Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare Part 19

--He was a man Of an unbounded Stomach, ever ranking Himself with Princes; one that by _Suggestion_ Ty'd all the kingdom. Simony was fair play.

His own opinion was his law, i' th' presence He would say untruths, and be ever double Both in his words and meaning. He was never, But where he meant to ruin, pitiful.

His promises were, as he then was, mighty; But his performance, as he now is, nothing.

Of his own body he was ill, and gave The Clergy ill example.

"The word _Suggestion_," says the Critick, "is here used with great propriety, and _seeming_ knowledge of the Latin tongue": and he proceeds to settle the sense of it from _the late Roman writers and their glossers_. But Shakespeare's knowledge was from Holingshed, whom he follows _verbatim_:

"This Cardinal was of a great stomach, for he compted himself equal with princes, and by craftie _Suggestion_ got into his hands innumerable treasure: he forced little on simonie, and was not pitifull, and stood affectionate in his own opinion: in open presence he would lie and saie untruth, and was double both in speech and meaning: he would promise much and performe little: he was vicious of his bodie, and gaue the clergie euil example." Edit. 1587. p. 922.

Perhaps after this quotation you may not think that Sir Thomas Hanmer, who reads _Tyth'd_ instead of _Ty'd all the kingdom_, deserves quite so much of Dr. Warburton's severity.-Indisputably the pa.s.sage, like every other in the Speech, is intended to express the meaning of the parallel one in the Chronicle: it cannot therefore be credited that any man, when the _Original_ was produced, should still chuse to defend a _cant_ acceptation; and inform us, perhaps, _seriously_, that in _gaming_ language, from I know not what practice, to _tye_ is to _equal_! A sense of the word, as far as I have yet found, _unknown_ to our old Writers; and, if _known_, would not surely have been used in _this_ place by our Author.

But let us turn from conjecture to Shakespeare's authorities. Hall, from whom the above description is copied by Holingshed, is very explicit in the demands of the Cardinal: who, having insolently told the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, "For sothe I thinke that _halfe_ your substaunce were to litle," a.s.sures them by way of comfort at the end of his harangue, that _upon an average_ the _tythe_ should be sufficient; "Sers, speake not to breake that thyng that is concluded, for _some_ shal not paie the _tenth_ parte, and _some_ more."-And again; "Thei saied, the Cardinall by Visitacions, makyng of Abbottes, probates of testamentes, graunting of faculties, licences, and other pollyngs in his Courtes legantines, had made his _threasore egall with the kynges_." Edit. 1548. p. 138. and 143.

Skelton, in his _Why come ye not to Court_, gives us, after his rambling manner, a curious character of Wolsey:

--By and by He will drynke us so dry And sucke us so nye That men shall scantly Haue penny or halpennye G.o.d saue hys n.o.ble grace And graunt him a place Endlesse to dwel With the deuill of hel For and he were there We nead neuer feare Of the feendes blacke For I undertake He wold so brag and crake That he wold than make The deuils to quake To shudder and to shake Lyke a fier drake And with a cole rake Bruse them on a brake And binde them to a stake And set hel on fyre At his own desire He is such a grym syre!-Edit. 1568.

Mr. Upton and some other Criticks have thought it very _scholar-like_ in Hamlet to swear the Centinels on a _Sword_: but this is for ever met with.

For instance, in the _Pa.s.sus primus_ of _Pierce Plowman_,

Dauid in his daies dubbed knightes, And did hem _swere on her sword_ to serue truth euer.

And in _Hieronymo_, the common b.u.t.t of our Author, and the Wits of the time, says Lorenzo to Pedringano,

Swear on this cross, that what thou sayst is true- But if I prove thee perjured and unjust, This very _sword_, whereon thou took'st thine oath, Shall be the worker of thy Tragedy!

We have therefore no occasion to go with Mr. Garrick as far as the French of Brantome to ill.u.s.trate this ceremony: a _Gentleman_ who will be always allowed the _first Commentator_ on Shakespeare, when he does not carry us beyond _himself_.

Mr. Upton, however, in the next place, produces a pa.s.sage from _Henry the sixth_, whence he argues it to be very plain that our Author had not only _read_ Cicero's _Offices_, but even more _critically_ than many of the Editors:

--This Villain here, Being Captain of a _Pinnace_, threatens more Than Bargulus, the strong Illyrian Pirate.

