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"Oh, she is lame! love's heralds should be thoughts,"

The third is, where the critic, from a super- | soliloquy while she is waiting for the abundance of the power of detecting what Nurse,appears the ridiculous side of things (which results from a deficiency of imagination), takes a caricaturist's view of the highest exercises of the intellect, and asserts his own cleverness by presenting a travestie. The first system, though it may be the most difficult, is the most safe; the third, though it appears the most insidious, is the least injurious; the second is, at once, easy and debasing; it may begin in Steevens and end in Amner.

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Here is a new link in the conduct of the story. And what a beautiful transition have we made from the elevated poetry of passion to the scarcely less elevated poetry of philosophy! The old man, whose pious thoughts shape themselves into sweet and solemn cadences, stands as the antagonist principle of the passionate conflicts that are going on around him. He is to be a great agent in the workings of the drama. He would close up the dissensions of the rival houses-he would make the new lovers blessed in their union he would assuage the misery of Romeo's exile-he would save his lady from an unholy marriage he would join them again in life, although the tomb appears to have separated them. The good old man will rely too much upon his philosophy, and his skilful dealing with human actions; as the lovers have already relied too much upon the integrity of their passion as a shield against calamity. The half-surprise, the half-gladness of the Friar, when Romeo tells him where his "heart's dear love is set," are delightful. The reproof that is meant for a commendation-the "come, young waverer"-the "wisely and slow," are all true to nature. But Romeo has secured his purpose, and his heart is at ease. Then is he fit to play a part in the comic scenes that succeed, to bandy words with Mercutio

and the scene with Romeo, Juliet, and the Friar, again bring us back to the high region elaborated after the first draft. of poetry. The latter scene was greatly

of the rival houses of Verona.—We see only We have almost lost sight of the quarrels the two lovers, who cannot sum up “half their sum of wealth," and have forgotten their names of Montague and Capulet as names of strife. But an evil hour is approaching. The brawl with which the drama opened is to be renewed

"The day is hot, the Capulets abroad." The "fiery Tybalt" and the "bold Mercutio" are the first victims of this factious hateand Romeo is banished. The action does not move laggingly-all is heat and precipitation. Juliet sits alone in her bower, unconscious of all but her impassioned imaginings. She thinks aloud in the solitude which is around her, with a characteristic vehemence of temperament; but in this soliloquy "there is something so almost infantine in her perfect simplicity, so playful and fantastic in the imagery and language, that the charm of sentiment and innocence is thrown over the whole."* The scene in which the Nurse tells her disjointed story of Tybalt's death is a masterpiece. We have here to encounter the often-repeated objection, that Shakspere uses conceits when he ought to be expressing the language of vehement passion. The conceits are not in accordance with the general taste of our own age, though they were so with that of Shakspere's. But they have a much higher justification. They are the results of strong emotion, seeking to relieve itself by a violent effort of the intellect, that the will may recover its balance. Immediately after the lines in which we have that play upon words whose climax is

"I am not I, if there be such an I,"

Mrs. Jameson's Characteristics of Women,' third

to be pleasant with the Nurse. But Juliet's edition, vol. i. p. 193.

we come at once to an exclamation of the | the verge of madness. But from this moment deepest pathos and simplicity:her love has become heroism. She sees

"Oh, break my heart!-poor bankrout;"— and then, when Juliet knows that Romeo is not dead, but that Tybalt has fallen by the hand of her husband, what a natural revulsion of feeling succeeds !——

"Oh, that deceit should dwell In such a gorgeous palace!" The transition from her reproach of Tybalt's murderer, to a glorious trust in the integrity of her lord, is surpassingly beautiful. Not less beautiful is the passion which Romeo exhibits in the Friar's cell. Each of the lovers in these scenes shows the intensity of their abandonment to an overmastering will. “They see only themselves in the universe." That is the true moral of their fate. But, even under the direst calamity, they catch at the one joy which is left-the short meeting before the parting. And what a parting that is! Here, again, comes the triumph of the beautiful over the merely tragic. They are once more calm. Their love again breathes of all the sweet sights and sounds in a world of beauty. They are parting but the almost happy Juliet says

"It is not yet near day :

Believe me, love, it was the nightingale."

"No pity sitting in the clouds"she rejects her Nurse-she resolves to deceive her parents. This scene brings out her character in its strongest and most beautiful relief. The Nurse, in the grossness of her nature, has dared to talk to the wife of Romeo-the all-loving and devoted wife—of the

the one passion of Juliet-the sense raised into soul-for a grovelling quality that her lofty imagination would utterly despise. "O most wicked fiend!" Not so Juliet's other counsellor. The Friar estimated her constancy, and he did "spy a kind of hope" Juliet would, at all hazards, put away "the that it might be rewarded. He saw that shame" of marrying Paris. Well had the Friar reckoned upon her "strength of will." The scene in his cell, and the subsequent scene when she swallows the draught, are amongst the most powerful in the play; and yet we never lose sight of the highest poetry, tiful. When Juliet is supposed to be dead, mingling what is grand with what is beautetchy and absolute father, and the mother nature again asserts her empire over the

green eye of Paris! The Nurse mistook

weeps over the

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'One, poor one, one poor and loving child." Romeo, who sees the danger of delay, is not Here, again, the gentle poetry of common

deceived:

"It was the lark, the herald of the morn." Then what a burst of poetry follows!"Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day Stands tiptoe on the misty mountains' tops." The scene closes with that exquisite display of womanly tenderness in Juliet, which hurries from the forgetfulness of joy in her husband's presence to apprehension for his safety. After this scene we are almost content to think, as Romeo fancied he thought, come what sorrow can,

It cannot countervail the exchange of joy." The sorrow does come upon poor Juliet with redoubled force. The absolute father, the unyielding mother, the treacherous Nurse, all hurrying her into a loathed marriage, might drive one less resolved to

feelings comes to the relief of the scene; and the Friar brings in a higher poetry in the consolations of divine truth.

As we approach the catastrophe, the poetical cast of Romeo's mind becomes even more It was first fanciful, then imaginative, then clearly defined than in the earlier scenes. impassioned-but when deep sorrow has been added to his love, and he treads upon the threshold of the world of shadows, it puts on even a higher character of beauty. As to the celebrated speech of the 'Apothecary,' we refuse to believe that it forms an exception to the general character of the beauty that throws its rich evening light over the closing scenes.

The criticism of the French school has not spared this famous passage. Joseph Warton, an elegant scholar, but who belonged to this

school, has the following observations in his earthen pots; and he had looked at the 'Virgil' (1763, vol. i. p. 301):—

"It may not be improper to produce the following glaring instance of the absurdity of introducing long and minute descriptions into tragedy. When Romeo receives the dreadful and unexpected news of Juliet's death, this fond husband, in an agony of grief, immediately resolves to poison himself. But his sorrow is interrupted, while he gives us an exact picture of the apothecary's shop from whom he intended to purchase the poison :

'I do remember an apothecary,' &c. I appeal to those who know anything of the human heart, whether Romeo, in this distressful situation, could have leisure to think of the alligator, empty boxes, and bladders, and other furniture, of this beggarly shop, and to point them out so distinctly to the audience. The description is, indeed, very lively and natural, but very improperly put into the mouth of a person agitated with such passion as Romeo is represented to be." The criticism of Warton, ingenious as it may appear, and true as applied to many "long and minute descriptions in tragedy," is here based upon a wrong principle. He says that Romeo, in his distressful situation, had not "leisure" to think of the furniture of the apothecary's shop. What then had he leisure to do? Had he leisure to run off into declamations against fate, and into tedious apostrophes and generalizations, as a less skilful artist than Shakspere would have made him indulge in? From the moment he had said,

"Well, Juliet, I will lie with thee to-night. Let's see for means,"

the apothecary's shop became to him the object of the most intense interest. Great passions, when they have shaped themselves into firm resolves, attach the most distinct importance to the minutest objects connected with the execution of their purpose. He had seen the apothecary's shop in his placid moments as an object of common curiosity. He had hastily looked at the tortoise and the alligator, the empty boxes, and the

tattered weeds and overwhelming brows of
their needy owner. But he had also said,
when he first saw these things,
"An if a man did need a poison now,

Whose sale is present death in Mantua,
Here lives a caitiff wretch would sell it him."

When he did need a poison, all these documents of the misery that was to serve him came with a double intensity upon his vision. The shaping of these things into words was not for the audience. It was not to produce

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a long and minute description in tragedy" that had no foundation in the workings of nature. It was the very cunning of nature which produced this description. Mischief was, indeed, swift to enter into the thoughts of the desperate man; but, the mind once made up, it took a perverse pleasure in going over every item of the circumstances that had suggested the means of mischief. All other thoughts had passed out of Romeo's mind. He had nothing left but to die; and everything connected with the means of his death was seized upon by his imagination with an energy that could only find relief in words.

Shakspere has exhibited the same knowledge of nature in his sad and solemn poem of 'The Rape of Lucrece,' where the injured wife, having resolved to wipe out her stain by death,

"calls to mind where hangs a piece Of skilful painting, made for Priam's Troy." She sees in that painting some fancied resemblance to her own position, and spends the heavy hours till her husband arrives in its contemplation.

"So Lucrece set a-work sad tales doth tell To pencill'd pensiveness and colour'd sorrow; She lends them words, and she their looks doth borrow."

It was the intense interest in his own resolve which made Romeo so minutely describe his apothecary. But, that stage past, came the abstraction of his sorrow:"What said my man, when my betossed soul Did not attend him as we rode? I think He told me Paris should have married Juliet."

"*which

nature and external circumstances,"

Juliet was dead; and what mattered it to | elegy on the frailty of love, from its own his "betossed soul" whom she should have married?

"Well, Juliet, I will lie with thee to-night,"

was the sole thought that made him remember an 66 apothecary," and treat what

his servant said as a "dream."

The gentleness of Romeo is apparent, even while he says

"The time and my intents are savage-wild;"

for he adds, with a strong effort, to his faithful Balthasar,

Romeo sings before his last sleep. And how
beautifully is the corresponding part sung
by the waking and dying Juliet !-
"What's here? a cup, closed in my true love's
hand?

