SCENE. X.

The arguments by which Lady Macbeth persuades her husband to commit the

murder, afford a proof of Shakespeare's knowledge of human nature. She

urges the excellence and dignity of courage, a glittering idea which has

dazzled mankind from age to age, and animated sometimes the

housebreaker, and sometimes the conqueror; but this sophism Macbeth has

for ever destroyed, by distinguishing true from false fortitude, in a

line and a half; of which it may almost be said, that they ought to

bestow immortality on the author, though all his other productions had

been lost:

I dare do all that may become a man;

Who dares do more is none.

This topick, which has been always employed with too much success, is

used in this scene, with peculiar propriety, to a soldier by a woman.

Courage is the distinguishing virtue of a soldier, and the reproach of

cowardice cannot be borne by any man from a woman, without great

impatience.

She then urges the oaths by which he had bound himself to murder Duncan,

another art of sophistry by which men have sometimes deluded their

consciences, and persuaded themselves that what would be criminal in

others is virtuous in them: this argument Shakespeare, whose plan

obliged him to make Macbeth yield, has not confuted, though he might

easily have shown that a former obligation could not be vacated by a

latter.

NOTE XVII.

Letting I dare not wait upon I would,

Like the poor cat i' th' adage.

The adage alluded to is, The cat loves fish but dares not wet her foot.

Catus amat pisces, sed non vult tingere plantas.

NOTE XVIII.

Will I with wine and wassel so convince.

To convince is, in Shakespeare, to _overpower_ or _subdue_, as in this

play:

--Their malady _convinces_

The great assay of art.

NOTE XIX.

--Who shall bear the guilt

Of our great _quell_?

_Quell_ is _murder, manquellers_ being, in the old language, the term

for which _murderers_ is now used.

NOTE XX.

ACT II. SCENE II.

--Now o'er one half the world

(a)_Nature seems dead_, and wicked dreams abuse

The curtain'd sleep; now witchcraft celebrates

Pale Hecat's offerings: and wither'd murther,

Alarum'd by his sentinel, the wolf,

Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace,

_With (b)Tarquin's ravishing sides_ tow'rds his design

Moves like a ghost.--Thou sound and firm-set earth,

Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear

Thy very stones prate of my where-about;

_And (c)take the present horror from the time,

Which now suits with it_.--

(a)--Now o'er one half the world

Nature seems dead.

That is, _over our hemisphere all action and motion seem to have

ceased_. This image, which is, perhaps, the most striking that poetry

can produce, has been adopted by Dryden, in his Conquest of Mexico.

All things are hush'd as Nature's self lay dead,

The mountains seem to nod their drowsy head:

The little birds in dreams their songs repeat,

And sleeping flowers beneath the night dews sweat.

Even lust and envy sleep!

These lines, though so well known, I have transcribed, that the contrast

between them and this passage of Shakespeare may be more accurately

observed.

Night is described by two great poets, but one describes a night of

quiet, the other of perturbation. In the night of Dryden, all the

disturbers of the world are laid asleep; in that of Shakespeare, nothing

but sorcery, lust, and murder, is awake. He that reads Dryden, finds

himself lulled with serenity, and disposed to solitude and

contemplation. He that peruses Shakespeare, looks round alarmed, and

starts to find himself alone. One is the night of a lover; the other,

that of a murderer.

(b)--Wither'd murder,

--thus with his stealthy pace,

With Tarquin's ravishing _sides_ tow'rds his design,

Moves like a ghost.--

This was the reading of this passage in all the editions before that of

Mr. Pope, who for _sides_, inserted in the text _strides_, which Mr.

Theobald has tacitly copied from him, though a more proper alteration

might, perhaps, have been made. A _ravishing stride_ is an action of

violence, impetuosity, and tumult, like that of a savage rushing on his

prey; whereas the poet is here attempting to exhibit an image of secrecy

and caution, of anxious circumspection and guilty timidity, the

_stealthy pace_ of a _ravisher_ creeping into the chamber of a virgin,

and of an assassin approaching the bed of him whom he proposes to

murder, without awaking him; these he describes as _moving like ghosts_,

whose progression is so different from _strides_, that it has been in

all ages represented to be, as Milton expresses it,

Smooth sliding without step.

This hemistich will afford the true reading of this place, which is, I

think, to be corrected thus:

--and wither'd murder,

--thus with his stealthy pace,

With Tarquin ravishing, _slides_ tow'rds his design,

Moves like a ghost.

Tarquin is, in this place, the general name of a ravisher, and the sense

is: Now is the time in which every one is asleep, but those who are

employed in wickedness, the witch who is sacrificing to Hecate, and the

ravisher, and the murderer, who, like me, are stealing upon their prey.

When the reading is thus adjusted, he wishes with great propriety, in

the following lines, that the _earth_ may not _hear his steps_.

(c) And take the present horror from the time.

Which now suits with it.--

I believe every one that has attentively read this dreadful soliloquy is

disappointed at the conclusion, which, if not wholly unintelligible, is

at least obscure, nor can be explained into any sense worthy of the

author. I shall, therefore, propose a slight alteration,

--Thou sound and firm-set earth,

Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear

Thy very stones prate of my where-about,

And _talk_--the present horror of the time!--

That now suits with it.--

Macbeth has, in the foregoing lines, disturbed his imagination by

enumerating all the terrours of the night; at length he is wrought up to

a degree of frenzy, that makes him afraid of some supernatural discovery

of his design, and calls out to the stones not to betray him, not to

declare where he walks, nor _to talk_.--As he is going to say of what,

he discovers the absurdity of his suspicion, and pauses, but is again

overwhelmed by his guilt, and concludes that such are the horrours of

the present night, that the stones may be expected to cry out against

him:

_That_ now suits with it.

He observes in a subsequent passage, that on such occasions _stones have

been known to move_. It is now a very just and strong picture of a man

about to commit a deliberate murder, under the strongest convictions of

the wickedness of his design.

NOTE XXI.

SCENE IV.

_Len_. The night has been unruly; where we lay

Our chimneys were blown down: and, as they say,

Lamentings heard i'th'air, strange screams of death,

And prophesying with accents terrible

Of dire combustion, and confused events,

_New-hatch'd to the woeful time_.

The obscure bird clamour'd the live-long night:

Some say, the earth was fev'rous, and did shake.

These lines, I think, should be rather regulated thus:

--prophesying with accents terrible,

Of dire combustion and confused events.

New-hatch'd to th'woeful time, the obscure bird

Clamour'd the live-long night. Some say, the earth

Was fev'rous and did shake.

A _prophecy_ of an _event new-hatch'd_, seems to be _a prophecy_ of an

_event past_. The term _new-hatch'd_ is properly applicable to a _bird_,

and that birds of ill omen should be _new-hatch'd to the woeful time_ is

very consistent with the rest of the prodigies here mentioned, and with

the universal disorder into which nature is described as thrown, by the

perpetration of this horrid murder.

NOTE XXII.

--Up, up, and see

The great doom's image, Malcolm, Banquo,

As from your graves rise up.--

The second line might have been so easily completed, that it cannot be

supposed to have been left imperfect by the author, who probably wrote,

--Malcolm! Banquo! rise!

As from your graves rise up.--

Many other emendations, of the same kind, might be made, without any

greater deviation from the printed copies, than is found in each of them

from the rest.

NOTE XXIII.

_Macbeth_.--Here, lay Duncan,

His silver skin laced with his golden blood;

And his gash'd stabs look'd like a breach in nature,

For ruin's wasteful entrance: there, the murtherers

Steep'd in the colours of their trade, their daggers

_Unmannerly breech'd with gore_.--

An _unmannerly dagger_, and a _dagger breech'd_, or as in some editions

_breach'd with gore_, are expressions not easily to be understood, nor

can it be imagined that Shakespeare would reproach the murderer of his

king only with _want of manners_. There are, undoubtedly, two faults in

this passage, which I have endeavoured to take away by reading,

--Daggers

_Unmanly drench'd_ with gore.--

_I saw_ drench'd _with the king's Mood the fatal daggers, not only

instruments of murder but evidences of_ cowardice.

Each of these words might easily be confounded with that which I have

substituted for it by a hand not exact, a casual blot, or a negligent

inspection.

Mr. Pope has endeavoured to improve one of these lines, by substituting

_goary blood_ for _golden blood_, but it may easily be admitted, that he

who could on such an occasion talk of _lacing the silver skin_, would

_lace it_ with _golden blood_. No amendment can be made to this line, of

which every word is equally faulty, but by a general blot.

It is not improbable, that Shakespeare put these forced and unnatural

metaphors into the mouth of Macbeth, as a mark of artifice and

dissimulation, to show the difference between the studied language of

hypocrisy, and the natural outcries of sudden passion. This whole

speech, considered in this light, is a remarkable instance of judgment,

as if consists entirely of antitheses and metaphors.

NOTE XXIV.

ACT III. SCENE II.

_Macbeth_.--Our fears in Banquo

Stick deep; and in his royalty of nature

Reigns that, which would be fear'd. 'Tis much he dares,

And to that dauntless temper of his mind,

He hath a wisdom that doth guide his valour

To act in safety. There is none but he,

Whose being I do fear: and, under him,

My genius is rebuk'd; (a)_as, it is said,

Anthony's was by Cæsar_. He chid the sisters,

When first they put the name of king upon me,

And bade them speak to him; then, prophet-like,

They hail'd him father to a line of kings:

Upon my head they plac'd a fruitless crown,

And put a barren sceptre in my gripe,

Thence to be wrench'd with an unlineal hand,

No son of mine succeeding. If 'tis so,

For Banquo's issue have I 'fil'd my mind;

For them, the gracious Duncan have I murther'd,

Put rancours in the vessel of my peace

Only for them; and mine eternal jewel

Given to the (b)_common enemy of man_,

To make them kings,--the seed of Banquo kings.

Rather than so, come fate into the list,

(c)And champion me to th' _utterance_!--

(a)--As, it is said,

Anthony's was by Cæsar.

Though I would not often assume the critick's privilege, of being

confident where certainty cannot be obtained, nor indulge myself too

far, in departing from the established reading; yet I cannot but propose

the rejection of this passage, which, I believe, was an insertion of

some player, that, having so much learning as to discover to what

Shakespeare alluded, was not willing that his audience should be less

knowing than himself, and has, therefore, weakened the author's sense by

the intrusion of a remote and useless image into a speech bursting from

a man wholly possessed with his own present condition, and, therefore,

not at leisure to explain his own allusions to himself. If these words

are taken away, by which not only the thought but the numbers are

injured, the lines of Shakespeare close together without any traces of a

breach.

My genius is rebuk'd. He chid the sisters.

(b)--The common enemy of man.

