AS YOU LIKE IT. We now approach another of the plays in which the genius of Shakespeare appears in its full splendour. It was produced in or before the year 1600; but not long before, since it is not mentioned by Meres in 1598. We know that it existed in 1600 only by a slight and irregular notice of it on the books of the Company of Stationers. We have no reason to think that it was then printed. At least no edition is known of it before it appeared in the folio of 1623; so that an editor, in settling the text of this play, has neither the assistance nor the perplexity which the various readings of the quartos give him. The text has come down to us in a state of very gross corruption. Sometimes speeches are assigned to the wrong characters. Sometimes the corruptions are in particular passages. There are within the compass of this play at least twenty passages in which the corruption is so decided that no one would for a moment think of defending the reading: and there are about fifteen where the probability of corruption is so great that the most scrupulous editor would think it his duty, if not to substitute a better text, yet to remark in his notes the text as delivered to us, and the text as it probably should be. Yet Mr. Knight tells us "the text of the original folio is, upon the whole, a very correct one." But in spite of all the disadvantages under which this play has come down to us, whether we read the folio with all its errors, or a modern edition, in which those errors are corrected according to the judgment of an editor, it is im possible not to acknowledge this as one of the greatest works of this great master. Its beauties are peculiar to itself. Save a few scenes of Cymbeline, we have nothing resembling it. It stands alone. But nearly the same may be said of all the greater works. Each is unlike every other. We are transported into a scene of wild nature, which is as vividly pourtrayed as is the garden at Belmont, or the weather-fended cell of Prospero. It is the Forest of Arden, that is the woody country about Namur, Leige, and Luxemburgh, watered by the Meuse. Shakespeare has himself fixed the locality, and given to it its geographical boundaries. He did not forsee that, in a distant day, there would be self-called critics, who would deride the idea of fixing his scenes on any actual locality. The Forest of Arden was a favourite spot for the lovers of field sports. In those days there was an air of religion thrown over every thing. In the midst of it was a little chapel, dedicated to Saint Herbert, the patron saint of hunters, with a shrine to which people went on pilgrimage. It would be, perhaps, taking it in too literal a spirit to imagine that this chapel was the chapel in which Sir Oliver was to join Touchstone and Audrey. The name and the district were familiar to Englishmen. When Spenser speaks of it, it is as the "famous Ardeyn.” An incident which occurred about the time when this play first appeared, or soon after, would draw attention to this forest and its wild and solitary grandeur. An English gentleman was pistolled by his guide as he was crossing it, "because, riding in a suit laid thick with gold-lace, he was supposed to have had store of crowns."* We hear much in this play of the oaks of Arden. * Peacham's Truth of our Times, p. 141. He gives no more of the name than "Mr. W. T." and says that he was a friend of his. Under an old oak, whose boughs were mossed with age, And again : Under an oak whose antique root peeps out Upon the brook that brawls along this wood.-Act iv. Sc. 1. A poet may undoubtedly, having formed the conception of a forest, call into existence whatever forest-trees he pleases, as he may invent, if it please him to do so, whole forests and whole islands at once. But Shakespeare, here at least, has chosen to follow nature and to conform to fact; for we happen to receive the information from one of his contemporaries that Arden "for the most part beareth oak."* Shakespeare did not select the Forest of Arden for the scene of his story from amongst other forests of Europe. It is the scene of the incidents in the novel from which he wrought: but he would not value the name the less because it was that of the mother from whom he sprung, and of the forest country of Warwickshire, in and around which his family had been seated for many generations. In any edition of the plays of Shakespeare, which aspires to completeness, the Novel by Lodge, which he has followed in this play, should be printed,† perhaps with some curtail * Googe's Whole Art of Husbandry, p. 95. + This is now of the less importance, as having been lately reprinted by Mr. J. P. Collier, in his extremely useful Shakespeare Library, which ought to accompany every edition of these plays. Mr. Collier has also, in various places, given us contributions for the Life of Lodge, particularly in The Poetical Decameron, a work abounding in valuable information respecting the poets and poetry of the age of Elizabeth. Mr. Singer has also given some account of him in a reprint of his Scillaes Metamorphosis. The foundation of all later notices of him was laid by Wood, in an article in the Athena, to which some very valuable additions were made by Dr. Bliss. There have also appeared some useful notices in The Gentleman's Magazine, N. S. Vol. ii. But there is still something wanting; some better proof than we yet possess that the scholar, lawyer, ment, as we have Arthur Brook's story of Romeus and Juliet appended to the play on that story. It is entitled ROSALYND-Euphues Golden Legacy: found after his death in his Cell at Silexedra, &c., for there is more of it. Till the discovery of this obscure tract, it was supposed that Shakespeare was indebted for the plot of this play to The Coke's Tale of Gamelyn, a story thought by some to be Chaucer's, but of which no printed copy is known to have existed in the time of Shakespeare. Lodge, when he wrote his Rosalynd, appears to have seen it. It was Dr. Zachary Grey who first brought it forward in illustration of Shakespeare. Shakespeare has added Jaques, Touchstone, and Audrey, to the number of the characters. Most of the characters are discriminated; some of them (especially Jaques) having very peculiar traits. They blend harmoniously, and are in strict keeping with the scenery. This play, more than any other particular play, appears to have laid strong hold on the mind of Milton. It appears not only to be prominent in his thoughts when he speaks generally of Shakespeare, but particular passages (more perhaps than he found in any other play) seem to have dwelt upon his memory and influenced his verse. Thus when, in the L'Allegro, he speaks of Shakespeare, it is in these terms, soldier, poet, translator of the classics, and physician, was one and the same Thomas Lodge: And again that this Thomas Lodge, M.D. is the same person with Thomas Lodge, M.D., son of Sir Thomas, who in 1612 placed a monument to the memory of his brother, Nicholas Lodge, in the church of Rolleston, in Nottinghamshire. One Thomas Lodge, M.D., of those times, married the widow of Solomon Aldred. There is a good deal to be cleared up before we can be said to have an authentic account of this remarkable man. His Rosalind will for ever connect his name with Shakespeare, as the circumstance that he is the Alcon of the Colin Clout connects it with Spenser: and he is, moreover, the first, or nearly the first, of English satirists, and the author of many lyrical pieces of great smoothness and beauty. Or sweetest Shakespeare, fancy's child, And when Edward Philips, his nephew, in the Theatrum Poetarum, speaks of Shakespeare under the prompting, as is reasonably thought, of Milton, he says, that "he pleaseth with a certain wild and native elegance." I am not for interpreting these words in too literal a spirit, but when we read them the first play that presents itself is As You Like It. The particular impression which he took from these "Delphic lines" may be traced particularly in that fine ode, one of the first heirs of his invention, the Hymn on Christ's Nativity. Who can doubt that when he wrote Only with speeches fair She wooes the gentle air, To hide her guilty front with innocent snow, that he remembered the words of Jaques, And the big round tears Coursed one another down his innocent nose : and it is hard to say which poet has made the most felicitous application of an epithet, in both connections so peculiar. Shakespeare has The fair, the chaste, the unexpressive she; from which Milton transplants the rare word which is found in it The helmed cherubim, And sworded seraphim, Are seen in glittering ranks with wings displayed, With unexpressive notes to heaven's new-born heir. |