Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

In the Epos, the poet in person is the relater. But he hides his own personality in that of the Muse he invokes; and offers himself to his auditors as the Voice only by which she speaks. She, the Muse, is thought to be throughout a faithful recorder; for she is supposed to have access to know all; and however marvellous may be the narrations, they are accepted with undoubting faith. Since she speaks, or rather sings, and the auditor only listens, the commonest and the most uncommon events are, in one respect, upon an even footing. For the hearer must picture them for himself. All are alike acted absent from the senses, and before the imagination alone. Hence the Epic Poet has an extraordinary facility afforded him for introducing into his work that order of representation which is called the marvellous. For it is just as easy to the hearer to set before his fancy a giant or a pigmy, as a man; the one-eyed monster Polyphemus, as the beautiful, the graceful, the swift, the strong, the sublime, the terrible Achilles. It is just as easy for him to transport himself in fancy to the summit of Olympus, to the palace of Jupiter, and to the Council or to the Banquet of the Gods, or to the deep sea-caves where Thetis sits with her companion nymphs in the hall of her father, the sea-god Nereus--as it is to remove himself from the festal hall, where the poet is singing to him and to the other guests, away to the camp of the Greeks, or to the court of Priam, or to the bower of Andromache. He has no more difficulty to think of Minerva darting, in the likeness of a hawk, from the snowy crest of Olympus to the shore of the Hellespont--or to imagine the Thunderer in his celestial car, lashing on his golden-maned steeds that pace the clouds and the air, and waft him at the speed almost of a wish from the unfolding portals of heaven to the summit of Mount Ida--than when he is called upon, in the midst of some totally different scene, to figure to himself a mortal hero, with waving crest, glittering in polished brass, advancing erect in his war-chariot, hurling his lance that misses his foe; and in return transpierced by that of his antagonist, falling backwards to the ground in his resounding arms, and groaning out his soul in the bloody dust. The truth is, that when you are called upon to see and to hear _within the mind_, you rejoice in the capacities of seeing and hearing that are thus unfolded in you, infinitely surpassing similar capacities which you possess in your bodily eye and ear; and therefore the stronger the demands that are made, the more readily even do you comply with them; and in this way, in part, we must understand the character that is impressed upon the _Iliad_, and the temper of mind in the hearer answering to the character. It is one of infinite liberty. The mind of the poet seems to be released from all bonds and from all bounds; and the temper in the hearer is the same. Another character, proper to Epic poetry, judging after its great model, the _Iliad_--is _universality_. In the direct narrative, we have gods and men, heaven, earth, sea, for seats of action--and, for a moment, a glimpse of hell. Recollect whilst the conflagration of war is raging, how the poet has found a moment, at the Scæan Gate, for the touching picture of an heroic father, a noble mother, and a babe in arms, scared at his father's dazzling and overshadowing helmet, who smiles, puts it from his head upon the ground, and lifts up the boy, with a prayer to Jove. Sacrifices to the gods, games, funeral rites, come in the course of the relation; and because the scene of the poem is distracted with warfare, the great poet has found, in the Vulcanian sculptures on the shield of Achilles, place for images of peace--the labours of the husbandman; the mirthful gathering in of the vintage with dance and song; the hymeneal pomp led along the streets. And in the similes, what pictures from animal life and manners! And then our enchantment is heightened by a prevailing duplication. Throughout, or nearly so, the transactions that are presented in the natural, are also presented in the supernatural. Thus we have earthly councils, heavenly councils; warring men, warring gods; kings of men, kings of gods; mortal husbands and wives, and sons and daughters; immortal husbands and wives, and sons and daughters. Palaces in heaven as on earth. The sea, in a manner, triplicates. Terrestrial steeds--celestial steeds--marine steeds! The natural and supernatural are united--when Achilles is half of mortal, half of immortal derivation; when heavenly coursers are yoked in the chariots of men; when Juno, for a moment, grants voice to the horse of Achilles; and the horse, whom Achilles has unjustly reproved, answers prophesying the death of the hero.

Why Homer made the _Iliad_ in hexameters, no man can tell; but having done so, he thereby constituted for ever the proper metre of Greek--and Latin--Epic poetry. But what a multitude of subjects, how different from one another does that, and every other Epic poem, comprehend! Glory to the hexameter! it suits them all. Now, in every Epic poem, and in few more than in the _Iliad_, there are many dramatic scenes. But in the Greek tragic drama, the dialogue is mainly in iambics; for this reason, that iambics are naturally suited for the language of conversation. Be it so. Yet here in the Epic, the dialogue is felt to be as natural in hexameters as the heart of man can desire. Hear Agamemnon and Achilles. Call to mind that colloquy in Pelides' tent.

Rhyme is unknown in Greek; and it is of rhyme that we are treating, though you may not see our drift. From Homer, then, pass on to Ariosto and Tasso. They, too, are Epic poets who have charmed the world. Their poems may not have such a sweep as the _Iliad_, still their sweep is great. Rich in rhyme is their language--rich the stanza they delighted in--_ottava rima_, how rich the name! Is rhyme unnatural from the lips of their peers and paladins? No--an inspired speech. Is hexameter blank verse alone fit for the mouths of Greek heroes--eight-line stanzas of oft-recurring rhymes for the mouths of Italian? Gentle shepherd, tell me why.

