Amenities of Literature Part 48

p.r.i.c.king his patient acquiescence, and disturbing his careless freedom; he issued no protest, he uttered no complaint, against the effrontery of the printers of those days, who published, as "newly corrected by William Shakespeare," old plays which he never wrote; nor did he yield the yearnings of a nurse to those ricketty children of the press which pa.s.sed as his progeny, bearing a name which he never could have deemed immortal. We may trace to its real cause this utter carelessness of his poetical existence.

The horizon of this poet's hopes was bounded by his daily task and his prosperous theatre. a.s.suredly it was not an ordinary gratification to be conscious that his friend Burbage would call into a real existence _Romeo_, _Macbeth_, and _Oth.e.l.lo_, and that the shares of the playhouse would in due time be transferred for Warwicks.h.i.+re acres. But his mind was above his condition, and however the dramatist flourished at "the Globe," Shakespeare himself felt the misery of a degraded station;--players and play-writing were held to be equally despicable in that day. This "secret sorrow" he may have himself confided to us; for in one of "the sonnets," he pathetically laments the compulsion which forced him to the trade of pleasing the public; and this humiliation, or this "stain," as the poet felt it, is ill.u.s.trated by a novel image--"Chide Fortune," exclaims the bard,

The guilty G.o.ddess of my harmful deeds, That did not better for my life provide Than public means which public manners breeds; Thence comes it that _my name receives a brand; And almost thence my nature is subdued To what it works in_, LIKE THE DYER'S HAND.

SHAKESPEARE, in the vigour of life, withdrew from the theatre and the metropolis, returning to his native abode.[10] "The properties and the wardrobe" were now exchanged for "land and t.i.thes." It is consolatory for us to have ascertained that our national bard, not yet, however, national, did not partic.i.p.ate in the common misery of his n.o.blest brothers. Four years glided away in the tranquil obscurity of his family, till his death! Yet still some old a.s.sociations survived with the dramatic bard, some reveries of the winter theatre of "the Blackfriars," and the summer Globe "open to the sky," for we are told that two or three of his n.o.blest dramas were composed during his retirement; and he retained his unbroken love for old companions.h.i.+p to the last, for, by a credible tradition, Shakespeare died of a fever contracted by convivial indulgence at a joyous meeting with his beloved cronies Ben Jonson and Michael Drayton.

We hear nothing more of SHAKESPEARE nor of any fragmentary ma.n.u.scripts; no verses were scattered on his funereal bier as with Spenser, no sepulchral volume of elegies was gathered, as with Jonson, to consecrate his memory. There was yet no SHAKESPEARE! no national bard! The poet himself could not have favoured a friend with a copy of many of his own plays, and probably could not himself have repeated one of those admired soliloquies which we now get by rote. SHAKESPEARE was wholly insensible to the days which were to come. All this to us seems incredible!

Seven years pa.s.sed away silently, and the nation remained without their Shakespeare, although Jonson, in the very year that the poet had deceased, had set the first example of a collection of dramas made by their own author; the volume sanctioned by his critical learning he dignified as his "works:" a proud distinction by which he laid himself open to the epigrammatists. At length, in 1623, two of Shakespeare's fellow-comedians, Heminges and Condell, published the first folio edition of "Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies."

These player-editors profess that "they have done this office to the dead only to keep the memory of so worthy a _friend and fellow_ alive as was our Shakespeare." Yet their utter negligence shown in "their fellow's" volume is no evidence of their pious friends.h.i.+p, nor perhaps of their care or their intelligence. The publication was not, I fear, so much an offering of affection as a pretext to secure the copyright.

Their real design seems to have been to recover the monopoly of ALL the plays, having lost the proprietors.h.i.+p of several which had _stolen abroad in Shakespeare's lifetime_, and to obtain this crafty purpose they practised a fraudulent deception.

_Fifteen quarto plays_ the public already possessed; no one appears to have known how they had issued from the study of the poet, or the treasury of the theatre. Our player-editors, however, now cautioned their readers that these fifteen plays were a fraud practised on them; that "they were stolen and surrept.i.tious copies maimed and deformed."

