died in manuscript. That of Lady Pembroke, the sister of Sir Philip Sydney, is said to have been the first dramatic composition by a female, in English. It is, however, not quite an original, being an adaptation and translation of a French tragedy, by Garnier. This poet was a scholar, a student and imitator of the Greek and Latin poets, especially of Seneca and Lucan; and, with much bad taste, his verses, of which La Harpe and other critics give specimens, exhibit not a little rhetorical splendour. It was his drama, first printed in 1580, which the Countess of Pembroke translated and published, as "Antonius," in 1592, and in a second edition in 1602. From her rank and her connection with Sir Philip Sydney, it is every way probable that Shakespeare must have read the book; and his retentive memory may have transfused some of its thoughts into his own drama. But the commentators are silent on this point, and I have not been able to procure either Garnier or his noble translator, for the use of this edition. Jodelle, the father of the French stage, had handled the same theme some years before, and there are said to be sixteen French tragedies on this subject, of which the last was the "Cleopatra" of Marmontel-a second-rate and frigid piece, of the old classic taste of the French stage. To these might be added a drama of a far nobler strain, the "Pompee" of Corneille, of which Cleopatra is the heroine, in the days of the "mightiest Julius's" loves not in those of Antony. The poet has, to use his own words, " in the character of Cleopatra preserved so much resemblance to the original as could be ennobled by the most splendid qualities. I have made her (says he) to love only from ambition, so that she appears to have no passion except so far as it may promote her own greatness." This presents but a cold counterpart to the Cleopatra of the two English dramatists. Otherwise the piece is one worthy to be read with Shake speare's Roman dramas; for, with some bad taste and extravagance, it is full of the noblest passages. Caesar's address to the remains of his dead rival Restes d'un demi-dieu, dont a peine je puis, Egaler le grand nom, tout vainquieur que j'en suisaffords a stately counterpart to the manly grief of Aufidius over the fallen Coriolanus, or Autony's lofty eulogy of the dead Brutus. There are several (at least four) Italian tragedies on the story of Antony and Cleopatra. Of these one only belongs to the literature of Europe-the "Cleopatra' of Alfieri. His Cleopatra is a very atrocious womanfalse, ambitious, and sternly bad. His Antony is a brave and credulous hero, much like his ancestor Hercules, who "loves not wisely, but too well." Nothing can be more far apart than the splendour of diction and imagery, the crowded variety of characters and incidents. and the bright, glancing, quickly-varying shades and changes of individual character, of the Shakespearian drama; and the simple plot, the few and strongly marked personages, the hard and unshadowed outline of those few, the pure but often harsh simplicity of style, varied with none of the lesser traits that give personal individuality, in the "Cleopatra" of Alfieri. It is, nevertheless, the work of genius, and has so much of thought. and power, and bitter passion, that he who reads Alfieri and does not feel these merits, is hardly able to do justice to the variety and magnificence of Shakespeare. There are some German plays on the same subject, of which the "Octavia" of Kotzebue is the only one of which I know any thing. It was attempted as a new experiment in dramatic rhythm, which is said by critics not to have been successful. The interest of the piece turns wholly on the mild virtues of Octavia. It has not kept its place on the German stage, nor gained any foothold in the literature of Europe. SOURCE AND MATERIALS OF THE PLOTS OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA, JULIUS CÆSAR, AND CORIOLANUS. THE readers of this edition have seen, from the frequent quotations in the notes, and references to North's Plutarch," how very largely Shakespeare was indebted to that translation for the materials of his three great Roman historical tragedies. The critics and commentators have been so sparing in their accounts of this translation, and one or two of them so unjust, that some account of it will not be out of place here. About the middle of the sixteenth century, Jacques Amyot, a learned French priest, afterwards bishop of Auxerre, translated into French a selection of Plutarch's reading public" of "Lives," which so charmed the " the day, that he was urged to complete the whole; and he was rewarded with rich ecclesiastical preferment, to His scholarship was, perhaps, not enable him to do so. of the highest order, and he was accused, on the strength of some mistakes or oversights in his version, of having translated, not from the Greek original, but from the Italian. This, however, was quite unfounded, whatever assistance, as a moderate Greek scholar, he might have received from prior versions. But though not the most accurate of Grecians, he was a man of taste and talent, had seen much of the world, and (as he observes of Plutarch) had himself" dealt much in weighty affairs of state," had lived among the highest and ablest personages of his times, and, like the old Grecian too, was himself a most delightful narrator of the events and anecdotes of his own country. To this he added a remarkable command of his own language, imperfectly formed and unpolished as it then was; thus giving to his translation, according to the high authority of Racine, a charm and grace which