Pawn his salvation, live at interest? Enter a little Boy with a Top and Scourge. Son. What ail you, father? Are you not well? I cannot scourge my top as long as you stand so. You take up all the room with your wide legs? Puh! you cannot make me afraid with this; I fear no visards, nor bugbears. [He takes up the Child by the skirts of his long coat with one hand, and draws his dagger with the other. Hus. Up, sir, for here thou hast no inheritance left. Son. O, what will you do, father? I am your white boy. Hus. Thou shalt be my red boy; take that. Son. O, you hurt me, father. Hus. My eldest beggar, [Strikes him. Thou shalt not live to ask an usurer bread; To cry at a great man's gate; or follow, 'Good your honour,' by a coach; no, nor your brother: "Tis charity to brain you. Son. How shall I learn, now my head's broke? Hus. Bleed, bleed, [Stabs him. Rather than beg. Be not thy name's disgrace; Spurn thou thy fortunes first; if they be base, Come view thy second brother's. Fates! My children's blood Maid. O help, help! Out, alas! murther, murther! Hus. Are you gossiping, you prating, sturdy quean? I'll break your clamour with your neck. Down stairs; Tumble, tumble, headlong. So : [He throws her down, and stabs the Child. The surest way to charm a woman's tongue, Is-break her neck: a politician did it. Son. Mother, mother; I am kill'd, mother! [WIFE awakes. Wife. Ha, who's that cried? O me! my children, Both, both, bloody, bloody! [Catches up the youngest Child. Hus. Strumpet, let go the boy; let go the beggar. Wife. O, my sweet husband! Hus. Filth, harlot ! 1 Ser. How is it with my most afflicted mistress? Wife. Why do I now recover? Why half live, To see my children bleed before mine eyes? A sight able to kill a mother's breast, without An executioner.-What, art thou mangled too? 1 Ser. I, thinking to prevent what his quick mischiefs Has so soon acted, came and rush'd upon him. We struggled; but a fouler strength than his O'erthrew me with his arms: then did he bruise me, me of hair; And rent my flesh, and robb'd A Enter a Servant. Ser. Please you to leave this most accursed place: Wife. Willing to leave it? 'Tis guilty of sweet blood, innocent blood: Murther has took this chamber with full hands, And will ne'er out as long as the house stands. [Exeunt. SCENE VIII-A High Road. Hus. O stumbling jade! The fifty diseases stop thee! chance! To throw me now, within a flight o' the town, In such plain even ground too! 'Sfoot, a man May dice upon it, and throw away the meadows. Filthy beast! [Cry within] Follow, follow, follow. Hus. Ha! I hear sounds of men, like hue and cry. 1 Ser. Follow; our murtherous master has Up, up, and struggle to thy horse; make on; Despatch that little beggar, and all's done. [Cry within] Here, here; this way, this way. Hus. At my back? Oh, What fate have I! my limbs deny me go. My will is 'bated; beggary claims a part. O could I here reach to the infant's heart! Enter the MASTER of the College, three Gentle men, and Attendants with Halberds. All. Here, here; yonder, yonder. Mast. Unnatural, flinty, more than barbarous! The Scythians, even the marble-hearted Fates, Could not have acted more remorseless deeds, In their relentless natures, than these of thine. Was this the answer I long waited on? The satisfaction for thy prison'd brother? Hus. Why, he can have no more of us than our skins, And some of them want but flaying 1 Gent. Great sins have made him impudent. Mast. He has shed so much blood, that he cannot blush. 2 Gent. Away with him; bear him to the justice's. A gentleman of worship dwells at hand: Hus. Knight. O, in a cooler blood you will repent it. Hus. I repent now that one is left unkill'd; My brat at nurse. I would full fain have wean'd him. Knight. Well, I do not think, but in to-morrow's judgment, The terror will sit closer to your soul, To further which, take this sad voice from me, Knight. Go, lead him to the gaol: Where justice claims all, there must pity fail. Hus. Come, come; away with me. [Exeunt HUSBAND, &c. Mast. Sir, you deserve the worship of your place: Would all did so! In you the law is grace. The desolation of his house, the blot SCENE X.-Before Calverly Hall. Enter HUSBAND guarded, MASTER of the Hus. I am right against my house,-seat of my ancestors: I hear my wife's alive, but much endanger'd. His WIFE is brought in. Gent. See, here she comes of herself. Now in the hands of unrelenting laws, Hus. How now? Kind to me? Did I not wound thee? Left thee for dead? Wife. Tut, far, far greater wounds did my breast feel; Unkindness strikes a deeper wound than steel. You have been still unkind to me. Hus. 