critic, but a nobly-gifted and pure-minded man, speaking of these writers, says, that "not only their manners, but their natures were inverted;" that "nothing remained with them of the dignity of poet, but the abused name;" and that "especially in dramatic, or, as they termed it, stage poetry, nothing but ribaldry, profanation, blasphemy, all license of offence both to God and man," were practised. Again he characterizes their productions as "miscelline interludes, wherein nothing was uttered but the filth of the time; and with such impropriety of phrase, such plenty of solecisms, such dearth of sense, so bold prolepses, so racked metaphors, with brothelry able to corrupt the ear of a pagan, and blasphemy to turn the blood of a Christian to water." This fierce, scorching eloquence of noble old Ben, is doubtless somewhat extravagant; but the truth is, his feelings had been stretched on the rack by their triumphant licentiousness; and if it seem strange that virtue should have charged his heavy artillery with such loads of fiery indignation, we should recollect that she had been outraged and exasperated by no less a crime than the desecration of art and the prostitution of genius. That he waxed furious at seeing genius thus developed only to be destroyed, and, like funeral torches, at once consuming itself and lighting others to death, is creditable alike to his mind and his morals. That this loathsome accumulation of rubbish and offal was altogether without redeeming elements, is not to be supposed. The monstrous brood of a race of Titans, these productions betrayed at least a giant strength, far preferable indeed of itself to the creeping effeminacy, the frozen rhetoric, and the apish etiquette of a much later age. Though the offspring of genius run mad, they were, nevertheless, the offspring of genius; and the divinity that always stirs within genius was sure sometimes to speak out through them. Sparks of celestial fire dwelt in them, but so buried beneath cartloads of ashes and dirt, as to be hopelessly hidden from the general eye. Writers pandering to the passions of the multitude for bread or for noise, and trusting to the inexhaustible abundance of their stores, stopped not to assoil the finer elements of the baser alloy that encumbered them. In short, the English stage presented but a prodigious overgrowth of loathsome and poisonous weeds, whose rankness served but to approve the richness and raciness of the soil; and the gifted eye had not yet come, which was to detect and rescue those numerous herbs of heavenly virtues that redeemed the crop from utter worthlessness. That originality pervaded, or rather, constituted, the entire growth, probably need not be said; but it was originality divorced from excellence; without art, or order, or law. Nay, they were obliged to be original, for it is not in the nature of the human mind long to preserve prototypes for such monstrous creations; so that if their like ever existed before, they could not possibly have outlived the time that produced them. Genius, unwilling to be instructed by classical models, yet unable to attain excellence without such instruction; genius struggling through manifold and manifest obstructions of ignorance and depravity; genius huddling together a few scenes, peopled with strong but crude conceptions, and filled with low, grovelling humour, and truculent, stormful bombast, mixed with occasional bursts of the noblest poetry, and winding up in pell-mell confusion, gave to a clapping and shouting mob-audience a chaos utterly incapable of a catastrophe. Such, substantially, appears to have been the condition of the English stage, when Shakspeare entered the theatre. It was out of this dark, pestiferous, and lethiferous imbroglio of earth and heaven, of dirt and divinity, that the myriad-minded genius of England was to create the bright, breathing, blossoming world of a national drama, the finest and noblest ever seen. At the time of which I am speaking, it was customary for the playwrights, acting separately or conjointly, to get up rifaccimentos of these old plays. In this way, neglected stock-copies, as they were called, after having been justly consigned to oblivion, were drawn out from the obscurity of the theatrical wardrobe, and came under the soft pencillings or sharp prunings of some of the greatest names on the roll of English literature. Let us imagine Shakspeare, utterly unconscious of his yet slumbering powers, and merely pursuing his managerial duties or interests, bending over the dusty manuscript of one of these wretched performances. Under the impulse of his first creative transport, seizing the pen, he hurries whole scenes into deepest night, and proceeds to replace them with his own intense, burning conceptions. Under his pencil, pregnant with celestial hues, the canvas of the fable before him, cleared of its wretched daubs, becomes almost divine; and the genius of poesy, hovering round his movements, "Adds the gleam, The light that never was on sea or land, That happy hour was the obscure birth of his immortality. Without any throes of labour, or flutterings of vanity, or congratulations of friends, he meekly and quietly ushered into being the first fruits of his genius. Hitherto English literature had no Shakspeare, and was poor; henceforth it has a Shakspeare, and is unspeakably rich. Had not Shakspeare's creative faculties been thus induced to brood over this chaotic heap of materials, until the mass became alive with the divinity issuing from him, his powers might have remained unknown both to himself and to the world. Engrossed in his theatrical labours, regardless of fame, and ignorant of his powers, he probably had little time, and less inclination, and no encouragement, to engage in the inventing of fables and the constructing of plots. Without the artist's hope, he was therefore without the artist's ambition; and probably had not presumed or suspected there was virtue enough in his pencil to pay the weaving of the canvas. To my mind, there is nothing in Shakspeare's character more admirable than that, without any of the modern cant about the artist's mission, as if this ought to exempt him from the ordinary cares and concerns of life; never mistaking the suggestions of vanity for the inspirations of genius, nor fancying himself honored by Heaven with any extraordinary messages to mankind, nor fearing lest he should fall below the work whereunto he was sent ;-thus nursing pride under an affectation of duty, and pleading conscience in behalf of conceit, and seeking, or sneaking, for some sphere commensurate with his great gifts ;-but acting as if on purpose to exemplify, that "wisdom is ofttimes nearer when we stoop than when we soar," he should have poured forth all the glory of his genius in striving simply to gain an honest and an honorable livelihood. How many of those foul, misshapen, monstrous forms he drew forth from their dark prison-house, and moulded into the beauty, and animated with the breath of his genius, cannot be ascertained. Traces of his inimitable hand are perceptible in many plays published under the names of contemporary dramatists; several of those published in his own name, are known to have been regenerations of pre-existing stock-copies; and some which drew vitality from his embraces perished in the subsequent wreck of theatrical wealth. At the glance of his mind, the ready-made scene became the very sphere of humanity; and all the persons of the drama, together with their appropriate surroundings, came trotting from his imagination, seemingly of their own accord, and as if by the express ordering of nature herself. Viewing an old fable or play with the prophetic eye of genius, he at once saw all that it had, and all that it wanted; measured its utmost capabilities, and supplied its utmost demands. Not venturing, perhaps, to undertake the drudgery, he almost unconsciously achieved the divinity, of his art. With the skeleton of a drama before him, which another could furnish as well, he could clothe it with flesh and inform it with life, which none could furnish but himself. Its characterless personages he could endow with individuality; its wooden faces he could transfigure into faces of flesh and blood, bursting with expression and life; its sleepy dialogue he could electrify with passion, and melt its frozen numbers into liquid music : scarifying its tumidities, and clip |