Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

ency, dignity and decorum: one part of his behaviour deferves to be particularly pointed out. During the exhibition of a mask with which he had ordered Ariel to entertaiy Ferdinand and Miranda, he starts fuddenly from the recolection of the confpiracy of Caliban and his confederates against his life, and difmifles his attendant fpirits, who inftatly vanish to a hollow and confufed noife. He appear to be greatly moved; and fuitably to this agitation of mird, which his danger has excited, he takes occafion, from the fudden difappearance of the vifionary scene, to moralize on the dif folution of all things:

These our actors,

As I foretold you, were all spirits; and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless, fabrick of this vific,
The cloud capt towers, the gorgeous palace,
The folemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall diffolve;
And, like this unsubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind-

To these noble images he adds a fhort but comprehenfive ob, fervation on human life, not excelled by any affage of the moral and fententious Euripides:

We are fueh ftuff

As dreams are made on; and our little lift
Is rounded with a fleep!-

Thus admirably is an uniformity of character, that leading beauty in dramatic poefy, preferved throughout the Tempeft. And it may be farther remarked, that the unities of action, of place, and of time, are in this play, though almoft conftantly violated by Shakespeare, exactly obferved. The action is one, great, and entire, the refte ation of Profpero to his dukedom; this bufinefs is transacted in the compafs of a small island, and in, or near, the cave of Profpero; though indeed, it had been more artful and fegular to have confined it to this fingle spot; and the time which the acstion takes up, is only equal to that of the reprefentation: an elegance which ought always to be aimed at in every wellsonducted fable, and for the w nt of which, a variety of the most entertaining incidents can scarcely atone,

ON A

MIDSUMMER-NIGHT's DREAM.

T

HE hiftory of our old poets is fo little known, and the first editions of their works become so very scarce, that it is hard pronouncing any thing certain about them: But, if that pretty fantastical poem of Drayton's called

Nymphidia, or, The Court of Fairy;" be early enough in time, (as, I believe, it is; for I have feen an edition of that author's paftorals, printed in 1593, quarto) it is not improbable, that Shakespeare took from thence the hint of his fairies: a line of that poem, "Thorough bufh, thorough briar," occurs alfo in his play. The reft of the play is, doubtless, invention: the names only of Thefeus, Hippolita, and Thefeus' former loves, Antiopa and others, being historical; and taken from the tranflated Plutarch, in the article-Thefeus.

P. 85. L. 6, Long withering out a young man's revenue.] Long withering out is, certainly, not good English. I rather think Shakespeare wrote, Long wintering on a young man's WARB.*

revenue.

Ibid.] That the common reading is not good English, I eannot perceive, and therefore find in myself no temptation to change it. JOHNSON.

P. 86. 1, 16. fall'n th' impreffion of her fantefic.] The expreffion is elegant and pretty. It alludes to the taking the impreffion of a key in wax, in order to have another made to unlock a cabinet. WARB.

L. 28. Or to ber death, according to our law.] By a law of Solon's, Parents had the abfolute power of life and death over their children. So it fuited the poet's purpose well enough to fuppofe the Athenians had it before. Or perhaps he neither thought nor knew any thing of the matter. WARB. P. 87. 1. 1. To you your father should be as a

god,

One, who compos'd your beauties; yea, and one,
To whom you are but as a form in wax

A

[ocr errors]

By him imprinted; and within his power

TO LEAVE the figure or disfigure it.] We fhould read,
To 'LEVE the figure, &c.

i. e. releve, to heighten or add to the beauty of the figure, which is faid to be imprintd by him. 'Tis from the French, relever. Thus they fay, Tapifleries relevées d'or. In the fame fenfe they use enlever, which Maundeville makes English of in this manner:-" And alle the walles withinne ben covered with gold and fylver, in fyn plates: and in the plates ben ftories and batayles of knyghtes enleved," p. 228. Rabalais, with a strain of buffoon humour, that equals the fober elegance of this paffage in our poet, calls the ímall gentry of France, Gentilhommes de bas relief. WARB.

Ibid.] I know not why fo harsh a word should be admitted with fo little need, a word that, spoken, could not be underftood, and of which no example can be fhewn. The fenfe is plain," you owe to your father a being which he may at pleasure continue or destroy." JOHNS. & CAN.

L. 14. I know not, by what power I am made bold.] It was the opinion of the ancients, that when a perfon did or faid any thing that exceeded his common faculties of performance, that he did it by the affiftance of fome God. So here fhe infinuates, that it was love that enabled her to plead his cause. WARB.

