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difficult and delicate, yet, perhaps, not the least capable of being both morally and poetically treated, is the union itself, and what, even in this life, it can be.

NOTES ON BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.

Seward's Preface.

1750.

The King And No King, too, is extremely spirited in all its characters; Arbaces holds up a mirror to all men of virtuous principles but violent passions. Hence he is, as it were, at once magnanimity and pride, patience and fury, gentleness and rigor, chastity and incest, and is one of the finest mixtures of virtues and vices that any poet has drawn, &c.

THESE are among the endless instances of the abject state to which psychology had sunk from the reign of Charles I. to the middle of the present reign of George III.; and even now it is but just awaking.

Ib. Seward's comparison of Julia's speech in the Two Gentlemen of Verona, act iv. last scene

Madam, 'twas Ariadne passioning, &c.

with Aspatia's speech in the Maid's Tragedy

I stand upon the sea-beach now, &c. Act ii.

and preference of the latter.

It is strange to take an incidental passage of one writer, intended only for a subordinate part, and compare it with the same thought in another writer, who had chosen it for a prominent and principal figure.

Ib. Seward's preference of Alphonso's poisoning in A Wife for a Month, act i. sc. 1, to the passage in King John, act v. sc. 7,—

Poison'd, ill fare! dead, forsook, cast off!

Mr. Seward! Mr. Seward! you may be, and I trust you are, an angel; but you were an ass.

Ib.

Every reader of taste will see how superior this is to the quotation from Shakspeare.

Of what taste?

Ib. Seward's classification of the plays:—

Surely Monsieur Thomas, the Chances, Beggar's Bush, and the Pilgrim, should have been placed in the very first class! But the whole attempt ends in a woful failure.

HARRIS'S COMMENDATORY POEM ON FLETCHER.

I'd have a state of wit convok'd, which hath
A power to take up on common faith:----

THIS is an instance of that modifying of quantity by emphasis, without which our elder poets can not be scanned. 'Power,' here, instead of being one long syllable-pow'r-must be sounded, not indeed as a spondee, nor yet as a trochee; but as—~ the first syllable is 14.

We can, indeed, never expect an authentic edition of our elder dramatic poets (for in those times a drama was a poem), until some man undertakes the work, who has studied the philosophy of metre. This has been found the main torch of sound restoration in the Greek dramatists by Bentley, Porson, and their followers ;-how much more, then, in writers in our own language! It is true that quantity, an almost iron law with the Greek, is in English rather a subject for a peculiarly fine ear, than any law or even rule; but, then, instead of it, we have, first, accent; secondly, emphasis; and lastly, retardation, and acceleration of the times of syllables according to the meaning of the words, the passion that accompanies them, and even the character of the person that uses them. With due attention to these,-above all, to that, which requires the most attention and the finest taste, the character, Massinger, for example, might be reduced to a rich and yet regular metre. But then the regulæ must be first known;—though I will venture to say, that he who does not find a line (not corrupted) of Massinger's flow to the time total of a trimeter catalectic iambic verse, has not read it aright. But by virtue of the last principle—the retardation or acceleration of time we have the proceleusmatic foot o o u u, and the dispondaus―― — — — —, not to mention the choriambus, the ionics, pæons, and epitrites. Since Dryden, the metre of our peets leads to the sense in our elder and more genuine bards, the sense, including the passion, leads to the metre. Read even Donne's

satires as he meant them to be read, and as the sense and passion demand, and you will find in the lines a manly harmony.

LIFE OF FLETCHER IN STOCKDALE'S EDITION. 1811.

In general their plots are more regular than Shakspeare's

THIS is true, if true at all, only before a court of criticism, which judges one scheme by the laws of another and a diverse Shakspeare's plots have their own laws or regula, and according to these they are regular.

one.

MAID'S TRAGEDY.