'Faith, and so I think I have; I did my murthers roughly out of hand, Seven wounds apiece. Now glides the devil from me, Departs at every joint; heaves up my nails. To spread into a father, and in fury Wife. O my repentant husband! Hus. O my dear soul, whom I too much have wrong'd; For death I die, and for this have I long'd. Wife. Thou shouldst not, be assur'd, for these faults die If the law could forgive as soon as I. [The two Children laid out. Hus. What sight is yonder? O, were it lawful that your pretty souls O that I might my wishes now attain, I should then wish you living were again, Though I did beg with you, which thing I fear'd: O, 'twas the enemy my eyes so blear❜d! O, would you could pray heaven me to forgive, sorrows, And live apart with this. Offi. Come, will you go? My soul is bloodied, well may my lips be so. Farewell, dear wife; now thou and I must part; I of thy wrongs repent me with my heart. Hus. That's but in vain; you see it must Farewell, ye bloody ashes of my boys! Mast. Wife. Dearer than all is my poor husband's life. I'll ever praise a woman for thy sake. I must return with grief; my answer's set; [Exeunt omnes. NOTICE ON THE AUTHORSHIP OF A YORKSHIRE TRAGEDY. · THE event upon which this little drama is founded happened in 1604; the play was published in 1608. If it were written by Shakspere then, as his name on the title-page would lead us to believe, it must have been written when he was at the height of his power and of his fame. The question therefore as to his authorship of this play lies within very narrow limits. On the one hand we have the assertion of the publisher, in his entry upon tho Stationers' registers, and in the title-page of the book, that Shakspere was the author: on the other hand, we have to consider the manifest improbability that one who essentially viewed human events and passions through the highest medium of poetry should have taken up a subject of temporary interest to dramatize upon a prosaic principle. The English stage is familiar with works of extensive and permanent popularity which present to the senses the literal movement of some domestic tragedy, in which, from the necessary absence of the poetical spirit, the feelings of the audience are harassed and tortured without any compensation from that highest power of art which subdues the painful in and through the beautiful. 'George Barnwell' and 'The Gamester' are ready examples of tragedies of this class; and without going into any minute comparisons, it is easy to understand that the principle upon which such works are composed is essentially different from that which presides over Hamlet and Lear and Othello. There was a most voluminous dramatic writer in Shakspere's time, Thomas Heywood, whose pen was ready to seize upon a subject of passing interest, such as the frantic violence of the unhappy Mr. Calverly. Charles Lamb, after quoting two very pathetic scenes from a tragedy of this writer, 'A Woman Killed with Kindness,' says, Heywood is a sort of prose Shakspeare. His scenes are to the full as natural and affecting. But we miss the poet, that which in Shakspeare always appears out and above the surface of the nature. Heywood's characters, his country gentlemen, &c., are exactly what we see (but of the best kind of what we see) in life. Shakspeare makes us believe, while we are among his lovely creations, that they are nothing but what we are familiar with, as in dreams new things seem old; but we awake, and sigh for the difference.' We have no doubt that Heywood could have written "The Yorkshire Tragedy;' we greatly question whether Shakspere would have written it. The play, however, is one of sterling merit in its limited range; and as it is also a remarkable specimen of a species of drama of which we have very few other examples of the Shaksperian age, we have printed it entire.' It is scarcely necessary for us to enter upon any minute criticism in this place, especially as we shall have to revert to the general principle of the suitableness of such a subject to Shakspere's powers, when we give an account of ' Arden of Feversham,' a tragedy of an earlier date, which has also been imputed to our great poet. A writer in the 'Retro |