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of some doubt. Shakspere's own idea of a man's capability of watchfulness may be collected from what Iago says of Cassio :

"and do but see his vice;

'Tis to his virtue a just equinox,
The one as long as the other;
He'll match the horologe a double set,
If drink rock not his cradle."

Othello, Act II. sc. iii.

Four-and-twenty hours, say the commentators; but as the Italian horologe numbers upon its dial-plate twenty-four hours, a "double set" or round, i. e. forty-eight hours, is the true time meant. "I feel it unpleasant to appeal to my own experience; but, having no other voucher at hand, I am constrained to do it.1"

On many occasions I have involuntarily outwatched the Florentine; and, upon one occasion at least, by twelve or fourteen hours. In my "salad days" of undergraduatecy, Sir Walter Scott's enchanted novel of Waverley fell into my hands; and being bound to return the volumes very quickly, and being much occupied by business during the day, I sat up during two successive summer nights at its perusal; nor did I feel any desire or necessity for sleep, until the usual time on the third night; an interval of no unpleasant watchfulness of sixand-fifty hours at the least, voluntarily endured. I need not add that, so occupied, I scarcely knew how time passed. Supposing then that every one could do what Shakspere has suggested, or I have done myself, I would assume a natural limit to the watch,—say, forty-eight or fifty-six consecutive hours; and I affirm that within that period the action of the Shaksperian drama is—almost universally-comprehended, and generally very much within that term. Now any other limitation, such as three, six, twelve, or twenty-four hours, is an arbitrary and unnatural law; improbable and needless where the true law so obviously reveals itself; and in this respect, I say, Shakspere's law transcends the law of the Greeks and Romans, and altogether eclipses the lights of the French school.

By this limitation, transactions which, according to our experience in life, would naturally occupy weeks, or months, nay years, are dramatically drawn within the compass of a few consecutive hours; Cowper's Preface to his Translation of Homer.

canvas.

just as the almost interminable views of the landscape are represented in all verisimilitude on the uniform plane surface of a few feet of Indeed Shakspere appears to have done for time what the painter has done for space,-thrown it into perspective, and given to the remote and to the near its proper and distinctive place, colouring, and character, as each exists in the natural world. The one, upon the upright, plane, and (excepting colouring) unvaried surface of a small sheet of canvas, presents to the spectator's eye a landscape embracing space from its nearest foreground through all the varieties of hill and valley, until the distances melt in the imperceptible line," where the green earth or the blue sea melts into the undistinguishable horizon; the other, within the undisturbed loophole of a single watch, gathers up the passages and events of a transaction, from its remotest manifestations down to its perfect and present consummation. The arts of both are of a homogeneous nature, and may be at once characterized and distinguished by the analogous names of the perspective of space and the perspective of time. The painter produces his effects by means of lights and shades, by the force of his foreground colouring, by atmospheric effects, and the gradual feebleness of his background or distant tints. The poet produces his by a series of dates skilfully graduated through a course of events, from that which is actually visible and palpable to the eyes, to those transmitted only to the ears, or suggested to the spectator's imagination, through a hundred different channels, until the impression left upon his mind is an impression composed of the visible and the audible, the natural and the dramatic, the real and the illusory. Shakspere knew at least as well as Horace that

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Segnius irritant animum demissa per aures,
Quam quæ sunt oculis subjecta fidelibus."

Upon this well-known principle he contrived what one may term a Chronometer, consisting of a double series of time or dates; the one illusory, suggestive, and natural; the other artistical, visible and dramatic; the first of which may be called the PROTRACTIVE series, the latter the ACCELERATING: and out of the impressions, thus equally created, he constructed a dramatic system unknown to the world before his time and unpractised ever since. He was the first dis

coverer, and, as far as my observation goes, the last practitioner, of an art which realizes in its full sense the canon of the Roman critic

"UT PICTURA POESIS."

I do not conceive it to have been the poet's desire to impress the spectator or the reader of his works with a rigid belief in the extremes of either series of his dates; to insinuate that the accelerating gave the only true or the protractive, the ALTOGETHER FALSE idea of the time of his action. On the contrary, I maintain that, by means of this double series of dates,-of his "two clocks" (according to the happy illustration of Christopher North),-he meant to produce an illusory effect on the mind (such as people actually experience in the theatre), disabling it from ascertaining the genuine duration of the action, and only permitting it to form, out of the elements of both series, such a dim, hazy, and indistinct conception as may, nay must, arise from the involution of measures of time so artfully intermingled.

