through with a purchase which he heard he had a mind to. A bounty very great, and very rare at any time. and almost equal to that profuse generosity the present age has shown to French dancers and Italian singers. What particular habitude or friendships he contracted with private men, I have not been able to learn, more than that every one who had a true taste of merit, and could distinguish men, had generally a just value and esteem for him. His exceeding candour and goodnature must certainly have inclined all the gentler part of the world to love him, as the power of his wit obliged the men of the most delicate knowledge and polite learning to admire him. His acquaintance with Ben Jonson began with a remarkable piece of humanity and good-nature. Mr. Jonson, who was at that time altogether unknown to the world, had offered one of his plays to the players, in order to have it acted; and the persons into whose hands it was put, after having turned it carelessly and superciliously over, were just upon returning it to him with an ill-natured answer, that it would be of no service to their company; when Shakespeare luckily cast his eye upon it, and found something so well in it as to engage him first to read it through, and afterwards to recommend Mr. Jonson and his writings to the public. Jonson was certainly a very good scholar, and in that had the advantage of Shakespeare; though at the same time I believe it must be allowed, that what nature gave the latter, was more than a balance for what books had given the former; and the judgment of a great man upon this occasion was, I think, very just and proper. In a conversation between Sir John Suckling, Sir William Davenant, Endymion Porter, Mr. Hales of Eaton, and Ben Jonson,-Sir John Suckling, who was a professed admirer of Shakespeare, had undertaken his defence against Ben Jonson with some warmth: Mr. Hales, who had sat still for some time, told them, that if Shakespeare had not read the ancients, he had likewise not stolen any thing from them; and that if he would produce any one topic finely treated by any of them, he would undertake to show something upon the same subject at least as well written by Shakespeare. The latter part of his life was spent, as all men of good sense will wish theirs may be, in ease, retirement, and the conversation of his friends. He had the good fortune to gather an estate equal to his occasion, and, in that, to his wish; and is said to have spent some years before his death at his native Stratford. His pleasurable wit and good-nature engaged him in the acquaintance, and entitled him to the friendship of the gentlemen of the neighbourhood. Among them, it is a story almost still remembered in that country, that he had a particular intimacy with Mr. Combe, an old gentleman noted thereabouts for his wealth and usury. It happened, that in a pleasant conversation among their common friends, Mr. Combe told Shakespeare, in a laughing manner, that he fancied he intended to write his epitaph, if he happened to outlive him; and since he could not know what might be said of him when he was dead, he desired it might be done immediately. Upon which Shakespeare gave him these four lines of verse: "Ten in the hundred lies here ingrav'd, Oh, ho! quoth the devil, 'tis my John-a-Combe." But the sharpness of the satire is said to have stung the man so severely, that he never forgave it. He died in the fifty-third year of his age, and was buried on the north side of the chancel, in the great church at Stratford, where a monument is placed in the wall. On his grave-stone underneath is― "Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear And curst be he that moves my bones." He had three daughters, of which two lived to be married: Judith, the elder, to one Mr. Thomas Quiney, by whom she had three sons, who all died without children; and Susannah, who was his favourite, to Dr. John Hall, a physician of good reputation in that country. She left one child only, a daughter, who was married first to Thomas Nash, Esq.; and afterwards to Sir John Bernard, of Abbington, but died likewise without issue. This is what I could learn of any note, either relating to himself or family: the character of the man is best seen in his writings. But since Ben Jonson has made a sort of an essay towards it in his "Discoveries," I will give it in his words: "I remember the players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare, that in writing (whatsoever he penned) he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, Would he had blotted a thousand! which they thought a malevolent speech. I had not told posterity this, but for their ignorance, who chose that circumstance to commend their friend by, wherein her most faulted; and to justify mine own candour, (for I loved the man, and do honour his memory, on this side idolatry, as much as any.) He was, indeed, honest, and of an open and free nature, had an excellent fancy, brave notions and gentle expressions; wherein he flowed with that facility, that sometimes it was neces sary he should be stopped: Sufflaminandus erat, as Augustus said of Haterius. His wit was in his own power, would the rule of it had been so too. Many times he fell into those things which could not escape laughter; as when he said, in the person of Cæsar, one speaking to him 'Cæsar, thou dost me wrong;' he replied 'Cæsar did never wrong, but with just cause :'— and such like, which were ridiculous. But he redeemed his vices with his virtues: there was ever more in him to be praised than to be pardoned." As for the passage which he mentions out of SHAKESPEARE, there is somewhat like it in JULIUS CESAR, but without the absurdity; nor did I ever meet with it in any edition that I have seen, as quoted by Mr. Jonson. Besides his plays in this edition, there are two or three ascribed to him by Mr. Langbain, which I have never seen, and know nothing of. He writ likewise VENUS AND ADONIS, and TARQUIN AND LUCRECE, in