usual thing in these days to set a great name to a book or books, by sharking booksellers, or snivelling writers, to get bread." MALONE. P. 12-in a late collection of poems.] Mr. Rowe did not go beyond A Late Collee tion of Poems, and does not seem to have known that Shakespeare wrote 154 Sonnets, and a poem entitled A Lover's Complaint. MALONE. P. 12. are really tragedies, with a run or mixture of comedy amongst them.] The critics who renounce tragi-comedy as barbarous, I fear, speak more from notions which they have formed in their closets, than any well-built theory deduced from experience of what pleases or displeases, which ought to be the foundation of all rules. Even supposing there is no affectation in this refinement, and that those critics have really tried and purified their minds till there is no dross remaining, still this can never be the case of a popular audience, to which a dramatic representation is referred. Dryden in one of his prefaces condemns his own conduct in The Spanish Friar; but, says he, I did not write it to please myself, it was given to the public. Here is an involuntary confession that tragi-comedy is more pleasing to the audience: I would ask then, upon what ground it is condemned? This ideal excellence of uniformity rests upon a supposition that we are either more refined, or a higher order of beings than we really are: there is no provision made for what may be called the animal part of our minds. Though we should acknowledge this passion for variety and contrarieties to be the vice of our nature, it is still a propensity which we all feel, and which he who undertakes to divert us must find provision for. We are obliged, it is true, in our pursuit after science, or excellence in any art, to keep our minds steadily fixed for a long continuance; it is a task we impose on ourselves: but I do not wish to task myself in my amusements. If the great object of the theatre is amusement, a dramatic work must possess every means to produce that effect; if it gives instruction by the by, so much its merit is the greater; but that is not its principal object. The ground on which it stands, and which gives it a claim to the protection and encouragement of civilized society, is not because it enforces moral precepts, or gives instruction of any kind; but from the general advantage that it produces, by habituating the mind to find its amuse ment in intellectual pleasures; weaning it from sensuality, and by degrees filing off, smoothing, and polishing, its rugged corners. Sir J. REYNOLDS. P. 13. the same coat of arms which Dugdale, in his Antiquities of that county describes for a family there. There are two coats, I observe, in Dugdale, where three silver fishes are borne in the name of Lucy; and another coat to the monument of Thomas Lucy, son of Sir William Lucy, in which are quartered in four several divisions, twelve little fishes, three in each division, probably luces. This very coat, indeed, seems alluded to in Shallow's giving the dozen white luces; and in Slender's saying he may quarter. THEOBALD. P. 14. but though we have seen that play received and acted as a comedy.] In 1701 Lord Lansdown produced his alteration of The Merchant of Venice, at the theatre in Lincoln's-Inn-Fields, under the title of The Jew of Venice, and expressly calls it a comedy. Shylock was performed by Mr. Dogget. REED. And such was the bad taste of our ancestors that this piece continued to be a stockplay from 1701 to Feb. 14, 1741, when The Merchant of Venice was exhibited for the first time at the theatre in Drury-Lane, and Mr. Macklin made his first appearance in the character of Shylock. MALONE. P. 19. are both concerned in the murder of their husbands,] It does not appear that Hamlet's mother was concerned in the death of her husband. MALONE. P. 21. Many came on horseback to the play.] Plays were at this time performed in the afternoon. "The pollicie of plaies is very necessary, howsoever some shallowbrained censurers (not the deepest searchers into the secrets of government) mightily oppugne them. For whereas the afternoon being the idlest time of the day wherein men that are their own masters (as gentleman of the court, the innes of the court, and a number of captains and soldiers about London) do wholly bestow themselves upon pleasure, and that pleasure they divide (how vertuously it skills not) either in gaming, following of harlots, drinking, or seeing a play, is it not better (since of four extreames all the world cannot keepe them but they will choose one) that they should betake them to the least which is plaies?" Nash's Pierce Pennilesse his Supplication