to states, wilfulness and precipitancy, and passion from mere habit and custom, can alone be expected. With his accustomed judgment, Shakspeare has begun by placing before us a lively picture of all the impulses of the play; and, as nature ever presents two sides, one for Heraclitus, and one for Democritus, he has, by way of prelude, shown the laughable absurdity of the evil by the contagion of it reaching the servants, who have so little to do with it, but who are under the necessity of letting the superfluity of sensoreal power fly off through the escape-valve of wit-combats, and of quarrelling with weapons of sharper edge, all in humble imitation of their masters. Yet there is a sort of unhired fidelity, an ourishness, about all this that makes it rest pleasant on one's feelings. All the first scene, down to the conclusion of the Prince's speech, is a motley dance of all ranks and ages to one tune, as if the horn of Huon had been playing behind the scenes. "Benvolio's speech "Madam, an hour before the worshipp'd sun and, far more strikingly, the following speech of old Montague "Many a morning hath he there been seen With tears augmenting the fresh morning dew '— prove that Shakspeare meant the Romeo and Juliet to approach to a poem, which, and indeed its early date, may be also inferred from the multitude of rhyming couplets throughout. And if we are right, from the internal evidence, in pronouncing this one of Shakspeare's early dramas, it affords a strong instance of the fineness of his insight into the nature of the passions, that Romeo is introduced already love-bewildered. The necessity of loving creates an object for itself in man and woman; and yet there is a difference in this respect between the sexes, though only to be known by a perception of it. It would have displeased us if Juliet had been represented as already in love, or as fancying herself so ;-but no one, I believe, ever experiences any shock at Romeo's forgetting his Rosaline, who had been a mere name for the yearning of his youthful imagination, and rushing into his passion for Juliet. Rosaline was a mere creation of his fancy; and we should remark the boastful positiveness of Romeo in a love of his own making, which is never shown where love is really near the heart. "The character of the Nurse is the nearest of anything in Shakspeare to a direct borrowing from mere observation; and the reason is, that as in infancy and childhood the individual in nature is a representative of a class,—just as in describing one larch tree, you generalize a grove of them,—so it is nearly as much so in old age. The generalization is done to the poet's hand. Here you have the garrulity of age strengthened by the feelings of a long-trusted servant, whose sympathy with the mother's affections gives her privileges and rank in the household; and observe the mode of connection by accidents of time and place, and the child-like fondness of repetition in a second childhood, and also that happy, humble, ducking under, yet constant resurgence against, the check of her superiors!— "Yes, madam!-Yet I cannot choose but laugh,' &c. "In the fourth scene we have Mercutio introduced to us. O! how shall I describe that exquisite ebullience and overflow of youthful life, wafted on over the laughing waves of pleasure and prosperity, as a wanton beauty that distorts the face on which she knows her lover is gazing enraptured, and wrinkles her forehead in the triumph of its smoothness! Wit ever wakeful, fancy busy and procreative as an insect, courage, an easy mind that, without cares of its own, is at once disposed to laugh away those of others, and yet to be interested in them,-these and all congenial qualities, melting into the common copula of them all, the man of rank and the gentleman, with all its excellencies and all its weaknesses, constitute the character of Mercutio!"-COLERIDGE. THE TAMING OF THE SHREW. THE earliest copy of this diverting comedy in its present form, yet known, is that of the folio 1623; but in the year 1594 was printed an anonymous play entitled "A Pleasant Conceited Historie, called The taming of a Shrew. As it was sundry times acted by the Right Honorable the Earle of Pembrook his seruants. Printed at London by Peter Short and are to be sold by Cutbert Burbie, at his shop at the Royall Exchange, 1594,"* quarto, which from its remarkable resemblance to the drama acknowledged to be Shakespeare's, may be looked upon almost as a previous edition of the same play. The "Pleasant Conceited Historie," of 1594, has an Induction, the characters of which are, a Noble man, Slie, a Tapster, Page, Players, and Huntsmen. The incidents of this Prelude, and the story, the characters, and the events of the play that follows-with the exception of an underplot taken from George Gascoigne's translation of Ariosto's "Il Suppositi,"—all so closely resemble those in Shakespeare's drama, that one was evidently framed upon the other. This remarkable similarity, both