It is always an entertainment to an inquisitive reader, to trace a

sentiment to its original source, and, therefore, though the term enemy

of man, applied to the devil, is in itself natural and obvious, yet some

may be pleased with being informed, that Shakespeare probably borrowed

it from the first lines of the Destruction of Troy, a book which he is

known to have read.

That this remark may not appear too trivial, I shall take occasion from

it to point out a beautiful passage of Milton, evidently copied from a

book of no greater authority: in describing the gates of hell, Book ii.

v.879, he says,

--On a sudden open fly,

With impetuous recoil and jarring sound,

Th' infernal doors, and on their hinges grate

Harsh thunder.

In the history of Don Bellianis, when one of the knights approaches, as

I remember, the castle of Brandezar, the gates are said to open,

_grating harsh thunder upon their brazen hinges_.

(c)--Come fate into the list,

And champion me to th' utterance.--

This passage will be best explained by translating it into the language

from whence the only word of difficulty in it is borrowed. _Que la

destinée se rende en lice, et qu'elle me donne un défi_ à l'outrance. A

challenge or a combat _a l'outrance, to extremity_, was a fixed term in

the law of arms, used when the combatants engaged with an _odium

internecinum, an intention to destroy each other_, in opposition to

trials of skill at festivals, or on other occasions, where the contest

was only for reputation or a prize. The sense, therefore, is, Let fate,

that has fore-doomed the exaltation of the sons of Banquo, enter the

lists against me, with the utmost animosity, in defence of its own

decrees, which I will endeavour to invalidate, whatever be the danger.

NOTE XXV.

_Macbeth_. Ay, in the catalogue, ye go for men;

As hounds, and grey-hounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs,

Shoughs, water-rugs, and demy-wolves are cleped

All by the name of dogs.

Though this is not the most sparkling passage in the play, and though

the name of a dog is of no great importance, yet it may not be improper

to remark, that there is no such species of dogs as _shoughs_ mentioned

by Caius De Canibus Britannicis, or any other writer that has fallen

into my hands, nor is the word to be found in any dictionary which I

have examined. I, therefore, imagined that it is falsely printed for

_slouths_, a kind of slow hound bred in the southern parts of England,

but was informed by a lady, that it is more probably used, either by

mistake, or according to the orthography of that time, for _shocks_.

NOTE XXVI.

_Macbeth_.--In this hour, at most,

I will advise you where to plant yourselves;

Acquaint you with the perfect spy o'th'time,

The moment on't; for't must be done to-night,

And something from the palace.--

What is meant by _the spy of the time_, it will be found difficult to

explain; and, therefore, sense will be cheaply gained by a slight

alteration.--Macbeth is assuring the assassins that they shall not want

directions to find Banquo, and, therefore, says,

I will--

_Acquaint you with_ a perfect spy _o'th'time_.

Accordingly a third murderer joins them afterwards at the place of

action.

_Perfect_ is _well instructed_, or _well informed_, as in this play,

Though in your state of honour I am _perfect_.

_Though I am_ well acquainted _with your quality and rank_.

NOTE XXVII.

SCENE IV.

_2 Murderer_. He needs not to mistrust, since he delivers

Our offices and what we have to do,

To the direction just.

Mr. Theobald has endeavoured unsuccessfully to amend this passage, in

which nothing is faulty but the punctuation. The meaning of this abrupt

dialogue is this: The _perfect spy_, mentioned by Macbeth in the

foregoing scene, has, before they enter upon the stage, given them the

directions which were promised at the time of their agreement; and,

therefore, one of the murderers observes, that, since _he has given them

such exact information, he needs not doubt of their performance_. Then,

by way of exhortation to his associates, he cries out,

--To the direction just.

_Now nothing remains but that we conform exactly to Macbeth's

directions_.

NOTE XXVIII.

SCENE V.

_Macbeth_. You know your own degrees, sit down:

At first and last, the hearty welcome.

As this passage stands, not only the numbers are very imperfect, but the

sense, if any can be found, weak and contemptible. The numbers will be

improved by reading,

--sit down at first,

And last a hearty welcome.

But for _last_ should then be written _next_. I believe the true

reading is,

You know your own degrees, sit down--_To_ first

And last the hearty welcome.

_All of whatever degree, from the highest to the lowest, may be assured

that their visit is well received_.

NOTE XXIX

_Macbeth._--There's blood upon thy face.

[--_To the murderer, aside at the door_.]

_Murderer_. 'Tis Banquo's then.

_Macbeth_. 'Tis better thee without, than _he_ within.

The sense apparently requires that this passage should be read thus:

'Tis better thee without, than _him_ within.

That is, _I am more pleased that the blood of Banquo should be on thy

face, than in his body_.

NOTE XXX.

_Lady Macbeth_. O proper stuff!

This is the very painting of your fear:

[_Aside to Macbeth_.

This is the air-drawn dagger, which, you said,

Led you to Duncan. Oh, these flaws and starts,

_Impostures to true fear_, would well become

A woman's story at a winter's fire,

Authoriz'd by her grandam. Shame itself!

Why do you make such faces? When all's done,

You look but on a stool.

As _starts_ can neither with propriety nor sense be called _impostures

to true fear_, something else was undoubtedly intended by the author,

who, perhaps, wrote,

--These flaws and starts,

_Impostures true to fear_, would well become

A woman's story.--

These symptoms of terrour and amazement might better become _impostors

true_ only _to fear, might become a coward at the recital of such

falsehoods, as no man could credit, whose understanding was not weakened

by his terrours; tales, told by a woman over a fire on the authority of

her grandam_.

NOTE XXXI.

_Macbeth_.--Love and health to all!

Then I'll sit down: give me some wine, fill full:--

I drink to the general joy of the whole table,

And to our dear friend Banquo, whom we miss;

Would he were here! to all, and him, we thirst,

_And all to all_.--

Though this passage is, as it now stands, capable of more meanings than

one, none of them are very satisfactory; and, therefore, I am inclined

to read it thus:

--to all, and him, we thirst,

_And hail to all_.

Macbeth, being about to salute his company with a bumper, declares that

he includes Banquo, though absent, in this act of kindness, and wishes

_health_ to all. _Hail_ or _heil_ for _health_ was in such continual use

among the good-fellows of ancient times, that a drinker was called a

_was-heiler_, or a _wisher of health_, and the liquor was termed

_was-heil_, because _health_ was so often _wished_ over it. Thus in the

lines of Hanvil the monk,

Jamque vagante scypho, discincto gutture _was-heil_

Ingeminant _was-heil_: labor est plus perdere vini

Quam sitis.--

These words were afterwards corrupted into _wassail_ and _wassailer_.

NOTE XXXII.

_Macbeth_.--Can such things be,

And overcome us, like a summer's cloud,

Without our special wonder? You make me strange

Even to the disposition that I _owe_,

When now I think, you can behold such sights,

And keep the natural ruby of your cheek,

When mine is blanched with fear.

This passage, as it now stands, is unintelligible, but may be restored

to sense by a very slight alteration:

--You make me strange

Ev'n to the disposition that I _know_.

_Though I had before seen many instances of your courage, yet it now

appears in a degree altogether_ new. _So that my long_ acquaintance

_with your_ disposition _does not hinder me from that astonishment

which_ novelty _produces_.

NOTE XXXIII.

It will have blood, they say, blood will have blood,

Stones have been known to move, and trees to speak;

Augurs, that understand relations, have

By magpies, and by choughs, and rooks, brought forth

The secret'st man of blood.--

In this passage the first line loses much of its force by the present

punctuation. Macbeth having considered the prodigy which has just

appeared, infers justly from it, that the death of Duncan cannot pass

unpunished;

It will have blood:--

then, after a short pause, declares it as the general observation of

mankind, that murderers cannot escape:

--they say, blood will have blood.

Murderers, when they have practised all human means of security, are

detected by supernatural directions:

Augurs, that understand relations, &c.

By the word _relation_ is understood the _connexion_ of effects with

causes; to _understand relations_ as _an augur_, is to know how those

things _relate_ to each other, which have no visible combination or

dependence.

NOTE XXXIV.

SCENE VII.

_Enter Lenox and another Lord_.

As this tragedy, like the rest of Shakespeare's, is, perhaps,

overstocked with personages, it is not easy to assign a reason, why a

nameless character should be introduced here, since nothing is said that

might not, with equal propriety, have been put into the mouth of any

other disaffected man. I believe, therefore, that in the original copy,

it was written, with a very common form of contraction, _Lenox and An_.

for which the transcriber, instead of Lenox and Angus, set down, Lenox

and _another Lord_. The author had, indeed, been more indebted to the

transcriber's fidelity and diligence, had he committed no errours of

greater importance.

NOTE XXXV.

As this is the chief scene of enchantment in the play, it is proper, in

this place, to observe, with how much judgment Shakespeare has selected

all the circumstances of his infernal ceremonies, and how exactly he has

conformed to common opinions and traditions:

Thrice the brinded cat hath mew'd.

The usual form in which familiar spirits are reported to converse with

witches, is that of a cat. A witch, who was tried about half a century

before the time of Shakespeare, had a cat named Rutterkin, as the spirit

of one of those witches was Grimalkin; and when any mischief was to be

done, she used to bid Rutterkin _go and fly_; but once, when she would

have sent Rutterkin to torment a daughter of the countess of Rutland,

instead of _going_ or _flying_, he only cried _mew_, from whence she

discovered that the lady was out of his power, the power of witches

being not universal, but limited, as Shakespeare has taken care to

inculcate:

Though his bark cannot be lost,

Yet it shall be tempest-tost.

The common afflictions which the malice of witches produced, were

melancholy, fits, and loss of flesh, which are threatened by one of

Shakespeare's witches:

Weary sev'n nights, nine times nine,

Shall he dwindle, peak, and pine.

It was, likewise, their practice to destroy the cattle of their

neighbours, and the farmers have, to this day, many ceremonies to secure

their cows and other cattle from witchcraft; but they seem to have been

most suspected of malice against swine. Shakespeare has, accordingly,

made one of his witches declare that she has been _killing swine_; and

Dr. Harsenet observes, that, about that time, "a sow could not be ill of

the measles, nor a girl of the sullens, but some old woman was charged

with witchcraft."

Toad, that under the cold stone,

Days and nights hast thirty-one,

Swelter'd venom sleeping got,

Boil thou first i' the charmed pot.

Toads have, likewise, long lain under the reproach of being by some

means accessary to witchcraft, for which reason Shakespeare, in the

first scene of this play, calls one of the spirits Padocke, or Toad, and

now takes care to put a toad first into the pot. When Vaninus was seized

at Tholouse, there was found at his lodgings, "ingens bufo vitro

inclusus," _a great toad shut in a vial_, upon which those that

prosecuted him "veneficium exprobrabant," _charged him_, I suppose,

_with witchcraft_.

