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whether fome people have not, in remembrance of the diverfion he had formerly afforded 'em, been forry to see his friend Hal use him fo fcurvily, when he comes to the crown in the end of the fecond part of Henry the fourth. Amongst other extravagancies, in the Merry Wives of Windsor, he has made him a Deer-stealer, that he might at the fame. time remember his Warwickshire profecutor, under the name of Justice Shallow; he has given him very near the fame coat of arms which Dugdale, in his antiquities of that county, defcribes for a family here, and makes the Wel parfon defcant very pleasantly upon 'em. That whole play is admirable; the humours are various and well oppos'd; the main defign, which is to cure Ford of his unreasonable jealoufy is extremely well conducted. In Twelfth-Night there is fomething fingularly ridiculous and pleasant in the fantastical steward Malvolio. The parafite and the vaingloricus in Parolles, in All's Well that Ends well, is as good as any thing of that kind in Plautus or Terence. Petruchio, in The Taming of the Shrew, is an uncommon piece of humour. The converfation of Benedick and Beatrice, in Much Ado about Nothing, and of Rofalind in As you like it, have much wit and fprightlinefs all along. His clowns, without which character there was hardly any play writ in that time, are all very entertaining: And, I believe, Ther fites in Troilus and Creffida, and Apemantus in Timon, will be allow'd to be mafter-pieces of ill-nature, and fatyrical fnarling. To these I might add, that incomparable character of Shylock the Jew, in the Merchant of Venice; but tho' we have feen that play receiv'd and acted as a Comedy, and the part of the few perform'd by an excellent Comedian, yet I cannot but think it was defigned tragically by the Author. There appears in it such a deadly spirit of revenge, fuch a favage fiercenefs and fellness, and fuch a bloody des fignation of cruelty and mischief, as cannot agree either with the style or characters of Comedy, The Play itself, take it altogether, feems to me to be one of the moft finish'd of any of Shakespear's. The tale indeed, in that part relating to the caskets, and the extravagant and unusual kind of bond given by Antonio, is too much remov'd from the Fples of probability: But taking the fact for granted, we

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muft allow it to be very beautifully written. There is fomething in the friendship of Antonio to Baffanio very great, generous and tender. The whole fourth act (fuppofing, as I faid, the fact to be probable) is extremely fine. But there are two paffages that deferve a particular notice. The firft is, what Portia fays in praife of mercy, and the other on the power of mufick. The melancholy of Jaques, in As you like it, is as fingular and odd as it is diverting. And if, what Horace fays,

Difficile eft proprie communia dicere,

'twill be a hard task for any one to go beyond him in the defcription of the feveral degrees and ages of man's life, tho' the thought be old, and common enough.

-All the world is a Stage,

And all the men and women meerly Players;
They have their Exits and their Entrances,
And one man in his time plays many Parts,
His Acts being seven ages. First the Infant
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms:
And then, the whining School-boy with his fatchel
And fbining morning-face, creeping like fnail
Unwillingly to fchool. And then the Lover
Sighing like furnace, with a woful ballad
Made to bis Mifirefs' eye-brow. Then a Soldier
Full of frange oaths, and bearded like the Pard,
Jealous in honour, fudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble Reputation

Ev'n in the cannon's mouth. And then the Juflice
In fair round belly, with good capon lin'd,
With eyes fevere, and beard of formal cut,
Full of wife faws and modern inftances;
And fo be plays his part. The fixth age shifts
Into the lean and flipper'd Pantaloon,
With spectacles on nofe, and pouch on fide;
His youthful hofe, well fav'd, a world too wide
For bis fhrunk fbanks; and bis big manly voice,

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Turning

Turning again toward childifb treble, pipes
And whiftles in bis found. Laft Scene of all,
That ends this ftrange eventful Hiftory,

Is fecond childishness and meer oblivion,
Sans teeth, fans eyes, fans tafte, fans ev'ry thing.
Vol. III. p. 33.

His Images are indeed every where fo lively, that the thing he would reprefent ftands full before you, and you poffefs every part of it. I will venture to point out one more, which is, I think, as ftrong and as uncommon as any thing I ever faw; 'tis an image of Patience. Speaking of a maid in love, he fays,

-She never told her love,

But let concealment, like a worm i'th' bud,
Feed on her damafk cheek: She pin'd in thought,
And fat like Patience on a monument,
Smiling at Grief,

What an Image is here given! and what a task would it have been for the greateft mafters of Greece and Rome to have exprefs'd the paffions defign'd by this fketch of Statuary! The ftyle of his Comedy is, in general, natural to the characters, and eafy in itself; and the wit moft commonly fprightly and pleafing, except in thofe places where he runs into dogrel rhymes, as in The Comedy of Errors, and fome other plays. As for his jingling fometimes, and playing upon words, it was the common vice of the age he liv'd in: And if we find it in the pulpit, made ufe of as an ornament to the Sermons of fome of the graveft Divines of thofe times; perhaps it may not be thought too light for the Stage.

