Diceto; Matthew Paris, Thomas Wykes, Walter Hemmingford, Robert d'Avesbury, and Nicholas Trivét Walsingham, Otterburne, and Rousse; Froissart, Philippe de Comines, Argenton and Monstrelet; Edward Hall, Bale, the biographer of Sir John Oldcastle, Ralph Hollinshed, and John Hooker.

We have set out this long list, in order to show what pains of collation would be required to arrive at a just estimate of characters in the earlier time; and we may now add, that the Elizabethan dramatists were far from having done so. Thus, the Richard III.' of Shakespeare, though it coincided with the opinion of Francis Bacon, did not agree with the opinions of many students of history; for Sir William Cornwallis, writing in 1600, when the play was in the first flush of its success, observes that :

Malicious credulity rather embraceth the partial writings of indiscreet chroniclers and witty playmakers, than his (Richard's) laws, and actions, the most innocent and impartial witnesses. (Ingleby's Centurie of Prayse, p. 41.)

Then the attempt to blacken the character of Sir John Oldcastle, in the person of Falstaff, elicited so much popular anger, that it was

found necessary to disavow such an intention, in the epilogue, where it is said:

If you be not too much cloyed with fat meat, our humble author will continue the story with Sir John in it, and make you merry with fair Katherine of France; where for anything I know Falstaffe shall die of a sweat, unless already he be killed with your hard opinions; for Oldcastle died a martyr; and this is not the man.

(2 Henry IV.)

It cannot, however, be denied that public opinion was justified in supposing that Oldcastle was meant, even if his name were not used at the first representation. He had been the associate of the Prince of Wales, but had fallen into disgrace, on account of his attachment to the opinions of the Lollards, after the Prince became king; while the real Sir John Falstaff had not. Thus Fuller says of the latter:

The stage hath been overbold with his memory, making him a Thrasonical puff and emblem of mock valour. True it is that Sir John Oldcastle did first bear the brunt on't, being made the make-sport in all plays, for a coward. It is easily known out of what purse that black penny came, the Papists railing on him for a heretic, and therefore, he must also be a coward. (Worthies of England—Norfolk, 1662, C. of P., p. 249.)

6

The story of King Lear' is taken from the Chronicle of Geoffrey of Monmouth, but we are indebted to Shakespeare for the unnecessary horror of Cordelia's murder. A general slaughter of the dramatis personce was, however, his idea of tragedy; and, if such an important character had been suffered to escape, the piece would probably have been handed down to us as one of Mr. Shakespeare's comedies; or, at most, as one of his histories. 'Henry VI.' follows Froissart and Hall; while the others, excepting, perhaps, Henry VIII.' which seems to have been written under the influence of popular prejudice, follow the Chronicles of Hollinshed.

CHAPTER IX.

THE ORIGINAL OF SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMATIC

FORM AND LANGUAGE.

THAT the dramatic form of the plays was not an inspiration of Shakespeare's own genius, is asserted, in terms, by Shakespeare himself. Thus, when Polonius is introducing the players, whom Rosencrantz had previously identified as Shakespeare's company, by his reference to the Globe (Hercules and his load too) he says "they are the best actors in the world either for tragedy or comedy . Seneca cannot be too heavy nor Plautus too light" (Ham. II. 2) a clear intimation that the former was the type of his tragedy, and the latter of his comedy.

Now Seneca's tragedies are barren of action, consisting for the most part of declamation, in which bombast and exaggeration take the place of true sublimity. And that is the character which Dr. Johnson assigns to Shakespeare's tragedy.

"In it," he says, "his performance seems to be constantly worse as his labour is more. The effusions of passion, which exigence forces out, are, for the most part, striking and energetick; but whenever he solicits his invention or strains his faculties, the offspring of his throes is tumour, meanness, tediousness, and obscurity" (p. xl).

And Warton, in his History of English. Poetry,' holds the same view, when he rates the pure declamation of Gorboduc above "the false sublime introduced by Shakspeare to please the vulgar." And it does not affect the argument to admit, as all must admit, that any one of Shakepeare's tragedies, if we omit Titus Andronicus,' is far more interesting than Lord Buckhurst's more correct work. The correct is not always entertaining; and we are most of us vulgar enough to prefer entertainment to the rules of propriety.

The blending of comedy with tragedy is not a peculiarity of Seneca; but the mingling of tragedy with comedy is a striking feature of Plautus; so that to that extent, the Roman comedian becomes the type of the English tragedy, the one being comico-tragœdia, as the other was tragico-comœdia, a mere inversion that scarcely amounts to a difference.

In one important particular, however, the dramatic form of Shakespeare's tragedy has no