But the "Paradise Lost" is in blank verse. It is. The fallen angels speak not in rhyme--nor Eve nor Adam. So Milton willed. But Dante's Purgatory, and Hell, and Heaven, are in rhyme--ay, and in difficult rhyme, too--_terza rima_. Yet the damned speak it naturally--so do the blessed. How dreadful from Ugolino, how beautiful from Beatrice!

But the drama--the drama--the drama--is your cry--what say we to the drama? Listen, and you shall hear--

The Tragic Drama rose at Athens. The splendid and inexhaustible mythology of gods and heroes, which had supplied the Epic Muse with the materials of her magnificent relations, furnished the matter of a new species of poetry. A palace--or a temple--or a cave by the wild sea-shore, was painted; actors, representing by their attire, and their majestic demeanour, heroes and heroines of the old departed world; nay, upon high occasions, celestial gods and goddesses--trod the Stage and spoke, in measured recitation, before assembled thousands of spectators, seated in wonder and awe-stricken expectation. The change to the poet in the manner of communicating with his hearers, alters the character of the composition. The stage trodden by living feet, the scenery, voices from human tongues varying with all the changes of emotion, impassioned gestures, and events no longer spoken of, but transacted in presence, before the eyes of the audience, are elements full of power, that claim for tragedy and impose upon it a character of its own. The heart is more interested, and the imagination less. Persons who accompany the whole business that is to be done, with speaking--a poem consisting of incessant dialogue--must disclose, with more precise and profounder discovery, the minds represented as engaged. Motives are produced and debated--the sudden turns of thought--the violent fluctuations of the passions--the gentle variations of the feelings, appear. Time is given for this internal display--and a species of poetry arises, distinguished for the fulness and the decision with which the springs of action in the human bosom are shown as breaking forth into, and determining, human action. Meanwhile, the means that are thus afforded to the poet of a more energetic representation, curb in him the flights of imagination. To represent Neptune as at three strides from his seat on a mountain-top descending the slope, that with all its woods quakes under the immortal feet, and as reaching at the fourth step his wave-covered palace--this, which was easy between the epic poet and his hearer, becomes out of place and impossible for tragedy, simply because no actors and no stage can represent a god so stepping and the hills so trembling. We know what the pathetically sublime literature was which the drama gave to Athens; how poets of profound and capacious spirits, who had looked into themselves--and, so enlightened, had observed human life--were able, by taking for their subjects the strongly portrayed characters and the stern situations of the old Greek fable, to unite in their lofty and impressive scenes the truth of nature and the tender interests which endear our familiar homes, to the grandeur of heroic recollections, to the awe of religion, and to the pomp, the magnificence, and the beauty of a gorgeous yet intellectual art.

The Greek Tragic drama is from end to end in verse; and unavoidably, because 'tis a part of a splendid religious celebration. It is involved in the solemn pomp of a festival. Therefore it dons its own solemn festival robes. The musical form is our key to the spirit. And in that varying musical form there are three degrees--first, the Iambic, nearest real speech--second, the Lyrical dialogue, farther off--third, the full Chorus--utmost removal. Pray, do not talk to us of the naturalness of the language. You never heard the like spoken in all your days. Natural it was on that stage--and over the roofless theatre the tutelary deities of Athens leant listening from the sky.

The model, or law, or self of the English drama, is _Shakspeare_. The character of his drama is, the imaging of nature. A foremost characteristic of nature is infinite and infinitely various production, expressing or intimating an indefatigably and inexhaustibly active spirit. But such a spirit of life, so acting and producing, appears to us as a fountain, ever freshly flowing from the very hand of God. All _that_ Shakspeare's drama images; and thus his art appears to us, as always the highest art appears to us to be, a Divine thing. The musical forms of his language should answer; and they do. They are; first, prose; second, loose blank verse; third, tied blank verse; fourth, rhyme.[1] This unbounded variety of the musical form really seems to answer to the premised idea; seems really to clothe infinite and infinitely varied intellectual production. Observe, we beseech you, what varieties of music! The rhyme--ay, the rhyme--has a dozen at least;--couplets--interlaced rhyme--single rhyme and double--anapests--diverse lyrical measures. Observe, too, that speakers of all orders and characters use all the forms. Hamlet, Othello, Lear, Coriolanus, Lance, use prose; Leontes and his little boy, Lear, Coriolanus, and his domestics--to say nothing of the Steward--Macbeth and his murderlings, use blank verse. Even Falstaff, now and then, a verse. All, high and low, wise, merry, and sad, _rhyme_. Fools, witches, fairies--we know not who else--use lyrical measures. Upon the whole, the _uttermost_--that is, the musical form--answers herein to the _innermost_ spirit. The spirit, endlessly-varying, creates endlessly-varying musical form. The total character is accordingly self-lawed, irrepressible creation.

Blank verse, then, is the predominating musical form of Shakspeare's comedies, histories, and tragedies. To such a degree as that _all_ the other forms often slip from one's recollection; and, to speak strictly, blank verse must be called the rule; while all other forms are diverse exceptions.

Only one comedy, the homely and English "Merry Wives of Windsor," has, for its rule, prose. Even here the two true lovers hold their few short colloquies in blank verse. And when the concluding fairy masque is toward, blank verse rages. Page and Ford catch it. The merry wife, Mrs Page, turns poetess to describe and project the superstitions to be used. In the fairy-scene Sir John himself, Shakspeare's most dogged observer of prose, is quelled by the spirit of the hour, and RHYMES. You would think that the soul of Shakspeare has been held chained through the play, and breaks loose for a moment ere ending it. All this being said, it may be asked:--"Why is blank verse the ordinary musical form of Shakspeare's Dramas?" And the obvious answer appears to be:--"Because it has a _middle removedness_ or _estrangement_ from the ordinary speech of men:--raising the language into imagination, and yet not out of sympathy."

