TO THE MEMORY OF THE DECEASED AUTHOR,
MASTER W. SHAKESPEARE.

SHAKESPEARE, at length thy pious fellows give
The world thy works: thy works, by which outlive
Thy tomb, thy name must. When that stone is rent,
And time dissolves thy Stratford monument,
Here we alive shall view thee still. This book,
When brass and marble fade, shall make thee look
Fresh to all ages; when posterity

Shall loath what's new, think all is prodigy
That is not Shakespeare's, every line, each verse,
Here shall revive, redeem thee from thy hearse.
Nor fire, nor cankering age, as Naso said
Of his, thy wit-fraught book shall once invade.
Nor shall I e'er believe or think thee dead
(Though miss'd) until our bankrout stage be sped
(Impossible) with some new strain to outdo
Passions of Juliet and her Romeo;
Or till I hear a scene more nobly take
Than when thy half-sword parleying Romans spake.
Till these, till any of thy volumes rest,
Shall with more fire, more feeling, be express'd,
Be sure, our Shakespeare, thou canst never die,
But, crown'd with laurel, live eternally.

L. DIGGES.

AN EPITAPH ON THE ADMIRABLE DRAMATIC
POET, W. SHAKESPEARE.*

WHAT need my Shakespeare for his honour'd bones
The labour of an age in piled stones,
Or that his hallow'd relics should be hid
Under a star-ypointing pyramid?
Dear son of memory, great heir of fame,
What need'st thou such dull witness of thy naine?
Thou in our wonder and astonishment
Has built thyself a lasting monument:

For whilst, to th' shame of slow-endeavouring art,
Thy easy numbers flow, and that each part

This epitaph of Milton, and the succeeding poem, belong to the second folio, of 1632.

Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued book
Those Delphic lines with deep impression took,
Then thou, our fancy of herself bereaving,
Dost make us marble with too much conceiving,
And so sepulchred in such pomp dost lie,
That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.

ON WORTHY MASTER SHAKESPEARE
AND HIS POEMS.

A MIND reflecting ages past, whose clear
And equal surface can make things appear
Distant a thousand years, and represent
Them in their lively colours' just extent:
To outrun hasty time, retrieve the fates,
Roll back the heavens, blow ope the iron gates
Of death and Lethe, where, confused, lie
Great heaps of ruinous mortality:
In this deep dusky dungeon to discern
A royal ghost from churls; by art to learn
The physiognomy of shades, and give
Them sudden birth, wond'ring how oft they live;
What story coldly tells, what poets feign
At second hand, and picture without brain
Senseless and soulless shows: To give a stage
(Ample and true with life) voice, action, age,
As Plato's year and new scene of the world,
Them unto us, or us to them had hurl'd:
To raise our ancient sovereigns from their hearse,
Make kings his subjects, by exchanging verse;
Enlive their pale trunks, that the present age
Joys in their joy, and trembles at their rage:
Yet so to temper passion, that our ears
Take pleasure in their pain: and eyes in tears
Both weep and smile; fearful at plots so sad,
Then laughing at our fear; abus'd, and glad
To be abus'd, affected with that truth
Which we perceive is false; pleas'd in that ruth
At which we start; and by elaborate play
Tortur'd and tickled; by a crablike way
Time past made pastime, and in ugly sort
Disgorging up his ravine for our sport

While the Plebeian Imp, from lofty throne,
Creates and rules a world, and works upon
Mankind by secret engines; now to move
A chilling pity, then a rigorous love:
To strike up and stroke down both joy and ire;
To steer th' affections; and by heavenly fire
Mould us anew. Stolen from ourselves-

This and much more which cannot be express'd But by himself, his tongue, and his own breast, Was Shakespeare's freehold, which his cunning brain

Improv'd by favour of the ninefold train.

