“The _King and No King_, too, is extremely spirited in all its
characters; Arbaces holds up a mirror to all men of virtuous
principles but violent passions. Hence he is, as it were, at once
magnanimity and pride, patience and fury, gentleness and rigour,
chastity and incest, and is one of the finest mixtures of virtues
and vices that any poet has drawn,” &c.
These are among the endless instances of the abject state to which
psychology had sunk from the reign of Charles I. to the middle of the
present reign of George III.; and even now it is but just awaking.
_Ib._ Seward’s comparison of Julia’s speech in the _Two Gentlemen of
Verona_, act iv. last scene—
“Madam, ’twas Ariadne passioning,” &c.
with Aspatia’s speech in the _Maid’s Tragedy_—
“I stand upon the sea-beach now,” &c.—Act ii.—
and preference of the latter.
It is strange to take an incidental passage of one writer, intended only
for a subordinate part, and compare it with the same thought in another
writer, who had chosen it for a prominent and principal figure.
_Ib._ Seward’s preference of Alphonso’s poisoning in _A Wife for a Month_,
act i. sc. 1, to the passage in _King John_, act v. sc. 7:—
“Poison’d, ill fare! dead, forsook, cast off!”
Mr. Seward! Mr. Seward! you may be, and I trust you are, an angel; but you
were an ass.
_Ib._—
“Every reader of _taste_ will see how superior this is to the
quotation from Shakespeare.”
Of what taste?
_Ib._ Seward’s classification of the plays.
Surely _Monsieur Thomas_, the _Chances_, _Beggar’s Bush_, and the
_Pilgrim_, should have been placed in the very first class! But the whole
attempt ends in a woful failure.
Harris’s Commendatory Poem On Fletcher.
“I’d have a state of wit convok’d, which hath
A _power_ to take up on common faith:”—
This is an instance of that modifying of quantity by emphasis, without
which our elder poets cannot be scanned. “Power,” here, instead of being
one long syllable—pow’r—must be sounded, not indeed as a spondee, nor yet
as a trochee; but as - u u;—the first syllable is 1-1/4.
We can, indeed, never expect an authentic edition of our elder dramatic
poets (for in those times a drama was a poem), until some man undertakes
the work, who has studied the philosophy of metre. This has been found the
main torch of sound restoration in the Greek dramatists by Bentley,
Porson, and their followers;—how much more, then, in writers in our own
language! It is true that quantity, an almost iron law with the Greek, is
in English rather a subject for a peculiarly fine ear, than any law or
even rule; but, then, instead of it, we have, first, accent; secondly,
emphasis; and lastly, retardation, and acceleration of the times of
syllables according to the meaning of the words, the passion that
accompanies them, and even the character of the person that uses them.
With due attention to these,—above all, to that, which requires the most
attention and the finest taste, the character, Massinger, for example,
might be reduced to a rich and yet regular metre. But then the _regulæ_
must be first known; though I will venture to say, that he who does not
find a line (not corrupted) of Massinger’s flow to the time total of a
trimeter catalectic iambic verse, has not read it aright. But by virtue of
the last principle—the retardation of acceleration of time—we have the
proceleusmatic foot u u u u, and the _dispondæus_ - - - -, not to mention
the _choriambus_, the ionics, pæons, and epitrites. Since Dryden, the
metre of our poets leads to the sense; in our elder and more genuine
bards, the sense, including the passion, leads to the metre. Read even
Donne’s satires as he meant them to be read, and as the sense and passion
demand, and you will find in the lines a manly harmony.
Life Of Fletcher In Stockdale’s Edition, 1811.
“In general their plots are more regular than Shakespeare’s.”
This is true, if true at all, only before a court of criticism, which
judges one scheme by the laws of another and a diverse one. Shakespeare’s
plots have their own laws of _regulæ_, and according to these they are
regular.
“Maid’s Tragedy.”
Act i. The metrical arrangement is most slovenly throughout.
“_Strat._ As well as masque can be,” &c.—
and all that follows to “who is return’d”—is plainly blank verse, and
falls easily into it.
_Ib._ Speech of Melantius:—
“These soft and silken wars are not for me:
The music must be shrill, and all confus’d,
That stirs my blood; and then I dance with arms.”
What strange self-trumpeters and tongue-bullies all the brave soldiers of
Beaumont and Fletcher are! Yet I am inclined to think it was the fashion
of the age from the Soldier’s speech in the Counter Scuffle; and deeper
than the fashion B. and F. did not fashion.
_Ib._ Speech of Lysippus:—
“Yes, but this lady
Walks discontented, with her wat’ry eyes
Bent on the earth,” &c.
Opulent as Shakespeare was, and of his opulence prodigal, he yet would not
have put this exquisite piece of poetry in the mouth of a no-character, or
as addressed to a Melantius. I wish that B. and F. had written poems
instead of tragedies.
_Ib._—
“_Mel._ I might run fiercely, not more hastily,
Upon my foe.”