Shakspeare and Sophocles agree in truth and strength, in life, passion, and imagination. They differ inwardly herein--Shakspeare founds in the power of nature. Under his hand nature brings forth art. The Attic tragedy begins from art. Its first condition is order, since it is part of a religious ceremonial. It resorts to nature, to quicken, strengthen, bear up art. Nature enters upon the Athenian stage, under a previous recognition of art as dominant.

From all that has been now said--and it is more than we at first intended to say--this conclusion follows, that there may be English rhymed dramas. There are French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian ones--and fine ones too; and nothing in nature forbids that there may be infinitely finer. That which universally affects off the stage, in all kinds of poetry, would, in the work of a great master, affect on it. The delusion of the theatre overcomes far greater difficulties carried with us thither in the constitution of our habitual life, than the use of rhyme by the visionary beings in the mimic scene. Beyond all doubt there might arise in rhyme a most beautiful romantic drama. Unreal infused into real, turns real at once into poetry. But this is of all degrees. In the lowest prose of life there is an infusion which we overlook. We should drop down dead without it. Let the unreal a little predominate; and now we become sensible to its presence, and now we _call_ the compound poetry. Let it be an affair of words, and we require verse as the fitting form. Our stage and language have settled upon blank verse as the proper metrical form for the proper measure of the unreal upon the ordinary tragic stage. Rhymed verse has a more marked separation, or is more distant from prose than blank verse is. Hence, you might suppose that it will be fitted on the stage for a surcharge of the unreal. Dryden's heroic tragedies are a proof, as far as one authority goes; and even they had great power over audiences willing to be charmed, and accustomed to what we should think a wide and continued departure from nature. But imagine a romantic play, full of beautiful and tender imagination, exquisitely written in rhyme, and modelled to some suitable mould invented by a happy genius. Why, the "Gentle Shepherd," idealizing modern Scottish pastoral life, was, in its humble way, an achievement; and, within our memory, critics of the old school looked on it well pleased when acted by lads and lasses of high degree, delighting to deem themselves for an evening the simple dwellers in huts around Habbie's How.

Let us now collect together all that Dryden has, in different moods of his unsettled and unsteady mind, written about Shakspeare. In the Dialogue formerly spoken of, comparisons are made between the modern English and the modern French drama. "If you consider the plots," says Neander, "our own are fuller of variety, if the writing, ours are more quick and fuller of spirit." And he denies--like a bold man as he was--that the English have in aught imitated or borrowed from the French. He says our plots are weaved in English looms; we endeavour therein to follow the variety and greatness of characters, which are derived to us from Shakspeare and Fletcher; the copiousness and well-knitting of the intrigues we have from Jonson. These two things he dares affirm of the English drama, that with more variety of plot and character, it has equal regularity; and that in most of the irregular plays of Shakspeare and Fletcher, (for Ben Jonson's are for the most part regular,) there is a more masculine fancy and greater spirit in the writing, than there is in any of the French. For a pattern of a perfect play, he is proposing to examine "the Silent Woman" of Jonson, the most careful and learned observer of the dramatic laws, when he is requested by Eugenius to give in full Ben's character. He agrees to do so, but says it will first be necessary to speak somewhat of Shakspeare and Fletcher; "his rivals in poesy, and one of them, in my opinion, at least his equal, perhaps his superior." Malone observes, that the caution observed in this decision, proves the miserable taste of the age; and Sir Walter, that Jonson, "by dint of learning and arrogance, fairly bullied the age into receiving his own character of his merits, and that he was not the only person of the name that has done so." This is coming it rather too strong; yet to stand well with others there is nothing like having a good opinion of one's-self, and proclaiming it with the sound of a trumpet.

"To begin, then, with Shakspeare. He was the man who, of all modern
and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive
soul; all the images of nature were still present to him, and he
drew them, not laboriously but luckily; when he describes any
thing, you more than see it--you feel it too. Those who accuse him
to have wanted learning, give him the greater commendation: he was
naturally learned, he needed not the spectacles of books to read
nature, he looked inwards and found her there. I cannot say he is
every where alike; were he so, I should do him injury to compare
him with the greatest of mankind. He is many times flat and
insipid; his comic wit degenerating into clenches, his serious
swelling into bombast. But he is always great when some great
occasion is presented to him--no man can say he ever had a fit
subject for his wit, and did not then raise himself as high above
the rest of poets,

'Quantum lenta solent inter viburna cupressi.'

"The consideration of this made Mr Hales of Eton say, that there
was no subject of which any poet ever writ, but he would produce it
much better done in Shakspeare: and, however others are now
generally preferred before him, yet the age wherein he lived, which
had contemporaries with him, Fletcher, and Jonson, never equalled
them to him in their esteem; and in the last king's court, when
Ben's reputation was at highest, Sir John Suckling, and with him
the greater part of the courtiers, set our Shakspeare far above
him.