So the _Wight_, he observes with great exultation, is named by Cicero in the Editions of Shakespeare's time, "Bargulus Illyrius latro"; tho' the modern Editors have chosen to call him Bardylis:-"and _thus_ I found it in _two_ MSS."-And _thus_ he might have found it in _two_ Translations, before Shakespeare was born. Robert Whytinton, 1533, calls him, "Bargulus a Pirate upon the see of Illiry"; and Nicholas Grimald, about twenty years afterward, "Bargulus the Illyrian Robber."

But it had been easy to have checked Mr. Upton's exultation, by observing that Bargulus does not appear in the _Quarto_.-Which also is the case with some fragments of Latin verses, in the different _Parts_ of this _doubtful_ performance.

It is scarcely worth mentioning that two or three more Latin pa.s.sages, which are met with in our Author, are immediately transcribed from the Story or Chronicle before him. Thus in _Henry the fifth_, whose right to the kingdom of France is copiously demonstrated by the Archbishop:

--There is no bar To make against your Highness' claim to France, But this which they produce from Pharamond: In terram Salicam mulieres ne succedant; No Woman shall succeed in Salike land: Which Salike land the French unjustly gloze To be the realm of France, and Pharamond The founder of this law and female bar.

Yet their own authors faithfully affirm That the land Salike lies in Germany, Between the floods of Sala and of Elve, &c.

Archbishop Chichelie, says Holingshed, "did much inueie against the surmised and false fained law Salike, which the Frenchmen alledge euer against the kings of England in barre of their just t.i.tle to the crowne of France. The very words of that supposed law are these, In terram Salicam mulieres ne succedant, that is to saie, Into the Salike land let not women succeed; which the French glossers expound to be the realm of France, and that this law was made by King Pharamond: whereas yet their owne authors affirme that the land Salike is in Germanie, between the rivers of Elbe and Sala," &c. p. 545.

It hath lately been repeated from Mr. Guthrie's _Essay upon English Tragedy_, that the _Portrait_ of Macbeth's _Wife_ is copied from Buchanan, "whose spirit, as well as words, is translated into the Play of Shakespeare: and it had signified nothing to have pored only on Holingshed for _Facts_."-"Animus etiam, per se ferox, prope quotidianis conviciis uxoris (quae omnium consiliorum ei erat conscia) stimulabatur."-This is the whole that Buchanan says of the _Lady_; and truly I see no more _spirit_ in the Scotch than in the English Chronicler. "The wordes of the three weird Sisters also greatly encouraged him [to the Murder of Duncan], but specially his wife lay sore upon him to attempt the thing, as she that was very ambitious, brenning in unquenchable desire to beare the name of a Queene." Edit. 1577. p. 244.

This part of Holingshed is an Abridgment of Johne b.e.l.l.e.n.den's translation of the _n.o.ble clerk_, Hector Boece, imprinted at Edinburgh, in Fol. 1541.

I will give the pa.s.sage as it is found there. "His wyfe impacient of lang tary (_as all wemen are_) specially quhare they ar desirus of ony purpos, gaif hym gret artation to pursew the thrid weird, that sche micht be ane quene, calland hym oft tymis febyl cowart and nocht desyrus of honouris, sen he durst not a.s.sailze the thing with manheid and curage, quhilk is offerit to hym be beniuolence of fortoun. Howbeit sindry otheris hes a.s.sailzeit sic thinges afore with maist terribyl jeopardyis, quhen they had not sic sickernes to succeid in the end of thair laubouris as he had."

p. 173.

But we can _demonstrate_ that Shakespeare had not the Story from Buchanan.

According to _him_, the Werd-Sisters salute Macbeth, "Una Angusiae Thamum, altera Moraviae, tertia _Regem_."-Thane of Angus, and of Murray, &c., but according to Holingshed, immediately from b.e.l.l.e.n.den, as it stands in Shakespeare: "The first of them spake and sayde, All hayle Makbeth, Thane of Glammis,-the second of them said, Hayle Makbeth, Thane of Cawder; but the third sayde, All hayle Makbeth, that hereafter shall be _king of Scotland_." p. 243.

_1 Witch_. All hail, Macbeth! Hail to thee, Thane of Glamis!

