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OTHELLO.

THE critics who have laboured to establish the exact chronological order of the dramatic writings of Shakespeare, have been not a little perplexed with the play of Othello, or the Moor of Venice. The singular expression,

The hearts of old gave hands,

But our new heraldry is hands, not hearts, Act i. Sc. 4.

was regarded by Warburton as containing an allusion to the addition of the red hand of Ulster to the family arms of persons who were admitted into the order of Baronets, which was founded by King James the First in 1611; whence the inference was very naturally drawn that the play could not have been written earlier than that year, and probably not long after it. It is chiefly on the strength of this passage that in his celebrated Essay, as originally published in 1790, Mr. Malone assigns Othello to 1611. Dr. Drake, who has, however, but small pretension to be regarded as an original investigator in his Shakesperian labours, contends for the succeeding year; and it is known that the addition of the hand was not finally determined on before 1612. Mr. Chalmers, chiefly relying on the same supposed allusion, places this play as late as 1614, making it the latest in the whole series.

It cannot be denied that the expression is a very peculiar one, and one not likely to be made use of by the Poet to express the very ordinary sentiment which it is made to convey, without some peculiar reason for it. The word "heraldry" must be brought in by some association independent of the business of the play. It is also a remarkable coincidence that there should have been a "new heraldry of

hands" in the Poet's lifetime, and that there should be in this passage of his writings mention of a "new heraldry” in connection with "hands." Hands, it will be remembered, were at the institution of the order of Baronets a figure very little used in English heraldry. Yet there is not only every reason to believe, but it is certain, that this play existed long before 1611; and that, therefore, either there is no allusion at all in this passage to the red hand of Ulster, or it is an expression introduced into the play at some period after the play had been for some years upon the stage. And the latter is probably the true solution.

Mr. Malone lived to change his opinion. In the latest edition of his Essay, that published after his death by Mr. Boswell, the work here quoted as Boswell's Malone, 1821, Othello is placed in 1604. "We know," says Mr. Malone, "that it was acted in 1604, and I have therefore placed it in that year." To this Mr. Boswell adds, "Mr. Malone never expressed himself at random. I therefore deeply lament that I have not been able to discover upon what evidence he knew this important and decisive fact." How the knowledge of the fact was acquired by Mr. Malone, it is not material to inquire; but the fact itself rests on very sufficient authority.

Mr. Cunningham in his valuable contribution to dramatic literature, the Extracts from the Accounts of the Revels at Court, 8vo, 1842, published by the Shakespeare Society, has given, at p. 203, extracts from the accounts for the year beginning November 1, 1604, and ending on the 31st October, 1605. In these accounts it appears that the King's Players, that is, the company to which Shakespeare belonged, performed the play of The Moor of Venice, at the Banquetting House at Whitehall, on the night of the first of November, (All Hallows Day,) 1604. The appearance in Mr. Cunning

ham's book of the date" 1605 " immediately over this entry might occasion the fact to be overlooked, that the entry really belongs to 1604; but that it does so is manifest from the whole tenor of the passage.

Here, then, we have the evidence which Mr. Boswell called for; or, if not that particular evidence, yet evidence quite as conclusive as any known to Mr. Malone could be, that Othello was performed in 1604.

Any inference from passages in the play, from its great excellence as a play, from any reference of it to a fancied history of the progress of the Poet's mind and genius, must go for nothing when opposed by robust historical testimony such as this.

Nobody had ever thought of throwing this noble composition farther back in the Poet's life, when Mr. Collier announced that Othello was performed before Queen Elizabeth in 1602.

This announcement was made in 1836, in a very valuable little volume entitled New Particulars regarding the Works of Shakespeare. The information was derived from a paper at Bridgewater House, part of the papers, private and official, left by Lord Chancellor Ellesmere. Queen Elizabeth honoured him, when Sir Thomas Egerton, with a visit at Harefield in 1602, remaining with him three days, namely, the last day of July and the first and second of August. Nothing appears to have been spared to provide suitable entertainment for Her Majesty and among the accounts of the expenses incurred on that occasion Mr. Collier found the following entry :

Rewardes to the Vaulters, Players, and Dauncers-of this, xli to Burbidge's Players for Othello-LXIIIIli XVIIs xd.

The whole of this paper of accounts was afterwards printed by Mr. Collier in his work entitled The Egerton Papers, published by the Camden Society, in 1840.

This appears to be evidence of the same decisive character with that of the Revel Accounts of 1604-5: and yet, having been already led to look with a certain amount of suspicion apon the matter produced from the repositories at Bridgewater House, in connection with the name and proceedings of Shakespeare, for reasons given in the First Part of these İllustrations, and these suspicions not having been removed (though I am free to confess that by a sight of the originals they might possibly be dispelled), I cannot say but that I look upon this evidence as not absolutely precluding further inquiry. Mr. Collier himself appears to have felt some difficulty:"It is singular that only one play and one company should be specified." It is so, and that only ten pounds should, as far as the evidence goes, have been assigned to the company at the Black Friars, the principal company of the time, leaving 54l. 18s. 10d. to be disbursed to other parties, who in a manner somewhat similar contributed to the amusement of the visitors. A sight of the original might I say dispel all suspicion, and I make these remarks only to put the inquirer into the chronological order on his guard; but the suspicion that all may not be right is a little strengthened by the fact which Mr. Collier states, when a third time, in his edition of Shakespeare, he has occasion to speak of this paper, that the clause, "Of this xli to Burbidge's players for Othello," is an interlineation; and there is certainly no apparent reason why such a piece of information should have been added after the account had been made up.

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Habits of criticism are apt to induce habits of scepticism, which may easily run into undue excess; and so it may in the present case. In the absence of the originals it would be unwise to pretend to pronounce any decisive opinion, and I shut up the question of the date of this play with an ex

pression of a hope that further evidence may yet be found for placing the composition of this noble tragedy among the literary honours of the reign of Queen Elizabeth.

Yet I would make one remark on what is a probable limi tation of the date of the play in one direction. This is a passage which, however when detached it presents a beautiful and striking image, has been oftener noticed for a certain dramatical impropriety, and which is not found in one of the early and authoritative editions. The passage is this :

IAGO.-Patience, I say; your mind, perhaps, may change.
OTHELLO.-Never, Iago. Like to the Pontick sea,

Whose icy current and compulsive course
Ne'er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on
To the Propontick and the Hellespont;
Even so my bloody thoughts, &c.

Act iii. Sc. 3.

Steevens has remarked that Shakespeare probably owed this to Pliny's Natural History as translated by Philemon Holland :-" And the Sea Pontus evermore floweth and runneth out into Propontis, but the sea never retireth back again within Pontus." Now this translation was first published in 1601, so that if, as seems probable, Shakespeare had read the passage, there is a probability established that the play was not written before 1601.

Shakespeare evidently had in his mind the Euxine; so that it is little probable that we owe the passage to Sir Philip Sidney's impress, which was the Caspian Sea, with the motto, Sine refluxu.

Few persons will doubt that the production of this passage in Holland's Pliny was a valuable contribution by Mr. Steevens to the illustration of these plays. And yet mark how he is treated by one of the modern editors in his note on the passage before us. "It is delightful to see how Shakespeare's knowledge impresses itself, even in technicalities,

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