"Beaumont and Fletcher, of whom I am next to speak, had, with the
advantage of Shakspeare's wit, which was their precedent, great
natural gifts, improved by study. Beaumont, especially, being so
accurate a judge of plays, that Ben Jonson while he lived submitted
all his writings to his censure, and, 'tis thought, used his
judgment in correcting, if not contriving, all his plots. What
value he had for him appeared by the verses he writ to him, and
therefore I need speak no further of it. The first play that
brought Fletcher and him into esteem was their 'Philaster;' for
before that they had written two or three very unsuccessfully, as
the like is reported of Ben Jonson before he writ 'Every Man in his
Humour.' Their plots were generally more regular than Shakspeare's,
especially those which were made before Beaumont's death; and they
understood and imitated the conversation of gentlemen much better,
whose wild debaucheries and quickness of wit in repartee no poet
before them could paint as they have done. Humour, which Ben Jonson
derived from particular persons, they made it not their business to
describe; they represented all the passions very lively, but, above
all, love. I am apt to believe the English language in them arrived
to the highest perfection--what words have since been taken in are
rather superfluous than ornamental. Their plays are now the most
pleasant and frequent entertainments of the stage, two of theirs
being acted through the year for one of Shakspeare's or Jonson's;
the reason is, because there is a certain gaiety in their comedies,
and pathos in their more serious plays, which suits generally with
all men's humours. Shakspeare's language is likewise a little
obsolete, and Ben Jonson's wit comes short of theirs.

"As for Jonson, to whose character I am now arrived, if we look
upon him while he was himself, (for his last plays were but his
dotages,) I think him the most learned and judicious writer which
any theatre ever had. He was a most severe judge; of himself as
well as others. One cannot say he wanted wit, but rather that he
was frugal of it in his works; you find little to retouch or alter.
Wit and language, and humour also, in some measure, we had before
him; but something of art was wanting to the drama till he came. He
managed his strength to more advantage than any who succeeded him.
You seldom find him making love in any of his scenes, or
endeavouring to move the passions; his genius was too sullen and
saturnine to do it gracefully, especially when he knew he came
after those who had performed both to such an height. Humour was
his proper sphere, and in that he delighted most to represent
mechanic people. He was deeply conversant in the ancients, both
Greek and Latin, and he borrowed boldly from them. There is scarce
a poet or historian among the Roman authors of those times, whom he
has not translated in 'Sejanus' and 'Catiline.' But he has done his
robberies so openly, that one may see he fears not to be taxed by
any law. He invades authors like a monarch; and what would be theft
in other poets is only victory in him. With the spoils of those
writers he so represents old Rome to us, in its rites, ceremonies,
and customs, that, if one of their poets had written either of his
tragedies, we had seen less of it than in him. If there was any
fault in his language it was, that he weaved it too closely and
laboriously, in his comedies especially. Perhaps, too, he did a
little too much Romanize our tongue, leaving the words, which he
translated, almost as much Latin as he found them; wherein, though
he learnedly followed their language, he did not enough follow with
the idiom of ours. If I would compare him with Shakspeare, I must
acknowledge him the more correct poet, but Shakspeare the greater
wit. Shakspeare was the Homer, or father, of our dramatic poets;
Jonson was the Virgil, the pattern of elaborate writing. I admire
him, but I love Shakspeare. To conclude of him, as he has given us
the most correct plays, so, in the precepts which he has laid down
in his 'Discoveries,' we have as many and profitable rules for
perfecting the stage as any wherewith the French can furnish us."

Samuel Johnson truly says of the Dialogue, "that it will not be easy to find, in all the opulence of our language, a treatise so artfully variegated with successive representations of opposite probabilities, so enlivened with imagery, and heightened with illustration." But we have some difficulty in going along with him when he adds--"The account of Shakspeare may stand as a perpetual model of encomiastic criticism, exact without minuteness, and lofty without exaggeration. The praise lavished by Longinus on the attestation of the heroes of Marathon by Demosthenes, fades away before it. In a few lines is exhibited a character, so sublime in its comprehension, and so curious in its limitations, that nothing can be added, diminished, or reformed; nor can the editors and admirers of Shakspeare, in all their emulation of reverence, boast of much more than of having diffused and paraphrased his epitome of excellence; of having changed Dryden's gold for baser metal, of lower value, though of greater bulk." Since this great critic's day--ay, with all his defects and perversities, Samuel was a great critic--what a blaze of illumination has been brought to bear on the genius of Shakspeare! Nevertheless, all honour to Glorious John! Next comes the famous prologue:--

As when a tree's cut down, the secret root
Lives under ground, and thence new branches shoot;
So, from old Shakspeare's honour'd dust, this day
Springs up the buds, a new reviving play.
Shakspeare, who (taught by none) did first impart
To Fletcher wit, to labouring Jonson art;
He, monarch-like, gave those, his subjects, law,
And is that nature which they paint and draw.
Fletcher reach'd that which on his heights did grow,
While Jonson crept and gather'd all below.
This did his love, and this his mirth digest;
One imitates him most, the other best.
If they have since outwrit all other men,
'Tis with the drops which fell from Shakspeare's pen.
The storm which vanish'd on the neighbouring shore,
Was taught by Shakspeare's 'Tempest' first to roar.
That innocence and beauty which did smile
In Fletcher, grew on this enchanted isle.
But Shakspeare's magic could not copied be--
Within that circle none durst walk but he.
I must confess 'twas bold, nor would you now
That liberty to vulgar wits allow,
Which works by magic supernatural things;
But Shakspeare's power is sacred as a king's.
Those legends from old priesthood were received,
And he them writ as people them believed."