The obvious intent of the illusory progress, is to lead the imagination to conceive, that within the compass of a narrow but uninterrupted watch, it may have witnessed an entire transaction, more or less extended, from beginning to end-the present and the past, throughout all the intermediate gradations of old Father "Time with his pentarchy of tenses;" in some such way as the observer beholds in a painted landscape the whole space enclosed within the visible horizon, with all its hills and valleys, woods and rivers, from the foreground close at hand, to the dim spire or the shadowy mountain, distant many, many miles, although every point of the plane, upright surface before us is equally distant from the observer's eye.1

TIME-ANALYSIS OF The Merchant of Venice.

"Of the Merchant of Venice, the received opinion is, that the time of the dramatic action, including the term of the bond, extends to somewhat more than three months. This I conceive to be an illusion contrived by means of a double series of dates, one which protracts, the other which accelerates, the action; and that, in virtue

So far Mr Halpin's Essay was written after he had read Dies Boreales, Part V. The subsequent part, which stands in notes of quotation, was in manuscript before Prof. Wilson's first discussion appeared in print.-ED.

of the latter, the dramatic time of the play is comprised within thirtypine consecutive hours.

The transaction naturally divides itself into two distinct periods,— with the interval between them.

1. The first period ranges from the opening of the action and the borrowing of Shylock's money, to the embarkation of Bassanio and his suite for Belmont:

2. The second includes the time between Bassanio's arrival at Belmont and his return to it, accompanied by Antonio after the trial: 3. And the interval between those two periods is concurrent with the time of the bond, whatever that may be.

Let us now examine each period of visible action by the dates exactly laid down in the text; and then fix the interval by the same rule.

ACCELERATING SERIES.

1. The action then commences with Bassanio's solicitation of the loan of 3000 ducats, and Antonio's direction to his friend to 'go presently inquire where money is to be had' (Act I. sc. ii.). Bassanio goes on his mission forthwith; meets with Shylock, agrees upon the terms, and invites him to dinner. The Jew consents to lend the money, but declines to 'smell pork' with the Christian, and he leaves the scene, directing the borrower to meet him forthwith at the notary's'; meanwhile he will

'go and purse the ducats straight;

See to his house, left in the fearful guard

Of an unthrifty knave; and presently

He will be with them [Bassanio and his friend].'

Act I. sc. ii.

As the invitation to dinner implies the time at which this part of the transaction takes place; and as the dinner hour in Shakspere's day was twelve o'clock, the time at which the action of the play commences is clearly indicated at a little before noon on the first day, say at eleven o'clock in the forenoon. The first Act, therefore, cannot

occupy more than a single hour.

The second Act, sc. ii., shows us Bassanio, having touched the ducats, making rapid preparations for his journey, giving to Lorenzo directions to stow his purchases orderly, and hasten his return:

'Return in haste, for I do feast to-night

My best-esteemed acquaintance: hie thee, go.'

The supper hour, we also learn in the same scene, is fixed for five o'clock in the afternoon of the same day. 'Let it be so hasted,' says Bassanio, 'that supper be ready at the farthest by five of the clock.' At nine the supper party breaks up, and Bassanio embarks for Belmont. Thus,

'ANTONIO. Fye, fye, Gratiano! where are all the rest?
the wind is come about;

Bassanio presently will go aboard.'—Act II. sc. vi.

And thus the time occupied by the transaction of the first period

is exactly limited to ten consecutive hours, viz. :

Hours.

From the opening of the action to dinner time

1

From dinner time (12 o'clock) to supper (5 o'clock)
From supper (5 o'clock) to the embarkation (9 o'clock)

5

First Period

10

II. The second period of action begins with Bassanio's arrival at Belmont, and ends with his return to it, in company with Antonio, after the trial.

His arrival at Belmont is announced in the last scene of the second Act, thus:

'SERVANT. Madam, there is alighted at your gate A young Venetian, &c

NERISSA. Bassanio, lord love, if thy will it be!'

And with those words ends the second Act.

The second scene of Act the Third presents Bassanio to Portia (not indeed a new acquaintance, nor now for the first time; for she had met (see Act I. sc. ii.) at her father's house, 'the Venetian, the scholar, and the soldier that had come thither in company of the Marquis of Montferrat, whose name was Bassanio'); but in this scene Bassanio has his first interview, in the capacity of a suitor, with Portia; and the dialogue shows there has been no delay between the announcement of his arrival and his waiting upon the lady. She prays him to pause, to tarry, but he is too impatient to let a moment to interpose between his arrival and the decision of his fortune:

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