menacing the atheist with punishment. After this scene, Simo nie, Hypocrisie, and Demerites-Communes appear and play their parts In conclusion, Pugnition Divine returns, preaches to them, upbraids them with their crimes, and, in short, draws them all to repentance, all but the Homme Obstiné, who persists in his impiety, and is destroyed for an example. To this sad serious subject they added, though in a separate representation, a merry kind of farce called Sottié, in which there was un Paysan [the Clown] under the name of Sot-Commun [or Fool]. But we, who borrowed all these delicacies from the French, blended the Moralité and Sottié together: So that the Paysan or Sot-Commun, the Clown or Fool, got a place in our serious moralities: Whose business we may understand in the frequent allusions our Shakspeare makes to them: as in that fine speech in the beginning of the third Act of Measure for Measure, where we have this obscure passage. 66 merely thou art Death's Fool, "For him thou labour'st by thy flight to shun, "And yet runn'st tow'rd him still. For, in these moralities, the Fool of the peice, in order to show the inevitable approaches of Death, (another of the Dramatis Persone) is made to employ all his stratagems to avoid him; which, as the matter is ordered, bring the Fool, at every turn, into the very jaws of his enemy: So that a representation of these scenes would afford a great deal of good mirth and morals mixed together. The very same thing is again alluded to in these lines of Love's Labour's Lost: "So Portent-like I would o'er-rule his state, "That he should be my Fool, and I his Fate." Act IV, sc. ii. But the French, as we say, keeping these two sorts of farces distinct, they became, in time, the parents of tragedy and comedy; while we, by jumbling them together, begot in an evil hour, that mongrel species, unknown to nature and antiquity, called tragicomedy. Warburton. TO this, when Mr. Upton's Dissertation is subjoined, there will, perhaps, be no need of any other account of the Vice. Like the old Vice.] The allusion here* is to the Vice, a droll character in our old plays, accoutred with a long coat, a cap with a pair of ass's ears, and a dagger of lath. Shakspeare alludes to his buffoon appearance in Twelfth Night, Act IV: "In a trice, like to the old Vice ; "Who with dagger of lath, in his rage and wrath; In The Second Part of King Henry IV, Act III, Falstaff compares Shallow to a Vice's dagger of lath. In Hamlet, Act III, Hamlet calls his uncle: "A vice of kings:" i. e. a ridiculous representation of majesty. These passages the editors have very rightly expounded. I will now mention some * i. e. p. 3, of Mr. Upton's book, where the words-like the old Vice--occur. Malone. others, which seem to have escaped their notice, the allusions being not quite so obvious. The iniquity was often the Vice in our moralities; and is introduced in Ben Jonson's play called The Devil's an Ass: and likewise mentioned in his Epigr. cxv: Being no vitious person, but the Vice "About the town, "Acts old Iniquity, and in the fit "Of miming, gets th' opinion of a wit." But a passage cited from his play will make the following observations more plain. Act I, Pug asks the Devil" to lend him a Vice:" "Satan. What Vice? "What kind would thou have it of? "Or Covetousness, or lady Vanity, "Or old Iniquity: I'll call him hither." Thus the passage should be ordered: "Pug. Why any: Fraud, "Or Covetousness, or lady Vanity, "Or old Iniquity. "Pug. I'll call him hither." "Enter Iniquity the Vice. "Ini. What is he calls upon me, and would seem to lack a Vice? "Ere his words be half spoken, I am with him in a trice." And in his Staple of News, Act II: "Mirth. How like you the Vice i' th' play? Expectation. Which is he? "Mirth. Three or four; old Covetousness, the sordid Penny-Boy, the Money-Bawd, who is a flesh-bawd too, they say. "Tattle. But here is never a Fiend to carry him away. Besides, he has never a wooden dagger! I'd not give a rush for a Vice, that has not a wooden dagger to snap at every body he meets. "Mirth. That was the old way, gossip, when Iniquity came in, like hokos pokos, in a jugler's jerkin," &c. He alludes to the Vice in The Alchymist, Act I, sc. iii: "Sub. And, on your stall, a puppet, with a Vice.