But what these new editors themselves alleged, they knew was false; for they actually reprinted, unaltered, in their own collection these declared surrept.i.tious copies. As the reprint became subject to their negligence, these _first editions_ were appreciated by Capel and Malone as ma.n.u.scripts, and by these quarto plays they corrected the text of the folio volume. The mystifying republication of these fifteen quarto plays is a piece of literary history of no common occurrence. CAPEL imagined that the player-editors merely reprinted these very copies which they had so loudly decried to save the labour of transcription. But looking closer into this affair, we seem to detect that a double deception was practised. The printers of these plays had secured the copyright by entering them at Stationers' Hall, and when the folio collection was projected it was found necessary by Heminges and Condell to admit the proprietors into the copartners.h.i.+p of the volume. Hence their names appear in the t.i.tlepage. Malone imagined that this circ.u.mstance indicated that the volume of Shakespeare was considered so great a risk that it required the joint aid of these printers. But the parties only united to secure the monopoly of all the plays.

It therefore results that the player-editors pretended to warn the public that all the preceding editions were "maimed and deformed," and the proprietors of these pretended surrept.i.tious editions silently acquiesced in their own condemnation, for the future advantages they expected to derive from their share in the monopoly.

It is quite obvious that the first proprietors of the quarto plays could never have acquired such complete copies without either Shakespeare or his company having furnished them. Yet Shakespeare, if he had connived at these publications, could never have revised the press; another evidence of the utter recklessness of the poet of the fate of his dramas.

The player-editors supplied about twenty new dramas, and by another adroit deception in their t.i.tlepage they announced that all the dramas were NOW published "acording to the original copies."

Alas! where were these "original copies?" The precious autographs could not have endured through many a season the thumbings of "the book-holder" or the prompter. The playhouse copies, carelessly written out in parts for the actors, interpolated with whole scenes, spurious with ribaldry, and extemporaneous nonsense at the caprice of some favourite actor, corrupt with false readings, obscure with distorted alterations, and often omissions of a line or half a line to connect or to complete the sense, verse lurking in prose, and metre without feet,--such were the original sins of the copies despatched in haste to a rapid press, and the writings of Shakespeare come before the world in these hurried proofs from printers among whom a corrector of the press seems to have been unknown. It is in this prolific soil of weeds that many are still too curiously seeking for the genuine text of Shakespeare, perhaps too often irretrievable.[11] The recollections of these two players were so inaccurate that they at first totally omitted the _Troilus and Cressida_, which is inserted without pagination, and with little discrimination in the writings of Shakespeare, preserved the barbarous _t.i.tus Andronicus_, evidently one of Marlowe's gigantic pieces, and the old play of "the first part of _Henry the Sixth_;" but it is by no means certain that not less than twenty other dramas had various degrees of claims to be included in the works of Shakespeare; such as the suspicious _Pericles_.[12] But the incompetence of these player-editors, even in transcribing from the prompter's copies, was not their only fault. "Will" was but "their fellow;" time had not hallowed him into the national poet; and they themselves had formed no elevated conception of the art of Sophocles and Terence; for in their dedication to two peers they express their fear whether their n.o.ble patrons from "their greatness would _descend to the reading of_ SUCH TRIFLES;" the immortal writings! These unhappy editors seem to reflect back to us the humiliated feelings of Shakespeare and the age on the histrionic art. In that early epoch of our literature the sock and buskin had indeed been worn by a reckless race.

Charles the First was a lover of the English drama. The king delighted to explore into the ma.n.u.script plays which were laid before the master of the revels for his license. Milton has acquainted us that the writings of Shakespeare formed the favourite studies of the monarch.[13]

In the "Iconoclastes," alluding to those writers who have shown the characteristic religious hypocrisy of tyrants, Milton observes, "I shall not instance an abstruse author wherein the king might be less conversant, but one whom we well know was the CLOSET COMPANION of these his solitudes, William Shakespeare."

