from the changes made by a century and a half, in manners or in words. As his personages act upon principles arising from genuine passion, věry little modified by particular forms, their pleasures and vexations are communicable to all times and to all places; they are natural, and therefore durable. The adventitious peculiarities of personal habits are only superficial dyes, bright and pleasing for a little while, yet soon fading to a dim tinet,' without any remains of former luster; but the discriminations of true passion are the colors of nature; they pervade the whole mass, and can only perish with the body that exhibits them. The accidental compositions of heterogeneous modes are dissolved by the chance which combined them; but the uniform simplicity of primitive qualities neither admits increase, uor suffers decay. The sand heaped by one flood is scattered by another; but the rock alway continues in its place. The stream of time, which is continually washing the dis'soluble fabrics of other poets, passes without injury by the adamant of Shakspeare. SPEAK DR. JOHNSON." 110. HAMLET'S INSTRUCTION TO THE PLAYERS.3 PEAK the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you,trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as lief the town-crier spake my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand thus, but use all gently; for in the věry torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, whirlwind of your passion', you must acquire and beget a temperance, that may give it smoothness. Oh! it offends me to the soul, to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters,-to very rags,—to split the ears of the groundlings; who, for the most part, are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb show and noise. I would have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant it out-herods Herod. Pray you, ávoid it. Tinct (tingkt), spot; stain; color See Biographical Sketch, p. 230. -See Rules for the Use of Emphasis, p. 32.-Ter' ma gant, a boisterous, brawling woman.- HEROD: there were four persons of this name, all of whom are mentioned in the New Testament. The Herod who sent out and slew all the children in Bethlehem [Matthew, chap. 2. Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor. Suit the action to the word; the word to the action; with this special observance that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature: for any thing so over-done is from the purpose of playing; whose end, both at the first and now, was, and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature;-to show virtue her own feature; scorn her own image; and the very age and body of the time, his form and pressure. Now this, overdone or come tardy off, though it make the unskillful laugh, can not but make the judicious grieve; the censure of which one, must, in your allowance, o'erweigh a whole theater of others. Oh! there be players, that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly, not to speak it profanely, that, neither having the accent of Christians, nor the gait of Christian, pagan, or man, have so strutted and bellowed, that I have thought some of nature's journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably! SHAKSPEARE. WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE, one of the greatest of all poets, was born at Stratfordon-Avon, Warwick county, England, in April, 1564. His father, JOHN SHAKSPEARE, a woolcomber or glover, rose to be high bailiff and chief alderman of Stratford. William is supposed to have received his early education at the grammar-school in his native town. We have no trace how he was employed between his school-days and manhood. Some hold that he was an attorney's clerk. Doubtless he was a hard, thougn perhaps an irregular student. He married ANNE HATHAWAY in 1582, and soon after became connected with the Blackfriar's Theater, in London, to which city he removed in 1586 or 1587. Two years subsequent he was a joint proprietor of that theater, with four others below him in the list. Though we know nothing of the date of his first play, he had most probably begun to write long before he left Stratford. Of his thirtyseven plays, the existence of thirty-one is defined by contemporary records. He became rich in the theaters, with which he ceased to be connected about 1609. He had previously purchased the principal house in his native town, where he ii. v. 16] was Herod the Great, king of the Jews. Herod that beheaded John the Baptist [Mark vi. 27] was Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great. Herod who persecuted the Christians [Acts xii. 20] was Herod Agrippa, grandson of Herod the Great, and nephew of Herod Antipas. The last of the four was Herod Agrippa II. [Acts xxv. xxvi.]