tainly nothing was ever more juftly written than the character of Cardinal Wolfey. He has fhewn him infolent in his profperity; and yet, by a wonderful address, he makes his fall and ruin the subject of general compaffion. The whole man, with his vices and virtues, is finely and exactly defcribed in the fecond scene of the fourth act. The diftreffes likewife of Queen Catharine, in this play, are very movingly touched; and though the art of the poet has fcreened King Henry from any grofs imputation of injuftice, yet one is inclined to with the queen had met with a fortune more worthy of her birth and virtue. Nor are the manners, proper to the perfons reprefented, lefs juftly observed, in those characters taken from the Roman hiftory; and of this, the fiercenefs and impatience of Coriolanus, his courage and difdain of the common people, the virtue and philofophical temper of Brutus, and the irregular greatness of mind in M. Antony, are beautiful proofs. For the two laft efpecially, you find them exactly as they are defcribed by Plutarch, from whom certainly Shakespeare copied them. He has indeed followed his original pretty close, and taken in several little incidents that might have been spared in a play. But, as I hinted before, his defign feems most commonly rather to describe those great men in the feveral fortunes and accidents of their lives, than to take any fingle great action, and form his work fimply upon that. However, there are some of his pieces, where the fable is founded upon one action only. Such are, more especially, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, and Othello. The defign in Romeo and Juliet is plainly the pu

nifhment

nishment of their two families, for the unreasonable feuds and animofities that had been fo long kept up between them, and occafioned the effufion of fo much blood. In the management of this ftory, he has fhewn fomething wonderfully tender and paffionate in the love-part, and very pitiful in the diftrefs. Hamlet is founded on much the fame tale with the Electra of Sophocles. In each of them a young prince is engaged to revenge

death of his father; their mothers are equally guilty, are both concerned in the murder of their hubands, and are afterwards married to the murderers. There is, in the first part of the Greek tragedy, fomething very moving in the grief of Electra; but, as Mr Dacier has obferved, there is fomething very unnatural and shocking in the manners he has given that princefs and Oreftes in the latter part. Oreftes imbrues his hands in the blood of his own mother; and that barbarous action is performed, though not immediately upon the stage, yet fo near, that the audience hear Clytemneftra crying out to Egyfthus for help, and to her fon for mercy while Electra, her daughter, and a princefs (both of them characters that ought to have appeared with more decency), ftands upon the stage, and encourages her brother in the parricide. What horror does this not raife! Clytemneftra was a wicked woman, and had deferved to die; nay, in the truth of the ftory, fhe was killed by her own fon; but to represent an action of this kind upon the ftage, is certainly an offence against those rules of manners proper to the perfons, that ought to be obferved there. On the contrary, let us only look a little on the conduct

of

of Shakespeare. Hamlet is reprefented with the fame piety towards his father, and refolution to revenge his death, as Oreftes; he has the fame abhorrence for his mother's guilt, which, to provoke him the more, is heightened by inceft: but it is with wonderful art and juftnefs of judgment, that the poet reftrains him from violence to his mother. To prevent any thing of that kind, he makes his father's Ghoft forbid that part of his vengeance:

But however thou purfu'ft this act,

Taint not thy mind, nor let thy foul contrive
Against thy mother aught; leave her to heav'n,
And to thofe thorns that in her bofom lodge,
To prick and fting her.

This is to diftinguish rightly between horror and terror. The latter is a proper paffion of tragedy, but the former ought always to be carefully avoided. And certainly no dramatic writer ever fucceed better in raifing terror in the minds of an audience than Shakespeare has done. The whole tragedy of Macbeth, but more especially the scene where the king is murdered, in the second act, as well as this play, is a noble proof of that manly fpirit with which he writ; and both thew how powerful he was, in giving the ftrongest motions to our fouls that they are capable of. I cannot leave Hamlet, without taking notice of the advantage with which we have feen this mater-piece of Shakespeare diftinguifh itself upon the age, by Mr Betterton's fine performance of that part; a man, who, though he had no other good qualities, as he has a great many, must have made his way in

to

to the esteem of all men of letters, by this only excellency. No man is better acquainted with Shakespeare's manner of expreffion, and indeed he has ftudied him fo well, and is fo much a master of him, that whatever part of his he performs, he does it as if it had been written on purpose for him, and that the author had exactly conceived it as he plays it. I must own a particular obligation to him, for the most confiderable part of the paffages relating to his life, which I have here tranfmitted to the public; his veneration for the memory of Shakespeare having engaged him to make a journey into Warwickshire, on purpose to gather up what remains he could, of a name for which he had fo a veneration *.

great

*This Account of the Life of Shakespeare is printed from Mr Rowe's fecond edition, in which it had been abridged and altered by himself after its appearance in 1709. STEEVENS.

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