Fillet of a fenny snake,

In the cauldron boil and bake:

Eye of newt, and toe of frog;--For a charm, &c.

The propriety of these ingredients may be known by consulting the books

De Viribus Animalium and De Mirabilibus Mundi, ascribed to Albertus

Magnus, in which the reader, who has time and credulity, may discover

very wonderful secrets.

Finger of birth-strangled babe,

Ditch-deliver'd by a drab--

It has been already mentioned, in the law against witches, that they are

supposed to take up dead bodies to use in enchantments, which was

confessed by the woman whom king James examined, and who had of a dead

body, that was divided in one of their assemblies, two fingers for her

share. It is observable, that Shakespeare, on this great occasion, which

involves the fate of a king, multiplies all the circumstances of

horrour. The babe, whose finger is used, must be strangled in its birth;

the grease must not only be human, but must have dropped from a gibbet,

the gibbet of a murderer; and even the sow, whose blood is used, must

have offended nature by devouring her own farrow. These are touches of

judgment and genius.

And now about the cauldron sing--

Black spirits and white,

Red spirits and grey,

Mingle, mingle, mingle,

You that mingle may.

And, in a former part:

--weird sisters hand in hand,--

Thus do go about, about;

Thrice to thine, and thrice to mine,

And thrice again, to make up nine;

These two passages I have brought together, because they both seem

subject to the objection of too much levity for the solemnity of

enchantment, and may both be shown, by one quotation from Camden's

account of Ireland, to be founded upon a practice really observed by the

uncivilized natives of that country. "When any one gets a fall," says

the informer of Camden, "he starts up, and, _turning three times to the

right_, digs a hole in the earth; for they imagine that there is a

spirit in the ground, and if he falls sick in two or three days, they

send one of their women that is skilled in that way to the place, where

she says, I call thee from the east, west, north, and south, from the

groves, the woods, the rivers, and the fens, from the _fairies, red,

black, white_." There was, likewise, a book written before the time of

Shakespeare, describing, amongst other properties, the _colours_ of

spirits.

Many other circumstances might be particularized, in which Shakespeare

has shown his judgment and his knowledge[4].

NOTE XXXVI.

SCENE II.

_Macbeth_. Thou art too like the spirit of Banquo; down!

Thy crown does (a)sear mine eye-balls:--and thy (b)_hair_,

Thou other gold-bound brow, is like the first:--

A third is like the former.

(a) The expression of Macbeth, that the _crown sears_ his eye-balls, is

taken from the method formerly practised of destroying the sight of

captives or competitors, by holding a burning bason before the eye,

which dried up its humidity. Whence the Italian, _abacinare, to blind_.

(b) As Macbeth expected to see a train of kings, and was only inquiring

from what race they would proceed, he could not be surprised that the

_hair_ of the second was _bound with gold_, like that of the first; he

was offended only that the second resembled the first, as the first

resembled Banquo, and, therefore, said:

--and thy _air_,

Thou other gold-bound brow, is like the first.

NOTE XXXVII.

I will--give to the edge o' th' sword

His wife, his babes, and all unfortunate souls

That _trace him in his line_.--No boasting like a fool:

This deed I'll do before my purpose cool.

Both the sense and measure of the third line, which, as it rhymes,

ought, according to the practice of this author, to be regular, are, at

present, injured by two superfluous syllables, which may easily be

removed by reading,

--souls

That trace his line:--No boasting like a fool.

NOTE XXXVIII.

SCENE III.

_Rosse_. My dearest cousin,

I pray you, school yourself: But for your husband,

He's noble, wise, judicious, and best knows

The fits o'th'time, I dare not speak much further,

But cruel are the times when we are traitors,

And do not know't ourselves, when we (a)_hold rumour

From what we fear_, yet know not what we fear;

But float upon a wild and violent sea,

Each way, and (b)_move_. I'll take my leave of you:

Shall not be long but I'll be here again:

Things at the worst will cease, or else climb upward

To what they were before: my pretty cousin,

Blessing upon you!

(a)--When we hold rumour

From what we fear, yet know not what we fear.

The present reading seems to afford no sense; and, therefore, some

critical experiments may be properly tried upon it, though, the verses

being without any connexion, there is room for suspicion, that some

intermediate lines are lost, and that the passage is, therefore,

irretrievable. If it be supposed that the fault arises only from the

corruption of some words, and that the traces of the true reading are

still to be found, the passage may be changed thus:

--when we _bode ruin_

From what we fear, yet know not what we fear.

Or, in a sense very applicable to the occasion of the conference:

--when the _bold, running_

From what they fear, yet know not what they fear.

(b) But float upon a wild and violent sea

Each way, and move.

That he who _floats_ upon a _rough sea_ must move, is evident, too

evident for Shakespeare so emphatically to assert. The line, therefore,

is to be written thus:

Each way, and move--I'll take my leave of you.

Rosse is about to proceed, but, finding himself overpowered by his

tenderness, breaks off abruptly, for which he makes a short apology, and

retires.

NOTE XXXIX.

SCENE IV.

_Malcolm_. Let us seek out some desolate shade, and there

Weep our sad bosoms empty.

_Macduff_. Let us rather

Hold fast the mortal sword; and, like good men,

Bestride our _downfal birth-doom_: each new morn,

New widows howl, new orphans cry, new sorrows

Strike heaven on the face, that it resounds

As if it felt with Scotland, and yell'd out

Like syllables of dolour.

He who can discover what is meant by him that earnestly exhorts him to

_bestride_ his _downfal birth-doom_, is at liberty to adhere to the

present text; but those who are willing to confess that such counsel

would to them be unintelligible, must endeavour to discover some reading

less obscure. It is probable that Shakespeare wrote:

--like good men,

Bestride our _downfall'n birthdom_--

The allusion is to a man from whom something valuable is about to be

taken by violence, and who, that he may defend it without encumbrance,

lays it on the ground, and stands over it with his weapon in his hand.

Our birthdom, or birthright, says he, lies on the ground, let us, like

men who are to fight for what is dearest to them, not abandon it, but

stand over it and defend it. This is a strong picture of obstinate

resolution.

_Birthdom_ for _birthright_ is formed by the same analogy with

_masterdom_ in this play, signifying the _privileges_ or _rights of a

master_.

Perhaps it might be _birth-dame_ for _mother_; let us stand over our

mother that lies bleeding on the ground.

NOTE XL.

_Malcolm_. Now we'll together; and the _chance of goodness_

Be like our warranted quarrel!

The _chance of goodness_, as it is commonly read, conveys no sense. If

there be not some more important errour in the passage, it should, at

least, be pointed thus:

--And the chance, of goodness,

Be like our warranted quarrel!

That is, may the event be, of the goodness of heaven, [_pro justicia

divina_,] answerable to the cause.

But I am inclined to believe that Shakespeare wrote,

--and the chance, O goodness,

Be like our warranted quarrel!

This some of his transcribers wrote with a small _o_, which another

imagined to mean _of_. If we adopt this reading, the sense will be, _and

O! thou sovereign goodness, to whom we now appeal, may our fortune

answer to our cause._

NOTE XLI.

ACT V. SCENE III.

_Macbeth_. Bring me no more reports, let them fly all,

Till Birnam wood remove to Dunsinane,

I cannot taint with fear. What's the boy Malcolm?

Was he not born of woman?--

--fly false thanes,

And mingle with the English epicures.

In the first line of this speech, the proper pauses are not observed in

the present editions.

Bring me no more reports--let them fly all--

_Tell me not any more of desertions--Let all my subjects leave me--I am

safe till, &c._

The reproach of epicurism, on which Mr. Theobald has bestowed a note, is

nothing more than a natural invective, uttered by an inhabitant of a

barren country, against those who have more opportunities of luxury.

NOTE XLII.

_Macbeth_. I have liv'd long enough: my _way_ of life

Is fall'n into the sear, the yellow leaf.

As there is no relation between the _way of life_, and _fallen into the

sear_, I am inclined to think, that the _W_ is only an _M_ inverted, and

that it was originally written, my _May_ of life.

_I am now passed from the spring to the autumn of my days, but I am

without those comforts that should succeed the sprightliness of bloom,

and support me in this melancholy season._

NOTE XLIII.

SCENE IV.

_Malcolm_. 'Tis his main hope:

For where there is _advantage to be given_,

Both more and less have given him the revolt;

And none serve with him but constrained things,

Whose hearts are absent too.

The impropriety of the expression _advantage to be given_, instead of

_advantage given_, and the disagreeable repetition of the word _given_

in the next line incline me to read,

--where there is _a'vantage_ to be _gone_,

Both more and less have given him the revolt.

_Advantage_ or _'vantage_, in the time of Shakespeare, signified

_opportunity_.

_More and less_ is the same with _greater and less_. So in the

interpolated Mandeville, a book of that age, there is a chapter of India

the more and the less.

NOTE XLIV.

SCENE V.

_Macbeth_.--Wherefore was that cry?

_Seyton_. The queen, my lord, is dead.

_Macbeth_. She should (a)have, died hereafter:

There would have been a time for such a _word_.

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

To the last syllable of (b)recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life's but a walking shadow.--

(a) She should have died hereafter,

There would have been a time for such a _word_.

This passage has very justly been suspected of being corrupt. It is not

apparent for what _word_ there would have been a _time_, and that there

would or would not be a _time_ for any _word_, seems not a consideration

of importance sufficient to transport Macbeth into the following

exclamation. I read, therefore:

She should have died hereafter,

There would have been a time for--such a _world!_--

To-morrow, &c.

It is a broken speech, in which only part of the thought is expressed,

and may be paraphrased thus: The queen is dead. _Macbeth_. Her death

should have been deferred to some more peaceful hour; had she lived

longer, _there would at length have been a time for_ the honours due to

her as a queen, and that respect which I owe her for her fidelity and

love. Such is the _world_--such is the condition of human life, that we

always think _to-morrow_ will be happier than to-day; but to-morrow and

to-morrow steals over us unenjoyed and unregarded, and we still linger

in the same expectation to the moment appointed for our end. All these

days, which have thus passed away, have sent multitudes of fools to the

grave, who were engrossed by the same dream of future felicity, and,

when life was departing from them, were, like me, reckoning on to-

morrow.

(b) To the last syllable of recorded time.

_Recorded time_ seems to signify the time fixed in the decrees of heaven

for the period of life. The _record_ of _futurity_ is, indeed, no

accurate expression, but as we only know transactions past or present,

the language of men affords no term for the volumes of prescience, in

which future events may be supposed to be written.