But certainly the greatness of this Author's genius do's no where fo much appear, as where he gives his imagination an entire loofe, and raifes his fancy to a flight above mankind and the limits of the vifible world. Such are his attempts in The Tempest, Midfummer-Night's Dream, Macbeth, and Hamlet. Of thefe, The Tempest, however it

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comes to be plac'd the first by the Publifters of his works, can never have been the first written by him: It feems to me as perfect in its kind, as almost any thing we have of his. One may obferve, that the Unities are kept here, with an exactness uncommon to the liberties of his writing: tho' that was what, I fuppofe, he valu'd himself least upon, fince his excellencies were all of another kind. I am very fenfible that he do's, in this play, depart too much from that likeness to truth which ought to be obferv'd in these fort of writings; yet he do's it fo very finely, that one is eafily drawn in to have more faith for his fake, than reafon does well allow of. His Magick has fomething in it very folemn and very poetical: And that extravagant character of Caliban is mighty well fuftain'd, fhews a wonderful invention in the Author, who could ftrike out fuch a particular wild image, and is certainly one of the fineft and most uncommon Grotesques that was ever seen. The obfervation, which I have been inform'd * three very great men concurr'd in making upon this part, was extremely juft; That Shakespear bad not only found out a new Character in bis Caliban, but bad alfo devis'd and adapted a new manner of Language for that Character.

It is the fame magick that raises the Fairies in MidSummer-Night's Dream, the Witches in Macbeth, and the Ghoft in Hamlet, with thoughts and language fo proper to the parts they fuftain, and fo peculiar to the talent of this Writer. But of the two laft of thefe Plays I fhall have occafion to take notice, among the Tragedies of Mr. ShakeSpear. If one undertook to examine the greatest part of these by thofe rules which are establish'd by Ariftotle, and taken from the model of the Grecian Stage, it would be no very hard task to find a great many faults: But as Shakefpear liv'd under a kind of mere light of nature, and had never been made acquainted with the regularity of those written precepts, fo it would be hard to judge him by a law he knew nothing of. We are to confider him as a man that liv'd in a ftate of almost universal license and:

Lord_Falkland, Lord C. J. Faughan, and Mr. Selden.

ignorance

ignorance: there was no establish'd judge, but every one took the liberty to write according to the dictates of his own fancy. When one confiders, that there is not one play before him of a reputation good enough to entitle it to an appearance on the prefent Stage, it cannot but be a matter of great wonder that he fhould advance dramatick Poetry fo far as he did. The Fable is what is generally plac'd the first, among those that are reckon'd the constituent parts of a Tragick or Heroick Poem; not, perhaps, as it is the most difficult or beautiful, but as it is the firft properly to be thought of in the contrivance and courfe of the whole; and with the Fable ought to be confider'd, the fit Difpofition, Order and Conduct of its feveral parts. As it is not in this province of the Drama that the strength and maftery of Shakespear lay, so I shall not undertake the tedious and ill-natur'd trouble to point out the feveral faults he was guilty of in it. His Tales were feldom invented, but rather taken either from true Hiftory, or Novels and Romances: And he commonly made use of 'em in that order, with those incidents, and that extent of time in which he found 'em in the Authors from whence he borrow'd them'. Almost all his hiftorical Plays comprehend a great length of time, and very different and distinct places: And in his Antony and Cleopatra, the Scene travels over the greatest part of the Roman Empire. But in recompence for his carelefness in this point, when he comes to another part of the Drama, The Manners of bis Characters, in acting or Speaking what is proper for them, and fit to be shown by the Poet, he may be generally juftify'd, and in very many places greatly commended. For thofe Plays which he has taken from the English or Roman history, let any man compare 'em, and he will find the character as exact in the Poet as the Hiftorian. He feems indeed fo far from propofing to himself any one action for a Subject, that the Title very often tells you, 'tis The Life of King John, King Richard, &c. What can be more agreeable to the idea our hiftorians give of Henry, the fixth, than the picture Shakespear has drawn of him! His Manners are every where exactly the fame with his ftory; one finds him ftill

defcrib'd

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