This has been considered as a designed reproach, and we are startled by such a style from the author of "Comus" and of "Samson Agonistes." The odious distinction of not referring the king to an abstruse author seems a palpable sneer at the course of the king's reading, who, however, was not deficient in learning; and in making the king's "closet companion" Shakespeare, Milton too well knew that he was casting the deepest odium on the royal character, for to this poet's then masters, the puritanical faction, there could be nothing less to be forgiven than a king, and a king in his imprisonments, mockingly here called "these his solitudes," than to be a play-reader! The slur, the gibe, and the covert satire are, I fear, too obvious. I would gladly have absolved our great bard from this act of treason at least against the majesty of Shakespeare's genius.[14] Milton had more deeply studied Shakespeare than any king whatever; but at this moment his literature was to be stretched on the torture of his politics.

In the history of the celebrity of Shakespeare, this day of royal favour sank amid the national tempest: and the theatre was abolished with the throne.

With the Restoration, the drama returned to the people. Half a century only had elapsed since our poet flourished; but in that half century our style, with our manners and modes of feeling, had suffered the vicissitudes of a revolution. If in the reign of Charles the First they perceived a change in the language from that of Elizabeth, that change was more apparent when, in retrograding, it was reduced to the indigent nakedness of the Puritanic period, and then, bursting into an opposite direction, like

Stars shot madly from their spheres

was mottled by the modern Gallic in phrase and in criticism, corrupting our national taste, and thus removing us still further from the Shakespearian diction in idiom and in imagery. A great master of language, Dryden, confesses he found Shakespeare almost as difficult as old Chaucer.

On the restored theatre, "the renowned Jonson," thus distinguished by Shadwell, retained his supremacy in _The Fox_, _The Silent Woman_, and _The Alchemist_, and the airy and loose Fletcher was popular, being considered by this new generation as having drawn the characters of gentlemen more to their humour than his grave predecessors. One of the first managers was Davenant: to his partiality, for he was eager to acknowledge Shakespeare his father, both in blood and in verse, we may ascribe the revival of that poet's plays. Dryden has told that it was Davenant who first taught him to appreciate our national bard; they were caught by the fancy of the poet; but the great ethical preceptor of mankind had never entered into their contemplation; and thus _Macbeth_ shrank into an opera under the hand of Davenant; and the _Tempest_, after having been seemingly burlesqued by duplicate characters of Miranda, Ferdinand, and Caliban, by Davenant and Dryden together, was turned into an opera by Shadwell, and exhibited as if it were a pantomime, depending now on popular favour for new dresses, new music, and new machinery. _Romeo and Juliet_ was altered by the Honourable James Howard, Dryden's brother-in-law, to introduce a happy conclusion: however, it is but justice to the town to record that they were so firmly divided in opinion on the catastrophe, that it was alternately played as tragedy and tragic-comic. We may fairly conclude by these profanations, that the true taste for our national bard had pa.s.sed away.[15]

Evelyn is a literary man, whose judgment has its value; and a.s.suredly, he records the taste of the court-circle. In 1661 he saw "_Hamlet, Prince of Denmark_, played; but now, _the old plays begin to disgust this refined age_, since his Majesty has been so long abroad." Pepys, his contemporary, was a play-haunter: and how he relished _The Midsummer Night's Dream_, with all its beautiful fancy, appears by his firm opinion, that "it was the most insipid, ridiculous play he had ever seen." _Macbeth_, though "a deep tragedy, had a strange perfection in a _divertis.e.m.e.nt_;" that is, _Macbeth_ was Davenant's opera, with music and dancing. But Pepys _read_ Oth.e.l.lo, and we have his deliberate notion; "but having lately read the _Adventures of Five Hours, Oth.e.l.lo_ seemed a mean thing!" It is clear from these, and there are other as remarkable instances, that their ideas of the drama had wholly changed; that Nature and Fancy had retired from the stage to give precedence to what are called "Heroic Tragedy," and comedies of Intrigue.

