to the English tafte, that tho' the feverer Critics among us cannot bear it, yet the generality of our audiences feem to be better pleas'd with it than with an exact Tragedy. The Merry Wives of Windfor, the Comedy of Errors, and the Taming of the Shrew, are all pure Comedy; the reft, however they are call'd, have fomething of both kinds. 'Tis 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 tho' they did not then ftrike at all ranks of people, as the Satire of the prefent age has taken the liberty to do, yet there is a pleafing and a well-diftinguifh'd variety in thofe characters which he thought fit to meddle with. Falstaff is allow'd by every body to be a mafter-piece; the Character is always well-fuftain'd, tho' 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. tho' itbe 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 tho' 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 almost too agreeable; and I don't know whether fome people have not, in remembrance of the diverfion he had formerly afforded 'em, been forry to see his friend Hal ufe him fo fcurvily, when he comes to the crown in the end of the fecond part of Henry the fourth. Amongst other extravagancies, in the Merry Wives of Windfor, he has made him a Deer-ftealer, 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 pleasantly upon 'em. That whole play is admirable; the humours are various and well oppos'd; the main defign, which is to cure Ford of his unreasonable jealoufy, is extremely well conducted. In TwelfthNight there is fomething fingularly ridiculous and plea fant fant in the fantastical fteward 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 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 Creffida, and Apemantus in Timon, will be allow'd to be mafter-pieces of ill-nature, and fatyrical fnarling. To thefe I might add, that incomparable character of Shylock the Jew, in the Merchant of Venice; but tho' we have seen that play receiv'd and afted as a comedy, and the part of the few perform'd. by an excellent Comedian, yet I cannot but think it was defigned tragically by the Author. There appears in it a deadly fpirit of revenge, fuch a favage fiercenefs and fellnefs, and fuch a bloody defignation of cruelty and mifchief, as cannot agree either with the ftyle or characters of Comedy. The play itfelf, take it altogether, feems to me to be one of the most finith'd of any of Shakespeare'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 remov'd 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 no ice. The firft is, what Portia fays in praife of mercy, and the other on the power of mufick. The melancholy in Jaques, in As you like it, is as fingular and add as it is diverting. And if, what Horace fays,. Difficile eft proprie communia dicere, 'twill 'twill be a hard task for any one to go beyond him in the description of the feveral degrees and ages of man's life, though the thought be old, and common enough. -All the world is a Stage, And all the men and women meerly Players; Ev'n in the connon's mouth. And then the Justice His Images are indeed every where fo lively, that the thing he would reprefent ftands full before you, and you poffefs eve y 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; 'tis an image of Patience. Speaking of a maid in love, he fays, -She -She never told her love, But let concealment, like a worm i th' bud, What an Image is here given! and what a task would it have been for the greatest mafters of Greece and Rome to have exprefs'd the paffions defign'd by this sketch of Statuary! The ftyle of his Comedy is, in general, natural to the characters, and eafy in itself; and the wit moft commonly fprightly and pleafing, except in thofe places where he runs into doggerel rhymes, as in The Comedy of Errors, and fome other plays. As for his jingling fometimes, and playing upon words, it was the common vice of the age he liv'd in: And if we find it in the pulpit, made ufe of as an ornament to the Sermons of fome of the graveft Divines of thofe times; perhaps it may not be thought too light for the Stage. But certainly the greatnefs of this Author's genius does no where fo much appear, as where he gives his imagination an entire loofe, and raifes his fancy to a flight above mankind and the limits of the vifible world. Such are his attempts in The Tempeft, Midfummer-Night's Dream, Macbeth, and Hamlet. Of these, The Tempeft, however it comes to be plac'd the first by the Publishers of his works, can never have been the firft written by him: It seems to me as perfect in its kind, as almost any thing we have of his. One may obferve, that the Unities are kept here, with an exactness uncommon to the liberties of his writing: tho' that was what, I fuppofe, he valu'd 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 likenefs to truth which ought to be obferv'd in thefe fort of writings; yet he does it fo very finely, that one is eafily 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 Caliban, is mighty * mighty well fuftain'd, fhews a wonderful invention in the Author, who could ftrike out fuch a particular wild image, and is certainly one or the finest and most uncommon Grotefques that was ever feen. The Obfervation, which. I have been inform'd three very great men concurr'd in making upon this part, was extremely jutt; That Shakespeare had not only found out a new Character in his Caliban, but had also devis'd and adapted a new manner of Language for that Character. It is the fame magick that raises the Fairies in MidJummer-Night's Dream, the Witches in Macbeth, and the Ghoft 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 last of these Plays I fhall have occafion to take notice, among the Tragedies of Mr. Shakespeare. If one undertook to examine the greatest part of these by those rules which are establish'd by Ariftotle, 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 liv'd under a kind of mere light of nature, and had never been made acquainted with the regularity of those 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 liv'd in a state of almost universal license and ignorance: there was no eftablish'd judge, but every one took the liberty to write according to the dictates of his own fancy. When one confiders, that there is not one play before hin of a reputation good enough to entitle it to an appearance on the preient Stage, it cannot but be a matter of great wonder that he should advance dramatick Poetry fo far as he did. The Fable is what is generally plac'd the firft, among thofe that are reckon❜d the conftituent parts of a Tragick or Heroic Poem; not, perhaps, as it is the most difficult or beautiful, but as it is the firft properly to be thought of in the contrivance and courfe of the whole; and with the Fable ought to be confider'd, the fit Difpofi * Lord Falkland, Lord C. J. Vaughan, and Mr. Selden. |