. before whom Paul pleaded, and "almost persuaded to be a Christian." All of these noted characters were men of cruelty and blood, and par ticularly Herod the Great. To "out-herod Herod' is to surpass Herod in his enormities, and Shakspeare uses this strong language to express his abhorrence of the style of speaking which he condemns. passed the residue of his life, and died in April, 1616. We can only refer students that wish to know more of this great poet, to his writings, an extended description of which is rendered unnecessary by the selection immediately preceding the above. It is not too much to say, with JEFFREY, that he is "more full of wisdom and ridicule and sagacity than all the moralists and satirists that ever existed-he is more wild, airy, and inventive, and more pathetic and fantastic, than all the poets of all regions and ages of the world; and has all those elements so happily mixed up in him, and bears his high faculties so temperately, that the most severe reader cannot complain of him for want of strength or of reason, nor the most sensitive for defect of ornament or ingenuity. Every thing in him is in unmeasured abundance and unequaled perfection; but every thing so balanced and kept in subordination, as not to jostle, or disturb, or take the place of another. The most exquisite poetical couceptions, images, and descriptions are given with such brevity, and introduced with such skill, as merely to adorn, without loading the sense they accompany. Although his sails are purple and perfumed, and his prow of beaten gold, they waft him on his voyage, not less, but more rapidly and directly, than if they had been composed of baser materials. All his excellencies, like those of nature herself, are thrown out together; and, instead of interfering with, support and recommend each other. His flowers are not tied up in garlands, nor his fruits crushed into baskets, but spring living from the soil, in all the dew and freshness of youth; while the graceful foliage in which they lurk, and the ample branches, the rough and vigorous stem, and the wide-spreading roots on which they depend, are present along with them, and share, in their places, the equal care of their creator." 111. CARDINAL WOLSEY, ON BEING CAST OFF BY KING HENRY VIII. 1. JAY, then, farewell, NAY I have touch'd the highest point of all my greatness; And, from that full meridian of my glory, I haste now to my setting: I shall fall 'THOMAS WOLSEY, well known in history as Cardinal Wolsey, was born at Ipswich, England, in 1471. He obtained an excellent education, and a brilliant student reputation at Magdalen College, Oxford. The turning point in his career was his appointment as one of the chap lains of Henry VII. He exercised an extraordinary influence over Henry VIII. in the early part of his reign. He became king's almoner, after which preferment flowed in upon him. Possessed of lucrative livings in England and France, in 1514 he was made bishop of Lincoln, in 1515 cardinal, the next year legate a Latere, a commission that made him virtually pope of England, and almost at the same time he received the high ministerial and judicial office of lord chancellor. He was defeated in his chief aspiration, to become pope of Rome. His overthrow was caused by his unwillingness to become the king's champion through his entire course, when HENRY was divorced from the sister of Charles Like a bright exhalation in the evening, So farewell to the little good you bear me. 4. Cromwell,' I did not think to shed a tear In all my miseries; but thou hast forced me, V., of Spain. He died in the abbey of Leicester, on the 28th of Novem ber, 1530. SHAKSPEARE gives his qualities and defects with matchless truth and beauty, as follows: "He was a scholar, and a ripe and good one; But to those men that sought him, sweet as summer. And though he was unsatisfied in getting (Which was a sin), yet in bestowing, madam, He was most princely." THOMAS CROMWELL, a statesman and adherent of Wolsey, and after. ward of Henry VIII., beheaded in 1510. Out of thy honest truth, to play the woman. Let's dry our eyes: and thus far hear me, Cromwell; And sleep in dull cold marble, where no mention Of me must more be heard,—say, then, I taught thee,- Love thyself last; cherish those hearts that hate thee,- Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace, To silence envious tongues. Be just, and fear not. Thy God's, and truth's: then, if thou fall'st, O Cromwell, There, take an inventory of all I have, To the last penny; 'tis the king's: my robe, I dare now call mine own. O, Cromwell, Cromwell! I served my king, he would not, in mine age, SHAKSPEARE. 112. NATIONAL SONG. E sons of Columbia, who bravely have fought descended, sires had May you long taste the blessings your valor has bought, And your sons reap the soil which their fathers defended. Mid the reign of mild Peace may your nation increase, See Biographical Sketch, p. 848. |