Poison, I see, hath been his timeless end :-
O churl drink all; and left no friendly drop,
To help me after? I will kiss thy lips;
Haply, some poison yet doth hang on them,
To make me die with a restorative."

They have paid the penalty of the fierce "Live, and be prosperous; and farewell, good hatreds that were engendered around them,

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and of their own precipitancy. But their misfortunes and their loves have healed the enmities of which they were the victims. "Poor sacrifices!" Capulet may now say,

"Oh, brother Montague, give me thy hand." They have left a peace behind them which they could not taste themselves. But their first "rash and unadvised" contract was elevated into all that was pure and beautiful, by their after sorrows and their constancy; and in happier regions their affections may put on that calmness of immortality which the ancients typified in their allegory of 'Love and the Soul.'

A. W. Schlegel.

CHAPTER IV.

THE MERCHANT OF VENICE.

'THE MERCHANT OF VENICE,' like 'A Midsummer-Night's Dream,' was first printed in 1600; and it had a further similarity to that play from the circumstance of two editions appearing in the same year-the one bearing the name of a publisher, Thomas Heyes, the other that of a printer, J. Roberts. The play was not reprinted till it appeared in the folio of 1623. In that edition there are only a few variations from the quartos.

"The Merchant of Venice' is one of the

| plays of Shakspere mentioned by Francis Meres in 1598, and it is the last mentioned in his list. From the original entry at Stationers' Hall, in 1598, providing that it be not printed without licence first had of the Lord Chamberlain, it may be assumed that it had not then been acted by the Lord Chamberlain's servants. We know, however, so little about the formalities of licence that we cannot regard this point as certain.

Stephen Gosson, who, in 1579, was moved

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to publish a tract called 'The School of Abuse, containing a pleasant invective against poets, pipers, players, jesters, and such like caterpillars of the commonwealth,' thus describes a play of his time:-"The Jew, shown at the Bull, representing the greedyness of worldly choosers, and the bloody minds of usurers." Mr. Skottowe somewhat leaps to a conclusion that this play contains the same plot as 'The Merchant of Venice:'"The loss of this performance is justly a subject of regret, for, as it combined within its plot the two incidents of the bond and the caskets, it would, in all probability, have thrown much additional light on Shakspeare's progress in the composition of his highly finished comedy." As all we know of this play is told us by Gosson, it is rather bold to assume that it combined the two incidents of the bond and the caskets. The combination of these incidents is perhaps one of the most remarkable examples of Shakspere's dramatic skill. "In the management of the plot," says Mr. Hallam," which is sufficiently complex without the slightest confusion or incoherence, I do not conceive that it has been surpassed in the annals of any theatre." The rude dramatists of 1579 were not remarkable for the combination of incidents. It was probably reserved for the skill of Shakspere to bring the caskets and the bond in juxtaposition. He found the incidents far apart, but it was for him to fuse them together. We cannot absolutely deny Mr. Douce's conjecture that the play mentioned by Gosson might have furnished our poet with the whole of the plot; but it is certainly an abuse of language to say that it did furnish him, because the Jew shown at the Bull deals with "worldly choosers," and the "bloody minds of usurers." We admit that the coincidence is curious.

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This curious production is printed in Percy's 'Reliques.'

Warton's opinion of the priority of this ballad to 'The Merchant of Venice' is thus expressed :-"It may be objected that this ballad might have been written after, and copied from, Shakespeare's play. But, if that had been the case, it is most likely that the author would have preserved Shakespeare's name of Shylock for the Jew; and nothing is more likely than that Shakespeare, in copying from this ballad, should alter the name from Gernutus to one more Jewish... Our ballad has the air of a narrative written before Shakespeare's play; I mean, that, if it had been written after the play, it would have been much more full and circumstantial. At present, it has too much the nakedness of an original."* The reasoning of Warton is scarcely borne out by a new fact, for which we are indebted to the researches of Mr. Collier. Thomas Jordan, in 1664, printed a ballad, or romance, called 'The Forfeiture;' and Mr. Collier says "So much does Shakespeare's production seem to have been forgotten in 1664, that Thomas Jordan made a ballad of it, and printed it as an original story (at least without any acknowledgment), in his Royal Arbor of Loyal Poesie,' in that year. In the same scarce little volume he also uses the plot of the serious part of 'Much Ado about Nothing,' and of 'The Winter's Tale,' both of which had been similarly laid by for a series of years, partly, perhaps, on account of the silencing of the theatres from and after 1642. The circumstance has hitherto escaped observation; and Jordan felt authorized to take such liberties with the story of 'The Merchant of Venice,' that he has represented the Jew's daughter, instead of Portia, as assuming the office of assessor to the Duke of Venice in the trial-scene, for the sake of saving the life of the Merchant, with whom she was in love."+ Now, it is remarkable that this ballad by Jordan, which was unquestionably written after the play, is much less full and circumstantial than the old ballad of 'Gernutus;' so that Warton's

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* Observations on the Fairy Queen,' 1807, vol. i. p. 182. New Particulars regarding the Works of Shakespeare,' p. 36.

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