claim certainly a very low rank among those of Shakspeare his original portion is not inconsiderable; but it is fair to observe, that some of the passages most popular, such as the death of Cardinal Beaufort, and the last speech of the Duke of York, seem not to be by his hand. 31. No one could think of disputing the superiority of Marlowe to all his contemporaries of this early Peele. school of the English drama. He was killed in a tavern fray in 1593. There is more room for difference of tastes as to the second place. Mr. Campbell has bestowed high praises upon Peele. "His David and Bethsabe is the earliest fountain of pathos and harmony that can be traced in our dramatic poetry. His fancy is rich and his feeling tender; and his conceptions of dramatic character have no inconsiderable mixture of solid veracity and ideal beauty. There is no such sweetness of versification and imagery to be found in our blank verse anterior to Shakspeare." I must concur with Mr. Collier in thinking these compliments excessive. Peele has some command of imagery, but in every other quality it seems to me that he has scarce any claim to honour; and I doubt if there are three lines together in any of his plays that could be mistaken for Shakspeare's. His Edward I. is a gross tissue of absurdity, with some facility of language, but nothing truly good. It has also the fault of grossly violating historic truth, in a hideous misrepresentation of the virtuous Eleanor of Castile; probably from the base motive of rendering the Spanish nation odious to the vulgar. This play, which is founded on a ballad equally false, is referred to the year 1593. The versification of Peele is much inferior to that of Marlowe; and though sometimes poetical, he seems rarely dramatic. exhibits a much greater share of the spirited versification, called by Jonson the "mighty line," of Christopher Marlowe. Malone, upon second thoughts, gave both these plays to Marlowe, having, in his dissertation on the three parts of Henry VI., assigned one to Greene, the other to Peele. None of the three parts have any resemblance to the manner of Peele. y Specimens of English Poetry, i. 140. Hawkins says of three lines in Peele's David and Bethsabe, that they contain a metaphor worthy of Eschylus : At him the thunder shall discharge his bolt; It may be rather Eschylean, yet I 191. 32. A third writer for the stage in this period is Robert Greene, whose "Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay Greene. may probably be placed about the year 1590. This comedy, though savouring a little of the old school, contains easy and spirited versification, superior to Peele, and though not so energetic as that of Marlowe, reminding us perhaps more frequently of Shakspeare." Greene succeeds pretty well in that florid and gay style, a little redundant in images, which Shakspeare frequently gives to his princes and courtiers, and which renders some unimpassioned scenes in his historic plays effective and brilliant. There is great talent shown, though upon a very strange canvas, in Greene's "Looking Glass for London and England." His angry allusion to Shakspeare's plagiarism is best explained by supposing that he was himself concerned in the two old plays which had been converted into the second and third parts of Henry VI. In default of a more probable claimant, I have sometimes been inclined to assign the first part of Henry VI. to Greene. But those who are far more conversant with the style of our dramatists do not suggest this; and we are evidently ignorant of many names, which might have ranked not discreditably by the side of these tragedians. The first part, however, of Henry VI. is, in some passages, not unworthy of Shakspeare's earlier days, nor, in my judgment, unlike his style; nor in fact do I know any one of his contemporaries who could have "Greene in facility of expression and in the flow of his blank verse is not to be placed below his contemporary Peele. His usual fault, more discoverable in his plays than in his poems, is an absence of simplicity; but his pedantic classical references, frequently without either taste or discretion, he had in common with the other scribbling scholars of the time. It was Shakspeare's good fortune to be in a great degree without the knowledge, and therefore, if on no other account, without the defect." Collier, iii. 153. Tieck gives him credit for "a happy talent, a clear spirit, and a lively imagination, which characterise all his writings." Collier, iii. 148. Mr. Collier says, iii. 146, Greene may possibly have had a hand in the written the scene in the Temple Garden. The light touches of his pencil have ever been still more inimitable, if possible, than its more elaborate strokes." Other writers of this age. 33. We can hardly afford time to dwell on several other writers anterior to Shakspeare. Kyd, whom Mr. Collier places, as a writer of blank verse, next to Marlowe, Lodge, Lily, Nash, Hughes, and a few more, have all some degree of merit. Nor do the anonymous tragedies, some of which were formerly ascribed to Shakspeare, and which even Schlegel, with less acuteness of criticism than is usual with him, has deemed genuine, always want a forcible delineation of passion, and a vigorous strain of verse, though not kept up for many lines. Among these are specimens of the domestic species of tragic drama, drawn probably from real occurrences, such as Arden of Feversham and the Yorkshire Tragedy, the former of which especially has very considerable merit. Its author, I believe, has not been conjectured; but it may be referred to the last decad of the century. Another play b"These three gifted men" (Peele, Greene, and Marlowe), says their late editor, Mr. Dyce (Peele's Works, preface, xxxv.), "though they often present to us pictures that in design and colouring outrage the truth of nature, are the earliest of our tragic writers who exhibit any just delineation of the workings of passion; and their language, though now swelling into bombast, and now sinking into meanness, is generally rich with poetry, while their versification, though somewhat monotonous, is almost always flowing and harmonious. They as much excel their immediate predecessors as they are themselves excelled by Shakspeare." Not quite as much. Collier, iii. 207. Kyd is author of Jeronymo, and of the "Spanish Tragedy," a continuation of the same story. Shakspeare has selected some of their absurdities for ridicule, and has left an abundant harvest for the reader. Parts of the Spanish Tragedy, Mr. C. thinks, "are in the highest degree pathetic and