NOTE XLV.

_Macbeth_. If thou speak'st false.

Upon the next tree shalt thou hang alive,

Till famine cling thee: if thy speech be sooth,

I care not if thou dost for me as much.--

I _pull_ in resolution; and begin

To doubt th' equivocation of the fiend,

That lies like truth: "Fear not till Birnam wood

Do come to Dunsinane," and now a wood

Comes toward Dunsinane.

I _pull_ in resolution.--

Though this is the reading of all the editions, yet as it is a phrase

without either example, elegance, or propriety, it is surely better to

read:

I _pall_ in resolution.--

_I languish in my constancy, my confidence begins to forsake me._ It is

scarcely necessary to observe how easily _pall_ might be changed into

_pull_ by a negligent writer, or mistaken for it by an unskilful

printer.

NOTE XLVI.

SCENE VIII.

_Siward_ Had I as many sons as I have hairs,

I would not wish them to a fairer death:

And so his knell is knoll'd.

This incident is thus related from Henry of Huntingdon, by Camden, in

his Remains, from which our author probably copied it.

When Siward, the martial Earl of Northumberland, understood that his

son, whom he had sent in service against the Scotchmen, was slain, he

demanded whether his wound were in the fore part or hinder part of his

body. When it was answered in the fore part, he replied, "I am right

glad; neither wish I any other death to me or mine."

* * * * *

After the foregoing pages were printed, the late edition of Shakespeare,

ascribed to Sir Thomas Hanmer, fell into my hands; and it was,

therefore, convenient for me to delay the publication of my remarks,

till I had examined whether they were not anticipated by similar

observations, or precluded by better. I, therefore, read over this

tragedy, but found that the editor's apprehension is of a cast so

different from mine, that he appears to find no difficulty in most of

those passages which I have represented as unintelligible, and has,

therefore, passed smoothly over them, without any attempt to alter or

explain them.

Some of the lines with which I had been perplexed, have been, indeed, so

fortunate as to attract his regard; and it is not without all the

satisfaction which it is usual to express on such occasions, that I find

an entire agreement between us in substituting [see Note II.] _quarrel_

for _quarry_, and in explaining the adage of the cat, [Note XVII.] But

this pleasure is, like most others, known only to be regretted; for I

have the unhappiness to find no such conformity with regard to any other

passage.

The line which I have endeavoured to amend, Note XI. is, likewise,

attempted by the new editor, and is, perhaps, the only passage in the

play in which he has not submissively admitted the emendations of

foregoing criticks. Instead of the common reading,

--Doing every thing

_Safe_ towards your love and honour,

he has published,

--Doing every thing

_Shap'd_ towards your love and honour.

This alteration, which, like all the rest attempted by him, the reader

is expected to admit, without any reason alleged in its defence, is, in

my opinion, more plausible than that of Mr. Theobald: whether it is

right, I am not to determine.

In the passage which I have altered in Note XL. an emendation is,

likewise, attempted in the late edition, where, for,

--and the chance _of_ goodness

Be like our warranted quarrel,

is substituted--and the chance _in_ goodness--whether with more or less

elegance, dignity, and propriety, than the reading which I have offered,

I must again decline the province of deciding.

Most of the other emendations which he has endeavoured, whether with

good or bad fortune, are too trivial to deserve mention. For surely the

weapons of criticism ought not to be blunted against an editor, who can

imagine that he is restoring poetry, while he is amusing himself with

alterations like these: for,

--This is the sergeant,

Who like a good and hardy soldier fought;

--This is the sergeant, who

Like a _right_ good and hardy soldier fought.

For,

--Dismay'd not this

Our captains Macbeth and Banquo?--Yes;

--Dismay'd not this

Our captains _brave_ Macbeth and Banquo?--Yes.

Such harmless industry may, surely, be forgiven, if it cannot be

praised: may he, therefore, never want a monosyllable, who can use it

with such wonderful dexterity.

Rumpatur quisquis rumpitur invidia!

The rest of this edition I have not read, but, from the little that I

have seen, think it not dangerous to declare that, in my opinion, its

pomp recommends it more than its accuracy. There is no distinction made

between the ancient reading, and the innovations of the editor; there is

no reason given for any of the alterations which are made; the

emendations of former criticks are adopted without any acknowledgment,

and few of the difficulties are removed which have hitherto embarrassed

the readers of Shakespeare.

I would not, however, be thought to insult the editor, nor to censure

him with too much petulance, for having failed in little things, of whom

I have been told, that he excels in greater. But I may, without

indecency, observe, that no man should attempt to teach others what he

has never learned himself; and that those who, like Themistocles, have

studied the arts of policy, and "can teach a small state how to grow

great," should, like him, disdain to labour in trifles, and consider

petty accomplishments as below their ambition.[5]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] "To deny the possibility, nay, the actual existence of witchcraft

and sorcery, is, at once flatly to contradict the revealed word of

God, in various passages both of the Old and New Testament: and the

thing itself is a truth to which every nation in the world hath, in

its turn, borne testimony, either by examples seemingly well-attested,

or by prohibitory laws, which, at least, suppose the possibility of

commerce with evil spirits." Blackstone, Commentaries iv. 60. The

learned judge, however, concludes with calling it a "dubious crime,"

and approves the maxim of the philosophic Montesquieu, whom no one

would lightly accuse of superstition, that "il faut être très

circonspect dans la poursuite de la magie et de l'hérésie." Esprit

des Lois, xii. 5. Selden attempted to justify the punishing of

witchcraft capitally. Works, iii. 2077. See Spectator, 117.

Barrington's Ancient Statutes, 407.

[2] In Nashe's Lenten Stuff, 1599, it is said, that no less than six

hundred witches were executed at one time. Reed.--Boswell's

Shakespeare, xi. 5. Dr. Grey, in his notes on Hudibras, mentions,

that Hopkins the noted witch-finder hanged sixty suspected witches

in one year. He also cites Hutchinson on Witchcraft for thirty

thousand having been burnt in 150 years. _See Barrington on Ancient

Statutes_.

[3] Johnson's apprehensions here are surely unfounded. The region of

Fancy, however, in his mind, was very circumscribed. Mrs. Montague's

chapter on Shakespeare's Preternatural Beings, in her excellent

Essay, will repay perusal. See too Schlegel on Dramatic Literature.

[4] Compare the Incantations of the Erichtho of Lucan, the Canidie of

Horace, the Cantata of Salvator Rosa, "all' incanto all' incante,"

and the Eumenides of Æschylus. The Gothic wildness of Shakespeare's

"weird sisters" will thence be better appreciated.--Ed.

[5] These excellent observations extorted praise from the supercilious

Warburton himself. In the Preface to his Shakespeare, published two

years after the appearance of Johnson's anonymous pamphlet, he thus

alludes to it: "As to all those things which have been published

under the titles of Essays, Remarks, Observations, &c. on

Shakespeare, (if you except some critical notes on Macbeth, given as

a specimen of a projected edition, and written, as appears, by a man

of parts and genius,) the rest are absolutely below a serious

notice." According to Boswell, Johnson ever retained a grateful

remembrance of this distinguished compliment; "He praised me," said

he, "at a time when praise was of value to me." Boswell, I. Johnson

affixed to this tract, proposals for a Shakespeare in 10 volumes,

18mo. price, to subscribers, 1_l_ 5_s_. in sheets, half-a-guinea of

which moderate sum was to be deposited at the time of subscription.

The following fuller proposals were published in 1756; but they were

not realized until the lapse of nine years from that period.

Boswell, I.--Ed.

PROPOSALS

FOR PRINTING THE

DRAMATICK WORKS

OF

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

PRINTED IN THE YEAR 1756.

When the works of Shakespeare are, after so many editions, again offered

to the publick, it will, doubtless, be inquired, why Shakespeare stands

in more need of critical assistance than any other of the English

writers, and what are the deficiencies of the late attempts, which

another editor may hope to supply?

The business of him that republishes an ancient book is, to correct what

is corrupt, and to explain what is obscure. To have a text corrupt in

many places, and in many doubtful, is, among the authors that have

written since the use of types, almost peculiar to Shakespeare. Most

writers, by publishing their own works, prevent all various readings,

and preclude all conjectural criticism. Books, indeed, are sometimes

published after the death of him who produced them; but they are better

secured from corruption than these unfortunate compositions. They

subsist in a single copy, written or revised by the author; and the

faults of the printed volume can be only faults of one descent.

But of the works of Shakespeare the condition has been far different: he

sold them, not to be printed, but to be played. They were immediately

copied for the actors, and multiplied by transcript after transcript,

vitiated by the blunders of the penman, or changed by the affectation of

the player; perhaps enlarged to introduce a jest, or mutilated to

shorten the representation; and printed at last without the concurrence

of the author, without the consent of the proprietor, from compilations

made by chance or by stealth out of the separate parts written for the

theatre; and thus thrust into the world surreptitiously and hastily,

they suffered another depravation from the ignorance and negligence of

the printers, as every man who knows the state of the press, in that

age, will readily conceive.

It is not easy for invention to bring together so many causes concurring

to vitiate the text. No other author ever gave up his works to fortune

and time with so little care: no books could be left in hands so likely

to injure them, as plays frequently acted, yet continued in manuscript:

no other transcribers were likely to be so little qualified for their

task as those who copied for the stage, at a time when the lower ranks

of the people were universally illiterate: no other editions were made

from fragments so minutely broken, and so fortuitously reunited; and in

no other age was the art of printing in such unskilful hands[1].

With the causes of corruption that make the revisal of Shakespeare's

dramatick pieces necessary, may be enumerated the causes of obscurity,

which may be partly imputed to his age, and partly to himself.

When a writer outlives his contemporaries, and remains almost the only

unforgotten name of a distant time, he is necessarily obscure. Every age

has its modes of speech, and its cast of thought; which, though easily

explained when there are many books to be compared with each other,

become sometimes unintelligible and always difficult, when there are no

parallel passages that may conduce to their illustration. Shakespeare is

the first considerable author of sublime or familiar dialogue in our

language. Of the books which he read, and from which he formed his

style, some, perhaps, have perished, and the rest are neglected. His

imitations are, therefore, unnoted, his allusions are undiscovered, and

many beauties, both of pleasantry and greatness, are lost with the

objects to which they were united, as the figures vanish when the

canvass has decayed.

It is the great excellence of Shakespeare, that he drew his scenes from

nature, and from life. He copied the manners of the world, then passing

before him, and has more allusions than other poets to the traditions

and superstition of the vulgar; which must, therefore, be traced, before

he can be understood.