Strange that he who could write so nobly about Shakspeare, could commit such an outrage on his divine genius as the play to which this is the prologue--"The Tempest, or the Enchanted Island," a Comedy. It was--Dryden tells us, and we must believe him--"originally Shakspeare's; a poet for whom Sir William D'Avenant had particularly a high veneration, and whom he first taught me to admire." So the two together, to show their joint and judicious admiration, set about altering "The Tempest." Fletcher had imitated it all in vain in his "Sea Voyage;" "the storm, the desert island, and the woman who had never seen a man, are all implicit testimonies of it." Few more delightful poets than Fletcher; but in an evil hour, and deserted by his good genius, did he then hoist his sail. But now cover your face with your hands--and then shut your ears. "_Sir John Suckling, a professed admirer of our author, has followed his footsteps_ in his '_Goblins_;' his Regmella being an open imitation of Shakspeare's Miranda, and his spirits, _though counterfeit_, yet are copied from Ariel." But Sir William D'Avenant, "as he was a man of quick and piercing imagination, soon found that somewhat might be added to the design of Shakspeare, of which neither Fletcher nor Suckling had ever thought;" "and this excellent contrivance," he was pleased, says Dryden with looks of liveliest gratitude, "to communicate to me, and to desire my assistance in it." You probably knew what was the "excellent contrivance" by which "the last hand"--the hand after Suckling's--"was put to it;" so that thenceforth the "Tempest" was to be let alone in its glory. "The counterpart to Shakspeare's plot, namely, that of a man who had never seen a woman, that by this means these two characters of innocence and love might the more illustrate and commend each other. _I confess that from the very first moment it so pleased me, that I never writ_ any thing with more delight." Sir Walter says it seems to have been undertaken chiefly with a view to give room for scenical decoration, and that Dryden's share in the alteration was probably little more than the care of adapting it to the stage. But Dryden's own words contradict that supposition, and he further tells us that his writings received D'Avenant's daily amendments; "and that is the reason why it is not so faulty as the rest, which I have done without the help and correction of so judicious a friend." They wrote together at the same desk. And Dryden found D'Avenant of "so quick a fancy, that nothing was proposed to him on which he would not suddenly produce a thought, extremely pleasant and surprising. * * His imagination was such as could not easily enter into any other man." It had been easy enough, he adds, to have arrogated more to himself than was his due in the writing of the play; but "besides the worthlessness of the action, which deterred me from it, (there being nothing so base as to rob the dead of his reputation,) I am satisfied I could never have received so much honour in being thought the author of any poem, how excellent soever--as I shall from the joining of my imperfections with the merit and name of Shakspeare and Sir William D'Avenant." From all this, and more of the same sort, 'tis plain that Dryden's share in the composition was at least equal to--we should say, much greater than--D'Avenant's.

You must not meddle with Miranda--for she is all our own. Yet we cheerfully introduce you to her sister, Dorinda, and leave you all alone by yourselves for an hour's flirtation. Hush! she is describing the ship!

"This floating Ram did bear his horns above,
And tied with ribands, ruffling in the wind:
Sometimes he nodded down his head awhile,
And then the waves did heave him to the moon,
He climbing to the top of all the billows;
And then again he curtsied down so low
I could not see him. Till at last, all sidelong
With a great crack, his belly burst in pieces."

We had but once before handled this performance--some threescore and ten years ago, when a man of middle age. We dimly remember being amused in our astonishment. Now that we are beginning to get a little old, we are, perhaps, growing too fastidious; yet surely it is something very shocking. Portsmouth Poll and Plymouth Sall--sisters originating at Yarmouth--when brought into comparison with Miranda and Dorinda of the enchanted island, to our imagination seem idealized into Vestal virgins. True, they were famous--when not half seas over--for keeping a quiet tongue in their mouths: with them mum was the word. Only when drunk as blazes, poor things, did they, by word or gesture, offend modesty's most sacred laws. But D'Avenant's and Dryden's daughters are such leering and lascivious drabs, so dreadfully addicted to innuendoes and _doubles entendres_ of the most alarming character, that, high as is our opinion of the intrepidity of British seamen, we should not fear to back the two at odds against a full-manned jolly-boat from a frigate in the offing sent in to fill her water-casks. Caliban himself--and what a Caliban he has become!--fights shy of the plenireps. Why--if it must be so--we give our arm to his sister Sycorax, a "fearsome dear" no doubt, but what better could one expect in a misbegotten monster? Oh, the confounding mysteries of self-degrading genius!

In the preface to "An Evening's Love; or, the Mock Astrologer," we again meet with some criticism on Shakspeare. We learn from it that Dryden had formed the ambitious design of writing on the difference betwixt the plays of his own age and those of his predecessors on the English stage, in order to show in what parts of "dramatic poesy we were excelled by Ben Jonson--I mean, humour and contrivance of comedy; and _in what we may justly claim precedence of Shakspeare and Fletcher_! namely, in heroic plays." He had, moreover, proposed to treat "of the improvement of our language since Fletcher's and Jonson's days, and, consequently, of our refining the courtship, raillery, and conversation of plays." In great attempts 'tis glorious even to fail; and assuredly had Dryden essayed all this, his failure would have been complete. "I would," said he, with his usual ignorance of his own and his age's worst sins and defects, "have the characters well chosen, and kept distant from interfering with each other, which is more than Fletcher _or Shakspeare did_! * * I think there is no folly so great in any part of our age, as the superfluity and waste of wit was in some of our predecessors, particularly Fletcher _and Shakspeare_." Refining the courtship, raillery, and conversation of plays! We cannot, perhaps, truly say very much in praise of those qualities in Ben's comedies, admirable as they are, and superior, in all respects, a thousand times over to the best of Dryden's and of his contemporaries'; but wilfully blind indeed, or worse, must the man who could thus write have been to the matchless grace, vivacity, delicacy, prodigality, and poetry of Shakspeare's comedy, which as far transcends all the happiest creations of other men's wit, as the pervading pathos and sublimity of his tragedy all their happiest inspirations from the holy fountain of ennobling or pitying tears.

