along. His clowns, without which character there was hardly any play writ in that time, are all very entertaining: And, I believe, Thersites in Troilus and Cressida, and Apemantus in Timon, will be allow'd to be master-pieces of ill-nature, and fatyrical snarling. To these I might add, that incomparable character of Shylock the Jew, in The Merchant of Venice; but tho' we have feen that play receiv'd and acted as a Comedy, and the part of the Jew perform'd by an excellent Comedian, yet I cannot but think it was design'd tragically by the Author. There appears in it such a deadly spirit of revenge, such a savage fierceness and fellness, and such a bloody designation of cruelty and mischief, as cannot agree either with the style or characters of Comedy. The Play it felf, take it all together, seems to me to be one of the most finish'd of any of Shakespear's. The tale indeed, in that part relating to the caskets, and the extravagant and unusual kind of bond given by Antonio, is too much remov'd from the rules of probability: But taking the fact for granted, we must allow it to be very beautifully written. There is fomething in the friendship of Antonio to Baffanio very great, generous and tender. The whole fourth act (fuppofing, as I faid, the fact to be probable) is extremely fine. But there are two passages that deserve a particular notice. The first is, what Portia says in praise of mercy, and the other on the power of musick. The melancholy of Jaques, in As you like it, as is fingular and odd as it is diverting. And if what Horace fays

Difficile eft proprie communia dicere,

'twill be a hard task for any one to go beyond him in the description of the several degrees and

ages of man's life, tho' the thought be old, and common enough.

८

All the world's a Stage,

And all the men and women meerly Players;
They have their Exits and their Entrances,
And one man in his time plays many Parts,
His Acts being seven ages. First the Infant
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms :
And then, the whining School-boy with his Satchel,
And shining morning-face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the Lover
Sighing like furnace, with a woful ballad
Made to his Mistress' eye-brow. Then a Scldier
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the Pard,
Jealous in honour, Sudden, quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble Reputation

Ev'n in the canon's mouth. And then the Justice
In fair round belly, with good capon lin'd,
With eyes fevere, and beard of formal cut,
Full of wife saws and modern instances;
And so he plays bis part. The fixth age shifts
Into the lean and flipper'd Pantaloon,
With fpectacles on nose, and pouch on fide;
His youthful hose, well fav'd, a world too wide
For bis shrunk shank; and bis big manly voice
Turning again tow'rd childish treble pipes,
And whistles in his found. Last Scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful History,
Is second childishness and meer oblivion,

Sans teeth, Sans eyes, sans taste, sans ev'ry thing.

His Images are indeed every where so lively, that the thing he would represent stands full before you, and you possess every part of it. I will venture to point out one more, which is, I think, as strong and as uncommon as any thing I ever saw; 'tis an image of Patience. Speaking of a maid in love, he says,

She never told her love,

But let concealment, like a worm i' th' bud,
Feed on her damask cheek: She pin'd in thought,
And fate like Patience on a monument,
Smiling at Grief.

What an Image is here given! and what a task would it have been for the greatest masters of Greece and Rome to have express'd the paffions design'd by this sketch of Statuary? The style of his Comedy is, in general, natural to the characters, and easy in it felf; and the wit most commonly sprightly and pleasing, except in those places where he runs into dogrel rhymes, as in The Comedy of Errors, and some other plays. As for his jingling sometimes, and playing upon words, it was the common vice of the age he liv'd in: And if we find it in the Pulpit, made use of as an ornament to the Sermons of fome of the gravest divines of those times; perhaps it may not be thought too light for the Stage.

But certainly the greatness of this Author's genius do's no where so much appear, as where he gives his imagination an entire loose, and raises his fancy to a flight above mankind and the limits of the visible world. Such are his attempts in The Tempest, Midsummer Night's Dream, Macbeth, and Hamlet. Of these, The Tempest, however it comes to be plac'd the first by the publishers of his works, can never have been the first written by him: It seems to me as perfect in its kind, as almost any thing we have of his. One may observe, that the Unities are kept here, with an exactness

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exaaness uncommon to the liberties of his writing: tho' that was what, I suppose, he valu'd himself least upon, since his excellencies were all of another kind. I am very sensible that he do's, in this play, depart too much from that likeness to truth which ought to be observ'd in these sort of writings; yet he do's it so very finely that one is easily drawn in to have more faith for his fake, than reason does well allow of. His Magick has something in it very folemn and very poetical: And that extravagant character of Caliban is mighty well sustain'd, shews a wonderful invention in the Author, who could strike out such a particular wild image, and is certainly one of the finest and most uncommon Grotesques that was ever seen. The observation, which I have been inform'd * three very great men concurr'd in making upon this part, was extremely just. That Shakespear had not only found out a new Character in his Caliban, but had also devis'd and adapted a new manner of Language for that Character.

It is the fame magick that raises the Fairies in Midsummer Night's Dream, the Witches in Mackbeth, and the Ghost in Hamlet, with thoughts and language so proper to the parts they sustain, and so peculiar to the talent of this Writer. But of the two last of these Plays I shall have occafion to take notice, among the Tragedies of Mr. Shakespear. If one undertook to examine the greatest part of these by those rules which are establish'd by Aristotle, and taken from the model of the Grecian Stage, it would be no very hard task to find a great many faults: But as Shakespear liv'd under a kind of mere light of nature, and had never been made acquainted with the regularity of those written precepts, so it would be hard to VOL. I. judge

* Ld. Falkland, Ld. C. J. Vaughan, and Mr. Selden,

judge him by a law he knew nothing of. We are to confider him as a man that liv'd in a state of almost univerfal license and ignorance: there was no establish'd judge, but every one took the liberty to write according to the dictates of his own fancy. When one confiders, that there is not one play before him of a reputation good enough to entitle it to an appearance on the present Stage, it cannot but be a matter of great wonder that he should advance dramatick Poetry so far as he did. The Fable is what is generally plac'd the first, among those that are reckon'd the constituent parts of a Tragick or Heroick Poem; not, perhaps, as it is the most difficult or beautiful, but as it is the first properly to be thought of in the contrivance and course of the whole; and with the Fable ought to be confider'd, the fit Disposition, Order and Conduct of its several parts. As it is not in this province of the Drama that the strength and mastery of Shakespear Jay, so I shall not undertake the tedious and ill-natur'd trouble to point out the several faults he was guilty of in it. His Tales were feldom invented, but rather taken either from true History, or Novels and Romances: And he commonly made ufe of 'em in that order, with those incidents, and that extent of time in which he found 'em in the Authors from whence he borrow'd them. So The Winter's Tale, which is taken from an old book, call'd, The Delectable History of Dorastus and Faunia, contains the space of fixteen or seventeen years, and the Scene is sometimes laid in Bohemia, and fometimes in Sicily, according to the original order of the Story. Almost all his historical Plays comprehend a great length of time, and very different and distinct places: And in his Antony and Cleopatra, the Scene travels over the greatest part of the Roman Empire. But in recompence for

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