SHAKSPEASE. 



215 



each man is constituted, Shakspeare reveals to us 

 in the most immediate manner. He demands and 

 obtains our belief, even for what is singular, and 

 deviates from the ordinary course of nature. 

 Never, perhaps, was so comprehensive a talent for 

 characterization possessed by any other man. It 

 not only grasps the diversities of rank, sex, and 

 age, down to the dawnings of infancy; not only do 

 his kings and beggars, heroes and pick-pockets, 

 sages and fools, speak and act with equal truth; 

 not only have his human characters such depth and 

 comprehension, that they cannot be ranged under 

 classes, and are inexhaustible, even in conception; 

 but he opens the gates of the magic world of spirits, 

 calls up the midnight ghost, exhibits witches 

 amidst their unhallowed mysteries, peoples the air 

 with sportive fairies and sylphs; and these beings, 

 existing only in imagination, possess such truth and 

 consistency, that, even in the case of deformed 

 monsters, like Caliban, he extorts the conviction 

 that if there should be such beings, they would so 

 conduct themselves. If the delineation of all his 

 characters, separately taken, is inimitably correct, 

 he surpasses even himself in so combining and con- 

 trasting them, that they serve to bring out each 

 other. No one ever painted as he has done the 

 facility of self-deception, the half self-conscious 

 hypocrisy towards ourselves, with which even 

 noble minds attempt to disguise the almost inevi- 

 table influence of selfish motives on human nature. 

 Shakspeare's comic talent is equally wonderful with 

 his pathetic and tragic. He is highly inventive in 

 comic situations and motives: it will be hardly 

 possible to show whence he has taken any of them. 

 His comic characterization is equally true, various, 

 and profound with his serious." In regard to his 

 diction and versification, Schlegel observes, " The 

 language is here and there somewhat obsolete, but 

 much less so than that of most of the writers of his 

 day a sufficient proof of the goodness of his choice. 

 He drew his language immediately from life, and pos- 

 sessed a masterly skill in blending the element of dia- 

 logue with the highest poetical elevation. Certain 

 critics say that Shakspeare is frequently ungramma- 

 tical. To prove this assertion, they must show 

 that similar constructions do not occur in his contem- 

 poraries ; but the direct contrary can be established. 

 In no language is every thing determined on princi- 

 ple : much is always left to the caprice of custom, 

 and, because this has since changed, is the poet 

 answerable for it ? In general, Shakspeare's style 

 yet remains the very best model, both in the vigor- 

 ous and the sublime, the pleasing and the tender. 

 The verse of all his plays is generally the rhymeless 

 iambic of ten or eleven syllables, occasionally inter- 

 mixed with rhymes, but more frequently alternating 

 with prose. No one piece is wholly written in 

 prose ; for, even in those which approach the most 

 to the pure comedy, there is always something 

 added which elevates them to a higher rank than 

 belongs to this class. In the use of verse and prose, 

 Shakspeare observes very nice distinctions, accord- 

 ing to the rank of the speakers, but still more ac- 

 cording to their characters and dispositions. His 

 iambics are sometimes highly harmonious and full 

 sounding, always varied, and suitable to the sub- 

 ject; they are at one time distinguished- for ease 

 and rapidity ; at another they move along with 

 mighty energy. All Shakspeare's productions bear 

 the stamp of his original genius; but no writer was 

 ever farther removed from a manner acquired from 

 habit and personal peculiarities." 



Forty-three dramatic pieces are ascribed to Shak- 

 speare ; eight of them, however, are considered by 

 English commentators to be spurious, but German 

 critics regard them as genuine. The thirty-five un- 

 contested pieces, which were written in twenty- 

 three years, from 1591 to 1614, Malone has at- 

 tempted to reduce to the following chronological 

 order: Love's Labour lost, King Henry VI. (3 

 parts), the Two Gentlemen of Verona, the Winter's 

 Tale, Midsummer Night's Dream, Romeo and Juliet, 

 the Comedy of Errors, Hamlet, King John, King 

 Richard II., Richard III., Henry IV. (1st part), 

 Merchant of Venice, All's well that ends well 

 Henry IV. (2d part), Henry V., Much Ado about 

 Nothing, As you like it, the Merry Wives of Wind- 

 sor, Henry VIII., Troilus and Cressida, Measure 

 for Measure, Cymbeline, King Lear, Macbeth, the 

 Taming of the Shrew, Julius Caesar, Antony and 

 Cleopatra, Coriolanus, Timon of Athens, Othello, 

 the Tempest, the Twelfth Night. There are many 

 objections, however, both internal and external, to 

 this arrangement. 



" The subjects of the comedies," to return to 

 Schlegel, "are generally taken from novels; they 

 are romantic love stories : none of them are confined 

 exclusively to common or domestic relations : all 

 possess poetical ornament, and some pass into the 

 wonderful or the pathetic." The Two Gentlemen 

 of Verona (compare Montemayor's Diana, book 2) 

 paints the fickleness of love, and its infidelity to- 

 wards friendship The Comedy of Errors (compare 



the MeruKchmi of Plautus, and A Comedy of Plautus 

 called Monechme, German, by Hans Sachs), the 

 only play of Shakspeare of which the idea is bor- 

 rowed from the ancients, is a piece which ought 

 not to be played without masks. The Taming of 

 the Shrew (compare Goulart, Thresor d'Histoire 

 admirable de nostre Temps, translated into English 

 by Edward Grimestone, 1607; Percy's Reliques of 

 ancient Poetry, vol. i. ; George Gascoigne's Sup- 

 poses, a translation from Ariosto's Suppositi; also, 

 The Art of Arts, or how to make a bad Woman a 

 good one, formerly practised by an Italian Cavalier, 

 &c., German, Rappersdorf, 12mo.) is derived, medi- 

 ately or immediately, from a piece of Ariosto. The 

 prelude of the drunken tinker is probably from a 

 popular tale, and the same subject has been drama- 

 tized by Holberg. These pieces are considered as 

 productions of his youth. Love's Labour lost is 

 referred to the same period. All's well that ends 

 well the Griselda of Shakspeare (compare Boccac- 

 cio's Decamerone, giorn. iii., novell. 9; Painter's 

 Palace of Pleasure ; Giletta of Narbon ; also the 

 old book, Schertz mil der Wahrheyf) presents in 

 Parolles a character of rich comic humour, which 

 would be more celebrated if it had not been thrown 

 into the shade by FalstafF. Much Ado about No- 

 thing (compare Belleforest's Timbree de Cardonne, 

 &c. ; Bandello's Novelle, Venice, 1566, vol. i. ; 

 Phoenicia, an interesting and memorable History, &c. 

 Magdeburg, John Franken, 1601; Ariosto, trans- 

 lated into English by Harrington, 1591 ; and parti- 

 cularly George Tuberville's account of this story) 

 is the same, in its main plot, with the Ariodante 

 and Ginevra of Ariosto. Measure for Measure 

 (compare G. Whetstone's Promus and Cassandra, 

 1578; Giraldo Cinthio's Hecatomithi overo cento 

 Novelle, Venice, 1593, decade viii., novella 5, trans- 

 lated in Painter's Palace of Pleasure) is the triumph 

 of mercy over strict justice. It contains the splendi d 

 character of Isabella. The Merchant of Venice 

 (compare Percy's Reliques, i.; Giovanni Florentine's 