He wrote at a time when our poetical language was yet unformed, when the

meaning of our phrases was yet in fluctuation, when words were adopted

at pleasure from the neighbouring languages, and while the Saxon was

still visibly mingled in our diction. The reader is, therefore,

embarrassed at once with dead and with foreign languages, with

obsoleteness and innovation. In that age, as in all others, fashion

produced phraseology, which succeeding fashion swept away before its

meaning was generally known, or sufficiently authorised: and in that

age, above all others, experiments were made upon our language, which

distorted its combinations, and disturbed its uniformity.

If Shakespeare has difficulties above other writers, it is to be imputed

to the nature of his work, which required the use of the common

colloquial language, and consequently admitted many phrases allusive,

elliptical, and proverbial, such as we speak and hear every hour without

observing them; and of which, being now familiar, we do not suspect that

they can ever grow uncouth, or that, being now obvious, they can ever

seem remote.

These are the principal causes of the obscurity of Shakespeare; to which

might be added the fulness of idea, which might sometimes load his words

with more sentiment than they could conveniently convey, and that

rapidity of imagination which might hurry him to a second thought before

he had fully explained the first. But my opinion is, that very few of

his lines were difficult to his audience, and that he used such

expressions as were then common, though the paucity of contemporary

writers makes them now seem peculiar.

Authors are often praised for improvement, or blamed for innovation,

with very little justice, by those who read few other books of the same

age. Addison, himself, has been so unsuccessful in enumerating the words

with which Milton has enriched our language, as, perhaps, not to have

named one of which Milton was the author; and Bentley has yet more

unhappily praised him as the introducer of those elisions into English

poetry, which had been used from the first essays of versification among

us, and which Milton was, indeed, the last that practised.

Another impediment, not the least vexatious to the commentator, is the

exactness with which Shakespeare followed his authors. Instead of

dilating his thoughts into generalities, and expressing incidents with

poetical latitude, he often combines circumstances unnecessary to his

main design, only because he happened to find them together. Such

passages can be illustrated only by him who has read the same story, in

the very book which Shakespeare consulted.

He that undertakes an edition of Shakespeare, has all these difficulties

to encounter, and all these obstructions to remove.

The corruptions of the text will be corrected by a careful collation of

the oldest copies, by which it is hoped that many restorations may yet

be made: at least it will be necessary to collect and note the variation

as materials for future criticks; for it very often happens that a wrong

reading has affinity to the right.

In this part all the present editions are apparently and intentionally

defective. The criticks did not so much as wish to facilitate the labour

of those that followed them. The same books are still to be compared;

the work that has been done, is to be done again; and no single edition

will supply the reader with a text, on which he can rely, as the best

copy of the works of Shakespeare.

The edition now proposed will, at least, have this advantage over

others. It will exhibit all the observable varieties of all the copies

that can be found; that, if the reader is not satisfied with the

editor's determination, he may have the means of choosing better for

himself.

Where all the books are evidently vitiated, and collation can give no

assistance, then begins the task of critical sagacity: and some changes

may well be admitted in a text never settled by the author, and so long

exposed to caprice and ignorance. But nothing shall be imposed, as in

the Oxford edition, without notice of the alteration; nor shall

conjecture be wantonly or unnecessarily indulged.

It has been long found, that very specious emendations do not equally

strike all minds with conviction, nor even the same mind, at different

times; and, therefore, though, perhaps, many alterations may be proposed

as eligible, very few will be obtruded as certain. In a language so

ungrammatical as the English, and so licentious as that of Shakespeare,

emendatory criticism is always hazardous, nor can it be allowed to any

man who is not particularly versed in the writings of that age, and

particularly studious of his author's diction. There is danger lest

peculiarities should be mistaken for corruptions, and passages rejected

as unintelligible, which a narrow mind happens not to understand.

All the former criticks have been so much employed on the corrections of

the text, that they have not sufficiently attended to the elucidation of

passages obscured by accident or time. The editor will endeavour to read

the books which the author read, to trace his knowledge to its source,

and compare his copies with their originals. If, in this part of his

design, he hopes to attain any degree of superiority to his

predecessors, it must be considered, that he has the advantage of their

labours; that, part of the work being already done, more care is

naturally bestowed on the other part; and that, to declare the truth,

Mr. Rowe and Mr. Pope were very ignorant of the ancient English

literature; Dr. Warburton was detained by more important studies; and

Mr. Theobald, if fame be just to his memory, considered learning only as

an instrument of gain, and made no further inquiry after his author's

meaning, when once he had notes sufficient to embellish his page with

the expected decorations.

With regard to obsolete or peculiar diction, the editor may, perhaps,

claim some degree of confidence, having had more motives to consider the

whole extent of our language than any other man from its first

formation. He hopes that, by comparing the works of Shakespeare with

those of writers who lived at the same time, immediately preceded, or

immediately followed him, he shall be able to ascertain his ambiguities,

disentangle his intricacies, and recover the meaning of words now lost

in the darkness of antiquity.

When, therefore, any obscurity arises from an allusion to some other

book, the passage will be quoted. When the diction is entangled, it will

be cleared by a paraphrase or interpretation. When the sense is broken

by the suppression of part, of the sentiment in pleasantry or passion,

the connexion will be supplied. When any forgotten custom is hinted,

care will be taken to retrieve and explain it. The meaning assigned to

doubtful words will be supported by the authorities of other writers, or

by parallel passages of Shakespeare himself.

The observation of faults and beauties is one of the duties of an

annotator, which some of Shakespeare's editors have attempted, and some

have neglected.--For this part of his task, and for this only, was Mr.

Pope eminently and indisputably qualified; nor has Dr. Warburton[2]

followed him with less diligence or less success. But I have never

observed that mankind was much delighted or improved by their asterisks,

commas, or double commas; of which the only effect is, that they

preclude the pleasure of judging for ourselves; teach the young and

ignorant to decide without principles; defeat curiosity and discernment,

by leaving them less to discover; and at last show the opinion of the

critick, without the reasons on which it was founded, and without

affording any light by which it may be examined.

The editor, though he may less delight his own vanity, will, probably,

please his reader more, by supposing him equally able with himself to

judge of beauties and faults, which require no previous acquisition of

remote knowledge. A description of the obvious scenes of nature, a

representation of general life, a sentiment of reflection or experience,

a deduction of conclusive arguments, a forcible eruption of effervescent

passion, are to be considered as proportionate to common apprehension,

unassisted by critical officiousness; since, to conceive them, nothing

more is requisite than acquaintance with the general state of the world,

and those faculties which he must almost bring with him who would read

Shakespeare.

But when the beauty arises from some adaptation of the sentiment to

customs worn out of use, to opinions not universally prevalent, or to

any accidental or minute particularity, which cannot be supplied by

common understanding, or common observation, it is the duty of a

commentator to lend his assistance.

The notice of beauties and faults, thus limited, will make no distinct

part of the design, being reducible to the explanation of some obscure

passages.

The editor does not, however, intend to preclude himself from the

comparison of Shakespeare's sentiments or expression with those of

ancient or modern authors, or from the display of any beauties not

obvious to the students of poetry; for, as he hopes to leave his author

better understood, he wishes, likewise, to procure him more rational

approbation.

The former editors have affected to slight their predecessors: but in

this edition all that is valuable will be adopted from every

commentator, that posterity may consider it as including all the rest,

and exhibiting whatever is hitherto known of the great, father of the

English drama.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] It is not true, that the plays of this author were more incorrectly

printed than those of any of his contemporaries: for in the plays of

Massinger, Marlowe, Marston, Fletcher, and others, as many errors

may be found. It is not true, that the art of printing was in no

other age in such unskilful hands. Nor is it true, in the latitude

in which it is stated, that "these plays were printed from

compilations made by chance or by stealth, out of the separate parts

written for the theatre:" two only of all his dramas, The Merry

Wives of Windsor, and King Henry V. appear to have been thus thrust

into the world; and of the former it is yet a doubt, whether it is a

first sketch, or an imperfect copy. See Malone's Preface throughout.

--Ed.

[2] See how this respectful reference to his labours was rewarded by

this "meek and modest ecclesiastic" in his Letters, 410, 272, 273.

Also Edinburgh Review for January, 1809.

PREFACE

TO

SHAKESPEARE.

PUBLISHED IN THE YEAR 1768[1].

That praises are without reason lavished on the dead, and that the

honours due only to excellence are paid to antiquity, is a complaint

likely to be always continued by those, who, being able to add nothing

to truth, hope for eminence from the heresies of paradox; or those, who,

being forced by disappointment upon consolatory expedients, are willing

to hope from posterity what the present age refuses, and flatter

themselves that the regard, which is yet denied by envy, will be at last

bestowed by time.

Antiquity, like every other quality that attracts the notice of mankind,

has undoubtedly votaries that reverence it, not from reason, but from

prejudice. Some seem to admire indiscriminately whatever has been long

preserved, without considering that time has sometimes co-operated with

chance; all, perhaps, are more willing to honour past than present

excellence; and the mind contemplates genius through the shades of age,

as the eye surveys the sun through artificial opacity. The great

contention of criticism is to find the faults of the moderns, and the

beauties of the ancients. While an author is yet living, we estimate his

powers by his worst performance, and when he is dead we rate them by his

best.

To works, however, of which the excellence is not absolute and definite,

but gradual and comparative; to works not raised upon principles

demonstrative and scientifick, but appealing wholly to observation and

experience, no other test can be applied than length of duration and

continuance of esteem. What mankind have long possessed they have often

examined and compared; and if they persist to value the possession, it

is because frequent comparisons have confirmed opinion in its favour.

As, among the works of nature, no man can properly call a river deep, or

a mountain high, without the knowledge of many mountains, and many

rivers; so, in the productions of genius, nothing can be styled

excellent till it has been compared with other works of the same kind.

Demonstration immediately displays its power, and has nothing to hope or

fear from the flux of years; but works tentative and experimental must

be estimated by their proportion to the general and collective ability

of man, as it is discovered in a long succession of endeavours. Of the

first building that was raised, it might be, with certainty, determined

that it was round or square; but whether it was spacious or lofty must

have been referred to time. The Pythagorean scale of numbers was at once

discovered to be perfect; but the poems of Homer we yet know not to

transcend the common limits of human intelligence, but by remarking,

that nation after nation, and century after century, has been able to do

little more than transpose his incidents, new name his characters, and

paraphrase his sentiments.

The reverence due to writings that have long subsisted, arises,

therefore, not from any credulous confidence in the superiour wisdom of

past ages, or gloomy persuasion of the degeneracy of mankind, but is the

consequence of acknowledged and indubitable positions, that what has

been longest known has been most considered, and what is most considered

is best understood.

The poet, of whose works I have undertaken the revision, may now begin

to assume the dignity of an ancient, and claim the privilege of

established fame and prescriptive veneration. He has long outlived his

century, the term commonly fixed as the test of literary merit[2].