to the Devil, 1592. STEEVENS. Ibid. the waiters that held the horses retained the appellation of Shakespeare's boys.] I cannot dismiss this anecdote without observing that it seems to want every mark of probability. Though Shakespeare quitted Stratford on account of a juvenile irregularity, we have no reason to suppose that he had forfeited the protection of his father who was engaged in a lucrative business, or the love of his wife who had already brought him two children, and was herself the daughter of a substantial yeoman. It is unlikely therefore, when he was beyond the reach of his prosecutor, that he should conceal his plan of life, or place of residence, from those who, if he found himself distressed, could not fail to afford him such supplies as would have set him above the necessity of holding horses for subsistence. Mr. Malone has remarked in his Attempt to ascertain the order in which the Plays of Shakespeare were written, that he might have found an easy introduction to the stage; for Thomas Green, a celebrated comedian of that period, was his townsman, and perhaps his relation. The genius of our author prompted him to write poetry; his connection with a player might have given his productions a dramatic turn; or his own sagacity might have taught him that fame was not incompatible with profit, and that the theatre was an avenue to both. That it was once the general custom to ride'on horse-back to the play, I am likewise yet to learn. The most popular of the theatres were on the Bankside; and we are told by the satirical pamphleteers of that time, that the usual mode of conveyance to these places of amusement, was by water, but not a single writer so much as hints at the custom of riding to them, or at the practice of having horses held during the hours of exhibition. Some allusion to this usage, (if it had existed) must, I think, have been discovered in the course of our researches after contemporary fashions. Let it be remembered too, that we receive this tale on no higher authority than that of Cibber's Lives of the Poets, Vol. I. p. 130. "Sir William Davenant told it to Mr. Betterton, who communicated it to Mr. Rowe," who, according to Dr. Johnson, related it to Mr. Pope. Mr. Rowe (if this intelligence be authentic) seems to have concurred with me in opinion, as he forebore to introduce a circumstance so incredible into his Life of Shakespeare. As to the book which furnishes the anecdote, not the smallest part of it was the composition of Mr. Cibber, being entirely written by a Mr. Shiells, amanuensis to Dr. Johnson, when his Dictionary was preparing for the press. T. Cibber was in the King's Bench, and accepted of ten guineas from the booksellers for leave to prefix his name to the work; and it was purposely so prefixed as to leave the reader in doubt whether himself or his father was the person designed. The foregoing anecdote relative to Cibber's Lives, &c. I received from Dr, Johnson. See, however, the Monthly Review, for December, 1781, p. 409. STEEVENS. Mr. Steevens in one particular is certainly mistaken. To the theatre in Blackfriars I have no doubt that many gentlemen rode in the time of Queen Elizabeth and King James I. From the Strand, Holborn, Bishopsgate Street, &c. where many of the nobility lived, they could indeed go no other way than on foot, or on horseback, or in coaches; and coaches till after the death of Elizabeth were extremely rare. Many of the gentry, therefore, certainly went to that playhouse on horseback. See the proofs, in the Essay above referred to. This, however, will not establish the tradition relative to our author's first employment at the playhouse, which stands on a very slender foundation. MALONE. Mr. Oldys had covered several quires of paper with laborious collections for a regular life of our author. From these I have made the following extracts, which (however trivial) contain the only circumstances that wear the least appearance of novelty or information. "If tradition may be trusted, Shakespeare often baited at the Crown Inn or Tavern, in Oxford, in his journey to and from London. The Landlady was a woman of great beauty and sprightly wit, and her husband, Mr. John Davenant, (afterwards mayor of that city,) a grave melancholy man; who, as well as his wife, used much to delight in Shakespeare's pleasant company. Their son young Will. Davenant (afterwards Sir William) was then a little school-boy in the town, of about seven or eight years old,* and so fond also of Shakespeare, that whenever he heard of his arrival, he would fly from school to see him. One day an old townsman observing the boy running homeward