_2 Witch_. All hail, Macbeth! Hail to thee, Thane of Cawdor!

_3 Witch_. All hail, Macbeth! that shalt be King hereafter!

Here too our Poet found the equivocal Predictions, on which his Hero so fatally depended. "He had learned of certain wysards, how that he ought to take heede of Macduffe;-and surely hereupon had he put Macduffe to death, but a certaine witch, whom he had in great trust, had tolde that he should neuer be slain with _man borne of any woman_, nor vanquished till the Wood of Bernane came to the Castell of Dunsinane." p. 244. And the Scene between Malcolm and Macduff in the fourth act is almost literally taken from the Chronicle.

Macbeth was certainly one of Shakespeare's latest Productions, and it might possibly have been suggested to him by a little performance on the same subject at Oxford, before King James, 1605. I will transcribe my notice of it from Wake's _Rex Platonicus_: "Fabulae ansam dedit antiqua de Regia prosapia historiola apud Scoto-Britannos celebrata, quae narrat tres olim Sibyllas occurrisse duobus Scotiae proceribus, Macbetho & Banchoni, & illum praedixisse Regem futurum, sed Regem nullum geniturum; hunc Regem non futurum, sed Reges geniturum multos. Vaticinii veritatem rerum eventus comprobavit. Banchonis enim e stirpe Potentissimus Jacobus oriundus." p.

29.

A stronger argument hath been brought from the Plot of _Hamlet_. Dr. Grey and Mr. Whalley a.s.sure us that for _this_ Shakespeare _must_ have read _Saxo Grammaticus_ in Latin, for no translation hath been made into any modern Language. But the truth is, he did not take it from _Saxo_ at all; a Novel called the _Hystorie of Hamblet_ was his original: a fragment of which, in _black Letter_, I have been favoured with by a very curious and intelligent Gentleman, to whom the lovers of Shakespeare will some time or other owe great obligations.

It hath indeed been said that, "IF _such an history exists_, it is almost impossible that any poet unacquainted with the Latin language (supposing his perceptive faculties to have been ever so acute) could have caught the characteristical madness of Hamlet, described by _Saxo Grammaticus_, so happily as it is delineated by Shakespeare."

Very luckily, our Fragment gives us a part of Hamlet's Speech to his _Mother_, which sufficiently replies to this observation:-"It was not without cause, and juste occasion, that my gestures, countenances, and words seeme to proceed from a madman, and that I desire to haue all men esteeme mee wholy depriued of sence and, reasonable understanding, bycause I am well a.s.sured that he that hath made no conscience to kill his owne brother (accustomed to murthers, and allured with desire of gouernement without controll in his treasons) will not spare to saue himselfe with the like crueltie, in the blood and flesh of the loyns of his brother, by him ma.s.sacred: and therefore it is better for me to fayne madnesse then to use my right sences as nature hath bestowed them upon me. The bright s.h.i.+ning clearnes therof I am forced to hide vnder this shadow of dissimulation, as the sun doth hir beams vnder some great cloud, when the wether in summer time ouercasteth: the face of a mad man serueth to couer my gallant countenance, and the gestures of a fool are fit for me, to the end that, guiding my self wisely therin, I may preserue my life for the Danes and the memory of my late deceased father, for that the desire of reuenging his death is so ingrauen in my heart, that if I dye not shortly, I hope to take such and so great vengeance, that these Countryes shall for euer speake thereof. Neuerthelesse I must stay the time, meanes, and occasion, lest by making ouer great hast I be now the cause of mine owne sodaine ruine and ouerthrow, and by that meanes end, before I beginne to effect my hearts desire: hee that hath to doe with a wicked, disloyall, cruell, and discourteous man, must vse craft, and politike inuentions, such as a fine witte can best imagine, not to discouer his interprise: for seeing that by force I cannot effect my desire, reason alloweth me by dissimulation, subtiltie, and secret practises to proceed therein."

But to put the matter out of all question, my communicative Friend above-mentioned, Mr. Capell (for why should I not give myself the credit of his name?), hath been fortunate enough to procure from the Collection of the Duke of Newcastle a _complete_ Copy of the _Hystorie of Hamblet_, which proves to be a translation from the French of Belleforest; and he tells me that "all the chief incidents of the Play, and all the capital Characters, are there in _embryo_, after a rude and barbarous manner: sentiments indeed there are none that Shakespeare could borrow; nor any expression but _one_, which is, where Hamlet kills Polonius behind the arras: in doing which he is made to cry out, as in the Play, '_a rat, a rat!_' "-So much for _Saxo Grammaticus_!