Whatever advantages he might once derive from personal allusions, local

customs, or temporary opinions, have for many years been lost; and every

topick of merriment, or motive of sorrow, which the modes of artificial

life afforded him, now only obscure the scenes which they once

illuminated. The effects of favour and competition are at an end; the

tradition of his friendships and his enmities has perished; his works

support no opinion with arguments, nor supply any faction with

invectives; they can neither indulge vanity, nor gratify malignity; but

are read without any other reason than the desire of pleasure, and are,

therefore, praised only as pleasure is obtained; yet, thus unassisted by

interest or passion, they have passed through variations of taste and

changes of manners, and, as they devolved from one generation to

another, have received new honours at every transmission.

But because human judgment, though it be gradually gaining upon

certainty, never becomes infallible; and approbation, though long

continued, may yet be only the approbation of prejudice or fashion; it

is proper to inquire, by what peculiarities of excellence Shakespeare

has gained, and kept the favour of his countrymen.

Nothing can please many, and please long, but just representations of

general nature. Particular manners can be known to few, and, therefore,

few only can judge how nearly they are copied. The irregular

combinations of fanciful invention may delight awhile, by that novelty

of which the common satiety of life sends us all in quest; but the

pleasures of sudden wonder are soon exhausted, and the mind can only

repose on the stability of truth.

Shakespeare is, above all writers, at least above all modern writers,

the poet of nature; the poet that holds up to his readers a faithful

mirror of manners and of life. His characters are not modified by the

customs of particular places, unpractised by the rest of the world; by

the peculiarities of studies or professions, which can operate but upon

small numbers; or by the accidents of transient fashions or temporary

opinions: they are the genuine progeny of common humanity, such as the

world will always supply, and observation will always find. His persons

act and speak by the influence of those general passions and principles

by which all minds are agitated, and the whole system of life is

continued in motion. In the writings of other poets a character is too

often an individual: in those of Shakespeare it is commonly a species.

It is from this wide extension of design that so much instruction is

derived. It is this which fills the plays of Shakespeare with practical

axioms and domestick wisdom. It was said of Euripides, that every verse

was a precept; and it may be said of Shakespeare, that from his works

may be collected a system of civil and economical prudence. Yet his real

power is not shown in the splendour of particular passages, but by the

progress of his fable, and the tenour of his dialogue; and he that tries

to recommend him by select quotations, will succeed like the pedant in

Hierocles, who, when he offered his house to sale, carried a brick in

his pocket as a specimen.

It will not easily be imagined how much Shakespeare excels in

accommodating his sentiments to real life, but by comparing him with

other authors. It was observed of the ancient schools of declamation,

that the more diligently they were frequented, the more was the student

disqualified for the world, because he found nothing there which he

should ever meet in any other place. The same remark may be applied to

every stage but that of Shakespeare. The theatre, when it is under any

other direction, is peopled by such characters as were never seen,

conversing in a language which was never heard, upon topicks which will

never arise in the commerce of mankind. But the dialogue of this author

is often so evidently determined by the incident which produces it, and

is pursued with so much ease and simplicity, that it seems scarcely to

claim the merit of fiction, but to have been gleaned, by diligent

selection, out of common conversation and common occurrences.

Upon every other stage the universal agent is love, by whose power all

good and evil is distributed, and every action quickened or retarded. To

bring a lover, a lady, and a rival into the fable; to entangle them in

contradictory obligations, perplex them with oppositions of interest,

and harass them with violence of desires inconsistent with each other;

to make them meet in rapture, and part in agony; to fill their mouths

with hyperbolical joy and outrageous sorrow; to distress them as nothing

human ever was distressed; to deliver them as nothing human ever was

delivered; is the business of a modern dramatist. For this, probability

is violated, life is misrepresented, and language is depraved. But love

is only one of many passions; and, as it has no great influence upon the

sum of life[3], it has little operation in the dramas of a poet, who

caught his ideas from the living world, and exhibited only what he saw

before him. He knew that any other passion, as it was regular or

exorbitant, was a cause of happiness or calamity.

Characters thus ample and general were not easily discriminated and

preserved, yet, perhaps, no poet ever kept his personages more distinct

from each other. I will not say, with Pope, that every speech may be

assigned to the proper speaker, because many speeches there are which

have nothing characteristical; but, perhaps, though some may be equally

adapted to every person, it will be difficult to find any that can be

properly transferred from the present possessor to another claimant. The

choice is right, when there is reason for choice.

Other dramatists can only gain attention by hyperbolical or aggravated

characters, by fabulous and unexampled excellence or depravity, as the

writers of barbarous romances invigorated the reader by a giant and a

dwarf; and he that should form his expectations of human affairs from

the play, or from the tale, would be equally deceived. Shakespeare has

no heroes; his scenes are occupied only by men, who act and speak as the

reader thinks that he should himself have spoken or acted on the same

occasion: even where the agency is supernatural, the dialogue is level

with life. Other writers disguise the most natural passions and most

frequent incidents; so that he who contemplates them in the book will

not know them in the world: Shakespeare approximates the remote, and

familiarizes the wonderful; the event which he represents will not

happen, but, if it were possible, its effects would, probably, be such

as he has assigned[4]; and it may be said, that he has not only shown

human nature as it acts in real exigencies, but as it would be found in

trials, to which it cannot be exposed.

This, therefore, is the praise of Shakespeare, that his drama is the

mirror of life; that he who has mazed his imagination, in following the

phantoms which other writers raise up before him, may here be cured of

his delirious ecstacies, by reading human sentiments in human language,

by scenes from which a hermit may estimate the transactions of the

world, and a confessor predict the progress of the passions.

His adherence to general nature has exposed him to the censure of

criticks, who form their judgments upon narrower principles. Dennis and

Rymer think his Romans not sufficiently Roman; and Voltaire censures his

kings as not completely royal[5]. Dennis is offended, that Menenius, a

senator of Rome, should play the buffoon; and Voltaire, perhaps, thinks

decency violated when the Danish usurper is represented as a drunkard.

But Shakespeare always makes nature predominate over accident; and, if

he preserves the essential character, is not very careful of

distinctions superinduced and adventitious. His story requires Romans or

kings, but he thinks only on men. He knew that Rome, like every other

city, had men of all dispositions; and, wanting a buffoon, he went into

the senate-house for that which the senate-house would certainly have

afforded him. He was inclined to show an usurper and a murderer, not

only odious, but despicable; he, therefore, added drunkenness to his

other qualities, knowing that kings love wine like other men, and that

wine exerts its natural power upon kings. These are the petty cavils of

petty minds; a poet overlooks the casual distinction of country and

condition, as a painter, satisfied with the figure, neglects the

drapery.

The censure which he has incurred by mixing comick and tragick scenes,

as it extends to all his works, deserves more consideration. Let the

fact be first stated, and then examined.

Shakespeare's plays are not, in the rigorous or critical sense, either

tragedies or comedies, but compositions of a distinct kind; exhibiting

the real state of sublunary nature, which partakes of good and evil, joy

and sorrow, mingled with endless variety of proportion and innumerable

modes of combination; and expressing the course of the world, in which

the loss of one is the gain of another; in which, at the same time, the

reveller is hasting to his wine, and the mourner burying his friend; in

which the malignity of one is sometimes defeated by the frolick of

another; and many mischiefs and many benefits are done and hindered

without design.

Out of this chaos of mingled purposes and casualties the ancient poets,

according to the laws which custom had prescribed, selected some the

crimes of men, and some their absurdities; some the momentous

vicissitudes of life, and some the lighter occurrences; some the

terrours of distress and some the gaieties of prosperity. Thus rose the

two modes of imitation, known by the names of _tragedy_ and _comedy_,

compositions intended to promote different ends by contrary means, and

considered as so little allied, that I do not recollect among the Greeks

or Romans a single writer who attempted both[6].

Shakespeare has united the powers of exciting laughter and sorrow, not

only in one mind, but in one composition. Almost all his plays are

divided between serious and ludicrous characters, and, in the successive

evolutions of the design, sometimes produce seriousness and sorrow, and

sometimes levity and laughter.

That this is a practice contrary to the rules of criticism will be

readily allowed; but there is always an appeal open from criticism to

nature. The end of writing is to instruct; the end of poetry is to

instruct by pleasing. That the mingled drama may convey all the

instruction of tragedy or comedy cannot be denied, because it includes

both in its alternations of exhibition, and approaches nearer than

either to the appearance of life, by showing how great machinations and

slender designs may promote or obviate one another, and the high and the

low co-operate in the general system by unavoidable concatenation.

It is objected, that by this change of scenes the passions are

interrupted in their progression, and that the principal event, being

not advanced by a due gradation of preparatory incidents, wants, at

last, the power to move, which constitutes the perfection of dramatick

poetry. This reasoning is so specious, that it is received as true even

by those who, in daily experience, feel it to be false. The interchanges

of mingled scenes seldom fail to produce the intended vicissitudes of

passion. Fiction cannot move so much, but that the attention may be

easily transferred; and though it must be allowed that pleasing

melancholy may be sometimes interrupted by unwelcome levity, yet let it

be considered, likewise, that melancholy is often not pleasing, and that

the disturbance of one man may be the relief of another; that different

auditors have different habitudes; and that, upon the whole, all

pleasure consists in variety.

The players, who, in their edition, divided our author's works into

comedies, histories and tragedies, seem not to have distinguished the

three kinds by any very exact or definite ideas.

An action which ended happily to the principal persons, however serious

or distressful through its intermediate incidents, in their opinion,

constituted a comedy. This idea of a comedy continued long amongst us;

and plays were written, which, by changing the catastrophe, were

tragedies to-day, and comedies to-morrow[7].

Tragedy was not in those times a poem of more general dignity or

elevation than comedy; it required only a calamitous conclusion, with

which the common criticism of that age was satisfied, whatever lighter

pleasure it afforded in its progress.

History was a series of actions, with no other than chronological

succession, independent of each other, and without any tendency to

introduce or regulate the conclusion. It is not always very nicely

distinguished from tragedy. There is not much nearer approach to unity

of action in the tragedy of Anthony and Cleopatra, than in the history

of Richard the second. But a history might be continued through many

plays, as it had no plan, it had no limits.

Through all these denominations of the drama, Shakespeare's mode of

composition is the same; an interchange of seriousness and merriment, by

which the mind is softened at one time, and exhilarated at another. But

whatever be his purpose, whether to gladden or depress, or to conduct

the story, without vehemence or emotion, through tracts of easy and

familiar dialogue, he never fails to attain his purpose; as he commands

us, we laugh or mourn, or sit silent with quiet expectation, in

tranquillity without indifference.