Shakespeare's plays, in a great measure, were banished the stage; but we may presume that Shakespeare still preserved some readers, though not critical ones, for four years after the Restoration the third edition of Shakespeare in 1664, with seven additional dramas, one of which, _The Yorks.h.i.+re Tragedy_, had been printed with his name in his lifetime, was given to the world.

Leaving the theatre, and its moody humours of the populace, let us turn to those who think in their closet. How did such critics arbitrate? We can have no judge more able than the learned author of "Hudibras,"--"The quickest apprehensions, and aptest geniuses to anything they undertake, do not always prove _the greatest masters_ in it, for there is more patience and phlegm required in those that attain to any degree of perfection, than is commonly found in the temper of _active and ready wits that soon tire, and will not hold out_." Butler instances Virgil, who wanting much of that natural easiness of wit that Ovid had, "did, nevertheless, with hard labour and long study, arrive at a higher perfection, than the other, with all his dexterity of wit, but less industry, could attain to. The same we may observe of JONSON and SHAKESPEARE, for he that _is able to think long and judge well, will be_ _sure to find out better things than another man can hit upon suddenly, though of more quick and ready parts_; which is commonly but CHANCE, and the other wit and judgment."[16]

After this long extract, it is quite evident that with a predilection for Shakespeare, alive at times to his true touches of nature, BUTLER could not at that day take a comprehensive view of the faculties of the great bard. What we deem his intuitive faculty seemed but "chance" that could only "hit suddenly;" that prodigality of genius, the marvels which modern criticism has revealed to its initiated--was an advent--the day had not yet come! Butler perceived the electrical strokes of Shakespeare; but the mental shadowings--and the oneness--which rose together in the creation of a _Macbeth_, a _Hamlet_, a _Lear_, was a philosophical result, which probably no one had yet dreamed of.

If the genius of SHAKESPEARE were neglected, it was also destined to be arraigned and condemned.

Critical learning was yet new in our literature; it had taken its birth in Italy, among a crowd of philosophers, rhetoricians and philologists, busied in developing the true principles of every species of literary composition. The academy _Della Crusca_ was a tribunal, and the "Poetic of Aristotle," commented on by the renowned Castelvetro, was a code, which was chiefly directed to the dramatic art. Our airy neighbours, whose national theatre at its beginning had much resembled our own in its freedom and originality, at the erection of the famous French Academy, evidently in imitation of the Cruscan, with the great cardinal at its head, surrendered to the Greeks and to Aristotle. Everything now was to be as it had been, and every work, whatever might be its genius, was to be strictly modelled by certain arbitrary decisions; and all tragedies were to be written according to the humour of that ancient people, the Greeks, with their choruses,--and regulated by the severe unities of time and place and action! Bossu set down his prescriptions to compound an Epic, and Pere Rapin, in his "Reflections on Aristotle's Treatise of Poetry," dictated "Universal Rules" for all sorts of poetry. RYMER, the collector of our Foedera, in his earlier days, was an excellent scholar, and cultivated elegant literature. He translated this very work of Pere Rapin, to which he prefixed an ingenious critical preface on comparative poetry. Enraptured by Grecian tragedy, and vivacious with French criticism, and moreover sanguine with an elevated conception of a certain forthcoming tragedy, which was to appear "a faultless piece" among our own monstrous dramas, Rymer grasped the new and formidable weapon of modern criticism. Armed at all points with a Grecian helmet and a Gallic lance, this literary Quixote sallied forth to attack all the giants, or the windmills, of the English theatre.

Now appeared "The Tragedies of the Last Age examined by the Practice of the Ancients. 1678." This explosion entirely fell on three of Fletcher's plays.[17] This critical bomb was learned and lively. The court, and consequently the popular, tastes were cla.s.sical or Gallic; RYMER haunted St. James's, and soon became one of "their majesties' servants." He had formed the most elevated conception of the dramatic art, and that tragedy was a poem for kings; and he tells, that the poets who first brought tragedy to perfection were made viceroys.

