Befides his plays in this edition, there are two or three afcribed to him by Mr. Langbaine, which I have never feen, and know nothing of. He writ likewife Venus and Adonis, and Tarquin and Lucrece, in ftanzas, which have been printed in a late collection of poems. As to the character given of him by Ben Jonfon, there is a good deal true in it but I believe it may be as well expreffed by what Horace fays of the firft Romans, who wrote tragedy upon the Greek models, (or indeed tranflated them,) in his epiftle to Auguftus: "Nam fpirat tragicum fatis, et feliciter audet, "Sed turpem putat in chartis metuitque lituram." As I have not propofed to myfelf to enter into a large and complete criticifm upon Shak fpeare's works, fo I will only take the liberty, with all due fubmiffion to the judgment of others, to obferve fome of those things I have been pleased with in looking him over. His plays are properly to be diftinguished only into comedies and tragedies. Thofe which are called hiftories, and even fome of his comedies, are really tragedies, with a run or mixture of comedy amongst them. That way of tragi-comedy was the common mistake of that age, and is indeed become fo agreeable to the English tafte, that though the feverer criticks among us cannot bear it, yet the generality of our audiences feem to be better pleafed with it than with an exact tragedy. The Merry Wives of Windfor, The Comedy of Errors, and The Taming of a Shrew, are all pure comedy; the reft, however they are called, have fomething of both kinds. It is not very easy to determine which way of writing he was moft excellent in. There is certainly a great deal of entertainment in his comical humours; and though they did not then strike at all ranks of people, as the fatire of the prefent age has taken the liberty to do, yet there is a pleafing and a well-diftinguished variety in thofe characters which he thought fit to meddle with. Falftaff is allowed by every body to be a masterpiece; the character is always well fuftained, though drawn out out into the length of three plays; and even the account of his death, given by his old landlady Mrs. Quickly, in the first act of Henry the Fifth, though it be extremely natural, is yet as diverting as any part of his life. If there be any fault in the draught he has made of this lewd old fellow, it is, that though he has made him a thief, lying, cowardly, vain-glorious, and in fhort every way vicious, yet he has given him fo much wit as to make him almoft too agreeable; and I do not know whether fome people have not, in remembrance of the diverfion he had formerly afforded them, been forry to fee his friend Hal ufe him fo fcurvily, when he comes to the crown in the end of The Second Part of Henry the Fourth. Amongst other extravagancies, in The Merry Wives of Windfor he has made him a deer-itealer, that he might at the fame time remember his Warwickshire profecutor, under the name of Juftice Shallow; he has given him very near the fame coat of arms which Dugdale, in his Antiquities of that country, defcribes for a family there, and makes the Welsh parfon defcant very pleafantly upon them. That whole play is admirable; the humours are various and well oppofed; 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 vain-glorious 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 fprightliness all along. His clowns, without which character there was hardly any play writ in that time, are all very entertaining : and, I believe, Therfites in Troilus and Creffita, and Apemantus in Timon, will be allowed to be mafter-pieces of illnature, and fatirical fnarling. To these I might add, that incomparable character of Shylock the Jew, in The Merchant of Venice; but though we have feen that play received and acted as a comedy, and the part of the Jew performed by an excellent comedian, yet I cannot but think it was defigned tragically by the author. There appears in it fuch a deadly fpirit of revenge, fuch a favage fierceness and fellness, and fuch a bloody defignation of cruelty and mischief, as cannot agree either with the ftile or characters of comedy. The play itfelf, take it altogether, feems to me to be one of the most finished of any of Shakspeare's. The tale indeed, in that part relating to the cafkets, and the extravagant and unufual kind of bond given by Antonio, is too much removed from the rules of probability; but taking the fact for granted, we must 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 praise 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,” it will be a hard task for any one to go beyond him in the defcription of the feveral degrees and ages of man's life, though the thought be old, and common enough: 66 All the world's a stage, "And all the men and women merely players; " "And then, the whining fchool-boy with his fatchel, "Made to his miftrefs' eye-brow. Then, a foldier; ཟ་ Ev'n in the cannon's mouth. And then, the justice; ** 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 "And fo he plays his part. The fixth age shifts 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; it is 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, 66 Smiling at Grief." What an image is here given! and what a task would it have been for the greatest mafters of Greece and Rome to have expreffed the paffions defigned by this fketch of ftatuary! The ftile of his comedy is, in general, natural to the characters, and eafy in itfelf; and the wit moft commonly fprightly and pleafing, except in thofe places where he runs into doggerel rhimes, as in The Comedy of Errors, and fone other plays. As for his jingling fometimes, and playing upon words, it was the common vice of the age he lived in: and if we find it in the pulpit made ufe of as an ornament to the fermons of fome of the graveft divines of those times, perhaps it may not be thought too light for the ftage. But certainly the greatnefs of this author's genius does no where fo much appear, as where he gives his imagination an entire loose, and raifes his fancy to a flight above mankind, and the limits of the visible world. Such are his attempts in The Tempest, A Midfummer-Night's Dream, Macbeth, and Hamlet. Hamlet. Of thefe, The Tempeft, however it comes to be placed the first by the publishers of his works, can never have been the first written by him: it feems to me as perfect in its kind, as almoft any thing we have of his. One may obferve, that the unities are kept here, with an exactnefs uncommon to the liberties of his writing; though that was what, I fuppofe, he valued himself least upon, fince his excellencies were all of another kind. I am very fenfible that he does, in this play, depart too much from that likeness to truth which ought to be observed in these fort of writings; yet he does it fo very finely, that one is easily 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 Cali ban is mighty well fuftained, fhews a wonderful invention in the author, who could ftrike out fuch a particular wild image, and is certainly one of the finest and most uncommon grotefques that ever was feen. The obfervation, which, I have been informed, three very great men concurred in making upon this part, was extremely juft; that Shakspeare had not only found out a new character in his Caliban, but had also devifed and adapted a new manner of language for that cha racter. It is the fame magick that raises the Fairies in A Midfummer-Night's Dream, the Witches in Macbeth, and the Ghost 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 these plays I fhall have occafion to take notice, among the tragedies of Mr. Shakspeare. If one undertook to examine the greatest part of these by those rules which are establifhed by Ariftotle, and taken from the model of the Grecian ftage, it would be no very hard talk to find a great many faults; but as Shakspeare lived under a kind of mere light of nature, and had never been made acquainted with the regularity of thofe 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 lived in a state of almost universal licence and ignorance: there was no established judge, but every one took the liberty to write according to the dictates of his own fancy. When one com fiders, |