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Live here in heaven, and may look on her, But Romeo may not."

commonplace vow of constancy, whilst Julia rushes away in tears ;-he quits Verona for Milan, and has a new love at first sight the We are not wandering from our purpose of instant he sees Silvia. The mode in which contrasting Proteus and Valentine, by showhe sets about betraying his friend, and woo- ing that the character of Valentine is coming his new mistress, is eminently charac-pounded of some of the elements that we teristic of the calculating selfishness of his

nature:

"If I can check my erring love, I will;

If not, to compass her I'll use my skill."

He is of that very numerous class of men who would always be virtuous, if virtue would accomplish their object as well as vice; who prefer truth to lying, when lying is unnecessary;—and who have a law of justice in their own minds, which if they can observe they "will;" but "if not,"”—if | they find themselves poor erring mortals, which they infallibly do,—they think

"Their stars are more in fault than they." This Proteus is a very contemptible fellow, who finally exhibits himself as a ruffian and a coward, and is punished by the heaviest infliction that the generous Valentine could bestow-his forgiveness. Generous, indeed, and most confiding, is our Valentine-a perfect contrast to Proteus. In the first scene he laughs at the passion of Proteus, as if he knew that it was alien to his nature; but, when he has become enamoured himself, with what enthusiasm he proclaims his devotion!

"Why, man, she is mine own; And I as rich in having such a jewel

As twenty seas, if all their sand were pearl." In this passionate admiration we have the germ of Romeo, and so also in the scene where Valentine is banished :

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find in Romeo; for the strong impulses of both these lovers are as much opposed as it is possible to the subtle devices of Proteus. The confiding Valentine goes to his banishment with the cold comfort that Proteus gives him :

"Hope is a lover's staff; walk hence with that." He is compelled to join the outlaws, but he makes conditions with them that exhibit the goodness of his nature; and we hear no more of him till the catastrophe, when his traitorous friend is forgiven with the same confiding generosity that has governed all his intercourse with him. We have little doubt of the incorrect sense in which the

passage is usually received, in which he is supposed to give up Silvia to his false friend -or, at any rate, of its unfinished nature. But it is perfectly natural and probable that he should receive Proteus again into his confidence, upon his declaration of "hearty sorrow," and that he should do so upon principle:

"Who by repentance is not satisfied,

Is nor of heaven, nor earth."

It is, to our minds, quite delightful to find in this, which we consider amongst the earliest of Shakspere's plays, that exhibition of the real Christian spirit of charity which, more or less, pervades all his writings; but which, more than any other quality, has made some persons, who deem their own morality as of a higher and purer order, cry out against them, as giving encouragement to evil doers. We shall have frequent occasion to speak of the noble lessons which Shakspere teaches dramatically (and not according to the childish devices of those who would make the dramatist write a "moral" at the end of five acts, upon the approved plan of a Fable in a spelling-book), and we therefore pass over, for the present, those profound critics who say "he has no

serving of pardon, but that it would be inconsistent with the characters of the pardoners that they should exercise their power with severity. Shakspere lived in an age when the vindictive passions were too frequently let loose by men of all sects and opinions, and much too frequently in the name of that religion which came to teach peace and good will. Is it to be objected to him, then, that wherever he could he asserted the supremacy of charity and mercy;

moral purpose in view."* But there are some who are not quite so pedantically wise as to affirm "he paid no attention to that retributive justice which, when human affairs are rightly understood, pervades them all," but who yet think that Proteus ought to have been at least banished, or sent to the galleys for a few years with the outlaws; that Angelo, in 'Measure for Measure,' should have been hanged; that Leontes, in 'The Winter's Tale,' was not sufficiently punished for his cruel jealousy by sixteen-that he taught men the "quality" of that years of sorrow and repentance ;· that blessed principle which Iachimo, in Cymbeline,' is not treated with poetical justice when Posthumus says,—

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The sole drift of my purpose doth extend
Not a frown further: go release them, Ariel."

Not so thought Shakspere. He, that never
represented crime as virtue, had the largest
pity for the criminal. "He has never var-
nished over wild and bloodthirsty passions
with a pleasing exterior- -never clothed
crime and want of principle with a false
show of greatness of soul:" but, on the
other hand, he has never made the criminal
a monster, and led us to flatter ourselves
that he is not a man. It is as a man, sub-
ject to the same infirmities as all are who
are born of woman, that he represents Pro-
teus, and Iachimo, and other of the lesser
criminals, as receiving pardon upon repent-
ance. It is not so much that they are de-

Lardner's Cyclopædia, Literary and Scientific Men,' vol. ii. p. 128.

Ibid., vol. iii. p. 122.

