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But, gentle people, give me aim awhile,-
For nature puts me to a heavy task ;-
Stand all aloof ;-but, uncle, draw you near,
To shed obsequious tears upon this trunk :-
O, take this warm kiss on thy pale cold lips,

[Kisses TITUS. These sorrowful drops upon thy blood-stain'd face, The last true duties of thy noble son!

Mar. Tear for tear, and loving kiss for kiss, Thy brother Marcus tenders on thy lips :

O, were the sum of these that I should pay

Countless and infinite, yet would I pay them!

Luc. Come hither, boy; come, come, and learn of us To melt in showers. Thy grandsire lov'd thee well : Many a time he danc'd thee on his knee,

Sung thee asleep, his loving breast thy pillow;
Many a matter hath he told to thee,

Meet, and agreeing with thine infancy;
In that respect then, like a loving child,

Shed yet some small drops from thy tender spring,
Because kind nature doth require it so :

Friends should associate friends in grief and woe:
Bid him farewell; commit him to the grave;

Do him that kindness, and take leave of him.

Boy. O grandsire, grandsire! even with all my heart 'Would I were dead, so you did live again!O lord, I cannot speak to him for weeping; My tears will choke me, if I ope my mouth. Enter Attendants, with AARON.

1 Rom. You sad Andronici, have done with woes; Give sentence on this execrable wretch,

That hath been breeder of these dire events.

Luc. Set him breast-deep in earth, and famish him ; There let him stand, and rave and cry for food:

If any one relieves or pities him,

For the offence he dies. This is our doom:

Some stay, to see him fasten'd in the earth.

Aar. O, why should wrath be mute, and fury dumb? I am no baby, I, that, with base prayers,

I should repent the evils I have done;

Ten thousand, worse than ever yet I did,
Would I perform, if I might have my will ;
If one good deed in all my life I did,

I do repent it from my very soul.

Luc. Some loving friends convey the emperor hence,
And give him burial in his father's grave:
My father, and Lavinia, shall forthwith
Be closed in our household's monument.
As for that heinous tiger, Tamora,

No funeral rite, nor man in mournful weeds,
No mournful bell shall ring her burial;

But throw her forth to beasts, and birds of prey :
Her life was beast-like, and devoid of pity;
And, being so, shall have like want of pity.
See justice done to Aaron, that damn'd Moor,
By whom our heavy haps had their beginning:
Then, afterwards, to order well the state;
That like events may ne'er it ruinate.

[Exeunt.

[8] There is an authority for ascribing this play to Shakspeare, which I think a very strong one, though not made use of, as I remember, by any of his commentators. It is given to him, among other plays, which are undoubtedly his, in a little book, called Palladis Tamia, or the Second Part of Vit's Commonwealth, written by Francis Meres, Maister of Arts, and printed at London in 1598. The other tragedies, enumerated as his in that book, are King John, Richard the Second, Henry the Fourth, Richard the Third, and Romeo and Juliet. The comedies are, the Midsummer-Night's Dream, the Gentlemen of Verona, the Comedy of Errors, the Love's Labour's Lost, the Love's Labour Won, and the Merchant of Venice. I have given this list, as it serves so far to ascertain the date of these plays; and also, as it contains a notice of a comedy of Shakspeare, the Love's Labour Won, not included in any collection of his works; nor, as far as I know, attributed to him by any other authority. TYRWHITT.

On what principle the editors of the first complete edition of our po et's plays admitted this into their volume, cannot now be ascertained. The most probable reason that can be assigned, is, that he wrote a few lines in it, or gave some assistance to the author, in revising it, or in some other way aided him in bringing it forward on the stage. The tradition mentioned by Ravenscroft in the time of King James II. warrants us in making one or other of these suppositions. "I have been told" (says he in his preface to an alteration of this play published in 1687,)" by some anciently conversant with the stage, that it was not originally his, but brought by a private author to be acted, and he only gave some master touches to one or two of the principal parts or characters.

To enter into a long disquisition to prove this piece not to have been writ. ten by Shakspeare, would be an idle waste of time. To those who are not conversant with his writings, if particular passages were examined, more words would be necessary than the subject is worth; those who are well acquainted with his works, cannot entertain a doubt on the question —I will however mention one mode by which it may be easily ascertained. Let the reader only peruse a few lines of Appius and Virginia, Tancred and Gismund, The Battle of Alcazar, Feronimo, Selimus Emperor of the Turks, The Wounds of Civil War, The Wars of Cyrus, Locrine, Arden of Feversham King Edward I. The Spanish Tragedy, Solyman and Perseda, King Leir, the old King John, or any other of the pieces that were exhibited before the time

of Shakspeare, and he will at once perceive that Titus Andronicus was coined in the same mint.