In its day, the following Epilogue caused a great hubbub--

"They, who have best succeeded on the stage,
Have still conform'd their genius to their age.
Thus Jonson did mechanic humours show,
When men were dull, and conversation low.
Then comedy was faultless, but 'twas coarse:
Cobb's tankard was a jest, and Otter's horse.
And, as their comedy, their love was mean;
Except by chance, in some one labour'd scene,
Which must atone for an ill-written play.
They rose, but at their height could seldom stay:
Fame then was cheap, and the first comer sped;
And they have kept it since by being dead.
But, were they now to write, when critics weigh
Each line, and every word, throughout a play,
None of them, no not Jonson in his height,
Could pass without allowing grains for weight.
Think it not envy that these truths are told--
Our poet's not malicious, though he's bold.
'Tis not to brand them that their faults are shown,
But by their errors, to excuse his own.
If love and honour now are higher raised,
'Tis not the poet, but the age is praised.
Wit's now arrived to a more high degree;
Our native language more refined and free;
Our ladies and our men now speak more wit,
In conversation, than those poets writ.
Then, one of these is, consequently, true;
That what this poet writes comes short of you,
And imitates you ill (which most he fears,)
Or else his writing is not worse than theirs.
Yet, though you judge (as sure the critics will)
That some before him writ with greater skill,
In this one praise he has their fame surpast,
To please an age more gallant than the last."

Dryden was called over the coals for this sacrilegious Epilogue by persons ill qualified for censors--among others, by my Lord Rochester--and was instantly ready with his defence--an "Essay on the Dramatic Poetry of the Last Age." In it he repeats the senseless assertion, "that the language, wit, and conversation of our age are improved and refined above the last;" and he takes care to include among the writers of the last age, _Shakspeare_, Fletcher, and Jonson. "In what," he asks "does the refinement of a language principally consist?"

"Either in rejecting such old words or phrases which are ill
sounding or improper, or in admitting new, which are more proper,
more sounding, and more luxuriant. * * * Malice and partiality set
apart, let any man who understands English, read diligently the
works of _Shakspeare_ and Fletcher, and I dare undertake that he
will find in every page either some solecism of speech, or some
notorious flaw in sense; yet these men are reverenced, when we are
not forgiven. That their wit is great, and many times their
expressions noble, envy itself cannot deny. But the times were
ignorant in which they lived. Poetry was then, if not in its
infancy among us, at least not arrived to its vigour and maturity.
Witness the lameness of their plots, many of which, especially
those they writ first, (for even that age refined itself in some
measure,) were made up of some ridiculous, incoherent story, which
in one play many times took up the business of an age. I suppose I
need not name 'Pericles, Prince of Tyre,' _nor the historical plays
of Shakspeare_, besides many of the rest, as the 'Winter's Tale,'
'Love's Labour Lost,' 'Measure for Measure,' which were either
founded on impossibilities, or at least so meanly written, that the
comedy neither caused your mirth, nor the serious part your
concernment."

In all this this rash and wretched folly, Dryden shows his ignorance of the order in which Shakspeare wrote his plays; and Sir Walter kindly says, that there will be charity in believing that he was not intimately acquainted with those he so summarily and unjustly condemns. But unluckily this nonsense was written during the very time he was said by Sir Walter to have been "engaged in a closer and more critical examination of the ancient English poets than he had before bestowed upon them;" and, from the perusal of Shakspeare, learning that the sole staple of the drama was "human characters acting from the direct and energetic influence of human passions." Yet Sir Walter was right; only Dryden's opinions and judgments kept fluctuating all his life long, too much obedient to the gusts of whim and caprice, or oftener still to the irregular influences of an impatient spirit, that could not brook any opposition from any quarter to its domineering self-will. For in not many months after, in the Prologue to "Aurengzebe," are these noble lines--

"But spite of all his pride, a secret shame
Invades his heart at Shakspeare's sacred name;
Awed when he hears his godlike Romans rage,
He, in a just despair, would quit the stage,
And to an age less polish'd, more unskill'd,
Does, with disdain, the foremost honours yield."