"The poetry of the last age," the age of Elizabeth, he considered was "rude as our architecture," and he detected the cause in our utter "neglect of the Poetic of Aristotle, on which all the great men in Italy had commented, before on this side of the Alps we knew of the existence of such a book."

This critic-poet,--for unluckily for Aristotle, Rymer resolved on being both,--had a notion that "though it be not necessary that all heroes should be kings, yet undoubtedly all crowned heads should be heroes;"

this was a prerogative of the crown never to be invaded by any parliament of poets. This pa.s.sive obedience in the critical art was perfume in "the royalty" of a dedication to Charles the Second, preparatory of the writer's own legitimate tragedy of _Edgar, or the English Monarch_, in rhymed verse; and the first inroad of his critical demolition was to expose "the barbarisms" of Milton's blank! Rymer was as intrepid as he was enterprising. He composed his tragedy on the principles which he advocated, and the result was precisely what happened to the Abbe d'Aubignac, who wrote on the same system.

Undoubtedly, he congratulated himself on the perfection of the clockwork machinery of his legitimate drama, where he had inviolably preserved the unities, for the action begins about one o'clock at noon, and the catastrophe closes at ten at night! He would have been right by "Shrewsbury clock." To the audience, however, the "long hour" might have seemed much longer than the delightful _Winter's Tale_ of Shakespeare, which includes the events of twenty years!

The formidable critique, not the tragedy, made a great sensation; many were on the side of the stout Aristotelian, though some might deem that little mercy had tempered his justice. Dryden prepared an answer, for we have its heads; but he seems to have been awed by the critic's learning, for he never proceeded, and at a later day Rymer was a critic quite after Pope's own heart on our ancient drama.[18] Some years after, the critique was honoured by a second edition, and in the following year this _combat a l'outrance_ was again waged, with no diminished intrepidity, in "A Short View of Tragedy, with some reflections on SHAKESPEARE, and other PRACt.i.tIONERS for the Stage," 1693. This, notwithstanding the offensive theme, is replete with curious literature, and some original researches in Provencal poetry.

"Rymer is the worst critic that ever lived." Such is the warm decision of an eloquent modern critic.[19] But in taste, as well as in more serious affairs, every age is governed by opinions. A mechanical critic then seemed mathematically irrefutable. Judging an English drama by the practice of the ancients, his triumph was easy. This scholastic doctrine, however, proved too subtle for the English people, and even the learned themselves in time looked up to nature. The philosophy of criticism, that is, of the human mind, was then imperfectly comprehended. A critic will be no longer safe who has nothing by heart but canons of criticism. The curious "Tracts" of RYMER are a memorable evidence how a learned critic deprived of native susceptibility, may distort the n.o.blest productions, by coa.r.s.e jocularity and that malice of criticism--ridicule! He calls _Oth.e.l.lo_ "the tragedy of the pocket-handkerchief." That beautiful incident Shakespeare had found in Cynthio's novel, and probably intuitively felt how casualties, small as this one, in human affairs may become a.s.sociated with our highest pa.s.sions. Rymer only exposed the poverty of his imagination when, with a morsel of Quintilian, he would demonstrate this incident to be "too small a matter to move us in tragedy, much like Fortunatus' purse and the invisible cloak, long ago worn threadbare, and stowed up in the wardrobe of obsolete romance." With _Oth.e.l.lo's_ tragic tale before him, the critic worms himself into "the burlesque or comic parts," and these he insidiously lauds, to insinuate that _Oth.e.l.lo_ is but "a b.l.o.o.d.y farce." The blending of the comic and the serious in the same character, as in that of Iago, as often we find it in the many-coloured scenes of human life, was an artful mixture too potent and poisonous in the cup of mechanical criticism. There is a strange malignant drollery, a bitter pleasantry in the villanous Iago, as in the scene where he alarms Brabantio for the fate of his daughter, which to "the heroic" dramatist, who could only move on stilts, was mistaken for "farce," and not comprehended in his narrow views of human nature.