The buskin'd Muse, the Comic Queen, the grand
And louder tone of Clio; nimble hand,
And nimbler foot, of the melodious pair;
The silver-voiced Lady; the most fair
Calliope, whose speaking silence daunts,
And she whose praise the heavenly body chants.
These jointly woo'd him, envying one another
(Obey'd by all as spouse, but lov'd as brother),
And wrought a curious robe of sable grave,
Fresh green, and pleasant yellow, red most brave,
And constant blue, rich purple, guiltless white,
The lowly russet, and the scarlet bright;
Branch'd and embroider'd like the painted spring,
Tach leaf match'd with a flower, and each string
Of golden wire, each line of silk; there run
Italian works whose thread the sisters spun;

And there did sing, or seem to sing, the choice
Birds of a foreign note and various voice.
Here hangs a mossy rock; there plays a fair
But chiding fountain purled: not the air,
Nor clouds, nor thunder, but were living drawn,
Not out of common tiffany or lawn,
But fine materials, which the Muses know,
And only know the countries where they grow.
Now when they could no longer him enjoy,
In mortal garments pent; death may destroy,
They say, his body, but his verse shall live,
And more than nature takes, our hands shall give:
In a less volume, but more strongly bound,
Shakespeare shall breathe and speak, with laurel
crown'd

Which never fades. Fed with Ambrosian meat
In a well-lined vesture rich and neat.

So with this robe they clothe him, bid him wear it,
For time shall never stain, nor envy tear it.
The friendly admirer of his endowments,
I. M. S.

THE NAMES OF THE PRINCIPAL ACTORS IN ALL THESE PLAYS.

THE rank as a writer which Shakspere took amongst his contemporaries is determined by a few decided notices of him. These notices are as ample and as frequent as can be looked for in an age which had no critical records, and when writers, therefore, almost went out of their way to refer to their literary contemporaries, except for purposes of set compliment. We believe that, as early as 1591, Spenser called attention to Shakspere, as

"the man whom Nature self had made To mock herself, and Truth to imitate;"

describing him also as

"that same gentle spirit, from whose pen Large streams of honey and sweet nectar flow."*

We know that the envy of Greene, in 1592, pointed at him as an absolute Johannes factotum, in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in à country;" and we receive this bitterness of the unfortunate dramatist against his more successful rival as a tribute to his power and his popularity. We consider that the apology of Chettle, who had edited the posthumous work of Greene containing this effusion of spite, was an acknowledgment of the established opinion of Shakspere's excellence as an author:-"Divers of worship have reported his uprightness of dealing, which argues his honesty, and his facetious grace in writing, that approves his art." This was printed in 1592, and yet the man who had won this reluctant testimony to his art, by "his facetious grace in writing," is held by modern authorities to have then been only a botcher of other men's works, as if "facetious grace were an expression that did not most happily mark the quality by which Shakspere was then most eminently distinguished above all his

• See Note A.

contemporaries,―his comic power,—his ability above all others to produce

"Fine Counterfesance, and unhurtful Sport, Delight, and Laughter, deck'd in seemly sort."

But passages such as these, which it is morally impossible to apply to any other man than Shakspere, are still only indirect evidence of the opinion which was formed of him when he was yet a very young writer. But a few years later we encounter the most direct testimony to his pre-eminence. He it was that in 1598 was assigned his rank, not by any vague and doubtful compliment, not with any ignorance of what had been achieved by other men ancient and modern, but by the learned discrimination of a scholar; and 'that rank was with Homer, Hesiod, Euripides, Eschylus, Sophocles, Pindar, Phocylides, and Aristophanes amongst the Greeks; Virgil, Ovid, Horace, Silius-Italicus, Lucan, Lucretius, Ausonius, and Claudian amongst the Latins; and Sidney, Spenser, Daniel, Drayton, Warner, Marlowe, and Chapman amongst the English. According to the same authority, it was "in mellifluous and honey-tongued Shakspeare that "the sweet witty soul of Ovid lives." This praise was applied to his Venus and Adonis, and other poems. But, for his dramas, he is raised above every native contemporary and predecessor: "As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for Comedy and Tragedy among the Latins; so Shakspeare among the English is the most excellent in both kinds for the stage." These are extracts with which many of our readers must be familiar. They are from "The Wits' Commonwealth' of Francis Meres, "Master of Arts of both Universities;" a book largely circulated, and mentioned with applause by contemporary writers. The author delivers not these sentences as his own peculiar opinion; he speaks unhesitatingly, as of a fact admitting no doubt, that Shakspere, among the

English, is the most excellent for Comedy and Tragedy. Does any one of the other "excellent" dramatic writers of that day rise up to dispute the assertion, galling perhaps to the self-love of some amongst them? Not a voice is heard to tell Francis Meres that he has overstated the public opinion of the supremacy of Shakspere. Thomas Heywood, one of this illustrious band, speaks of Meres as an approved good scholar; and says that his account of authors is learnedly done.* Heywood himself, indeed, in lines written long after Shakspere's death, mentions him in stronger terms of praise than he applies to any of his contemporaries. Lastly, Meres, after other comparisons of Shakspere with the great writers of antiquity and of his own time, has these words, which nothing but a complete reliance upon the received opinion of his day could have warranted him in applying to any living man: "As Epius Stolo said that the Muses would speak with Plautus' tongue, if they would speak Latin; so I say that the Muses would speak with Shakespeare's fine filed phrase, if they would speak English."

