What reader of Shakespeare, on being present for the first time at the performance of Richard III., is not shocked and bewildered by the long first Scene of that droll piece of mosaic work which the managers facetiously announce as William Shakespeare's Tragedy. I shall never forget my youthful surprise, which gave place to wrath, merging gradually to sullenness, and finally veering round to laughter. I did not know that the Richard III. of the stage was a hodge-podge manufactured by Cibber, partly from Shakespeare's Richard III., partly from Henry V., partly from Henry VI., and partly from emanations of the Cibberian mind. A perusal of Hazlitt's criticism afterwards enlightened me as to the structure of the acting play,-if that can be called structure which has neither plan nor coherence before Shakespeare's works had become to me an object of critical study.

The editor of the Modern Standard Drama, remarks, in demurring to Hazlitt's strictures: "We suspect that old Cibber was, after all, a better judge than his more philosophical critic, of the ingredients that go to make up a

good acting play." But the question put at issue is, not whether Cibber knew better than Hazlitt how to make a good acting play, but whether Cibber knew better than Shakespeare how to bring on and develope Shakespeare's characters. With all deference to Garrick and the "popular audiences" whom the alterations were made to please, to Cibber who made them, and to Mr. Sargent who endorses them, I think that Shakespeare knew best. Stage effect is another matter; something which did not exist in Shakespeare's time any more than instrumentation in Handel's; and Garrick or Mr. Kemble might properly change it in any manner according with good taste, as Mozart put the wind score to the Messiah. But the latter would have had as much right to cut out half a dozen bars from each piece in the Messiah, and to supply their places with something from Judas Maccabeus, or Acis & Galatea, or with music of his own, as Cibber to make up Richard III. of Henry VI., Henry V., and his own "worse than needless additions," as Hazlitt calls them.

The prosing Henry delays the action of the play, and is a most useless excrescence upon it,-a huge and cumbrous dramatic wart upon the fair proportions of the piece. Shakespeare was adequate to the task he undertook; and did just what he meant to do when he introduced Gloster's soliloquy so abruptly. The excuse for having a Scene before it, that "it would be spoiled in the representation, in the noise and confusion which must usually attend the first rising of the curtain," is most lame. Such commotion instantly subsides at the sound of the actor's voice; and what greater commotion could there be than the applause which greets the actor who plays Richard, as he steps upon the stage. The worst interpolation of Cibber is the speech put in the mouth of Richard after he falls: "Perdition seize thine arm," &c. It is the worst, because it is entire

ly inconsistent with Gloster's character. He is an unmitigated villain, having nothing noble about him, and nothing admirable but his knowledge of human nature and his inflexible will. His ambition is not the fruit of a soaring spirit, but of the hate he bears mankind; for, be it observed, Richard loves no man. He seeks the crown not because it will make him great, but because it will make others grovel. He is completely selfish, looking upon those around him merely as tools which he can or cannot use, and utterly remorseless, caring not if he destroy them in using them. He is not a sturdy, open usurper, with whom we might have some sympathy while condemning him; but a mean, sneaking nocrite, an intriguer, a stabber, and a poisoner, who indeed has courage enough to fight when necessary, and skill and prudence enough to fight well ; but though born in chivalric days, he fights with no chivalric feeling. He has no honesty himself, and recognizes none in others. To reach his throne, he commits six murders with as little compunction as he would tread on as many spiders; and when there, is too mean to pay to him. who helped him there, the petty price of his treachery. Such is the man whom Cibber, not Shakespeare, would cause to say, when dying, to his victor:

"But oh! the vast renown thou hast acquir'd
In conquering Richard, does afflict him more
Than even his body's parting with his soul,"

Shakespeare's Richard would have yielded renown an hundredfold greater than his own, yes, and have done any mean thing, with knowledge that it would be published to the world, if by doing so he could have retained his crown and his life.

Many passages necessary to the perfect understanding of the character, such as Gloster's defence of himself to the

Queen and her friends, his speech to the lords which results in the death of Hastings, his conversation with the Lieutenant of the Tower when asking admission to Clarence, and others, together with some of the finest poetical passages of the play,-such as Clarence's dream, the description of the murder of the Princes, and the Queen's address to the Tower, are cut out, as not being fitted for "an acting play," forsooth. Cannot this be remedied? I do not agree with Hazlitt in his opinion that these passages may judiciously be omitted. The only reason which he assigns, that he should "be loth to trust them in the mouth of almost any actor," would be equally well urged against the finest passage in this or any other play. It may be a good reason for excluding Shakespeare's works entirely from the stage; but it cannot justify their mutilation.

ACT I. SCENE 3.

"Q. Mary. Thou elvish-mark'd, abortive, rooting hog, Thou that wast seal'd in thy nativity

The slave of nature and the son of Hell."

Could epithets be better applied than those in the last of these three lines? And yet all manner of contrivance is used to avoid calling Gloster "the slave of nature:"as for instance, "the shame of nature,” " "the scorn of nature," and "the stain of nature." the stain of nature." But "the slave of nature" here does not mean, as the correctors evidently suppose it does,-one who serves nature, one who is a bondman to nature; but one who is the lowest, the most servile, in the whole realm of nature. When one Irishman calls another 'the thief o' the wor-r-ld' he does not mean to accuse the other of purloining this planet, but of being eminently

the thief of the world. So Queen Margaret calls Gloster eminently the slave of nature.

In a subsequent speech of the Queen's in this Scene, the change in Mr. Collier's folio of "bottled spider" to "bottle spider," seems a judicious correction of a probable typographical error.

ACT III. SCENE 3.

"Rat. Make haste, the hour of death is expiate."

Steevens proposed expirate for "expiate ;" and it seems to me imperatively necessary to receive it into the text. There is no meaning to be extracted from the line in its present condition. Shakespeare is made to use 'expiate in one other instance, which is quoted by Malone in defence of the continuance of the word in this passage.

"Then look I death my days should expiate."

Sonnet XXII.

But I believe that the same typographical error took place in the last, as in the first, on account of Shakespeare's use of this peculiar and quaint termination, of which he was fond :-he uses 'festinate,' 'combinate,' and conspirate.' It is remarkable that "expiate" has no possible meaning in either of these passages; and that expirate fully completes the sense of both.

ACT IV. SCENE 4.

"K. Rich. Well! as you guess?"

If there be two words for the use of which, more than