Jealous in honour, fudden and quick in quarrel, En in the cannon's mouth. And then the juftice, In fair round belly, with good capon lin'd, With eyes fevere, and beard of formal cut, Full of wife faws and modern inftances; And fo he plays his part. The fixth age fhifts Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon, With fpectacles on nofe, and pouch on fide; His youthful hofe, well fav'd, a world too wide For his fhrunk fhanks; and his big manly voice, Turning again tow'rd childish treble, pipes And whiftles in his found. Laft fcene of all, That ends this ftrange eventful history, Is fecond childishness, and mere oblivion, Sans teeth, fans eyes, fans tafie, fans every thing. His images are indeed every where fo lively, that the thing he would reprefent ftands full before you, and you poffefs 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 faw; it is an image of patience. Speaking of a maid in love, he fays, 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 masters of Greece and Rome to have expreffed the paffions defigned by this sketch of ftatuary! The style of his comedy is, in general, natural to the charac ters ters, and easy in itself; and the wit most commonly sprightly and pleafing, except in those places where he runs into doggrel rhimes, 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 lived in: and if we find it in the pulpit, made ufe of as an ornament to the fermons of fome of the graveft divines of thofe times, perhaps it may not be thought too light for the stage. But certainly the greatness of this author's genius does no where fo 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 vifible world. Such are his attempts in The Tempeft, Midfummer Night's Dream, Macbeth, and Hamlet. Of thefe, The Tempeft, however it comes to be placed the first by the publishers of his works, can never have been the first written by him: it feems 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 exactnefs uncommon to the liberties of his writing; though that was what, I fuppofe, he valued himself leaft upon, fince his excellencies were all of another kind. am very fenfible that he does, in this play, depart too much from that likeness to truth which ought to be observed 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 well fustained; Thews a wonderful invention in the author, who I could could ftrike out fuch a particular wild image, and is certainly one of the finest and most uncommon grotefques that ever was feen. The obfervation, which I have been informed three very great men concurred in making upon this part, was extremely jult; That Shakespeare had not only found out a new character in his Caliban, but had alfo devised and adapted a new manner of language for that character. It is the fame magick that raises the Fairies in Midfummer 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 laft of thefe plays I fhall have occafion to take notice, among the tragedies of Mr Shakespeare. If one undertook to examine the greatest of these by thofe rules which are established by Ariftotle, and taken from the model of a Grecian ftage, 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, fo it would be hard to judge him by a law he knew nothing of. We are to confider him as a man that lived in a state of almoft univerfal licence 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 confiders, that there is not one play before him of a reputation good enough to entitle it to an appearance on the prefent ftage, it cannot but be a matter of great wonder that he should advance dramatick poetry fo far as he did. The fable is what * Lord Falkland, Lord C. J. Vaughan, and Mr Selden. what is generally placed the first among thofe that are reckoned the constituent parts of a tragick or heroick 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 courfe of the whole; and with the fable ought to be confidered the fit difpofition, order, and conduct of its several parts. As it is not in this province of the drama that the ftrength and maftery of Shakespeare lay, fo I fhall not undertake the tedious and ill-natured trouble to point out the feveral faults he was guil ty of in it. His tales were feldom invented, but rather taken either from true hiftory, or novels and romances: and he commonly made ufe 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. Almost all his hiftorical plays comprehend a great length of time, and very different and diftinct places; and in his Antony and Cleopatra, the scene travels over the greatest part of the Roman empire. But in recompence for his careleffnefs 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 fhewn by the poet, he may be generally juftified, and in very many places greatly commended.' For thofe plays which he has taken from the English or Roman hiftory, let any man compare them, and he will find the character as exact in the poet as the historian. He feems, indeed, fo far from propofing to himself any one action for a subject, that the title very often tells you, it is The Life of King John, King Richard, &c. What can be more agreeable to the idea our hiftorians give of Henry the Sixth, than the picture Shakefpeare has drawn of him! His manners are every where exactly the fame with the ftory; one finds him ftill defcribed with fimplicity, paffive fanctity, want of courage, weaknefs of mind, and eafy fubmiflion to the governance of an imperious wife, or prevailing faction: though at the fame time the poet does juftice to his good qualities, and moves the pity of his audience for him, by fhewing him pious, difinterested, a contemner of the things of this world, and wholly refigned to the fevereft difpenfations of God's providence. There is a fhort scene in The Second Part of Henry the Sixth, which I cannot but think ad mirable in its kind. Cardinal Beaufort, who had murdered the Duke of Gloucester, is fhewn in the laft agonies on his death-bed, with the good king praying over him. There is fo much terror in one, fo much tenderness and moving piety in the other, as must touch any one who is capable either of fear or pity. In his Henry the Eighth, 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 fhewn in an equal degree, and the fhades in this picture do not bear a juft proportion to the lights, it is not that the artist wanted either colours or skill in the difpofition of them; but the truth, I believe, might be, that he forbore doing it out of regard to Queen Elizabeth, fince it could have been no very great respect to the memory of his mistress, to have expofed fome certain parts of her father's life upon the stage. He has dealt much more freely with the minifter of that great king; and cer |