stanzas, which have been printed in a late collection of poems. As to the character given of him by Ben Jonson, there is a good deal true in it; but I believe it may be as well expressed by what Horace says of the first Romans, who wrote tragedy upon the Greek models, (or indeed translated them,) in his epistle to Augustus: "Natura sublimis et acer, Nam spirat tragicum satis et feliciter audet, As I have not proposed to myself to enter into a large and complete collection upon Shakespeare's works, so I will only take the liberty, with all due submission to the judgments of others, to observe some of those things I have been pleased with in looking him over. Garrick. His plays are properly to be distinguished only into comedies and tragedies. Those which are called "Histories," and even some of his comedies, are really tragedies, with a run or mixture of comedy among them. That way of tragi-comedy was the common mistake of that age, and is indeed become so agreeable to the English taste, that though the severer critics among us cannot bear it, yet the generality of our audiences seem to be better pleased with it than with an exact tragedy. The MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR, the COMEDY OF ERRORS, and the TAMING OF THE SHREW, are all pure comedy; the rest, however they are called, have something of both kinds. It is not very easy to determine which way of writing he was most 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 satire of the present age has taken the liberty to do, yet there is a pleasing and a well-distinguished variety in those characters which he thought fit to meddle with. Falstaff is allowed by every body to be a master-piece; the character is always well sustained, though drawn 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 V., 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 short every way vicious, yet he has given him so much wit as to make him almost too agreeable, and I do not know whether some people have not, in remembrance of the diversion he had formerly afforded them, been sorry to see his friend Hal use him so scurvily, when he comes to the crown in the end of the second part of HENRY IV. Among other extravagances, in the MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR, he has made him a deer-stealer, that he might at the same time remember his Warwickshire prosecutor, 66 under the name of Justice Shallow; he has given him very near the same coat-of-arms which Dugdale, in his Antiquities" of that county, describes for a family there, and makes the Welsh parson descant very pleasantly upon them. That whole play is admirable; the humours are various and well-opposed; the main design, which is to cure Ford of his unreasonable jealousy, is extremely well conducted. In the TWELFTH NIGHT, there is something singularly ridiculous and pleasant in the fantastical steward, Malvolio. The parasite 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 conversation of Benedick and Beatrice, in MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, and of Rosalind, in As You LIKE IT, have much wit and sprightliness all along. His clowns, without which character there was hardly any play writ in that time, are all very entertaining. And, I believe, Thersites, in TROILUS AND CRESSIDA, and Apemantus, in TIMON, will be allowed to be master-pieces of ill-nature and satirical snarling. To these I might add, that incomparable character of Shylock the Jew, in the MERCHANT OF VENICE; but though we have seen 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 designed tragically by the author. There appears in it such a deadly spirit of revenge, such a savage fierceness and fellness, and such a bloody designation of cruelty and mischief, as cannot agree either with the style or character of comedy. The play itself, take it altogether, seems to me to be but one of the most finished of any of Shakespeare's. The tale indeed, in that part relating to the caskets, and the extravagant and unusual 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 something in the friendship of Antonio to Bassanio very great, generous, and tender. The whole fourth act (supposing, as I said, the fact to be probable) is extremely fine. But there are two passages that deserve a particular notice. The first is. what Portia says in praise of mercy, and the other on the power of music. The melancholy of Jacques, in As YOU LIKE IT, is as singular and odd as it is diverting; and if, what Horace says "Difficile est proprie communia dicere," it will be a hard task for any one to go beyond him in the description of the several degrees and ages of man's life, though the thought be old, and common enough. "All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; Ev'n in the cannon's mouth. And then, the justice; In fair round belly, with good capon lin'd, Is second childishness, and mere oblivion; Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything." His images are indeed every where so lively, that the thing he would represent stands full before you, and you possess every part of it. I will venture to point out one more, which is, I think, as strong and as uncommon as any thing I ever saw; it is an image of patience. Speaking of a maid in love, he says— "She never told her love, But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud, Smiling at Grief." Caliban, but had also devised and adapted a new manner of language for that character. It is the same magic that raises the fairies in the MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM, the witches in MACBETH, and the ghost in HAMLET, with thoughts and language so proper to the parts they sustain, and so peculiar to the talent of this writer. But of the last two of these plays I shall have occasion to take notice, among the tragedies of Shakespeare. If one undertook to examine the greatest part of these by those rules which are established by Aristotle, and taken from the model