Of the popularity of Shakspere in his own day the external evidence, such as it is, is more decisive than the testimony of any contemporary writer. He was at one and the same time the favourite of the people and of the Court. There is no record whatever known to exist of the public performances of Shakspere's plays at his own theatres. Had such an account existed of the receipts at the Blackfriars and the Globe as Henslowe kept for his company, we should have known something precise of that popularity which was so extensive as to make the innkeeper of Bosworth, "full of ale and history," derive his knowledge from the stage of Shakspere:

"For when he would have said, King Richard died,

And call'd, A horse, a horse! he Burbage cried."‡

But the facts connected with the original publication of Shakspere's plays sufficiently prove how eagerly they were for the most part received by the readers of the drama. From 1597 to 1600, ten of these plays were published from authentic copies, undoubtedly with the consent of the author. The system of publication did not commence before 1597; and, with four exceptions, it was not continued beyond 1600. Of these plays there were published, before the appearance of the collected edition of 1623, four editions of Richard II., six of

"Here I might take fit opportunity to reckon up all our English writers, and compare them with the Greek, French, Italian, and Latin poets, not only in their pastoral, historical, elegiacal, and heroical poems, but in their tragical and comical subjects, but it was my chance to happen on the like, learnedly done by an approved good scholar, in a book called 'Wits' Commonwealth, to which treatise I wholly refer you, returning to our present subject."-Apology for Actors, 1612. + Hierarchy of Blessed Angels, 1635, Bishop Corbet, who died in 1635.

The First Part of Henry IV., six of Richard III., four of Romeo and Juliet, six of Hamlet, besides repeated editions of the plays which were surreptiously published-the maimed and imperfect copies described by the editors of the first folio. Of the thirty-six plays contained in the folio of 1623, only one-half was published, whether genuine or piratical, in the author's lifetime; and it is by no means improbable that many of those which were originally published with his concurrence were not permitted to be reprinted, because such publication might be considered injurious to the great theatrical property with which he was connected. But the constant demand for some of the plays is an evidence of their popularity which cannot be mistaken; and is decisive as to the people's admiration of Shakspere. As for that of the Court, the testimony, imperfect as it is, is entirely conclusive:"Sweet Swan of Avon! what a sight it were To see thee in our waters yet appear, And make those flights upon the banks of Thames That so did take Eliza and our James,"

is no vague homage from Jonson to the memory of his "beloved friend," but the record of a fact. The accounts of the revels at Court, between the years 1588 and 1604, the most interesting period in the career of Shakspere, have not been discovered in the depositories for such papers. We have indeed memoranda of payments to her Majesty's players during this period, but nothing definite as to the plays represented. We know not what "so did take Eliza ;" but we are left in no doubt as to the attractions for our James." It appears from the Revels Book that, from Hallowmas-day 1604 to the following Shrove Tuesday, there were thirteen plays performed before the King, eight of which were Shakspere's, namelyOthello, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Measure for Measure, The Comedy of Errors, Love's Labour's Lost, Henry V., and the Merchant of Venice twice, that being "again commanded by the King's Majesty." Not one of these, with the possible exception of Measure for Measure, was recommended by its novelty. The series of the same accounts is broken from 1605 to 1611; and then from Hallowmas-night to Shrove Tuesday, which appears to have been the theatrical season of the Court, six different companies of players contribute to the amusements of Whitehall and Greenwich by the performance of twelve plays. Of five which are performed by the King's players two are by Shakspere-The Tempest, and The Winter's Tale. If the records were more perfect, this proof of the admiration of Shakspere in the highest circle would no doubt be more conclusive. As it is, it is sufficient to support this general argument.* During the life of Shakspere his surpassing Extracts from the Accounts of the Revels at Court,' by Peter Cunningham.