A. W. Schlegel, Black's trans., vol. ii. p. 137.

"Droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven;"—
that he proclaimed-no doubt to the annoy-
ance of all self-worshippers-that "the web
of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and
ill together;"-and that he asked of those
who would be hard upon the wretched, "Use
every man after his desert, and who shall
'scape whipping?" We may be permitted
to believe that this large toleration had its
influence in an age of racks and gibbets;
and we know not how much of this chari-
table spirit may have come to the aid of the
more authoritative and holier teaching of
the same principle,-forgotten even by the
teachers, but gradually finding its way into
the heart of the multitude,-till human
punishments at length were compelled to be
subservient to other influences than those of
the angry passions, and the laws could only
dare to ask for justice, but not for ven-

geance.

The generous, confiding, courageous, and forgiving spirit of Valentine are well appreciated by the Duke-"Thou art a gentleman." In this praise are included all the virtues which Shakspere desired to represent in the character of Valentine ;-the absence of which virtues he has also indicated in the selfish Proteus. The Duke adds, "and well derived." "Thou art a gentleman," in thy spirit". valled merit ;" and thou hast the honours of -a gentleman in "thy unriancestry-the further advantage of honourable progenitors.

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We have dwelt so long upon the contrasts in the characters of the "two gentlemen," Proteus and Valentine, that we may appear

Valentine and her hatred for himself; nor is there, in any of the slight distinctions which we have pointed out, any real inferiority in her character to that of Julia. She is only more under the influence of circumstances. Julia, by her decision, subdues the circumstances of her situation to her own will.

to have forgotten our purpose of also tracing | she, indeed, spiritedly avows her love for the distinctive peculiarities of the two ladies "beloved." Julia, in the sweetest feminine tenderness, is entirely worthy of the poet of Juliet and Imogen. Amidst her deep and sustaining love she has all the playfulness that belongs to the true woman. When she receives the letter of Proteus, the struggle between her affected indifference and her real disposition to cherish a deep affection is exceedingly pretty. Then comes, and very quickly, the development of the change which real love works,—the plighting her troth with Proteus,-the sorrow for his absence, the flight to him,-the grief for his perjury, the forgiveness. How full of heart and gentleness is all her conduct after she has discovered the inconstancy of Proteus! How beautiful an absence is there of all upbraiding either of her faithless lover or of his new mistress! Of the one she says,

"Because I love him, I must pity him;"

the other she describes, without a touch of

envy, as

"A virtuous gentlewoman, mild, and beautiful." Silvia is a character of much less intensity of feeling. She plays with her accepted lover as with a toy given to her for her amusement; she delights in a contest of words between him and his rival Thurio; she avows she is betrothed to Valentine, when she reproves Proteus for his perfidy, but she allows Proteus to send for her picture, which is, at least, not the act of one who strongly felt and resented his treachery to his friend. When she resolves to escape from her prison, she does not go forth to danger and difficulty with the spirit of Julia,-"a true-devoted pilgrim," but she places herself under the protection of Eglamour ("a very perfect gentle knight," as Chaucer would have called him)

"For the ways are dangerous to pass."

She
goes to her banished lover, but she flies
from her father-

"To keep me from a most unholy match." When she encounters Proteus in the forest,

Turn we now to Speed and Launce, the two "clownish" servants of Valentine and Proteus.

In a note introducing the first scene between Speed and Proteus, Pope says, “This whole scene, like many others in these plays (some of which I believe were written by Shakspere, and others interpolated by the players), is composed of the lowest and most trifling conceits, to be accounted for only by the gross taste of the age he lived in; populo ut placerent. I wish I had authority to leave them out." There are passages in Shakspere which an editor would desire to leave out, if he consulted only the standard of taste in his own age; just as there are passages in Pope which we now consider filthy and corrupting, which the wits and fine ladies of the court of Anne only regarded as playful and piquant. The scenes, however, in which Speed and Launce are prominent,-with the exception of a few obscure allusions, which will not be discovered unless a commentator points them out, and of one piece of plain speaking in Launce, which is refinement itself when compared with the classical works of the Dean of St. Patrick's,—these scenes offer a remarkable instance of the reform which Shakspere was enabled to effect in the conduct of the English stage, and which, without doubt, banished a great deal of what had been offensive to good manners, as well as good taste. The "clown" or "fool" of the earlier English drama was introduced into every piece. He came on between the acts and sometimes interrupted even the scenes by his buffoonery. Occasionally the author set down a few words for him to speak; but out of these he had to spin a monologue of doggrel verses created by his "extemporal wit." The 'Jeasts' of Richard Tarleton, the most celebrated of these clowns, were published in 1611; and