of the Grecian stage, it would be no very hard task to find a great many faults: but as Shakespeare lived under a kind of mere light of nature, and had never been made acquainted with the regularity of those written precepts, so it would be hard to judge him by a law he knew nothing of. We are to consider him as a man that lived in a state of almost universal license 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 considers, that there is not one play before him of a reputation good enough to entitle it to an appearance on the present stage, it cannot but be a matter of great wonder that he should advance dramatic poetry so far as he did. The fable is what is generally placed the first among those that are reckoned the constituent parts of a tragic or heroic poem; not, perhaps, as it is the most difficult or beautiful, but as it is the first properly to be thought of in the contrivance and course of the whole; and with the fable ought to be considered the fit disposition, order, and conduct of its several parts. As it is not in this province of the drama that the strength and mastery of Shakespeare lay, so I shall not undertake per-several faults he was guilty of in it. His tales were the tedious and ill-natured trouble to point out the What an image is here given! and what a task would it But certainly the greatness of this author's genius does no where so much appear, as where he gives his imagination an entire loose, and raises his fancy to a flight above mankind, and the limits of the visible world. Such are his attempts in THE TEMPEST, MIDSUMMERNIGHT'S DREAM, MACBETH, and HAMLET. Of these, THE TEMPEST, however it comes to be placed the first by the publishers of his works, can never have been the first written by him: it seems to be as perfect in its kind as almost any thing we have of his. One may observe, that the unities are kept here, with an exactness uncommon to the liberties of his writing; though that was what, I suppose, he valued himself least upon, since his excellences were all of another kind. I am very sensible that he does, in this play, depart too much from that likeness to truth which ought to be observed in these sort of writings; yet he does it so very finely, that one is easily drawn in to have more faith for his sake, than reason does well allow of. His magic has something in it very solemn, and very poetical: and that extravagant character of Caliban is mighty well sustained, shows a wonderful invention in the author, who could strike out such a particular wild image, and is certainly one of the finest and most uncommon grotesques that ever was seen. The observation, which, I have been informed, three very great men1 concurred in making upon this part, was extremely just; that Shakespeare had not only found out a new character in his 1 Lord Falkland, Lord C. J. Vaughan, and Mr. Selden. seldom invented, but rather taken either from the true history, or novels and romances; and he commonly made use of them in that order, with those incidents. and that extent of time in which he found them in the authors from whence he borrowed them. So the WINTER'S TALE, which is taken from an old book, called "The Delectable History of Dorastus and Fawnia," contains the space of sixteen or seventeen years, and the scene is sometimes laid in Bohemia, and sometimes in Sicily, according to the original order of the story. Almost all his historical plays comprehended a great length of time, and very different and distinct places: and in his ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA, the scene travels over the greatest part of the Roman empire. But in recompense for his carelessness in this point, when he comes to another part of the drama, the manners of his characters, in acting or speaking what is proper for them, and fit to be shown by the poet, he may be generally justified, and in very many places greatly commended For those plays which he has taken from the Engl.sh or Roman history, let any man compare them, and he will find the character as exact in the poet as the historian. He seems indeed so far from proposing to himself any one action for a subject, that the title very often tells you, it is "The Life of King John, King Richard," etc. What can be more agreeable to the idea our historians give of Henry VI. than the picture Shakespeare has drawn of him? His manners are every where exactly the same with the story: one finds him still described with simplicity, passive sanctity, want of courage, weakness of mind, and easy submission to the governance of an imperious wife, or prevailing faction: though at the same time the Poet does justice to his good qualities, and moves the pity of his audience for him, by showing him pious, disinterested, a contemner of the things of this world, and wholly resigned to the severest dispensations of God's providence. Rowe. Plutarch, from whom certainly Shakespeare copied them. He has indeed followed his original pretty close, and taken in several little incidents that might have been spared in a play. But, as I hinted before, his design seems most commonly rather to describe those great men in the several fortunes and accidents of their lives, than to take any single great action, and form his work simply upon that. However, there are some of his pieces where the fable is founded upon one action only. Such are more especially, ROMEO AND JULIET, HAMLET, and OTHELLO. The design in ROMEO AND JULIET is plainly the punishment of their two families, for the unreasonable feuds and animosities that had been so long kept up between them, and occasioned the effusion of so much blood. In the management of this story, he has shown something wonderfully tender and passionate in the love-part, and very pitiful in the distress. HAMLET is founded on much the same tale with the "Electra" of Sophocles. In each of them a young prince is engaged to revenge the death of his father, their mothers are equally guilty, are both concerned