When Shakespeare's plan is understood, most of the criticisms of Rymer

and Voltaire vanish away. The play of Hamlet is opened, without

impropriety, by two centinels; Iago bellows at Brabantio's window,

without injury to the scheme of the play, though in terms which a modern

audience would not easily endure; the character of Polonius is

seasonable and useful; and the Gravediggers themselves may be heard with

applause.

Shakespeare engaged in dramatick poetry with the world open before him;

the rules of the ancients were yet known to few; the publick judgment

was unformed; he had no example of such fame as might force him upon

imitation, nor criticks of such authority as might restrain his

extravagance: he, therefore, indulged his natural disposition, and his

disposition, as Rymer has remarked, led him to comedy. In tragedy he

often writes, with great appearance of toil and study, what is written

at last with little felicity; but, in his comick scenes, he seems to

produce, without labour, what no labour can improve. In tragedy he is

always struggling after some occasion to be comick; but in comedy he

seems to repose, or to luxuriate, as in a mode of thinking congenial to

his nature. In his tragick scenes there is always something wanting, but

his comedy often surpasses expectation or desire. His comedy pleases by

the thoughts and the language, and his tragedy, for the greater part, by

incident and action. His tragedy seems to be skill, his comedy to be

instinct[8].

The force of his comick scenes has suffered little diminution from the

changes made by a century and a half, in manners or in words. As his

personages act upon principles arising from genuine passion, very little

modified by particular forms, their pleasures and vexations are

communicable to all times and to all places; they are natural, and,

therefore, durable; the adventitious peculiarities of personal habits

are only superficial dies, bright and pleasing for a little while, yet

soon fading to a dim tinct, without any remains of former lustre; but

the discriminations of true passion are the colours of nature; they

pervade the whole mass, and can only perish with the body that exhibits

them. The accidental compositions of heterogeneous modes are dissolved

by the chance that combined them; but the uniform simplicity of

primitive qualities neither admits increase, nor suffers decay. The sand

heaped by one flood is scattered by another, but the rock always

continues in its place. The stream of time, which is continually washing

the dissoluble fabricks of other poets, passes, without injury, by the

adamant of Shakespeare[9].

If there be, what I believe there is, in every nation, a style which

never becomes obsolete, a certain mode of phraseology so consonant and

congenial to the analogy and principles of its respective language, as

to remain settled and unaltered; this style is probably to be sought in

the common intercourse of life, among those who speak only to be

understood, without ambition of elegance. The polite are always catching

modish innovations, and the learned depart from established forms of

speech, in hope of finding or making better; those who wish for

distinction forsake the vulgar, when the vulgar is right; but there is a

conversation above grossness and below refinement, where propriety

resides, and where this poet seems to have gathered his comick dialogue.

He is, therefore, more agreeable to the ears of the present age than any

other author equally remote, and among his other excellencies deserves

to be studied as one of the original masters of our language.

These observations are to be considered not as unexceptionably constant,

but as containing general and predominant truth. Shakespeare's familiar

dialogue is affirmed to be smooth and clear, yet not wholly without

ruggedness or difficulty; as a country may be eminently fruitful, though

it has spots unfit for cultivation: his characters are praised as

natural, though their sentiments are sometimes forced, and their actions

improbable; as the earth upon the whole is spherical, though its surface

is varied with protuberances and cavities.

Shakespeare with his excellencies has likewise faults, and faults

sufficient to obscure and overwhelm any other merit. I shall show them

in the proportion in which they appear to me, without envious malignity

or superstitious veneration. No question can be more innocently

discussed than a dead poet's pretensions to renown; and little regard is

due to that bigotry which sets candour higher than truth.

His first defect is that to which may be imputed most of the evil in

books or in men. He sacrifices virtue to convenience, and is so much

more careful to please than to instruct, that he seems to write without

any moral purpose. From his writings, indeed, a system of social duty

may be selected, for he that thinks reasonably must think morally; but

his precepts and axioms drop casually from him; he makes no just

distribution of good or evil, nor is always careful to show in the

virtuous a disapprobation of the wicked; he carries his persons

indifferently through right and wrong, and, at the close, dismisses them

without further care, and leaves their examples to operate by chance.

This fault the barbarity of his age cannot extenuate; for it is always a

writer's duty to make the world better, and justice is a virtue

independent on time or place.

The plots are often so loosely formed, that a very slight consideration

may improve them, and so carelessly pursued, that he seems, not always

fully to comprehend his own design. He omits opportunities of

instructing or delighting, which the train of his story seems to force

upon him, and apparently rejects those exhibitions which would be more

affecting, for the sake of those which are more easy.

It may be observed, that in many of his plays the latter part is

evidently neglected. When he found himself near the end of his work, and

in view of his reward, he shortened the labour to snatch the profit. He,

therefore, remits his efforts where he should most vigorously exert

them, and his catastrophe is improbably produced or imperfectly

represented.

He had no regard to distinction of time or place, but gives to one age

or nation, without scruple, the customs, institutions, and opinions of

another, at the expense not only of likelihood, but of possibility.

These faults Pope has endeavoured, with more zeal than judgment, to

transfer to his imagined interpolators. We need not wonder to find

Hector quoting Aristotle, when we see the loves of Theseus and Hippolyta

combined with the Gothick mythology of fairies. Shakespeare, indeed, was

not the only violator of chronology, for in the same age Sidney, who

wanted not the advantages of learning, has, in his Arcadia, confounded

the pastoral with the feudal times, the days of innocence, quiet, and

security, with those of turbulence, violence, and adventure[10].

In his comick scenes he is seldom very successful, when he engages his

characters in reciprocations of smartness and contests of sarcasm; their

jests are commonly gross, and their pleasantry licentious; neither his

gentlemen nor his ladies have much delicacy, nor are sufficiently

distinguished from his clowns by any appearance of refined manners.

Whether he represented the real conversation of his time is not easy to

determine; the reign of Elizabeth is commonly supposed to have been a

time of stateliness, formality, and reserve; yet, perhaps, the

relaxations of that severity were not very elegant[11]. There must,

however, have been always some modes of gaiety preferable to others, and

a writer ought to choose the best.

In tragedy his performance seems constantly to be 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.

In narration he affects a disproportionate pomp of diction, and a

wearisome train of circumlocution, and tells the incident imperfectly in

many words, which might have been more plainly delivered in few.

Narration in dramatick poetry is naturally tedious, as it is unanimated

and inactive, and obstructs the progress of the action; it should,

therefore, always be rapid, and enlivened by frequent interruption.

Shakespeare found it an incumbrance, and instead of lightening it by

brevity, endeavoured to recommend it by dignity and splendour.

His declamations or set speeches are commonly cold and weak, for his

power was the power of nature; when he endeavoured, like other tragick

writers, to catch opportunities of amplification, and instead of

inquiring what the occasion demanded, to show how much his stores of

knowledge could supply, he seldom escapes without the pity or resentment

of his reader.

It is incident to him to be now and then entangled with an unwieldy

sentiment, which he cannot well express, and will not reject; he

struggles with it a while, and, if it continues stubborn, comprises it

in words such as occur, and leaves it to be disentangled and evolved by

those who have more leisure to bestow upon it.

Not that always where the language is intricate, the thought is subtile,

or the image always great where the line is bulky; the equality of words

to things is very often neglected, and trivial sentiments and vulgar

ideas disappoint the attention, to which they are recommended by

sonorous epithets and swelling figures.

But the admirers of this great poet have most reason to complain when he

approaches nearest to his highest excellence, and seems fully resolved

to sink them in dejection, and mollify them with tender emotions, by the

fall of greatness, the danger of innocence, or the crosses of love. What

he does best, he soon ceases to do. He is not long soft and pathetick

without some idle conceit, or contemptible equivocation. He no sooner

begins to move, than he counteracts himself; and terrour and pity, as

they are rising in the mind, are checked and blasted by sudden

frigidity.

A quibble is to Shakespeare, what luminous vapours are to the traveller;

he follows it at all adventures it is sure to lead him out of his way,

and sure to ingulf him in the mire. It has some malignant power over his

mind, and its fascinations are irresistible. Whatever be the dignity or

profundity of his disquisitions, whether he be enlarging knowledge or

exalting affection, whether he be amusing attention with incidents, or

enchaining it in suspense, let but a quibble spring up before him, and

he leaves his work unfinished. A quibble is the golden apple for which

he will always turn aside from his career, or stoop from his elevation.

A quibble, poor and barren as it is, gave him such delight, that he was

content to purchase it, by the sacrifice of reason, propriety and truth.

A quibble was to him the fatal Cleopatra for which he lost the world,

and was content to lose it.

It will be thought strange, that, in enumerating the defects of this

writer, I have not yet mentioned his neglect of the unities; his

violation of those laws which have been instituted and established by

the joint authority of poets and of criticks.

For his other deviations from the art of writing, I resign him to

critical justice, without making any other demand in his favour, than

that which must be indulged to all human excellence; that his virtues be

rated with his failings: but, from the censure which this irregularity

may bring upon him, I shall, with due reverence to that learning which I

must oppose, adventure to try how I can defend him.

His histories, being neither tragedies nor comedies, are not subject to

any of their laws; nothing more is necessary to all the praise which

they expect, than that the changes of action be so prepared as to be

understood; that the incidents be various and affecting, and the

characters consistent, natural and distinct. No other unity is intended,

and, therefore, none is to be sought.

In his other works he has well enough preserved the unity of action. He

has not, indeed, an intrigue regularly perplexed and regularly

unravelled: he does not endeavour to hide his design only to discover

it, for this is seldom the order of real events, and Shakespeare is the

poet of nature: but his plan has commonly what Aristotle requires, a

beginning, a middle, and an end; one event is concatenated with another,

and the conclusion follows by easy consequence. There are, perhaps, some

incidents that might be spared, as in other poets there is much talk

that only fills up time upon the stage; but the general system makes

gradual advances, and the end of the play is the end of expectation.

To the unities of time and place he has shown no regard; and, perhaps, a

nearer view of the principles on which they stand will diminish their

value, and withdraw from them the veneration which, from the time of

Corneille, they have generally received, by discovering that they have

given more trouble to the poet, than pleasure to the auditor.

The necessity of observing the unities of time and place arises from the

supposed necessity of making the drama credible. The criticks hold it

impossible, that an action of months or years can be possibly believed

to pass in three hours; or that the spectator can suppose himself to sit

in the theatre, while ambassadors go and return between distant kings,

while armies are levied and towns besieged, while an exile wanders and

returns, or till he whom they saw courting his mistress, shall lament

the untimely fall of his son. The mind revolts from evident falsehood,

and fiction loses its force when it departs from the resemblance of

reality.

