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Macbeth. How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags ? What is 't you do?

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Macbeth. Is this a dagger, which I see before me,

The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee :

I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.

Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling, as to sight? or art thou but
A dagger of the mind; a false creation,
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?

Act 2. Sc. 1.

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HAMLET, PRINCE OF DENMARK:

A TRAGEDY, BY WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.

A DRAMA of the same name and subject as the present, is supposed to have been exhibited before the year 1589; and Malone imagined that Shakspeare only altered it, using likewise the black-letter Historie of Hamblett. The story itself was originally derived from the Historia Danica of Saxo Grammaticus; translated by Belleforest in his Novels, and rendered into English in the above narrative.

Dr. Percy's copy of Speght's edition of Chaucer, once belonged to Gabriel Harvey, who had written his name at both the commencement and conclusion, with the date of 1598, and several notes between; one of which was "The younger sort take much delight in Shakspeare's Venus and Adonis, but his Lucrece, and his Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke, have it in them to please the wiser sort." The original composition of Hamlet is therefore placed in 1597, with revisions and additions to 1600. The earliest entry of it at Stationers' Hall is July 26th, 1602, and a copy of the play in it's imperfect state, dated 1603, and supposed to have been printed from a spurious original, was first discovered in the beginning of 1825. Another edition appeared in 1604, “newly imprinted and enlarged, to almost as much again as it was"; the variations in which are both numerous and striking.

The scene of Hamlet is at the Castle and Court of Elsineur, and the action apparently occupies some months. The story is entirely fabulous, and is placed by Saxo at an impossible period of antiquity; but perhaps it may be safely referred to the end of the 10th, or the beginning of the 11th century, during the invasions of England by the Danes; to which period Mr. Planché has adapted the series of historical costumes prepared for it for Covent-Garden Theatre, in 1825.

The original Hamlets were Joseph Taylor and John Lowin, from the former of whom, taught by Shakspeare, Davenant is said to have instructed Betterton to perform so admirably as he did. His most eminent successors have been Garrick, Henderson, J. P. Kemble, Young, and Kean; whilst Booth appears to have surpassed all others as the Ghost, unless it were Shakspeare himself, who is recorded to have performed it. In 1771, Garrick produced this Tragedy at Drury-Lane, all the parts being sacrificed to that of Hamlet, but after his death the original was restored; and the modern adaptation is that by J. P. Kemble, brought out at Drury-Lane in 1800, and at Covent-Garden in 1804.

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Hamlet. Alas! poor Yorick !-I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips, that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? quite chapfallen?

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KING LEAR:

A TRAGEDY, BY WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.

THE story of this sovereign was originally related by Geoffrey of Monmouth; and thence translated in Holinshed's Chronicle, whence Shakspeare certainly derived it, though he seems to have been more indebted to an anonymous play, entered at Stationers' Hall May 14th, 1594. Cordelia's answer to Lear in the first scene, and the conduct of Goneril's steward, have been referred to John Higgins' poem of "Queene Cordila," in part I. of the Mirror for Magistrates, 1587; and the episode of Gloucester and his sons, to the narrative of the blind king of Paphlagonia, in Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia; no traces of it occurring in the other sources of the fable.

The whole of this Tragedy could not have been composed until after 1603, because it contains several singular names of spirits, taken from Samuel Harsnet's Declaration of Popish Impostors, then first published. Malone confidently thought that the substitution of "British man" for " English man," in Edgar's repetition of the old verse, Act iii. Scene 4. proved the piece to have been written after James I. had been proclaimed the first sovereign of Great Britain, October 1st, 1604. He therefore referred the play to 1605, and Dr. Drake to 1604. It was first entered at Stationers' Hall, November 26th, 1607, and in 1608 was thrice printed in quarto, the contents of each edition varying, though the title pages correspond; it was played before the King at Whitehall in 1606, and at the Globe Theatre, Bankside.

The scene of Lear is in various parts of Britain, and the time towards the end of his reign. He is stated to have been the eldest son of Bladud, to to have " nobly governed his country for sixty years," and to have died about 800 years Before Christ. In the wise-speeches preserved in Camden's Remains, 1605, a reply like that of Cordelia, is attributed to a daughter of Ina, King of the West-Saxons, who reigned A. D. 688-726; which is perhaps the real origin of the fable.

In 1681, Nahum Tate's alteration of this Tragedy appeared at the Duke's Theatre; in which the Fool was omitted, Edgar and Cordelia made enamoured, and the conclusion rendered happy. This was always favourably received, whilst Colman's version from Shakspeare and Tate, acted at Covent-Garden in 1768, was presented but a few nights only. Betterton and Booth were famous for their performance of Lear, though they were far exceeded by Garrick, who appeared in the part in 1742, and by J. P. Kemble, who produced his adaptation of the Tragedy at Drury-Lane, January 3rd, 1801, and at Covent-Garden in 1808.

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