stone is the witty fool, and Rosalind one of the women pointed at by Gifford for their profanity. Corin is a natural philosopher; a priest is introduced to be ridiculed.

The usual freedoms are taken with Scripture. Our author must ever had it uppermost in his thoughts, so many speeches are pointed with it. Respecting divorce, he is rather Miltonic. It is in this play that we find Shakspere's tribute to the memory of Marlowe.

The famous 'seven ages' conclude without a single reference to religion.

Critics have wondered that our author should have neglected the fine opportunity of putting us in possession of the arguments with which the Duke was converted. How little they had profited by the study of this play! Shakspere had another moral to enforce. Jaques continues to the end the materialist of As You Like It.

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.

Marriage and irreverence seem to be the Much Adoes of this play. Chiefly is it a covert satire upon the serious of the times in which it was produced, who made so much ado about the licences of the stage, and the levities of our author.

Profane allusions are defended under the name of 'old ends,' which is the title Richard III. gives to his quotations from Scripture.

We have a scandalous dialogue between Antonio and Leonato upon curst women,' 'curst cows,' and 'apes in hell,' and a projected visit of Beatrice to the devil.' 'Warburton, in order to support the poet's seriousness, throws this into the margin, remarking, All this impious nonsense thrown to the bottom is the players, and foisted in without rhyme or reason.' But Johnson, more candid and honest, says, 'Warburton puts them in the margin. They do not indeed deserve so honourable a place. Yet, I am afraid they are too much in the manner of our author, who is sometimes trying to purchase merriment at too dear a rate.' We need not ask how does this manner of our author,' to which a critic, so unwilling (being a Christian) as Johnson, confesses, comport with that reverence with which we are called upon to endow Shakspere.

Plainly did our bard anticipate, or reply, to the unavoidable scruples of the religious, to the profane witticisms of his plays; and with archness begs it to be thought, that he 'fears God, howsoever it seems not in him, by some large jests he will make.' Both these latter things are indeed true. The fear of God, indeed, does not seem in him,' and the 'large jests' he certainly makes.

The sapient Dogberry is the natural fool of the play. He makes God a good man,' and writes it down that people 'hope they serve him.' The polished raillery of Beatrice and Benedict is relieved by the profane simplicity of Dogberry and Verges. Steevens may be added to Warburton as condemning the profanity of this play.

THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR.

The reader will know what to expect in the way of sedateness and seriousness, when he is informed that the knight of the ample paunch is the hero of this play. Campbell has supposed this performance to be the successor of Hamlet. We find a variation of a distinguished idea there. Hamlet thought there was a divinity in the ends of men; Falstaff thinks there is a divinity in odd numbers.'

Women, according to the sentiment of the present age, are more religious than men; but according to Gifford, and according to fact, this was not the idea which Shakspere had of the nature of the female character. The Merry Wives excel in the merriment they make with heaven.

This laxity of wit, which in the text we have pointed out, is allowed specially in this play not to be necessary to character. It plainly originated in the taste of the author ; and it seems likely to have been for the better security of this diversion that he kept his effusions from publication.

We find that worthy personage, Pistol, representing himself as a 'raven' whom the Lord would feed, but whose faith is of so unsettled a nature, that he picks pockets when he should rely upon Providence. This is a fair example of the idle piety of all these worthies.

Mrs. Quickly has a servant whose worse fault is that he is given to prayers;' and Mrs. Page advises Mrs. Ford to 'dispense with such a trifle as going to hell for an eternal

moment or so.' Mrs. Quickly is so spiritually diplomatic, as to consider that at the court of heaven the bonus of a little devotion would procure a serviceable connivance at the debauchery of Falstaff.

But all this is less astonishing than the courtesy of critics towards this assemblage of levities. Mr. Knight especially has been so condescending as to discover 'deep satire' in it. We try in vain to compass in imagination the wonder of mankind when they shall find the plain infidelity of Diderot and Paine to be after all but 'deep satire'-which they assuredly will, should ever Mr. Knight undertake the editorship of the 'Religieuse,' or the 'Age of Reason.' Nowhere else is the equal to be found of the levity of the Merry Wives.

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It is a significant fact, that the irreverent passages of this play were after additions of Shakspere.

TWELFTH NIGHT; OR, WHAT YOU WILL.