Less polished--more unskilled! Here, too, he is possessed with the same foolish fancy as when he said, in the "Defence of the Epilogue,"--"But these absurdities which those poets committed, may more properly be called the age's fault than theirs. For besides the want of education and learning, (which was their particular unhappiness,) they wanted the benefit of converse. Their audiences were no better, and therefore were satisfied with what they brought. Those who call theirs the golden age of poetry, have only this reason for it, that they were then content with acorns before they knew the use of bread!" Then, after a somewhat hasty and unconvincing examination of certain incorrectnesses and meannesses of expression even in Ben Jonson, learned as he was, he asks, "What correctness after this can be expected from _Shakspeare_ or Fletcher, who wanted that learning and care which Jonson had? I will therefore spare myself the trouble of enquiring into their faults, who, had they lived now, had doubtless written more correctly." Since Shakspeare's days, too, the English language had been refined, he says, by receiving new words and phrases, and becoming the richer for them, as it would be "by importation of bullion." It is admitted, however, that Shakspeare, Fletcher, and Jonson did indeed beautify our tongue by their _curiosa felicitas_ in the use of old words, to which it often gave a rare meaning; but in that they were followed by "Sir John Suckling and Mr Waller, _who refined upon them_!" But the greatest improvement and refinement of all, "in this age," is said to have been in wit. Pure wit, and without alloy, was the wit of the court of Charles the Second, and of the Clubs. It shines like gold, yea much fine gold, in the works of all the master play-wrights. Whereas, "Shakspeare, who many times has written better than any poet in any language, is yet so far from writing wit always, or expressing that wit according to the dignity of the subject, that he writes, in many places, below the dullest writers of ours, or any preceding age. Never did any author precipitate himself from such height of thought to so low expressions, as he often does. He is the very Janus of poets; he wears almost every where two faces; and you have scarce begun to admire the one ere you despise the other." That the wit "of this age" is much more courtly, may, Dryden thinks, be easily proved by viewing the characters of gentlemen which were written in the last. For example--who do you think? Why, MERCUTIO. "Shakspeare showed the best of his skill in Mercutio; and he said himself that he was forced to kill him in the third act, to prevent being killed by him. But for my part I cannot find he was so dangerous a person: I see nothing in him but what was so exceedingly harmless, that he might have lived to the end of the play and died in his bed, without offence to any man." Wit Shakspeare had in common with his ingenious contemporaries; but theirs, to speak out plainly, "was not that of gentlemen; there was ever somewhat that was ill-natured and clownish in it, and which confessed the conversation of the authors." "In this age," Dryden declares the last and greatest advantage of writing proceeds from conversation. "In that age" there was "less gallantry;" and "neither did they (Shakspeare, Ben, and the rest) keep the best company of theirs." But let the illustrious time-server speak at large.

"Now, if they ask me, whence it is that our conversation is so much
refined? I must freely, and without flattery, ascribe it to the
court; and in it, particularly to the king, whose example gives a
law to it. His own misfortunes, and the nation's, afforded him an
opportunity, which is rarely allowed to sovereign princes--I mean
of travelling, and being conversant in the most polished courts of
Europe; and, thereby, of cultivating a spirit which was formed by
nature to receive the impressions of a gallant and generous
education. At his return, he found a nation lost as much in
barbarism as in rebellion; and, as the excellency of his nature
forgave the one, so the excellency of his manners reformed the
other. The desire of imitating so great a pattern, first awakened
the dull and heavy spirits of the English from their natural
reservedness; loosened them from their stiff forms of conversation,
and made them easy and pliant to each other in discourse. Thus,
insensibly, our way of living became more free; and the fire of the
English wit, which was before stifled under a constrained,
melancholy way of breeding, began first to display its force by
mixing the solidity of our nation with the air and gaiety of our
neighbours. This being granted to be true, it would be a wonder if
the poets, whose work is imitation, should be the only persons in
three kingdoms who should not receive advantage by it; or, if they
should not more easily imitate the wit and conversation of the
present age than of the past.

"Let us, therefore, admire the beauties and the heights of
Shakspeare, without falling after him into a carelessness, and, as
I may call it, a lethargy of thought, for whole scenes together."

Shakspeare lethargic--comatose!

Sir Walter's admiration of "glorious John" was so much part of his very nature, that he says, "it is a bold, perhaps presumptuous, task to attempt to separate the true from the false criticism in the foregoing essay: for who is qualified to be umpire betwixt Shakspeare and Dryden?" None that ever breathed, better than his own great and good self. Yet surely he was wrong in saying, that when Shakspeare wrote for the stage, "wit was not required." Required or not, there it was in perfection, of which Dryden, with all his endowments, had no idea. The question is not as he puts it, were those "audiences incapable of receiving the delights which a cultivated mind derives from the gradual development of a story, the just dependence of its parts upon each other, the minute beauties of language, and the absence of every thing incongruous or indecorous?" They may have been so, though we do not believe they were. But the question is, are Shakspeare's Plays, beyond all that ever were written, distinguished for those very excellences, and free from almost all those very defects? That they are, few if any will now dare to deny. While the best of Dryden's own Plays, and still more those of his forgotten contemporaries, infinitely inferior to Shakspeare's in all those very excellences, are choke-full of all manner of faults and flagrant sins against decorum and congruity, in the eyes of mere taste; and with a few exceptions, according to no rules can be rated high as works of art. The truth of all this manifestly forced itself upon Sir Walter's seldom erring judgment, as he proceeded in the composition of the elaborate note, in which he would fain have justified Dryden even at the expense of Shakspeare. And, as it now stands, though beautifully written, it swarms with _non-sequiturs_, and perplexing half-truths.

In the Preface to "Troilus and Cressida," (1679,) Dryden again--and for the last time--descants, in the same unsatisfactory strain, on Shakspeare. Æschylus, he tells us, was held in the same veneration by the Athenians of after ages as Shakspeare by his countrymen. But in the age of that poet, the Greek tongue had arrived at its full perfection, and they had among them an exact standard of writing and speaking; whereas the English language, even in his (Dryden's) own age, was wanting in the very foundation of certainty, "a perfect grammar:" so, what must it have been in Shakspeare's time?

