216 



SIIAKSPEARE. 



// Pecorone, nel quale si contengono 48 Novelle an- 

 tiche belle d'Invenzione e di Stilo, written in 1 -'57S, 

 printed at Milan in 1554, and at Treviso in 1001 ; 

 Gesta Romanorum cum Applicationibus monlufti 

 ac 7itysticis, Augsburg, 1489, and Strasburg, 1538 

 Uecameronr, i/iarn. x., nov. 1 ; Tlie Jew, an old 

 English play; also The Carnival in Venice, an old 

 German play) is a wonderful picture of character. 

 It is one of Shakspeare's most perfect works. The 

 fifth act of this play may be regarded as an after- 

 piece, serving to excite pleasant feelings, after the 

 narrowing scenes exhibited in the preceding portions 

 of the drama. As you like it (compare Chaucer's 

 Coke's Tale ofGatnebjn; Thomas Lodge's Rosalynd, 

 or Euphues' golden Legacy, 1590, 4to., an old pas- 

 toral romance) is a charming play, which, with its 

 gayety, liveliness and freedom, seems to have been 

 intended to show that nothing is wanted to call 

 forth the poetry which has its dwelling in nature 

 and the human mind, but to throw off all artificial 



constraint The Twelfth Night, or What you will 



(Bandello, t. ii., nov. 20), unites the entertainment 

 of an intrigue contrived with great ingenuity, to 

 the richest fund of comic characters and situations, 

 and the beauty of an ethereal poetry. If this was 

 in fact Shakspeare's last work, he enjoyed to the 

 end of his days the same youthfulness of mind, and 

 carried all the luxuriance of his talents with him to 

 the grave. The Merry Wives of Windsor (com- 

 pare The Lovers of Pisa, in Tarleton's Newes out 

 of Purgatorie; II Pecorone, giorn. i., nov. 2; The 

 Fortunate, the Deceived, and the Unfortunate Lovers; 

 Piacevoli Notti di Straparola, Venice, 1567, I. i., 

 notte 4, favola 4) is said to have been written at 

 the request of queen Elizabeth, because she wanted 

 to see Falstaff in love. It is certain that it was 

 acted in her presence (probably at Windsor, at a 

 festival of the order of the garter). Moliere's 

 School for Women resembles it in the particular 

 that a jealous man is made the constant confidant 

 of the progress of his rival. Of all the pieces of 

 Shakspeare, this approaches the nearest to pure 

 comedy. The conclusion is made romantic by a 

 fanciful delusion, founded on a popular superstition. 

 A Midsummer Night's Dream (compare Bettie's 

 Titania and Theseus; Plutarch's Theseus; Michael 

 Drayton's Nymphidia, the Court of Fayrie: Chau- 

 cer's Knight's Tale; Boccaccio's Teseide; Legend 

 of Thisbe of Babylon") ; the Tempest, source un- 

 known (compare Twenty of the Plays of Shakspeare, 

 being the whole Number printed in Quarto, by George 

 Steevens, Esq., London, 1666, 4 vols.) These 

 plays resemble each other in this particular, that, 

 in both, the influence of a world of spiritual beings 

 is interwoven with the turmoil of human passions, 

 and the farcical adventures of folly. The former 

 piece was written certainly earlier, and is, perhaps, 

 the most luxuriant and fanciful of Shakspeare's pro- 

 ductions. It unites, in Titania's amour, the ex- 

 tremes of the fanciful and the vulgar. The second, 

 apparently the fruit of Shakspeare's latter years, is 

 superior in us delineation of character. In the 

 wise, all-directing Prospero, in the tender flame of 

 Ferdinand and Miranda, in the masterly picture of 

 the terrestrial monster Caliban, and the heavenly 

 Ariel, there is a most harmonious connexion of op- 

 posite conceptions. The Winter's Tale (compare 

 A Pleasant History of Dorastus and Fawnia, by 

 Robert Greene; Spencer's Fairy Queen, book v., 

 canto 9, 15) is one of those tales which are pe- 

 culiarly fitted to beguile the dreary leisure of a 

 long winter evening, which are attractive and in- 



telligible even to childhood, and transport even 

 manhood back to. the golden age, when it yielded 

 to the sway of the imagination Cymbeline (com- 

 pare Boccaccio, giorn. ii., nov. 9 ; Hans Sachs, The 

 Innocent Lady Genura ; Schertz mit der Wahrheyt ; 