It is scarcely conceivable how industriously the puritanical Zeal of the last age exerted itself in destroying, amongst better things, the innocent amus.e.m.e.nts of the former. Numberless _Tales_ and _Poems_ are alluded to in old Books, which are now perhaps no where to be found. Mr. Capell informs me (and he is in these matters the most able of all men to give information) that our Author appears to have been beholden to some Novels which he hath yet only seen in French or Italian: but he adds, "to say they are not in some English dress, prosaic or metrical, and perhaps with circ.u.mstances nearer to his stories, is what I will not take upon me to do: nor indeed is it what I believe; but rather the contrary, and that time and accident will bring some of them to light, if not all."--

W. Painter, at the conclusion of the second _Tome_ of his _Palace of Pleasure_, 1567, _advertises_ the Reader, "bicause sodaynly (contrary to expectation) this Volume is risen to greater heape of leaues, I doe omit for this present time _sundry Nouels_ of mery deuise, reseruing the same to be joyned with the rest of an other part, wherein shall succeede the remnant of Bandello, specially sutch (suffrable) as the learned French man Francois de Belleforrest hath selected, and the choysest done in the Italian. Some also out of Erizzo, Ser Giouanni Florentino, Parabosco, Cynthio, Straparole, Sansouino, and the best liked out of the Queene of Nauarre, and other Authors. Take these in good part, with those that haue and shall come forth."-But I am not able to find that a _third Tome_ was ever published: and it is very probable that the Interest of his Booksellers, and more especially the prevailing Mode of the time, might lead him afterward to print his _sundry Novels_ separately. If this were the case, it is no wonder that such _fugitive Pieces_ are recovered with difficulty; when the _two Tomes_, which Tom. Rawlinson would have called _justa Volumina_, are almost annihilated. Mr. Ames, who searched after books of this sort with the utmost avidity, most certainly had not seen them when he published his _Typographical Antiquities_; as appears from his blunders about them: and possibly I myself might have remained in the same predicament, had I not been favoured with a Copy by my generous Friend, Mr. Lort.

Mr. Colman, in the Preface to his elegant Translation of Terence, hath offered some arguments for the Learning of Shakespeare, which have been retailed with much confidence, since the appearance of Mr. Johnson's Edition.

"Besides the resemblance of particular pa.s.sages scattered up and down in different plays, it is well known that the _Comedy of Errors_ is in great measure founded on the _Menaechmi_ of Plautus; but I do not recollect ever to have seen it observed that the disguise of the _Pedant_ in the _Taming of the Shrew_, and his a.s.suming the name and character of _Vincentio_, seem to be evidently taken from the disguise of the _Sycophanta_ in the _Trinummus_ of the said Author; and there is a quotation from the _Eunuch_ of Terence also, so familiarly introduced into the Dialogue of the _Taming of the Shrew_, that I think it puts the question of Shakespeare's having read the Roman Comick Poets in the _original_ language out of all doubt,

Redime te captum, quam queas, minimo."

With respect to _resemblances_, I shall not trouble you any further.-That the _Comedy of Errors_ is founded on the _Menaechmi_, it is notorious: nor is it less so, that a Translation of it by W. W., perhaps William Warner, the Author of _Albion's England_, was extant in the time of Shakespeare; tho' Mr. Upton, and some other advocates for his learning, have cautiously dropt the mention of it. Besides this (if indeed it were different), in the _Gesta Grayorum_, the Christmas Revels of the Gray's-Inn Gentlemen, 1594, "a _Comedy of Errors_ like to Plautus his _Menechmus_ was played by the Players." And the same hath been suspected to be the Subject of the _goodlie Comedie of Plautus_ acted at Greenwich before the King and Queen in 1520; as we learn from Hall and Holingshed:-Riccoboni highly compliments the English on opening their stage so well; but unfortunately Cavendish, in his _Life of Wolsey_, calls it an _excellent Interlude in Latine_. About the same time it was exhibited in German at Nuremburgh, by the celebrated _Hanssach_, the _Shoemaker_.