almost out of breath, asked him whither he was posting in that heat and hurry. Ile answered, to see his god-father Shakespeare. There's a good boy, said the other, but have a care that you don't take God's name in vain. This story Mr. Pope told me, at the Earl of Oxford's table, upon occasion of some discourse which arose about Shakespeare's monument then newly erected in Westminster Abbey ;f MALONE. * He was born at Oxford in February, 1605-6. †This monument," says Mr. Granger, was erected in 1741, by the direction of the Earl of Burlington, Dr. Mead, Mr. Pope, and Mr. Martyn, Mr, Fleetwood and and he quoted Mr. Betterton the player for his authority. I answered, that I thought such a story might have enriched the variety of those choice fruits of observation he has presented to us in his preface to the edition he had published of our poet's works. He replied "There might be in the garden of mankind such plants as would seem to pride themselves more in a regular production of their own native fruits, than in having the repute of bearing a richer kind by grafting; and this was the reason he omitted it.* "Old Mr. Bowman the player reported from Sir William Bishop, that some part of Sir John Falstaff's character was drawn from a townsman of Stratford, who either faithlessly broke a contract, or spitefully refused to part with some land for a valuable consideration, adjoining to Shakespeare's, in or near that town.” To these anecdotes I can only add the following: At the conclusion of the advertisement prefixed to Lintot's edition of Shakespeare's Poems, it is said, "That most learned prince and great patron of learning, King James the First, was pleased with his own hand to write an amicable letter to Mr. Shakespeare; which letter, though now lost, remained long in the hands of Sir William D'Avenant, as a credible person now living can testify." Mr. Oldys, in a MS. note to his copy of Fuller's Worthies, observes, that "the story came from the Duke of Buckingham, who had it from Sir William D'Avenant." The late Mr. Thomas Osborne, bookseller, (whose exploits are celebrated by the author of the Dunciad,) being ignorant in what form or language our Paradise Lost was written, employed one of his garretteers to render it from a French translation into English prose. Lest, hereafter, the compositions of Shakespeare should be brought back into their native tongue from the version of Monsieur le Compte de Catuelan, le Tourneur, &c. it may be necessary to observe, that all the following particulars, extracted from the preface of these gentlemen, are as little founded in truth as their description of the ridiculous Jubilee at Stratford, which they have been taught to represent as an affair of general approbation and national concern. They say, that Shakespeare came to London without a plan, and finding himself at the door of a theatre, instinctively stopped there, and offered himself to be a holder of horses :-that he was remarkable for his excellent performance of the Ghost in Hamlet :-that he borrowed nothing from preceding writers-that all on a sudden Mr. Rich gave each of them a benefit towards it, 'from one of Shakespeare's plays. "On the monument is inscribed-amor publicus posuit. Dr. Mead objected to amor publicus, as not occurring in old classical inscriptions; but Mr. Pope and the other gentlenen concerned insisting that it should stand, Dr. Mead yielded the point, saying "Omnia vincit amor, nos et sedamus amori." "This anecdote was communicated by Dr. Lort, late Greek Professor of Cambridge, who had it from Dr. Mead himself." It was recorded at the time in The Gentleman's Magazine for Feb. 1741, by a writer who objects to every part of the inscription, and says it ought to have been, "G. S. centum viginti et quatuor post obitum annis populus plaudens [aut favens} posuit." The monument was opened Jan. 29, 1741. Scheemaker is said to have got 3007. for his work. The performers at each house, much to their honour, performed gratis; and the Dean and Chapter of Westminster took nothing for the ground. The money received by the performance at Drury Lane, amounted to 2001. at Covent Garden to about 100/. These particulars I learn from Oldy's MS. notes on Langbaine. MALONE. Mr. Oldys might have added, that he was the person who suggested to Mr. Pope the singular course, which he pursued in his edition of Shakespeare. "Remember," says Oldys in a MS. note to his copy of Langbaine, article, Shakespeare, "what I observed to my Lord Oxford for Mr. Pope's use, out of Cowley's preface." The observation here alluded to, I believe, is one made by Cowley in his preface, p. 53. edit. 1710, 