popularity appears to have provoked no expression of envy from his contemporaries, no attempt to show that his reputation was built upon an unsolid foundation. Some of the later commentators upon Shakspere, however, took infinite pains to prove that Jonson had ridiculed him during his life, and disparaged him after his death. Every one knows Fuller's delightful picture of the convivial exercises in mental strength between Jonson and Shakspere :- "Many were the wit-combats between Shakspeare and Ben Jonson. I behold them like a Spanish great galleon and an English man-of-war. Master Jonson, like the former, was built far higher in learning, solid but slow in his performances; Shakspeare, like the latter, less in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about, and take advantage of all winds by the quickness of his wit and invention." Few would imagine that a passage such as this should have been produced to prove that there was a quarrel between Jonson and Shakspere; that the wit-combats of these intellectual gladiators were the consequence of their habitual enmity. By the same perverse misinterpretation have the commentators sought to prove that, when Jonson, in his prologues, put forth his own theory of dramatic art, he meant to satirize the principles upon which Shakspere worked. It is held that in the prologue to 'Every Man in his Humour,' acted in 1598 at Shakspere's own theatre, Jonson especially ridicules the historical plays of Henry VI. and Richard III.:

"with three rusty swords,

And help of some few foot and half-foot words,
Fight over York and Lancaster's long jars,
And in the tiring-house bring wounds to scars."

There is in another author a similar ridicule, and stronger, of the inadequacy of the stage to present a battle to the senses :

“We shall much disgrace—
With four or five most vile and ragged foils,
Right ill-dispos'd in brawl ridiculous-
The name of Agincourt.".

But Shakspere himself was the author of this passage; and he was thus the satirist of himself, as much as Jonson was his satirist, when he compared in his prologue the comedy of manners with the historical and romantic drama which had then. such attractions for the people. Shakspere's Chorus to Henry V., from which we have made the last extract, was written the year after the performance of Jonson's play. We recognise in it a candid admission of the good sense of Jonson, which at once shows that Shakspere was the last to feel the criticism as a personal attack. Nothing, in truth, can be more absurd than the attempts to show, from supposed allusions in Jonson, that he was an habitual detractor of Shakspere. The reader will

find these "proofs of Jonson's malignity" brought forward, and dismissed with the contempt that they deserve, in a paper appended to Gifford's 'Memoir of Jonson.' The same acute critic had the merit of pointing out a passage in Jonson's 'Poetaster,' which, he says, "is as undoubtedly true of Shakspere as if it were pointedly written to describe him." He further says, It is evident that throughout the whole of this drama Jonson maintains a constant allusion to himself and his contemporaries," and that, consequently, the lines in question were intended for Shakspere:

"That which he hath writ Is with such judgment labour'd and distill'd Through all the needful uses of our lives, That, could a man remember but his lines, He should not touch at any serious point, But he might breathe his spirit out of him.

His learning savours not the school-like gloss
That most consists in echoing words and terms,
And soonest wins a man an empty name;
Nor
any long or far-fetch'd circumstance
Wrapp'd in the curious general'ties of art;
But a direct and analytic sum

Of all the worth and first effects of art.
And for his poesy, 'tis so ramm'd with life,
That it shall gather strength of life, with being,
And live hereafter more admir'd than now.'

The private opinion of Jonson with regard to Shakspere would not be so much a reflection of the popular judgment as that of the critical few who would apply the tests of ancient art, not only to the art of Shakspere, but to the art of that great body of writers who had founded the English drama upon a broader foundation than the precepts of Aristotle. The art of Jonson was opposed to the art of Shakspere. He satisfied the few, but the many rejected him. There is a poem on Jonson's C Sejanus,' which shows how his learned harangues-paraphrases for the most part of the ancient writers-were received by the English people :

"When in the Globe's fair ring, our world's best

stage,

I saw Sejanus, set with that rich foil,

I look'd the author should have borne the spoil
Of conquest from the writers of the age:
But when I view'd the people's beastly rage,
Bent to confound thy grave and learned toil,
That cost thee so much sweat and so much oil,
My indignation I could hardly assuage."

It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that Jonson, in his free conversations with Drummond of Hawthornden, in January, 1619, should say that "Shakspere wanted art." When Jonson said this he was in no laudatory mood. Drummond heads his record of the conversation thus: "His censure of

* The Poetaster, Act v., Scene 1.