Act i. The metrical arrangement is most slovenly throughout. Strat. As well as masque can be, &c.

and all that follows to who is return'd'—is plainly blank verse, and falls easily into it.

Ib. Speech of Melantius :

These soft and silken wars are not for me:

The music must be shrill, and all confus'd,

That stirs my blood; and then I dance with arms.

What strange self-trumpeters and tongue-bullies all the brave soldiers of Beaumont and Fletcher are! Yet I am inclined to think it was the fashion of the age from the Soldier's speech in the Counter Scuffle; and deeper than the fashion B. and F. did not fathom.

Ib. Speech of Lysippus :

Yes, but this lady

Walks discontented, with her wat'ry eyes
Bent on the earth, &c.

Opulent as Shakspeare was, and of his opulence prodigal, he yet would not have put this exquisite piece of poetry in the mouth of a no-character, or as addressed to a Melantius. I wish that B. and F. had written poems instead of tragedies.

Ib.

Read

Mel. I might run fiercely, not more hastily,
Upon my foe.

I might run more fiercely, not more hastily.—

Ib. Speech of Calianax :

Office! I would I could put it off! I am sure I sweat quite through my office!

The syllable off reminds the testy statesman of his robe, and he carries on the image.

Ib. Speech of Melantius :

-Would that blood,

That sea of blood, that I have lost in fight, &c.

All B. and F.'s generals are pugilists, or cudgel-fighters, that boast of their bottom and of the claret they have shed. Ib. The Masque ;-Cinthia's speech :

But I will give a greater state and glory,
And raise to time a noble memory

Of what these lovers are.

was the

I suspect that nobler,' pronounced as 'nobiler'—o—, poet's word, and that the accent is to be placed on the penultimate of 'memory.' As to the passage-

Yet, while our reign lasts, let us stretch our power, &c.

removed from the text of Cinthia's speech by these foolish editors as unworthy of B. and F.—the first eight lines are not worse, and the last couplet incomparably better, than the stanza retained. Act ii. Amintor's speech :—

Oh, thou hast nam'd a word, that wipes away

All thoughts revengeful! In that sacred name,
'The king,' there lies a terror.

It is worth noticing that of the three greatest tragedians, Massinger was a democrat, Beaumont and Fletcher the most servile jure divino royalists, and Shakspeare a philosopher; if aught personal, an aristocrat.

A KING AND NO KING.

Act iv. Speech of Tigranes:

She, that forgat the greatness of her grief

And miseries, that must follow such mad passions,
Endless and wild as women! &c.

SEWARD'S note and suggestion of 'in.'

It would be amusing to learn from some existing friend of Mr. Seward what he meant, or rather dreamed, in this note. It is certainly a difficult passage, of which there are two solutions;— one, that the writer was somewhat more injudicious than usual; -the other, that he was very, very much more profound and Shaksperian than usual. Seward's emendation, at all events, is right and obvious. Were it a passage of Shakspeare, I should not hesitate to interpret it as a characteristic of Tigranes' state of mind, disliking the very virtues, and therefore half-consciously representing them as mere products of the violence of the sex in general in all their whims, and yet forced to admire, and to feel and to express gratitude for, the exertion in his own instance. The inconsistency of the passage would be the consistency of the author. But this is above Beaumont and Fletcher,

THE SCORNFUL LADY,

Act ii. Sir Roger's speech:-

Did I for this consume my quarters in meditations, vows, and woo'd her in heroical epistles? Did I expound the Owl, and undertake, with labor and expense, the recollection of those thousand pieces, consum'd in cellars and tobacco-shops, of that our honored Englishman, Nic. Broughton? &c.

STRANGE, that neither Mr. Theobald, nor Mr. Seward, should have seen that this mock heroic speech is in full-mouthed blank verse! Had they seen this, they would have seen that 'quarters' is a substitution of the players for 'quires' or 'squares' (that is) of paper :

Consume my quires in meditations, vows,
And woo'd her in heroical epistles. (cc)

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