8vo: "This has been the case with Shakespeare, Fletcher, Jonson, and many others, part of whose poems I should presume to take the boldness to prune and lop away, if the care of replanting them in print did belong to me; neither would I make any scruple to cut off from some the unnecessary young suckers, and from others the old withered branches; for a great wit is no more tied to live in a vast volume, than in a gigantic body; on the contrary it is commonly more vigorous the less space it animates, and as Statius says of little Tydeus,-- ❝------totos infusa per artus "Major in exiguo regnabat corpore virtus." Pope adopted this very unwarrantable idea; striking out from the text of his author whatever he did not like: and Cowley himself has suffered a sort of poetical punishment for having suggested it, the learned Bishop of Worcester [Dr. Hurd] having pruned and lopped away his beautiful luxuriances, as Pope, on Cowley's sug gestion, did those of Shakespeare. MALONE. he left the stage, and returned without eclat into his native country that his monument at Stratford is of copper:-that the courtiers of James I. paid several compliments to him which are still preserved :-that he relieved a widow, who, together with her numerous family, was involved in a ruinous lawsuit:-that his editors have restored many passages in his plays, by the assistance of the manuscripts he left behind him, &c. &c. Let me not, however, forget the justice due to these ingenious Frenchmen, whose skill and fidelity in the execution of their very difficult undertaking, is only exceeded by such a display of candour as would serve to cover the imperfections of much less elegant and judicious writers. STEEVENS. JOHNSON'S PREFACE. P. 29. tragedies to-day, and commedies to-morrow.] Thus, says Downes, the Prompter, p. 22: The tragedy of Romeo and Juliet was made some time after [1662] into a tragi-comedy, by Mr. James Howard, he preserving Romeo and Juliet alive; so that when the tragedy was revived again, 'twas play'd alternately, tragical one day, and tragi-comical another, for several days together." STEEVENS. P. 31.-his comedy to be instinct.] In the rank and order of geniuses it must, I think, be allowed, that the writer of good tragedy is superior. And therefore, I think the opinion, which I am sorry to perceive gains ground, that Shakespeare's chief and predominant talent lay in comedy, tends to lessen the unrivalled excellence of our divine bard. J. WARTON. P. 33. -with those of turbulence, violence, and adventure.] As a further extenuation of Shakespeare's error, it may be urged that he found the Gothic mythology of Fairies already incorporated with Greek and Roman story, by our early translators. Phær and Golding, who first gave us Virgil and Ovid in an English dress, introduce Fairies almost as often as Nymphs are mentioned in these classic authors. Thus Homer, in his 24th Iliad: "In Sypilus--in that place where 'tis said "The goddesse Fairies use to dance about the funeral bed "Of Achelous:-----" Neither are our ancient versifiers less culpable on the score of anachronisms. Under their hands the balista becomes a cannon, and other modern instruments are perpetually substituted for such as were the produce of the remotest ages. It may be added, that in Arthur Hall's version of the fourth Iliad, Juno says to Jupiter; -the time will come that Totnam French shall turn." And in the tenth Book we hear of "The Bastile," " Lemster wooll,” and “The Byble." STEEVENS. P. 35.--unities of time and place.] Mr. Twining, among his judicious remarks on the poetic of Aristotle, observes, that "with respect to the strict unities of time and place, no such rules were imposed on the Greek poets by the critics, or by themselves; nor are imposed on any poet, either by the nature, or the end, of the dramatic imitation itself." Aristotle does not express a single precept concerning unity of place. This supposed restraint originated from the hypercriticism of his French commentators. STEEVENS. P. 37.make the stage a field.] So, in the Epistle Dedicatory to Dryden's Love's Triumphant: "They who will not allow this liberty to a poet, make it a very ridiculous thing, for an audience to suppose themselves sometimes to be in a field, sometimes in a garden, and at other times in a chamber. There are not, indeed, so many absurdities in their supposition, as in ours; but 'tis an original absurdity for the audience to suppose themselves to be in any other place, than in the very theatre in which they sit; which is neither a chamber, nor garden, nor yet a public place of any business but that of the representation." STEEVENS. 