modern elegance and correctness have never equalled. He was thus enabled to fulfil his own idea of the duty of a good translator, which (he says in his preface) is "not merely to render the meaning of his author, but to reflect his very mind and manner." The most remarkable proof of the excellence of this translation is that, though first printed in 1558, it is still regarded as the most agreeable and popular French version of Plutarch, although several others have been since made, with more scholar-like accuracy, by eminent translators. Within the present century, it has been repeatedly reprinted in Paris, following the old French text, and with no other change than the addition of the notes of Brotier, and other modern scholars. In 1579, Sir Thomas North, an English gentleman, translated the whole of Amyot's translation of the Lives" into English, and printed them in one large folio. His English, though now, in the progress of the two languages, become more antiquated than Amyot's French, is as spirited, graceful, and idiomatic, with that same undefinable air of an original, which is so He made his version seldom found in translations. very honestly from the French, without professing any knowledge of the Greek: printing it with the title of "The Lives of the noble Grecians and Romaines, compared together by that grave learned philosopher and historiographer, Plutarke of Cheronea; Translated out of Greek into French by James Amiot, Bishop of Auxerre, etc.; and out of French into English by Sir Thomas North, Knight-1570." It was, of course, not without some errors; and an epigram of the times, preserved by Dr. Farmer, thus assailed it : 64 'Twas Greek at first, that Greek was Latin made, there may be in the sense, North's graceful freedom of "The French critics, with one voice, acknowledge This well-filled folio, of 1250 pages, Shakespeare studied diligently; for, not content with drawing thence the plots and main characters of his Roman tragedies, and embodying its noblest speeches into still nobler verse, he has gathered up from different parts slight and transient tints of character, and entwined them into his dialogue, so as to give a matchless individuality and in vain among the Roman and Grecian heroes of Corvariety to his historic personages, such as we look for neille, of Racine, or of Alfieri, magnificent as are the conceptions and majestic as are the personages of those great poets. Whether Shakespeare went at all beyond his "Plutarch" for such materials, is a question I am not prepared to decide. In CORIOLANUS he certainly did not; for, though Livy had been translated before he wrote that play, he makes use of no fact or circumstance not in Plutarch. Had he consulted Livy, either in the original or in Holland's translation, he would have found several thoughts and expressions quite in unison with the spirit of Plutarch's narrative, and such as he would not willingly have rejected. But he was evidently content with the grand materials he found in Plutarch, and these, without the addition of any other historical accessories such as a writer like Walter Scott would have delighted to interweave with his main narrative-he 65 has enriched with his own observation of life and char acter, and vivified by his creative, life-giving imagination. In JULIUS CESAR and ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA, there are a few allusions and incidents which might induce the belief that he had looked further into Roman history, though Plutarch is never lost from sight. Thus, in JULIUS CESAR, Malone and others have thought that some of his incidents might be traced to Suetonius, whose "Lives of the Caesars" had also been already translated. I am myself inclined to believe that Lucanprobably not directly, but through the imitation of preceding dramatists-had assisted to give to the speeches of Julius Cæsar something of that stately assumption which, little suited as it is to the character of that most unaffected of all great men, is yet singularly like, in taste and style, to the somewhat arrogant self-confidence and swelling declamation of the hero of the "Pharsalia." The English reader will feel this as much as the classical scholar, by comparing the speeches of Shakespeare's Julius with those to the rebellious army and to the pilot, in the fifth book of the 66 Pharsalia," as given in the animated version of Rowe acter. Again, in ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA, the character of Lepidus-a Justice Shallow raised, by accident, to be the "triple pillar of the world"-is brought out with a spirit and distinctness much beyond what Plutarch alone would have suggested, and yet corresponding with the character of the triumvir, as we gather it from other ancient sources. Plutarch gives us but slight and transient notices of Lepidus, and nowhere draws his char Yet Shakespeare's Lepidus is, in conversation and behaviour, precisely that most empty of men, (ir omnium vanissimus, as Paterculus calls him,) which the real triumvir appears to have been actually, from all the notices of him in Greek and Latin authors. Whether the hints in Plutarch, connected with the Poet's practical observation of folly in high places, were suffi cient to expand themselves into this graphic commentary on the adage, "quam parva sapientiá regitur mundus," so historically true in the individual, or whether the Poet in this case, as in some others, was indebted to a prior poet or dramatist on the same subject, or to his desultory reading in some other quarters, it must be left for future and more minute inquirers to decide. Pompey's Statue. |