From the narrow limitation of time necessarily arises the contraction of

place. The spectator, who knows that he saw the first act at Alexandria,

cannot suppose that he sees the next at Rome, at a distance to which not

the dragons of Medea could, in so short a time, have transported him; he

knows with certainty that he has not changed his place; and he knows

that place cannot change itself; that what was a house cannot become a

plain; that what was Thebes can never be Persepolis.

Such is the triumphant language with which a critick exults over the

misery of an irregular poet, and exults commonly without resistance or

reply. It is time, therefore, to tell him, by the authority of

Shakespeare, that he assumes, as an unquestionable principle, a

position, which, while his breath is forming it into words, his

understanding pronounces to be false. It is false, that any

representation is mistaken for reality; that any dramatick fable in its

materiality was ever credible, or, for a single moment, was ever

credited.

The objection arising from the impossibility of passing the first hour

at Alexandria, and the next at Rome, supposes, that when the play opens,

the spectator really imagines himself at Alexandria, and believes that

his walk to the theatre has been a voyage to Egypt, and that he lives in

the days of Anthony and Cleopatra. Surely he that imagines this may

imagine more. He that can take the stage at one time for the palace of

the Ptolemies, may take it in half an hour for the promontory of Actium.

Delusion, if delusion be admitted, has no certain limitation; if the

spectator can be once persuaded, that his old acquaintance are Alexander

and Cæsar, that a room illuminated with candles is the plain of

Pharsalia, or the bank of Granicus, he is in a state of elevation above

the reach of reason, or of truth, and from the heights of empyrean

poetry, may despise the circumscriptions of terrestrial nature. There is

no reason why a mind thus wandering in ecstacy should count the clock,

or why an hour should not be a century in that calenture of the brains

that can make the stage a field.

The truth is, that the spectators are always in their senses, and know,

from the first act to the last, that the stage is only a stage, and that

the players are only players. They come to hear a certain number of

lines recited with just gesture and elegant modulation. The lines relate

to some action, and an action must be in some place; but the different

actions that complete a story may be in places very remote from each

other; and where is the absurdity of allowing that space to represent

first Athens, and then Sicily, which was always known to be neither

Sicily nor Athens, but a modern theatre?

By supposition, as place is introduced, time may be extended; the time

required by the fable elapses, for the most part, between the acts; for,

of so much of the action as is represented, the real and poetical

duration is the same. If, in the first act, preparations for war against

Mithridates are represented to be made in Rome, the event of the war

may, without absurdity, be represented, in the catastrophe, as happening

in Pontus; we know that there is neither war, nor preparation for war;

we know that we are neither in Rome nor Pontus; that neither Mithridates

nor Lucullus are before us. The drama exhibits successive imitations of

successive actions; and why may not the second imitation represent an

action that happened years after the first, if it be so connected with

it, that nothing but time can be supposed to intervene? Time is, of all

modes of existence, most obsequious to the imagination; a lapse of years

is as easily conceived as a passage of hours. In contemplation we easily

contract the time of real actions, and, therefore, willingly permit it

to be contracted when we only see their imitation.

It will be asked, how the drama moves, if it is not credited. It is

credited with all the credit due to a drama. It is credited, whenever it

moves, as a just picture of a real original; as representing to the

auditor what he would himself feel, if he were to do or suffer what is

there feigned to be suffered or to be done. The reflection that strikes

the heart is not, that the evils before us are real evils, but that they

are evils to which we ourselves may be exposed. If there be any fallacy,

it is not that we fancy the players, but that we fancy ourselves unhappy

for a moment; but we rather lament the possibility than suppose the

presence of misery, as a mother weeps over her babe, when she remembers

that death may take it from her. The delight of tragedy proceeds from

our consciousness of fiction; if we thought murders and treasons real,

they would please no more.

Imitations produce pain or pleasure, not because they are mistaken for

realities, but because they bring realities to mind. When the

imagination is recreated by a painted landscape, the trees are not

supposed capable to give us shade, or the fountains coolness; but we

consider how we should be pleased with such fountains playing beside us,

and such woods waving over us. We are agitated in reading the history of

Henry the fifth, yet no man takes his book for the field of Agincourt. A

dramatick exhibition is a book recited with concomitants that increase

or diminish its effect. Familiar comedy is often more powerful on the

theatre, than in the page; imperial tragedy is always less. The humour

of Petruchio may be heightened by grimace; but what voice or what

gesture can hope to add dignity or force to the soliloquy of Cato?

A play read, affects the mind like a play acted. It is, therefore,

evident, that the action is not supposed to be real; and it follows,

that between the acts a longer or shorter time may be allowed to pass,

and that no more account of space or duration is to be taken by the

auditor of a drama, than by the reader of a narrative, before whom may

pass in an hour the life of a hero, or the revolutions of an empire.

Whether Shakespeare knew the unities, and rejected them by design, or

deviated from them by happy ignorance, it is, I think, impossible to

decide, and useless to inquire. We may reasonably suppose, that, when he

rose to notice, he did not want the counsels and admonitions of scholars

and criticks, and that he, at last, deliberately persisted in a

practice, which he might have begun by chance. As nothing is essential

to the fable but unity of action, and as the unities of time and place

arise evidently from false assumptions, and, by circumscribing the

extent of the drama, lessen its variety, I cannot think it much to be

lamented, that they were not known by him, or not observed: nor, if such

another poet could arise, should I very vehemently reproach him, that

his first act passed at Venice, and his next in Cyprus. Such violations

of rules merely positive, become the comprehensive genius of

Shakespeare, and such censures are suitable to the minute and slender

criticism of Voltaire.

Non usque adeo permiscuit imis

Longus summa dies, ut non, si voce Metelli

Serventur leges, malint a Cæsare tolli.

Yet when I speak thus slightly of dramatick rules, I cannot but

recollect how much wit and learning may be produced against me; before

such authorities I am afraid to stand, not that I think the present

question one of those that are to be decided by mere authority, but

because it is to be suspected, that these precepts have not been so

easily received, but for better reasons than I have yet been able to

find. The result of my inquiries, in which it would be ludicrous to

boast of impartiality, is, that the unities of time and place are not

essential to a just drama; that though they may sometimes conduce to

pleasure, they are always to be sacrificed to the nobler beauties of

variety and instruction; and that a play written with nice observation

of critical rules, is to be contemplated as an elaborate curiosity, as

the product of superfluous and ostentatious art, by which is shown,

rather what is possible, than what is necessary.

He that, without diminution of any other excellence, shall preserve all

the unities unbroken, deserves the like applause with the architect, who

shall display all the orders of architecture in a citadel, without any

deduction from its strength; but the principal beauty of a citadel is to

exclude the enemy; and the greatest graces of a play are to copy nature,

and instruct life.

Perhaps, what I have here not dogmatically but deliberately written, may

recall the principles of the drama to a new examination. I am almost

frighted at my own temerity; and when I estimate the fame and the

strength of those that maintain the contrary opinion, am ready to sink

down in reverential silence; as Æneas withdrew from the defence of

Troy, when he saw Neptune shaking the wall, and Juno heading the

besiegers.

Those whom my arguments cannot persuade to give their approbation to the

judgment of Shakespeare, will easily, if they consider the condition of

his life, make some allowance for his ignorance.

Every man's performances, to be rightly estimated, must be compared with

the state of the age in which he lived, and with his own particular

opportunities; and though to the reader a book be not worse or better

for the circumstances of the author, yet, as there is always a silent

reference of human works to human abilities, and as the inquiry, how far

man may extend his designs, or how high he may rate his native force, is

of far greater dignity than in what rank we shall place any particular

performance, curiosity is always busy to discover the instruments, as

well as to survey the workmanship, to know how much is to be ascribed to

original powers, and how much to casual and adventitious help. The

palaces of Peru or Mexico were certainly mean and incommodious

habitations, if compared to the houses of European monarchs; yet who

could forbear to view them with astonishment, who remembered that they

were built without the use of iron?

The English nation, in the time of Shakespeare, was yet struggling to

emerge from barbarity. The philology of Italy had been transplanted

hither in the reign of Henry the eighth; and the learned languages had

been successfully cultivated by Lilly, Linacre, and More; by Pole,

Cheke, and Gardiner; and afterwards by Smith, Clerk, Haddon, and Ascham.

Greek was now taught to boys in the principal schools; and those who

united elegance with learning, read, with great diligence, the Italian

and Spanish poets. But literature was yet confined to professed

scholars, or to men and women of high rank. The publick was gross and

dark; and to be able to read and write, was an accomplishment still

valued for its rarity.

Nations, like individuals, have their infancy. A people newly awakened

to literary curiosity, being yet unacquainted with the true state of

things, knows not how to judge of that which is proposed as its

resemblance. Whatever is remote from common appearances is always

welcome to vulgar, as to childish credulity; and of a country

unenlightened by learning, the whole people is the vulgar. The study of

those who then aspired to plebeian learning was laid out upon

adventures, giants, dragons, and enchantments. The Death of Arthur was

the favourite volume.

The mind, which has feasted on the luxurious wonders of fiction, has no

taste of the insipidity of truth. A play, which imitated only the common

occurrences of the world, would, upon the admirers of Palmerin and Guy

of Warwick, have made little impression; he that wrote for such an

audience was under the necessity of looking round for strange events and

fabulous transactions; and that incredibility, by which maturer

knowledge is offended, was the chief recommendation of writings to

unskilful curiosity.

Our author's plots are generally borrowed from novels; and it is

reasonable to suppose, that he chose the most popular, such as were read

by many, and related by more; for his audience could not have followed

him through the intricacies of the drama, had they not held the thread

of the story in their hands.

The stories, which we now find only in remoter authors, were, in his

time, accessible and familiar. The fable of As You Like It, which is

supposed to be copied from Chaucer's Gamelyn, was a little pamphlet of

those times; and old Mr. Cibber remembered the tale of Hamlet in plain

English prose, which the criticks have now to seek in Saxo Grammaticus.

His English histories he took from English chronicles and English

ballads; and as the ancient writers were made known to his countrymen by

versions, they supplied him with new subjects; he dilated some of

Plutarch's lives into plays, when they had been translated by North.

His plots, whether historical or fabulous, are always crowded with

incidents, by which the attention of a rude people was more easily

caught than by sentiment or argumentation; and such is the power of the

marvellous, even over those who despise it, that every man finds his

mind more strongly seized by the tragedies of Shakespeare than of any

other writer: others please us by particular speeches; but he always

makes us anxious for the event, and has, perhaps, excelled all but Homer

in securing the first purpose of a writer, by exciting restless and

unquenchable curiosity, and compelling him that reads his work to read

it through.