in the titles and the contents of these two productions, has been the occasion of much interesting perquisition. The first impression would naturally be that they were by the same hand, and that the latter, wonderfully improved in the spirit of the dialogue and the ease and flow of the verse, was only a revised edition of the other. This was Pope's conjecture, and he acted upon it by boldly transferring passages from the anonymous play into his edition of Shakespeare. In favour of this supposition are the facts, that the authorship of the early play is still unknown, the almost identity of the titles, and that Shakespeare's comedy, though undoubtedly written and acted before the beginning of the seventeenth century, was not published, so far as we yet know, before 1623. Another theory, which has been maintained with much ingenuity by Mr. Hickson (see "Notes and Queries," Vol. I, pp. 194, 227, 345), is, that the anonymous comedy was produced after and in direct imitation of Shakespeare's. A third hypothesis gives priority to the "Taming of a Shrew," and supposes that our author adopted it as a popular subject, re-casting and re-writing the whole with as much originality as was compatible with a close adherence to the fundamental incidents of his predecessor. This last assumption is perfectly consonant to the customs of the theatre in those days. Nothing was more common than the reproduction of dramas once in vogue, with alterations and additions; and as a close examination and comparison of the two works prove to us convincingly, that the disputed play was neither written by nor borrowed from Shakespeare, we consider this the most satisfactory explanation of their affinity. History furnishes us with two or three instances of such a trick as that put upon Christopher Sly in the prelude to this comedy, having been perpetrated for the amusement of some distinguished personage. The story of "The Sleeper Awakened" is one of the kind, and Mr. Lane is of opinion that it is founded on a real historical anecdote. In that story the ruse practised by the Caliph upon his humble victim is only the introduction to an acquaintance, which leads to a series of entertaining adventures, but it is precisely of the same character as that with which the present play is prefaced. Speaking of "The Sleeper Awakened," Mr. Lane says,"The author by whom I have found the chief portion of this tale related as an historical *This, the earliest edition known, is now in the library of the Duke of Devonshire. It was reprinted in 1596, and a copy of that edition is in the possession of Lord Ellesmere. The third impression, that of 1607, is with the first, in the collection of the Duke of Devonshire. anecdote is El-Is-hakee, who finished his history shortly before the close of the reign of the 'Osmanlee Sultan Mustafa, apparently in the year of the Flight 1032 (A. D. 1623). He does not mention his authority; and whether it is related by an older historian I do not know, but perhaps it is founded upon fact." part, as to the historical character of the incident; but we find its counterpart in chronicles of This is not a very decided expression of opinion on Mr. Lane's the Middle Ages much more specifically related. (See Heuterus, De Rebus Burgundicis. Goulart, Thrésor d'histoires admirables et merveilleuses de notre temps.) There is a kindred story, too, recorded by Sir Richard Barkley in "A Discource on the Felicitie of Man," (1598, p. 24,) who relates it as if he had been an eye-witness, and terms it a pretie experiment practised by the Emperor Charles the Fifth upon a drunkard." His tale is that the Emperor encountered an unconscious drunkard in the streets of Ghent, had him carried home to his palace, dressed in princely habiliments, served by royal attendants, supplied with the most costly dainties, and surrounded by everything calculated to give him the impression that he was a prince of unlimited wealth and authority. As he thus sat "in his Majestie," eating and drinking, "he tooke to his cups so freelie," that he fell fast asleep again as he sat in his chair. His attendants then stripped him of his fresh apparel, clothed him with his own rags again, and carried him to the place where he was first found. When he awoke and joined his companions, he narrated the particulars of his adventure in the palace as the subject of a pleasant dream. The more immediate source, however, whence the incident of the Induction was taken, is probably an anecdote in an old collection of many tales compiled by Richard Edwards, printed as early as 1570,* which will be found in the Illustrative Comments at the end of the play. *No copy of this edition is now known; but what is believed to be a fragment of a subsequent edition has lately particulacovered: and, curiously enough, it contains this story, and scarcely anything else. Tailor, Haberdasher, and Servants attending on SCENE,-sometimes in PADUA; and sometimes in PETRUCHIO's House in the Country. |