"The tongue in general is so much refined since then, that many of
his words, and more of his phrases, are scarce intelligible. And of
those which we understand, some are ungrammatical, others coarse;
and his whole style is so pestered with figurative expressions,
that it is as affected as it is obscure. It is true that, in his
latter plays, he had worn off somewhat of the rust; but the tragedy
which I have undertaken to correct was in all probability one of
his first endeavours on the stage.... So lamely is it left to us,
that it is not divided into acts. For the play itself, the author
seems to have begun it with some fire. The characters of Pandarus
and Thersites are promising enough; but, as if he grew weary of his
task, after an entrance or two, he lets them fall; and the latter
part of the tragedy is nothing but a confusion of drums and
trumpets, excursions, and alarms. The persons who give name to the
tragedy are left alive. Cressida is false, and is not punished.
Yet, after all, because the play was Shakspeare's, and that there
appeared in some places of it the admirable genius of the author, I
undertook to remove that heap of rubbish, under which many
excellent thoughts lay wholly buried. Accordingly, I have
remodelled the plot, threw out many unnecessary persons, improved
those which were begun and left unfinished, as Hector, Troilus,
Pandarus, and Thersites, and added that of Andromache. After that,
I made, with no small trouble, an order and connexion of all the
scenes, removing them from the place where they were inartificially
set; and though it was impossible to keep them all unbroken,
because the scene must be sometimes in the city and sometimes in
the court, yet I have so ordered them, that there is a coherence of
them with one another, and a dependence on the main design: no
leaping from Troy to the Grecian tents, and thence back again, in
the same act, but a due proportion of time allowed for every
motion. I need not say that I have refined the language, which
before was obsolete; but I am willing to acknowledge, that as I
have often drawn his English nearer to our times, so I have
sometimes conformed my own to his; and consequently, the language
is not altogether so pure as it is significant."

John Dryden and Samuel Johnson resemble one another very strongly in their treatment of Shakspeare. Both of them seem at times to have perfectly understood and felt his greatness, and both of them have indited glorious things in its exaltation. Their praise is the utterance of worship. You might believe them on their knees before an idol. But theirs is a strange kind of reverence. It alternates with derision, and is compatible with contempt. The god sinks into the man and the man is a barbarian, babbling uncouth speech. "Coarse," "ungrammatical," "obscure," "affected," "unintelligible," "rusty!" The words distilled from the lips of Cordelia, Desdemona, Juliet, Imogen!

Dryden informs us, that ages after the death of Æschylus, the Athenians ordained an equal reward to the poets who could alter his plays to be acted in the theatre, with those whose productions were wholly new, and of their own. But the case, he laments, is not the same in England, though the difficulties are greater. Æschylus wrote good Greek, Shakspeare bad English; and to make it intelligible to a refined audience was a hard job. Sorely "pestered with figurative expressions" must have been the transmogrifier; and he had to look for wages, not to a nation's gratitude, but a manager's greed. It was, indeed, a desperate expedient for raising the funds. In his judgment the Play itself was but a poor affair--an attempt by an apprentice, that, to be producible, required the shaping of a master's hand. "Lamely left" it had to be set on its feet ere it could tread the stage. With what _nonchalance_ does he throw out "unnecessary persons," and improve "unfinished!" Hector, Troilus, Pandarus, and Thersites, skilless Shakspeare had but begun--artful Dryden made an end of them; Cressida, who was false as she was fair, yet left alive to deceive more men, became a paragon of truth, chastity, and suicide; and by an amazing stretch of invention, far beyond the Swan's, was added Andromache. Dryden proudly announces that "the scenes of Pandarus and Cressida, of Troilus and Pandarus, of Andromache with Hector and the Trojans, in the second act, are wholly new; together with that of Nestor and Ulysses with Thersites, and that of Thersites with Ajax and Achilles. I will not weary my reader with the scenes which are added of Pandarus and the lovers in the third, and those of Thersites, which are wholly altered; but I cannot omit the last scene in it, which is almost half the act, betwixt Troilus and Hector. I have been so tedious in three acts, that I shall contract myself in the two last. The beginning scenes of the fourth act are either added, or changed wholly by me; the middle of it is Shakspeare's, altered and mingled with my own; three or four of the last scenes are altogether new; and the whole fifth act, both the plot and the writing, are my own additions." O heavens! why was it not all "my own?"

No human being can have a right to use another in such a way as this. Shakspeare's plays were then, and are now, as much his own property as the property of the public--or rather, the public holds them in trust. Dryden was a delinquent towards the dead. His crime was sacrilege. In reading _his_ "Troilus and Cressida," you ever and anon fear you have lost your senses. Bits of veritable Shakspearean gold, burnished star-bright, embossed in pewter! Diamonds set in dirt! Sentences illuminated with words of power, suddenly rising and sinking, through a flare of fustian! Here Apollo's lute--there hurdy-gurdy.

"For the play itself," said Dryden insolently, "the author seems to have begun it with some fire;" and here it is continued with much smoke. "The characters of Pandarus and Thersites are promising enough;" here we shudder at their performance. Such a monstrous Pandarus would have been blackballed at the Pimp. Thersites--Shakspeare's Thersites--for Homer's was another Thersites quite--finely called by Coleridge, "the Caliban of demagogic life"--loses all individuality, and is but a brutal buffoon grossly caricatured. The scene between Ulysses and Achilles, with its wondrous wisdomful speech, is omitted! of itself, worth all the poetry written between the Restoration and the Revolution.

Spirit of Glorious John! forgive, we beseech thee, truth-telling Christopher--but angels and ministers of grace defend us! WHO ART THOU? Shakspeare's ghost.