RYMER, however, was a ripe scholar, and the founder in our literature of what has been considered as the French or the cla.s.sical school of criticism; and he has won the unlucky distinction of being designated as "Shakespeare's critic!" In Dryden's prologue to "Love Triumphant," there is an allusion which Sir Walter Scott could not a.s.sign to any individual, though he acutely suspected it had a reference to some person: Sir Walter at that moment forgot Rymer and his "heroic tragedy." The lines are now very significant.

To SHAKESPEARE'S CRITIC, he bequeaths the curse, _To find his faults_, and yet HIMSELF MAKE WORSE.[20]

The uncertain criticisms of Dryden on Shakespeare were often dictated by the impulse of the moment, and stand in strange opposition to each other. At one happy time, indeed, he exclaimed, "I admire Jonson, but I love Shakespeare;" but he had not dived into the spirit of the poet, else we should not have had the strong censure of a "lethargy of thought for whole scenes together;" we should not have heard of "the bombast speeches of Macbeth;" nor that "the historical plays, _The Winter's Tale_, and _Measure for Measure_, are so meanly written, that the comedy neither caused your mirth, nor the serious part your concernment."

Dryden, however great as a poet, was deficient in pa.s.sion, whose natural touches he acknowledged he had found in Otway. In his earliest pieces, while enamoured of the false taste of his heroic tragedies, it is certain he had formed little relish for nature and Shakespeare, which, at a later period of life, he seems to have been more open to.

In 1681, the Poet Laureate, Nahum Tate, was so little acquainted with Shakespeare, that _Lear_ being brought to his notice, he found it a treasure, a heap of jewels unstrung and unpolished; and having had "the good fortune to light upon an expedient to rectify it," he brought it on the stage.

Shakespeare was now out of fas.h.i.+on, and a man of fas.h.i.+on aimed a last and mortal blow. The n.o.ble author of the "Characteristics" anathematised "the Gothic model of poetry." He told the nation that "the British muses were in their infant state, without anything of shapeliness or person, lisping in their cradles, with stammering tongues which nothing but their youth and rawness can excuse." Our dramatic SHAKESPEARE and our epic MILTON are among these venerable bards, "_rude as they were according to their time and age_." The cla.s.sical pedant had, however, the sagacity to perceive that they have provided us with "the richest ore." Nature and Shakespeare lifted not their veil to the cold artificial soliloquist whose faint delicacy bred its own sickliness, and who, in the march and glitter of his external pomp, only betrayed the internal failure of his vigour.

The fourth and last folio edition of Shakespeare appeared in 1685. The poet again was locked up in a huge folio for the following twenty-five years, when, in 1709, he was freed by Rowe, who now gave him to the world at large in a more current form, which would meet the eye of the many.[21]

The appearance of Rowe's edition at least placed the volumes in the hands of Steele and Addison, and possibly it formed their first studies of this poet. Whoever will take the pains to examine their popular papers may discover the fruits of their first thoughts. Steele at first seems to have derived his knowledge of Shakespeare from the plays as they were represented; he quotes _Macbeth_ by memory very faultily in the famous exclamation of Macduff, and seems quite unconscious of the character of Lady Macbeth, and indeed notices that all the female characters of Shakespeare make "so small a figure."[22] As we proceed, we discover him more deeply read and more familiar with the poet's language. It was not to be hoped from Addison's colder fancy and cla.s.sical severity, that the Elizabethan poet could transport this critic by his inexhaustible imagery and a diction which paints the pa.s.sions as well as reveals them. The prosaic genius of Addison, which had produced a frigid _Cato_, could hardly fathom the depth of the mightier soul. He p.r.o.nounced Shakespeare "very faulty in hard metaphors and forced expressions," and he joins Shakespeare and Nat Lee as instances of the false sublime.[23] Pope's idea was similar, in his conversation, not in his preface; and later so was Thomas Warton's.[24]

In 1718, Bysshe, in compiling his "Art of Poetry," which consists of mere extracts, pa.s.sed by "Spenser and the poets of his age, because their language has become so obsolete that most readers of our age have no ear for them, and therefore SHAKESPEARE is so rarely cited in this collection."