fortunate it must have been for the morals of our ancestors that Shakspere constructed dialogue for his "Clowns," and insisted on their adhering to it: "Let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them." The "Clown" was the successor of the "Vice" of the old Moralities; and he was the representative of the domestic "Jester" that flourished before and during the age of Shakspere. The "clownish servant was something intermediate between the privileged "fool" of the old drama and the pert lackey of the later comedy. But he originally stood in the place of the genuine "Clown;" and his "conceits are to be regarded partly as a reflection of the manners of the most refined, whose wit, in a great degree, consisted in a play upon words, and partly as a law of the established drama, which even Shakspere could not dispense with, if he had desired so to do. But his instinctive knowledge of the value of his dramatic materials led him to retain the "Clowns" amongst other inheritances of the old stage; and who that has seen the use he has made of the "allowed fool" in 'Twelfth Night,' and 'As You Like It,' and 'All's Well that Ends Well,' and especially in Lear,'of the country clown in 'Love's Labour's Lost' and 'The Merchant of Venice,'-and of the "clownish" or witty servant in The Two Gentleman of Verona,' will regret that he did not cast away what Pope has called "low" and "trifling," determining to retain a machinery equally adapted to the relief of the tragic and the heightening of the comic, and entirely in keeping with what we now call the romantic drama,—an edifice of which | Shakspere found the scaffolding raised and the stone quarried, but which it was reserved for him alone to build up upon a plan in which the most apparently incongruous parts were subjected to the laws of fitness and proportion, and wherein even the grotesque (like the grinning heads in our fine Gothic cathedrals) was in harmony with the beautiful and the sublime.

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Speed and Launce are both punsters; but Speed is by far the more inveterate one. He begins with a pun-my master "is shipp'd already, and I have play'd the sheep (ship) in losing him." The same play upon words which the ship originates runs through the scene; and we are by no means sure that, if Shakspere made Verona a seaport in ignorance (which we very much doubt),—if, like his own Hotspur, he had "forgot the map,"-whether he would, at any time, have converted Valentine into a land-traveller, and have lost his pun upon a better knowledge. In the scene before us, Speed establishes his character for "a quick wit;" Launce, on the contrary, very soon earns the reputation of "a mad-cap" and "an ass." And yet Launce can pun as perseveringly as Speed. But he can do something more. He can throw in the most natural touches of humour amongst his quibbles; and, indeed, he altogether forgets his quibbles when he is indulging his own peculiar vein. That vein is unquestionably drollery,-as Hazlitt has well described it, the richest farcical drollery. His descriptions of his leave-taking, while "the dog all this while sheds not a tear," and of the dog's misbehaviour when he thrust "himself into the company of three or four gentlemanlike dogs," are perfectly irresistible. We must leave thee, Launce; but we leave thee with less regret, for thou hast worthy successors. Thou wert among the first fruits, we think, of the creations of the greatest comic genius that the world has seen, and thou wilt endure for ever, with Bottom, and Malvolio, and Parolles, and Dogberry. Thou wert conceived, perhaps, under that humble roof at Stratford, to gaze upon which all nations have since sent forth their pilgrims! Or, perhaps, when the young poet was, for the first time, left alone in the solitude of London, he looked back upon that shelter of his boyhood, and shadowed out his own parting in thine, Launce!

CHAPTER II.

THE COMEDY OF ERRORS.

'THE Comedy of Errors' was clearly one of Shakspere's very early plays. It was probably untouched by its author after its first production. We have here no existing sketch to enable us to trace what he introduced,and what he corrected, in the maturity of his judgment. It was, we imagine, one of the pieces for which he would manifest little solicitude after his genius was fully developed. The play is amongst those mentioned by Meres in 1598. The only allusion in it which can be taken to fix a date is one which is supposed to refer to the civil contests of France upon the accession of Henry IV.

We must depend, then, upon the internal evidence of this being a very early play. This evidence consists,

1. In the great prevalence of that measure which was known to our language as early as the time of Chaucer by the name of "rime dogerel." This peculiarity is found only in three of our author's plays,-in 'Love's Labour's Lost,' in 'The Taming of the Shrew,' and in 'The Comedy of Errors.' But this measure was a distinguishing characteristic of the early English drama. It prevails very much more in this play than in 'Love's Labour's Lost:' for prose is here much more sparingly introduced. The doggrel seems to stand half-way between prose and verse, marking the distinction between the language of a work of art and that of ordinary life, in the same way that the recitative does in a musical composition. It is to be observed, too, in The Comedy of Errors,' that this measure is very carefully regulated by somewhat strict laws:

"We came into the world like brother and brother,

And now let's go hand in hand, not one before another."

This concluding passage, which is cast in the same mould as the other similar verses of the play, is much more regular in its

structure than the following in 'Love's Labour's Lost:'

"And such barren plants are set before us, that we thankful should be,

Which we of taste and feeling are, for those

parts that do fructify in us more than he." The latter line almost reminds us of 'Mrs. Harris's Petition,' which, according to Swift, "Humbly sheweth

"That I went to warm myself in Lady Betty's chamber, because I was cold,

And I had in a purse seven pounds four shil

lings and sixpence, besides farthings, in

money and gold."

The measure in 'The Comedy of Errors' was formed by Shakspere upon his rude predecessors. In some of these it is not only occasionally introduced, but constitutes the great mass of the dialogue. In Gammer Gurton's Needle,' for example, the doggrel measure prevails throughout, as in the concluding lines:

"But now, my good masters, since we must be gone,

And leave you behind us, here all alone,
Since at our lasting ending thus merry we be,
For Gammer Gurton's Needle's sake, let us
have a plaudytie."

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