interesting." This perhaps may be admitted, but Kyd is not, upon the whole, a pleasing dramatist. Lodge, one of the best poets of the age, was concerned, jointly with Greene, in the Looking Glass for London. In this strange performance the prophet Hosea is brought to Nineveh, and the e The murder of Arden of Feversham occurred under Edward VI., but the play was published in 1592. The impression made by the story must have been deep, to produce a tragedy so long afterwards. It is said by Mr. Collier, that Professor Tieck has inclined to think Arden of Feversham a genuine work of Shakspeare. I cannot but venture to suspect that, if this distinguished critic were a native, he would discern such differences of style as render this hypothesis improbable. The speeches in Arden of Feversham have spirit and feeling, but there is none of that wit, that fertility of analogical imagery, which the worst plays of Shakspeare display. The language is also more plain and perspicuous than we ever find in him, especially on a subject so full of passion. Mr. Collier discerns the hand of Shakspeare in the Yorkshire Tragedy, and thinks that "there are some speeches which could scarcely have proceeded killed with of the same kind, A Woman killed with Kindness, bears the date of 1600, and is the earliest production Heywood's of a fertile dramatist, Thomas Heywood. The Wow language is not much raised above that of comedy, Kindness. but we can hardly rank a tale of guilt, sorrow, and death, in that dramatic category. It may be read with interest and approbation at this day, being quite free from extravagance either in manner or language, the besetting sin of our earlier dramatists, and equally so from buffoonery. The subject resembles that of Kotzebue's drama, The Stranger, but is managed with a nobler tone of morality. It is true that Mrs. Frankfort's immediate surrender to her seducer, like that of Beaumelé in the Fatal Dowry, makes her contemptible; but this, though it might possibly have originated in the necessity created by the narrow limits of theatrical time, has the good effect of preventing that sympathy with her guilt which is reserved for her peni tence. William 34. Of William Shakspeare,' whom, through the mouths of those whom he has inspired to body forth the modifications of his immense mind, we seem to Shakspeare. know better than any human writer, it may be truly said that we scarcely know any thing. We see him, so far as we do see him, not in himself, but in a reflex image from the objectivity in which he was manifested: he is Falstaff, and Mercutio, and Malvolio, and Jaques, and Portia, and Imogen, and Lear, and Othello; but to us he is scarcely a determined person, a substantial reality of past time, the man Shakspeare. The two greatest names in poetry are to us little more than names. If we are not yet come to from any other pen." Collier, iii. 51. It was printed with his name in 1608; but this, which would be thought good evidence in most cases, must not be held sufficient. It is impossible to explain the grounds of internal persuasion in these nice questions of aesthetic criticism; but I cannot perceive the hand of Shakspeare in any of the anonymous tragedies. Though I shall not innovate in a work of this kind, not particularly relating to Shakspeare, I must observe, that Sir Frederick Madden has offered very specious reasons (in the Archa ologia, vol. xxvi.) for believing that the poet and his family spelt their name Shakspere, and that there are, at least, no exceptions in his own autographs, as has commonly been supposed. A copy of Florio's translation of Montaigne, a book which he had certainly read (see Malone's note on Tempest, act ii. scene 1), has been lately discovered with the name W. Shakspere clearly written in it, and there seems no reason to doubt that it is a genuine signature. This book has, very properly, been placed in the British Museum, among the choice κειμηλια of that repository. question his unity, as we do that of "the blind old man of Scio's rocky isle," an improvement in critical acuteness doubtless reserved for a distant posterity, we as little feel the power of identifying the young man who came up from Stratford, was afterwards an indifferent player in a London theatre, and retired to his native place in middle life, with the author of Macbeth and Lear, as we can give a distinct historic personality to Homer. All that insatiable curiosity and unwearied diligence have hitherto detected about Shakspeare serves rather to disappoint and perplex us than to furnish the slightest illustration of his character. It is not the register of his baptism, or the draft of his will, or the orthography of his name that we seek. No letter of his writing, no record of his conversation, no character of him drawn with any fulness by a contemporary has been produced. His first writings for the stage. 35. It is generally supposed that he settled in London. about 1587, being then twenty-three years old. For some time afterwards we cannot trace him distinctly. Venus and Adonis, published in 1593, he describes in his dedication to Lord Southampton, as "the first heir of his invention." It is, however, certain that it must have been written some years before, unless we take these words in a peculiar sense, for Greene, in his Groat's Worth of Wit, 1592, alludes, as we have seen, to Shakspeare as already known among dramatic authors. It appears by this passage, that he had converted the two plays on the wars of York and Lancaster into what we read as the second and third parts of Henry VI. What share he may have had in similar repairs of the many plays then represented cannot be determined. It is generally believed that he had much to do with the tragedy of Pericles, which is now printed among his works, and which 8 [I am not much inclined to qualify this paragraph in consequence of the petty circumstances relating to Shakspeare which have been lately brought to light, and which rather confirm than otherwise what I have said. But I laud the labours of Mr. Collier, Mr. Hunter, and other collectors of such crumbs; though I am not sure that we should not venerate Shakspeare as much if they had left him undisturbed in his obscurity. To be told that he played a trick to a brother player in a licentious amour, or that he died of a drunken frolic, as a stupid vicar of Stratford recounts (long after the time) in his diary, does not exactly inform us of the man who wrote Lear. If there was a Shakspeare of earth, as I suspect, there was also one of heaven; and it is of him that we desire to know something.-1842.] |