Rowe silently corrected his unostentatious edition; when fifteen years had elapsed, Tonson called on a greater poet to succeed to the editorial throne. The cla.s.sical taste of Pope was disturbed and rarely sympathised with "the choice of the subjects, the wrong conduct of the incidents, false thoughts, forced expressions:" in tenderness to Shakespeare these he held to be "not so much defects, but superfoetations," which are to be ascribed to the times, to interpolation, to the copyists; and contemning "the dull duty" of editors.h.i.+p, he initiated himself into the novel office of expurgator; striking out or inserting at pleasure--not only pruning, but grafting. Schlegel exclaims in agony, that Pope would have given us a mutilated Shakespeare! but Pope, to satisfy us that he was not insensible to the fine pa.s.sages of Shakespeare, distinguished by inverted commas all those which he approved! So that Pope thus furnished for the first time what have been called "The _Beauties_ of Shakespeare!" but amid such a disfigured text, the _faults_ of Shakespeare must have been too apparent! Pope but partially relished and often ill understood his Shakespeare; yet in the liveliest of prefaces he offers the most vivid delineation of our great bard's _general characteristics_. The _genius of Shakespeare_ was at once comprehended by his brother poet; but _the text_ he was continually tampering with ended in a fatal testimony that POPE had no congenial taste for the style, the manner, and the whole native drama of England.[25] POPE laid himself open to the investigating eye of THEOBALD.

The attention of THEOBALD had been drawn to our old plays by THOMAS c.o.xETER, an enthusiast of our ancient dramatists. This c.o.xeter was the original projector of their revival, but having communicated his plan, he witnessed the incompetent DODSLEY appropriate this fond hope of his dreamy life, and he has left us his indignant groans.[26]

After an interval of seven years Theobald gave his edition. His attempts were limited to the emendation of corrupt pa.s.sages and the explanation of obscure ones: the more elevated disquisitions to develope the genius of his author, by principles of criticism applied to his beauties or his defects, he a.s.signed to "a masterly pen." This at least was not arrogant; the man who is sensible of his own weakness, is safe by not tasking it to the proof. His annotations are amusing from the self-complacency of the writer, who at times seems to have been struck by his own felicitous results; and in truth he was often successful, more than has been honestly avowed by those who have poached on his manor. Theobald exulted over Pope, but he read his triumph in "The Dunciad."

The Popeians now sunk the sole merit of the laborious sagacity of "the restorer," as Mr. Pope affectionately called him, to that of "a word-catcher." But "piddling Theobald," branded in the forehead by the immortal "Dunciad," was the first who popularised the neglected writings of Shakespeare.[27] His editions dispersed thirteen thousand copies, while nearly a third of Pope's original subscription edition, of seven hundred and fifty copies, were left unvendible.[28]