in the murder of their husbands, and are afterwards married to the murderers. There is in the first part of the Greek tragedy something very moving in the grief of Electra; but, as Mr. Dacier has observed, there is something very unnatural and shocking in the manners he has given that princess and Orestes in the latter part. Orestes imbrues his hands in the blood of his own mother; and that barbarous action is performed, though not immediately upon the stage, yet so near, that the audience hear Clytemnestra crying out to Egysthus for help, and to her son for mercy; while Electra her daughter, and a princess, (both of them characters that ought to have appeared with more decency,) stands upon the stage, and encourages her brother in the parricide. What horror does this not raise! Clytemnestra was a wicked woman, and had deserved to die; nay, in the truth of the story, she was killed by her own son; but to represent an action of this kind on the stage, is certainly an offence against those rules and manners proper to the persons that ought to be observed there. On the contrary, let us only look a little on the conduct of Shakespeare. Hamlet is represented with the same piety towards his father, and resolution to revenge his death, as Orestes; he has the same abhorrence for his mother's There is a short scene in the second part of KING HENRY VI., which I cannot think but admirable in its kind. Cardinal Beaufort, who had murdered the Duke of Gloucester, is shown in the last agonies on his death-bed, with the good king praying over him. There is so much terror in one, so much tenderness and moving piety in the other, as must touch any one who is capable either of fear or pity. In his HENRY VIII., that prince is drawn with that greatness of mind, and all those good qualities which are attributed to him in any account of his reign. If his faults are not shown in an equal degree, and the shades in this picture do not bear a just proportion to the lights, it is not that the artist wanted either colours or skill in the disposition of them; but the truth, I believe, might be, that he forbore doing it out of regard to Queen Elizabeth, since it could have been no very great respect to the memory of his mistress, to have exposed some certain parts of her father's life upon the stage. He has dealt much more freely with the minister of that great king; and certainly no-guilt, which, to provoke him the more, is heightened by thing was ever more justly written than the character of Cardinal Wolsey. He has shown him insolent in his prosperity; and yet, by a wonderful address, he makes his fall and ruin the subject of general compassion. The whole man, with his vices and virtues, is finely and exactly described in the second scene of the fourth act. The distresses likewise of Queen Katharine, in this play, are very movingly touched: and though the art of the Poet has screened King Henry from any gross imputation of injustice, yet one is inclined to wish the queen had met with a fortune more worthy of her birth and virtue. Nor are the manners, proper to the persons represented, less justly observed in those characters taken from the Roman history; and of this, the fierceness and impatience of Coriolanus, his courage and disdain of the common people, the virtue and philosophical temper of Brutus, and the irregular greatness of mind in Mark Antony, are beautiful proofs. For the two last especially, you find them exactly as they are described by incest; but it is with wonderful art and justness of judg- Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive This is to distinguish rightly between horror and terror. souls that they are capable of. I cannot leave HAMLET, without taking notice of the advantage with which we have seen this master-piece of Shakespeare distinguish itself upon the stage, by Mr. Betterton's fine performance of that part. A man, who, though he had no other good qualities, as he has a great many, must have made his way into the esteem of all men of letters by this only excellency. No man is better acquainted with Shakespeare's manner of expression, and indeed he has studied him so well, and is so much a master of him, that whatever part of his he performs, he does it as if it had been written on purpose for him, and that the author had exactly conceived it as he plays it. I must own a particular obligation to him for the most considerable part of the passages relating to this life, which I have here transmitted to the public; his veneration for the memory of Shakespeare having engaged him to make a journey into Warwickshire, on purpose to gather up what remains he could of a name for which he had so great a veneration. To the foregoing JOHNSON added one passage, which POPE related, as communicated to him by Rowe. In the time of Elizabeth, coaches being yet uncommon, and hired coaches not at all in use, those who were too proud, too tender, or too idle to walk, went on horseback to any distant business or diversion. Many came on horseback to the play; and when Shakespeare fled to London from the terror of a criminal prosecution, his first expedient was to wait at the door of the playhouse, and hold the horses of those that had no servants, that they might be ready again after the performance. In this office he became so conspicuous for his care and readiness, that in a short time every man as he alighted called for Will. Shakespeare, and scarcely any other waiter was trusted with a horse while Will. Shakespeare could be had. This was the first dawn of better fortune. Shakespeare, finding more horses put into his hand than he could hold, hired boys to wait under his inspection, who, when Will. Shakespeare was summoned, were immediately to present themselves, I am Shakespeare's boy, Sir. In time, Shakespeare found higher employment: but as long as the practice of riding to the playhouse continued, the waiters that held the horses retained the appellation of Shakespeare's boys. |