 Holinshed's Chronicles; Dion. Cass. Hist. Rom., I. 

 lx., c. 20; Suetonius's Caligula, c. 44; Henry's 

 History of Great Britain, London, 1771, quarto, 

 vol. i., page 17) is a remarkable composition, con- 

 necting a novel of Boccaccio with ancient British 

 traditions, from the times of the first Roman em- 

 perors. By easy transitions, the poet blends into a 

 harmonious whole the social manners of the latest. 

 times, with the deeds of heroes, and even with ap- 

 pearances of the gods Romeo and Juliet, (com- 

 pare Girolamo dalla Corte's Istoria di Verona, 1594, 

 vol. i. ; Istoria novellamente ritrovata di due nobili 

 Amanti, con la pietosa Morte intervenuta gia nella 

 Citta di Verona, nel Tempo del Sic/nor Bartolomeo 

 della Scala ; Bandello, /. ii., nov. 1; Boisteau's 

 Dixhuit Histoires tragigues, mises en Langue Fran- 

 coise, 1560, 12mo. ; The Tragical Historic of 

 Romeus and Juliet, London, 1562; Painter's Palace 

 of Pleasure, t. ii., nov. 25; see also Lope de Vega 

 Carpio's Castelvines y Monteses, Comedia famosa). 

 Othello (compare Giraldi Cinthio, decade iii, nov. 

 7 translated into French by Gabriel Chapuys, 1584 

 Englished by Painter) is a picture of love, arid its 

 pitiable fate, in a world whose atmosphere is too 

 rough for this tenderest blossom of human life. The 

 sweetest and the bitterest, love and hatred, gayety 

 and dark forebodings, tender embraces and sepul- 

 chres, the fulness of life, and self-destruction, are 

 blended into a unity of impression in this harmoni- 

 ous and wonderful work. In Othello, we recognize 

 the wild nature of the African, tamed only in ap- 

 pearance by the desire of fame, by foreign laws of 

 honour, and by nobler and milder manners. His 

 jealousy is of that sensual kind which, in burning 

 climes, has given birth to the disgraceful confine- 

 ment of women, and to a thousand unnatural usages. 

 The Moor is frank, confiding, grateful ; but the 

 force of passion puts to flight all his acquired and 

 accustomed virtues. A more artful villain than 

 lago was never pourtrayed; cool, discontented, and 

 morose, arrogant where he dares to be so, but 

 aumble and insinuating when it suits his purposes, 

 tie is a complete master in the art of dissimulation; 

 accessible only to selfish emotions, he is thoroughly 

 skilled in rousing the passions of others, and in 

 availing himself of every opening which they give 

 lira ; he is as excellent an observer of men as any 

 one can be who is unacquainted with higher motives 

 of action than his own experience. Desdemona is 

 a high ideal representation of enthusiastic passion. 

 Vo eloquence is capable of painting the overwhelm- 



ng force of the catastrophe in Othello Hamlet 



^compare Saxonis Grammatici Histories Danicce 

 Libri xvi, ed. Stephanii, Sorse, 1644, lib. 3; Belle- 

 brest, Avec quelle Ruse Amleth qui depuisfut Roi 

 de Danemarc, vengea la Mart de son Pere Huruon- 

 dille, occis par Fengon, son Ffere, et autre Occur- 

 rence de son Histoire ; English, The Historic of 

 Hamblet, quarto, 1608) is unique in its kind ; a 

 tragedy of thought, inspired by continual and never 

 satisfied meditation on human destiny, and the dark 

 perplexity of events in this world. Hamlet is a 

 mind of high cultivation, a prince of royal manners, 

 endowed with the finest sense of propriety, suscepti- 

 ble of noble ambition, and open, in the highest de- 

 gree, to enthusiasm for the excellence in which he 

 is deficient. He acts the part of madness with ini- 