It is an evidence of the spread of Shakespeare's celebrity, that a fas.h.i.+onable circle had formed themselves into a society under the t.i.tle of "The Shakespeare Club." Every week they bespoke some favourite play; but, unexpectedly, the _acted plays_ of Shakespeare seemed to lose greatly of their secret magic: this failure was charged upon the unhappy performers, whose skill appeared all unequal to raise the emotions which the bard had inspired in the closet. Certain it is, that for the full comprehension of the genius of this great poet, we must learn to think, to reflect, to combine, for what has pa.s.sed is a part of what is going on; and this is a labour more adapted for the repose of the closet than the business of the theatre. Much is written which must remain in the mind, and cannot come within the province of acting. The dramas of Shakespeare, as they have descended to us, modern taste also has always required to be altered and adapted; they are less calculated for performance on the stage than those of almost any other dramatist who has become cla.s.sical in the theatre. Unquestionably, the great poet had retained much of the barbarism of the old plays which he re-wrote without remodelling; bustle which hurries on our attention without stimulating our feelings; some flagrant indecorums and some absolute nonsense to the taste of "the groundlings of the Globe." In the reverie of the poet's pages, the eye glides silently over the offending pa.s.sages which cannot detain it. It was these prominent defects which provoked so many modern alterations; and no doubt Tate and Cibber, and all that race, exulted like Shadwell, who in his dedication to his alteration of _Timon of Athens_ exclaims, "I can truly say I have made it into a play." When Sir James Mackintosh observed, that "Ma.s.singer's taste, as Shakespeare's genius, is displayed with such prodigal magnificence in the _parts_, but never employed in the construction of the whole," he was perhaps not aware of the real cause, which was that of our great poet following the construction of old plays, without altering their ordonnance. It is true also, that the characters of Shakespeare require something of his own genius in their personifiers to sustain the perfect illusion; great actors seem always to have felt the deep emotions they raised; they studied, they meditated, till at length they personified the ideal character they represented. We are told this of Burbage and Betterton, and we know it of Garrick and Mrs. Siddons.

A novel fate was now to befal Shakespeare. Theobald had made his volumes useful for all hands; a man of rank, who had been the Speaker of the House of Commons, set the first example of literary magnificence. Sir THOMAS HANMER had cradled his fancy in the idealism of publication; his edition was to be not only "the fairest impression, beautified with the ornaments of sculpture," but it was not to be _sold_ by booksellers! The Shakespeare of Sir Thomas Hanmer seemed to be a sacred thing, like the shew-bread of ancient Israel, to be touched by no profane hand, nor eaten but by an exclusive cla.s.s. He made a gratuitous donation of his "sculptured" edition to his Alma Mater, to issue from the university press, at a very moderate subscription price. The embroidered mantle, however, but ill concealed the trifler. Sir Thomas had vigorously attacked the grammatical errors of the poet, which, in fact, was often a violation of the text, for Shakespeare wrote ungrammatically; the other editorial effort was a metrical amus.e.m.e.nt, gently lopping a redundant, or straightening a limping line; the only harm of his edition was his modesty in adopting all the innovations of his predecessors, for his own were quite innocent. On the whole, Sir Thomas appears to have edited his Shakespeare, wearing all the while his "white kid gloves," which the Mad Tom Hervey, who ran away with his lady, by information which he ought not to have divulged, a.s.sured the world that the baronet always slept in.

Under the veil of giving "dear Mr. Pope's" edition, which no one craved, the great author of "The Divine Legation" now edited Shakespeare. It must have occurred to the readers of this edition, that hitherto no one had entered into any right conception of a great portion of the poet's writings. Many pa.s.sages with which our memory is familiar were wrested into the most whimsical readings; plain matters were for ever obscured by perverse but ingenious interpretations; not only the words, but the thoughts of the author were changed; here a line was to be wholly rejected, and there an interpolation was to clear an imperfect sense; but the most prominent feature of the commentary was that learned fancy which struck out allusions to the most recondite circ.u.mstances of learned antiquity.[29]

In this great commentator on Shakespeare there was always a contest between his learning and his fancy; the one was copious, and the other was exuberant; neither could yield to the other; and the reader was sure to be led astray by both. His fervid curiosity was absolutely creative; all things crowded to bear on his point; in the precipitancy of his pen, his taste or his judgment was not of that degree which could save him even from inglorious absurdities. But the ingenious follies of his literature were such that they have often been preserved, for the sake of all that learning which it required for their refutation.

When all was over, and the battle was fought and lost, the friends of the great man acknowledged that the editor's design had never been to explain Shakespeare! and that he was even conscious that he had frequently imputed to the poet meanings which had never entered the mind of the bard! Our critic's grand object was to display his own learning in these amus.e.m.e.nts of his leisure. Warburton wrote for Warburton, and not for Shakespeare; and the literary confession almost rivals those of Lauder or Psalmanazar.