L. 31. Thus all the copies, yet earthlier is fo harsh a word, and earthler happy for happier earthly a mode of speech fo unufual, that I wonder none of the editors have proposed earlier happy. JOHNSON. Earthly happy. CAPELL.

P. 89. 1. 13. Come, my Hippolita; what cheer, my love?] Hippolita had not faid one fingle word all this while. Had a modern poct had the teaching of her, we fhould have found her the bufieft amongst them; and without doubt, the lovers might have expect a more equitable decifion. But Shakefpeare knew better what he was about; and obferved decoWARB. L. 22. Beteem them.] Or pour down upon them. POPE. Ibid.] Give them, bestow upon them. The word is used by Spenfer. JOHNSON.

rum.

L. 23. Eigh me, for Ah me.

For aught. Hermia was

inferted in the folio 1632, but is now changed for the first reading.

L. 27.] Enthralled to low; vulg. to love.

JOHNSON.
ТНЕОВ.

P. 90. I. 6. Momentany is the old and proper word. JOHNS. L. 8. Brief as the lightning in the collied night,

That, in a Spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth,

And ere a man bath power to fay, Behold!

The jaws of darkness do devour it up.] Tho' the word Spleen be here employed odly enough, yet I believe it right. Shakespeare always hurried on by the grandeur and multitude of his ideas affumes, every now and then, an uncommon licence in the use of his words. Particularly in complex moral modes it is ufual with him to employ one, only to express a very few ideas of that number of which it is compofed. Thus wanting here to exprefs the ideas--of a fudden, or in a trice, he ufes the word Spleen; which partially confidered, fignifying a hafty fudden fit, is enough for him, and he never troubles himself about the further or fuller fignification of the word. Here, he uses the word Spleen for a fudden hafty fit; so just the contrary, in the Two Gentlemen of Verona, he ufes fudden for fpleenatic-fudden quips. And it must be owned this fort of converfation adds a force to the diction.

WARB.

L. 20. I have a widow aunt, &c.] Thefe lines perhaps might more properly be regulated thus:

L. 27.

I have a widow aunt, a dowager

Of great revenue, and the hath no child,

And the respects me as her only fon;

Her house from Athens is removed fev'n leagues,

There, gentle Hermia, may I marry thee,

And to that place

-If thou lov'ft me then

Steal forth thy father's bouse, &c.

Her. My good Lyfander,

I fwear to thee by Cupid's strongest bow,
By, &c. &c.

In that fame place thou haft appointed me

JOHNSON.

To-morrow truly will I meet with thee.] Lyfander does but just propose her running away from her father at midnight, and straight she is at her oaths that she will meet him

at the place of rendezvous. Not one doubt or hesitation, not one condition of affurance for Lyfander's conftancy. Either she was naufeously coming; or else had before jilted him; and he could not believe her without a thousand oaths. But Shakespeare observed nature at another rate.———The fpeeches are divided wrong, and must be thus rectified; when Lyfander had propofed her running away with him, the replies,

Her. My good Lyfander

and is going on to fecurity for his fidelity. This he perceives, and interrupts her with the grant of what the cemands.

Lyf. I swear to thee by Cupid's ftrongest bow, &c.
By all the vows that ever men have broke,

In number more than ever woman spoke
Here the interrupts him in her turn; declares herself fatis-
fied, and confents to meet him in the following words,
In that fame place thou haft appointed ine,
To-morrow truly will I meet with thee.

Her.

[ocr errors]

This divifion of the lines, befides preferving the character, gives the dialogue infinitely more force and fpirit. WARB. Ibid.] This emendation is judicious, but not necessary. The cenfure of men, as oftener perjured than woman, seems to make that line more proper for the lady. JOHNSON.

The

P. 91. 1. 15. Your eyes are lode-ftars.] This was a compliment not unfrequent among the old poets. The lode-ftar is the leading or guiding far, that is the pole ftar. magnet is for the fame reafon called the lode fione, either becaufe it leads iron, or because it guide the failor. Milton has the fame thought in L'Allegro,

Towers and battlements it fees
Bofom'd high in tufted trees,
Where perhaps fome beauty lies,

The Cynofure of neighb'ring eyes.

JOHNSON.

L. 19.] This emendation is taken from the Oxford edition. The common reading is, Your words I'd catch.

JOHNSON.

P. 92. 1. 10.] Perhaps the reader may not difcover the propriety of thefe lines. Hermia is willing to comfort Helena, and to avoid all appearance of triumph over her. She there

« ZurückWeiter »