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All the best men are ours; for 'tis ill hap,

If they hold, when their ladies bid them clap.

however, must be received as very dubious, since we know not the exact date of this or the other plays, and cannot tell how our author might have changed his practice or opinions.

The historical dramas are now concluded, of which the two Parts of Henry the Fourth, and Henry the Fifth, are among the happiest of our author's compositions; and King John, Richard the Third, and Henry the Eighth, deservedly stand in the second class. Those whose curiosity would refer the historical scenes to their original, may consult Holinshed, and sometimes Hall: from Holinshed Shakspeare has often inserted whole speeches, with no more alteration than was necessary to the numbers of his verse. To transcribe them into the margin was unnecessary, because the original is easily examined, and they are seldom less perspicuous in the poet than in the historian.

To play histories, or to exhibit a succession of events by action or dialogue, was a common entertainment among our rude ancestors upon great festivities. The parish clerks once performed at Clerkenwell a play which lasted three days, containing The History of the World. JOHNSON.

TROILUS AND CRESSIDA.

VOL. VI.

S

THE story was originally written by Lollius, an old Lombard author, and since by Chaucer. Pope.

66

Mr. Pope (after Dryden) informs us, that the story of Troilus and Cressida was originally the work of one Lollius, a Lombard; (of whom Gascoigne speaks in Dan Bartholmewe his first Triumph : Since Lollius and Chaucer both, make doubt upon that glose,”") but Dryden goes yet further. He declares it to have been written in Latin verse, and that Chaucer translated it. Lollius was a historiographer of Urbino in Italy. Shakspeare received the greatest part of his materials for the structure of this play from the Troye Boke of Lydgate. Lydgate was not much more than a translator of Guido of Columpna, who was of Messina in Sicily, and wrote his History of Troy in Latin, after Dictys Cretensis, and Dares Phrygius, in 1287. On these, as Mr. Warton observes, he engrafted many new romantick inventions, which the taste of his age dictated, and which the connexion between Grecian and Gothick fiction easily admitted; at the same time comprehending in his plan the Theban and Argonautic stories from Ovid, Statius. and Valerius Flaccus. Guido's work was published at Cologne in 1477, again, 1480: at Strasburgh, 1486, and ibidem, 1489. It appears to have been translated by Raoul le Feure, at Cologne, into French, from whom Caxton rendered it into English in 1471, under the title of his Recuyel, &c. so that there must have been yet some earlier edition of Guido's performance than I have hitherto seen or heard of, unless his first translator had recourse to * a manuscript.

Guido of Columpna is referred to as an authority by our own chronicler Grafton. Chaucer had made the loves of Troilus and Cressida famous, which very probably might have been Shakspeare's inducement to try their fortune on the stage.-Lydgate's Troye Boke was printed by Pynson, in 1513. In the books of the Stationers' Company, anno 1581, is entered "A proper ballad, dialogue-wise, between Troilus and Cressida." Again, Feb. 7. 1602: "The booke of Troilus and Cressida, as it is acted by my Lo. Chamberlain's men.' The first of these entries is in the name of Edward White, the second in that of M. Roberts. Again, Jan. 28. 1608, entered by Rich. Bonian and Hen. Whalley, “A booke called the history of Troilus and Cressida." STEEVENS.

The entry in 1608-9 was made by the booksellers for whom this play was published in 1609. It was written, I conceive, in 1602. MALOne.

Before this play of Troilus and Cressida, printed in 1609, is a bookseller's preface, showing that first impression to have been before the play had been acted, and that it was published without Shakspeare's knowledge, from a copy that had fallen into the bookseller's hands. Mr. Dryden thinks this one of the first of our

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