly Corneille has reprefented characters borrowed from so great a portrait painter as Tacitus, let us now see what Shakespear has done, from those awkward originals our old chronicles.

THE

THE

FIRST PART

OF

HENRY IV.

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[89]

THE

FIRST PART

OF

HENRY IV.

THE

HE peculiar dexterity, with which the author unfolds the characters, and prepares the events of this play, deferves our attention.

There is not perhaps any thing more difficult in the whole compass of the dramatic art, than to open to the fpectator the previous incidents, that were productive of the prefent circumftances, and the characters of the perfons from whose conduct, in fuch circumstances, the fubfequent events are to flow. An intelligent spectator will receive great pleasure from obferving every

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