How far the Twelfth Night is from proving an exception, in point of irreligious philosophy, from any we have examined, is evidenced from the fact that it drew from Johnson the candid regret, that 'Shakspere, in so many passages, ventured so near profaneness.' Yet by some this was supposed to be Shakspere's last work. Knight, by arguing against it from the supposition that Shakspere was employed on more serious subjects, is obliged thereby to admit, that at one time of life he was not reverentially employed.

This play appears to have been designed for the amusement of the legal fraternity of the Temple, and no man better than our author could congenially accommodate the free tastes of that body.

The Clown and Olivia in the Twelfth Night re-enact the parts of the Clown and Countess in a former play. Take one of many instances. It is the hackneyed reproach of the infidel, that if the pious are so sure of future bliss they would never mourn for the dead, who must be better off. Olivia has lost her brother, and declares

I know his soul is in heaven, fool.

To which the Clown answers

The more fool you, madonna, to mourn for your brother's soul being in heaven.

All the world knows the party who relish these jests, and the school in which they originate.

Fate is the Providence of the Twelfth Night.

TROILUS AND CRESSIDA.

This play, though of antique plot, displays the propensity of our poet to theological satire. It abounds in references to the times of Shakspere, and religious parties then notorious. These animadversions are of the usual depreciatory species.

Thersites is impious throughout. The prologue tells us that 'good or bad is but the chance of war,' and this sentiment of necessity is general in the play. It is Time that friends or ends,' says Pandarus. This hero has a new oath -he swears by 'God's lid.'

Some Puritan is satirised in person in this play-a proof that Shakspere did not hesitate to attack such as were obnoxious to him, on account of their religious scruples respecting the theatre. Knight is evidently wrong in supposing it to be Prynne, who appears not to have written his 'Histrio-Mastix' till twenty years after Shakspere's death. We reject the instance in our favour cited by so eminent an opponent of our views as Knight, when the instance is not tenable as we have no wish to make out a case, but to make out the truth.

We find frequent touches of Shaksperian morality. His philosophy went to paint morality as independent of religious considerations. With him the laws of morality were written with sufficient plainness on the tablets of the human heart. It was a moral rather than the divine government which he delighted to illustrate.

As one instance of the manner in which Shakspere engrafted his readings of Scripture on every theme, ancient or modern, we may refer to the genealogy of love given by Paris. It is a parody from the first chapter of Matthew, with the words of Jesus in the mouth of Pandarus-'Love is a generation of vipers.'

KING HENRY VIII.

This play affords curious negative evidence of the antireligious idiosyncracy of our author, who chooses to remain

neutral in depicting two great religious parties, a course hard to be followed, and only to be expected in David Hume, or the historian of Ferney.

King Henry VIII., in spite of Shakspere's denial of it, is disgraced by an indecency which has always been charged upon scoffers.

We find many touches of religion in this performanceparticularly the dying speech of Queen Katherine, which is a masterly proof of what our poet might oftener have done, had his taste lain that way.

As usual, we find the priestly character at some discount in point of piety. Wolsey, though great as a man, is little as a divine. Without necessity of character to justify it, our poet makes him irreligious in his early career, and we have only quasi piety at his fall. Wolsey speaks of the death of Dr. Pace as the clown to Olivia, and says, 'he was a fool for being virtuous.'

So little favour is bestowed upon the characters of God's professed servants, that when Queen Katherine sees two of them, she is made to say, 'they speak like honest men, pray God they prove so.'

Religion sits awkwardly on the lips of the rapacious but fallen cardinal. He uses it sometimes in bitter irony, sometimes to conceal his impotent malice. He clings to worldly grandeur to the last, and dies when his hopes of success die. While he declares his hopes in heaven to dwell,' the audience are made to see how reluctant he is to realise them there.

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Our poet is seen further in the natural advantages given to Wolsey over Cranmer. Though in Wolsey ambition, and in Cranmer piety, predominate, yet is there a certain nobility of nature in Wolsey which rises as his fortunes fall; while Cranmer, under the same circumstances, whines and fawns.

In the prologue, Shakspere promises not to be bawdy,' and forthwith is so; in the epilogue, he denies that he has abused the city, which he has just done. This furnishes a general key to our author's religious freedoms. He frequently denies them, which seems to be his way of parrying the charge to which he has just laid himself open. The play seems rather underrated by the critics. Shakspere does