TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. THIS is one of the most loose and desultory of our author's plays it rambles on just as it happens, but it overtakes, together with some indifferent matter, a prodigious number of fine things in its way. Troilus himself is no character: he is merely a common lover; but Cressida and her uncle Pandarus are hit off with proverbial truth. By the speeches given to the leaders of the Grecian host, Nestor, Ulysses, Agamemnon, Achilles, Shakspeare seems to have known them as well as if he had been a spy sent by the Trojans into the enemy's camp-to say nothing of their being very lofty examples of didactic eloquence. The following is very stately and spirited declamation— Ulysses. Troy, yet upon her basis, had been down, * The specialty of rule hath been neglected. * * * The heavens themselves, the planets, and this center, Observe degree, priority, and place, And posts, like the commandment of a king, What plagues and what portents? what mutinies? Commotion in the winds? frights, changes, horrors, Divert and crack, rend and deracinate The unity and married calm of states Quite from their fixture! O, when degree is shaken, (Which is the ladder to all high designs) The enterprize is sick! How could communities, And the rude son would strike his father dead : And appetite (an universal wolf, And last, eat up himself. Great Agamemnon, And this neglection of degree it is, Of his superior, grows to an envious fever Not her own sinews. To end a tale of length, It cannot be said of Shakspeare, as was said of some one, that he was "without o'erflowing full." He was full, even to o'erflowing. He gave heaped measure, running over. This was his greatest fault. He was only in danger "of losing distinction in his thoughts" (to borrow his own expression), "As doth a battle when they charge on heaps There is another passage, the speech of Ulysses to Achilles, showing him the thankless nature of popularity, which has a still greater depth of moral observation and richness of illustration than the former. It is long, but worth the quoting. The sometimes giving an entire extract from the unacted plays of our author may with one class of readers have almost the use of restoring a lost passage: and may serve to convince another class of critics, that the poet's genius was not confined to the production of stage effect by preternatural means.— "Ulysses. Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back, Wherein he puts alms for oblivion, A great-siz'd monster of ingratitudes : Those scraps are good deeds past, Which are devour'd as fast as they are made, Forgot as soon as done : Persev'rance, dear my lord, Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail In monumental mockery. Take the instant way; Or, like a gallant horse fallen in first rank, O'er-run and trampled on : then what they do in present, For time is like a fashionable host, That slightly shakes his parting guest by th' hand, And with his arms out-stretch'd, as he would fly, Grasps in the comer: Welcome ever smiles, And Farewell goes out sighing. O, let not virtue seek Remuneration for the thing it was; For beauty, wit, high birth, vigour of bone, desert in service, Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all To envious and calumniating time: One touch of nature makes the whole world kin,- More laud than gold o'erdusted. The present eye praises the present object. The throng of images in the above lines is prodigious and though they sometimes jostle against one another, they everywhere raise and carry on the feeling, which is metaphysically true and profound. The debates between the Trojan chiefs on the restoring of Helen are full of knowledge of human motives and character. Troilus enters well into the philosophy of war, when he says, in answer to something that falls from Hector, "Why there you touch'd the life of our design: A spur to valiant and magnanimous deeds." The character of Hector, in the few slight indications which appear of it, is made very amiable. His death is sublime, and shows in a striking light the mixture of barbarity and heroism of the age. The threats of Achilles are fatal; they carry their own means of execution with them. |