The testimony of Meres, mentioned in a preceding note, alone remains to be considered. His enumerating this among Shakspeare's plays may be accounted for in the same way in which we may account for its being printed by his fellow-comedians in the first folio edition of his works. Meres was, in 1598, when his book appeared, intimately connected with Drayton, and probably acquainted with some of the dramatic poets of the time, from some or other of whom he might have heard that Shakspeare interested himself about this tragedy, or had written a few lines for the author. The internal evidence furnished by the piece itself, and proving it not to have been the production of Shakspeare, greatly outweighs any single testimony on the other side. Meres might have been misinformed, or inconsiderately have given credit to the rumour of the day. For six of the plays which he has. mentioned, (exclusive of the evidence which the representation of the pieces themselves might have furnished,) he had perhaps no better authority than the whisper of the theatre; for they were not then printed. He could not have been deceived by a title-page, as Dr. Johnson supposes; for Shakspeare's name is not in the title-page of the edition printed in quarto in 1611, and therefore we may conclude, was not in the title-page of that in 1594, of which the other was undoubtedly a re-impression. Had this mean perforinance been the work of Shakspeare, can it be supposed that the booksellers would not have endeavoured to procure a sale for it by stamping his name upon it?

In short, the high antiquity of the piece, its entry on the Stationers' books, and being afterwards printed without the name of our author, its being performed by the servants of Lord Pembroke, &c. the stately march of the, versification, the whole colour of the composition, its resemblance to sev eral of our most ancient dramas, the dissimilitude of the stile from our anthor's undoubted compositions, and the tradition mentioned by Ravenscroft, when some of his contemporaries had not been long dead, (for Lowin and Taylor, two of his fellow-comedians, were alive a few years before the Restoration, and sir William D'Avenant, who had himself written for the stage in 1629, did not die till April 1668;) all these circumstances combined, prove with irresistible force that the play of Titus Andronicus has been erroneously ascribed to Shakspeare. MALONE.

This is one of those plays which I have always thought with the better judges, ought not to be acknowledged in the list of Shakspeare's genuine pieces. And, perhaps, I may give a proof to strengthen this opinion, that may put the matter out of question. Ben Jonson, in the Introduction to his Bartholomew-Fair, which made its first appearance in the year 1614, couples Feronymo and Andronicus together in reputation, and speaks of them as plays then twenty-five or thirty years standing. Consequently Andronicus must have been on the stage before Shakspeare left Warwickshire to come and reside in London; and I never heard it so much as intimated, that he had turned his genius to stage-writing before he associated with the players, and became one of their body. However, that he afterwards introduced it a-new on the stage, with the addition of his own masterly touches, is incontestible, and thence, I presume, grew his title to it. The diction in general, where he has not taken the pains to raise it, is even beneath that of the Three Parts of Henry VI. The story we are to suppose merely fictitious. Andronicus is a sur-name of pure Greek derivation. Tamora is rei-ther mentioned by Ammianus Marcellinus, nor any body else that I can find. Nor had Rome, in the time of her emperors, any war with the Goths that I know of: not till after the translation of the empire, I mean to Byzantium. And yet the scene of our play is laid at Rome, and Saturninus is elec ted to the empire at the Capitol. THEOBALD.

All the editors and critics agree with Mr. Theobald in supposing this play spurious. I see no reason for differing from them; for the colour of the stile is wholly different from that of the other plays, and there is an attempt at regular versification, and artificial closes, not always inelegant, yet seldom pleasing. The barbarity of the spectacles, and the general massacre,

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which are here exhibited, can scarcely be conceived tolerable to any audience; yet we are told by Jonson, that they were not only borne but praised. That Shakspeare wrote any part, though Theobald declares it incontestible, I see no reason for believing.

The testimony, by which it is ascribed to Shakspeare, is by no means equal to the argument against its authenticity, arising from the total difference of conduct, language, and sentiments, by which it stands apart from all the rest Meres had probably no other evidence than that of a títle-page, which, though in our time it be sufficient, was then of no great authority; for all the plays which were rejected by the first collectors of Shakspeare's works, and admitted in later editions, and again rejected by the critical editors, had Shakspeare's name on the title, as we must suppose, by the fraudulence of the printers, who, while there were yet no gazettes, nor advertisements, nor any means of circulating literary intelligence, could usurp at pleasure any celebrated name. Nor had Shakspeare any interest in detecting the imposture, as none of his fame or profit was produced by the press.

The chronology of this play does not prove it not to be Shakspeare's. If it had been written twenty-five years, in 1614, it might have been written when Shakspeare was twenty-five years old. When he left Warwickshire I know not, but at the age of twenty-five it was rather too late to fly for deer-stealing.

Ravenscroft, who in the reign of James II. revised this play, and restored it to the stage, tells us, in his preface, from a theatrical tradition, I suppose, which in his time might be of sufficient authority, that this play was touched in different parts by Shakspeare, but written by some other poet. I do not find Shakspeare's touches very discernible. JOHNSON.

I agree with such of the commentators as think that Shakspeare had no hand in this abominable tragedy; and consider the correctness with which it is printed, as a kind of collateral proof that he had not. The genuine works of Shakspeare have been handed down to us in a more depraved state than those of any other contemporary writer; which was partly owing to the obscurity of his hand writing, which appears to have been scarcely leg. ible, and partly to his total neglect of them when committed to the press. And it is not to be supposed, that he should have taken more pains about the publication of this horrid performance, than he did in that of his noblest productions. M. MASON.

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