1 P. 47. ---we make such prose in common conversation.] Thus, also, Dryden, in the Epistle Dedicatory to his Rival Ladies: "Shakespeare who (with some errors not to be avoided in that age, had, undoubtedly, a larger soul of poesie than ever any of our nation) was the first, who, to shun the pains of continual rhyming, invented that kind of writing which we call blank verse, but the French more properly, prose mesurée; into which the English tongue so naturally slides, that in writing prose 'tis hardly to be avoided." STEEVENS. P. 49. printed without correction of the press.] Much deserved censure has been thrown out on the carelessness of our ancient printers, as well as on the wretched transcripts they obtained from contemporary theatres. Yet I cannot help observing that, even at this instant, should any one undertake to publish a play of Shakespeare from pages of no greater fidelity than such as are issued out for the use of performers, the press would teem with as interpolated and inextricable nonsense as it produced above a century ago. Mr. Colman, who cannot be suspected of ignorance or misrepresentation, in his preface to the last edition of Beaumont and Fletcher, very forcibly styles the prompter's books" the most inaccurate and barbarous of all manuscripts." And well may they deserve that character: for verse, as I am informed, still continues to be transcribed as prose by a set of mercenaries, who in general have neither the advantage of literature or understanding. Foliis tantum ne carmina manda ne turbata volent ludibria, was the request of Virgil's Hero to the Sybil, and should also be the supplication of every dramatic poet to the agents of a prompter. STEEVENS. P. 68. from the bishop of Aleria.] John Andreas. He was secretary to the Vatican Library during the papacies of Paul II. and Sixtus IV. By the former he was employed to superintend such works as were to be multiplied by the new art of printing, at that time brought into Rome. He published Herodotus, Strabo, Livy, Aulus Gellius, &c. His school-fellow, Cardinal de Cusa, procured him the bishopric of Aceia, a province in Corsica; and Paul II. afterwards appointed him to that of Aleria in the same island, where he died in 1493. STEEVENS. THE TEMPEST. P. 119. Play the men.] i. e. act with spirit, behave like men. So, Chapman's ranslation of the second Iliad: "Which doing, thou shalt know what souldiers play the men, Again, in scripture, 2 Sam. x. 12: "Be of good courage, and let us play the men for our people." MALONE. P. 120. bring her to try with main course.] Probably from Hackluyt's Voyages, 1598: "And when the barke had way, we cut the hauser, and so gate the sea to our friend, and tried out all that day with our main course.? MALONE. This phrase occurs also in Smith's Sea Grammar, 1627, 4to. under the article, How to handle a ship in a Storme: "Let us lie at Trie with our maine course; that is, to hale the tacke aboord, the sheat close aft, the boling set up, and the helme tied close aboord." STEEVENS. Ibid. Lay her a-hold, a-hold;] To lay a ship a-hold, is to bring her to lie as near the wind as she can, in order to keep clear of the land, and get her out to sea. STEEVENS. ibid. -set her two courses; off to sea again,] The courses are the main sail and foresail. JOHNSON ibid. merely cheated of our lives] Merely in this place, signifies absolutely; in which sense it is used in Hamlet, Act 1: 66 -Things rank and gross in nature "Possess it merely." STEEVENS. P. 121. full poor cell,] A cell in a great degree of poverty. So, in Antony and Cleopatra: "I am full sorry." STEEVENS. P. 122. that there is no soul---] Thus the old editions read: but this is apparently defective. Mr. Rowe, and after him Dr. Warburton, read--that there is no soul lost, without any notice of the variation. Mr. Theobald substitutes no foil, and Mr. Pope follows him. To come so near the right, and yet to miss it, is unlucky: the author probably wrote no soil, no stain, no spot; for so Ariel tells: "Not a hair perish'd; "On their sustaining garments not a blemish, And Gonzalo, "The rarity of it is, that our garments being drenched in the sea, keep notwithstanding their freshness and glosses." Of this emendation I find that the author of notes on The Tempest had a glimpse, but could not keep it. JOHNSON Such interruptions are not uncommon to Shakespeare. He sometimes begins a sentence, and, before he concludes it, entirely changes its construction, because another, more forcible, occurs. As this change frequently happens in conversation, it may be suffered to pass uncensured in the language of the stage. STEEVENS. VOL. X. N 2 |