*" Some places of Shakspeare will from hence appear more easy, as in The First Part of King Henry IV, Act II, where Hal humorously characterizing Falstaff, calls him, That reverend Vice, that grey Iniquity, that father Ruffian, that Vanity in years, in allusion to this buffoon character. In King Richard III, Act III: "Thus like the formal Vice, Iniquity, "I moralize two meanings in one word." Iniquity is the formal Vice. Some correct the passage: —a puppet, with a Vice.] Mr. Upton has misinterpreted this passage. A vice in the present instance means a device, clockwork. Coryat, p. 254, speaks of a picture whose eyes were n by a vice. Farmer. "Thus like formal-wise antiquity, "I moralize: Two meanings in one word." Which correction is out of all rule of criticism. In Hamlet, Act I, there is an allusion, still more distant, to the Vice; which will not be obvious at first, and therefore is to be introduced with a short explanation. This buffoon character was used to make fun with the Devil; and he had several trite expressions, as I'll be with you in a trice: Ah, ha, boy, are you there? &c. And this was great entertainment to the audience, to see their old enemy so belaboured in effigy. In King Henry V, Act IV, a boy characterizing Pistol, says, Bardolph and Nym had ten times more valour, than this roaring Devil i' the old play: every one may pare his nails with a wooden dagger." Now Hamlet, having been instructed by his father's ghost, is resolved to break the subject of the discourse to none but Horatio; and to all others his intention is to appear as a sort of madman; when therefore the oath of secrecy is given to the sentinels, and the Ghost unseen calls out, swear; Hamlet speaks to it as the Vice does to the Devil. Ah, ha, boy, say'st thou so? Art thou there, Truepenny? Hamlet had a mind that the sentinels should imagine this was a shape that the devil had put on; and in Act III he is somewhat of this opinion himself: "The spirit that I have seen The manner of speech therefore to the Devil was what all the audience were well acquainted with; and it takes off, in some measure, from the horror of the scene. Perhaps too the poet was willing to inculcate, that good humour is the best weapon to deal with the Devil. Truepenny, either by way of irony, or li terally from the Greek, Turavov, veterator. Which word the Scholiast on Aristophanes' Clouds, ver. 447, explains, τpúμn, ὅ περιτετριμμένος ἐν τοις πράγμασιν ὅν ἡμεῖς ΤΡΥΠΑΝΟΝ και acμ. Several have tried to find a derivation of the Vice: if I should not hit on the right, I should only err with others. The Vice is either a quality personalized, as BIH and KAPTON in Hesiod and Eschylus; Sin and Death in Milton; and indeed Vice itself is a person. B. XI, 527: "And took his image whom they serv'd, a brutish Vice." his image, i. e. a brutish Vice's image: the Vice, Gluttony; not without some allusion to the Vice of the plays: but rather, I think, 'tis an abbreviation of vice-devil, as vice-roy, vice-doges, &c. and therefore properly called the Vice. He makes very free with his master, like most other vice-roys, or prime ministers. So that he is the Devil's Vice, and prime minister; and 'tis this that makes him so saucy. Upton. Mr. Upton's learning only supplies him with absurdities. His derivation of vice is too ridiculous to be answered. I have nothing to add to the observations of these learned cri tics, but that some traces of this antiquated exhibition are still retained in the rustick puppet-plays, in which I have seen the Devil very lustily belaboured by Punch, whom I hold to be the legitimate successor of the old Vice. Johnson. KING HENRY VIII. WE are unacquainted with any dramatic piece on the subject of Henry VIII, that preceded this of Shakspeare; and yet on the books of the Stationers' Company appears the following entry: "Nathaniel Butter] (who was one of our author's printers) Feb. 12, 1604. That he get good allowance for the enterlude of K. Henry VIII, before he begin to print it; and with the wardens hand to yt, he is to have the same for his copy." Dr. Farmer in a note on the epilogue to this play, observes, from Stowe, that Robert Greene had written somewhat on the same story. Steevens. This historical drama comprizes a period of twelve years, commencing in the twelfth year of King Henry's reign, (1521) and ending with the christening of Elizabeth in 1533. Shakspeare has deviated from history in placing the death of Queen Katharine before the birth of Elizabeth, for in fact Katharine did not die till 1536. King Henry VIII was written, I believe, in 1601. Dr. Farmer in a note on the epilogue, observes, from Stowe, that "Robert Greene had written something on this story;" but this I apprehend, was not a play, but some historical account of Henry's reign, written not by Robert Greene, the dramatic poet, but by some other person. In the list of "authors out of whom Stowe's Annals were compiled," prefixed to the last edition printed in his life time, quarto, 1605, Robert Greene is enumerated with Robert de Brun, Robert Fabian, &c. and he is often quoted as an authority for facts in the margin of the history of that reign. Malone. |