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 fketch of ftatuary! The ftile of his comedy is, in geheral, natural to the characters, and eafy in itfelf; and the wit most commonly fprightly and pleafing, except in thofe places where he runs into doggere! 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 gravest divines of those times; perhaps it may not be thought too light for the stage.

But certainly the greatness of this author's genius does no where so 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 Tempest, Midfummer Night's Dream, Macbeth, and Hamlet. Of thefe, The Tempest, however it comes to be placed the firft by the publishers of his works, can never have been the firft 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 exactness uncommon to the liberties of his writing; though that was what, I fuppofe, he valued himfelf leaft upon, fince his excellencies were all of another kind. I am very fenfible that he does, in this play, depart too much from that likenefs to truth which ought to be observed in these 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 fuftained, fhews a wonderful invention in the author, who could ftrike out fuch a particular wild image, and is certainly one of the [M 2] finest

finest and most uncommon grotesques that was ever feen. The obfervation, which I have been informed 4 three very great men concurred in making upon this part, was extremely juft; That Shakespeare had not only found out a new character in his Caliban, but had alfo devifed 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 last of these plays I fhall have occafion to take notice, among the tragedies of Mr. Shakespeare. If one undertook to examine the greatest part of thefe by thofe rules which are established by Ariftotle, and taken from the model of a Grecian ftage, it would be no very hard talk 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 almost 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 is generally placed the firft, among thofe that are reckoned the conftituent parts of a tragick or heroick poem; not, perhaps, as it is the moft 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

Lord Falkland, Lord C. J. Vaughan, and Mr. Selden.

be

be confidered the fit difpofition, order, and conduct of its feveral parts. As it is not in this province of the drama that the ftrength and maftery of Shakefpeare lay, fo I fhall not undertake the tedious and ill-natured trouble to point out the feveral faults he was guilty of in it. His tales were seldom invented, but rather taken either from true hiftory, or novels and romances: and he commonly made ufe of them in that order, with thofe 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 careJeffnefs in this point, when he comes to another part of the drama, The manners of his characters, in acting or fpeaking 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 those 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 hiftorian. He feems indeed fo far from propofing to himself any one action for a fubject, 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 historians give of Henry the Sixth, than the picture Shakespeare has drawn of him! His manners are every where exactly the fame with the ftory; one finds him ftill described with fimplicity, paffive fanctity, want of courage, weakness of mind, and eafy fubmiffion 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. [M 3]

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There is a fhort scene in the Second Part of Henry the Sixth, which I cannot but think admirable in its kind. Cardinal Beaufort, who had murdered the Duke of Gloucester, is fhewn in the last agonies on his deathbed, with the good king praying over him. There is fo much terror in one, fo much tenderness and moving piety in the other, as muft touch any one who is capable either of fear or pity. In his Henry the Eighth, that prince is drawn with that greatnefs 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 artift wanted either colours or fkill 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 refpect to the memory of his mistress, to have exposed fome certain parts of her father's life upon the ftage. He has dealt much more freely with the minifter of that great king, and certainly 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 addrefs, he inakes his fall and ruin the fubject of general com paffion. The whole man, with his vices and virtues, is finely and exactly defcribed in the fecond fcene 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 obferved, 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

and the irregular greatnefs 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 clofe, and taken in feveral little incidents that might have been spared in a play. But, as I hinted before, his defign feems moft commonly rather to defcribe thofe great men in the several fortunes and accidents of their lives, than to take any fingle great action, and form his work fimply upon that. However, there are fome of his pieces, where the fable is founded upon one action only. Such are more efpecially, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, and Othello. The defign in Romeo and Juliet is plainly the punishment 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 the death of his father, their mothers are equally guilty, are both concerned in the murder of their hufbands, and are afterwards married to the murderers. There is in the firft part of the Greek tragedy fomething very moving in the grief of Electra; but, as Mr. Dacier has obferved, there is something very unnatural and shocking in the manners he has given that Princefs and Oreftes in the latter part. Oreftes embrues his hands in the blood of his own mother; and that barbarous action is performed, though not immediately upon the ftage, yet fo near, that the audience hear Clytemneftra crying out to Ægyfthus for help, and to her fon for mercy: while Electra her daughter, and a Princess (both of them characters that ought to have appeared with more decency) ftands upon the ftage, and encourages

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her