Amenities of Literature Part 50

"Mellifluous Shake-speare,"

_Hierarchie of Angels_, 206.

The question resolves itself into this--Is the name of our great bard to descend to posterity with the barbaric curt shock of SHAKSPERE, the tw.a.n.g of a provincial corruption; or, following the writers of the Elizabethan age, shall we maintain the restoration of the euphony and the truth of the name of SHAKESPEARE?

[2] Mr. J. Payne Collier, in his "New Facts regarding the Life of Shakespeare."

[3] Roscius Anglica.n.u.s.--They were Richard Burbage and John Lowin.

[4] Greene was then lying on his last pallet of rhyme and misery, dictating this sad legacy of "a groat's worth of wit bought with a million of repentance."

[5] _Bombast_ is not here used in the present application of the term, in a depreciating sense, but is a simile derived from the cotton used in stuffing out or quilting the fashionable dresses.

[6] Collier's "New Facts," 13. Dyce's edition of "Greene's Dramatic Works."

[7] Heywood's "Apology for Actors."--The Epistle to his bookseller at the end.

[8] In the comedy of _Eastward Ho!_ the joint production of Jonson, Marlowe, and Chapman,--Shakespeare is ridiculed, particularly the madness of Hamlet and Ophelia.

[9] ROBERT CHESTER, a fantastical versifier, whose volume is priced in the "Bib. Anglo-Poetica" at 50_l._, but this price was too moderate; for, at the sale of Sir M. Sykes, some ingenious lover of absurd poetry willingly gave 61_l._ 19_s._ I have not yet seen this extraordinary production, and derive my knowledge only from a specimen in the catalogue.

[10] In 1612 or 13.

[11] Most of our old plays come before us in a corrupt and mangled state. They were often imperfectly caught by the scribe, or otherwise surrept.i.tiously obtained; hurried through the press from some illegible ma.n.u.script by a careless printer, who would throw three distinct speeches into the mouth of one character, transpose the names of the dramatis personae, and omit the change of scene; while others again with indiscriminate fidelity, from a stolen transcript of the prompter's book, preserved his private memorandums and directions in the stage-copy. Even in the first folio of Shakespeare, so absent from their work were the player-editors, that "tables and chairs" are introduced to direct the property-man, or the scene-shifters, to be in readiness. Verse is printed as prose, to save the expenditure of those small blank s.p.a.ces which divide those two regions of genius. The dramatists themselves, who probably conceived that they had consigned all their property in their vended plays, never read their own proof-sheets. The reader may form a clear conception of the injuries inflicted on these writers by the existing presentation copy of Ma.s.singer's "Duke of Milan," in which may be seen how the poet, after its publication, indignantly corrected the multiplied and the strange errata. The printer gave this text--

"Observe and honour her as if the SEAL Of woman's goodness only dwelt in hers."

The poet corrected this to "the SOUL." The sagacity of an English Bentley could hardly have conjectured the happy emendation; only the poet himself could have supplied it.

Again the printer's text runs--

"From any lip whose HONOUR writ not Lord."

The poet corrected this also to "whose OWNER."

These errors of the press are far more important to the readers of Shakespeare than many suspect. "Who knows," exclaimed the acute Gifford, "whether much of the ingenious toil to explain nonsense in the variorum edition of Shakespeare is not absolutely wasted upon mere _errors of the press_?" Not long after this was said, an actual experiment of the kind was made by a skilful printer. This person, during the leisure of eleven years of a French captivity, had found his most constant companion in a Shakespeare.* By his own experience of the blunders and the mischances of the typographer, to which we may add also a little sagacity, he recovered some of the lost text.

His new readings were accompanied by an explanation of those mechanical accidents which had caused these particular errata. The practical printer mortified the haughty commentator by several felicitous and obvious emendations. The grave brotherhood of black-letter looked askance on such humble ingenuity, and turned against the simple printer. Unluckily for ZACHARY JACKSON, he had the temerity, in the flush of success, of abandoning his type-work to err in "the dalliance of fancy" into an ambitious Commentary of "seven hundred pa.s.sages," when seventy had exceeded his fair claim. The commentating printer therefore met with the fate of the immortalised cobbler who ventured to criticise beyond the right measure of his last.

* So numerous were the English prisoners in France during the persecuting war of Napoleon, and so general was the demand for a Shakespeare, that more than one edition, I think, was printed by the French booksellers, which I have seen on their literary stalls.

[12] Collier's "Poetical Decameron," i. 52. STEEVENS thought _The Yorkshire Tragedy_ to be Shakespearian; and the Rev. ALEXANDER DYCE, struck by the Shakespearian soliloquy of the wife, decides that "it contains pa.s.sages worthy of his pen."--_Dyce's Mem. of Shakespeare_, x.x.xi.

[13] That Shakespeare was the favourite poet of Charles the First is confirmed to the eyes of posterity; for on the copy the king used, he has written his own name, and left other traces of his pen; the volume now bears also the autograph of George the Third. It is preserved, it is hoped, in the library of the sovereigns of England.

[14] Milton, however, has been misinterpreted by some modern critics; when, on this occasion, having quoted that pa.s.sage in _Richard the Third_ which displays his hypocrisy, Milton adds--"_Other stuff of this sort_ may be read throughout the whole tragedy, wherein the poet used not much license in departing from the truth of history." Pye, in his "Commentary on the Poetic of Aristotle," is indignant at the language of Milton. He takes the term "stuff" in its modern depreciating sense; but it had no such meaning with Milton, it merely signified _matter_. Pye exclaims--"Could Milton have imagined that _the stuff_ of Mr. William Shakespeare would be preferred to 'Comus'

and the 'Samson Agonistes?'"--212.

[15] I derive my knowledge from the "Roscius Anglica.n.u.s" of DOWNES, the prompter; it is a meagre chronicle, and the scribe is illiterate; but the edition by F. WALDRON, 1784, is an addition to our literary history. Though chiefly dramatic, it abounds with some curious secret history. Waldron, himself an humble actor, was, however, a sagacious literary antiquary; but his modesty and failure of encouragement impeded his proposed labours. Gifford found him intelligent when that critic was busied on Jonson; and I possess an evidence of his acute emendations.

By this chronicle of our drama, it appears that in a list of fifteen stock plays there are seven of Beaumont and Fletcher, three of Jonson, and three of Shakespeare. In another list of twenty-one plays there are _five_ of Jonson, and but _one_ of Shakespeare and that _t.i.tus Andronicus_.

[16] Butler's "Genuine Remains," ii. 494.

[17] _Rollo, King and no King_, and _The Maid's Tragedy_.

[18] We may listen to Pope:--S. "Rymer is a learned and strict critic!"--P. "Ay, that's exactly his character. He is generally right, though rather too severe in his opinion of the particular plays he speaks of; and is, on the whole, one of the best critics we ever had."--Spence's "Anecdotes," 172.

[19] "Edinburgh Review," Sept. 1831.

[20] The fate of Rymer's Tragedy has been ill.u.s.trated by the inimitable humour of Addison in No. 592 of "The Spectator."

Describing different theatrical properties, he says--"They are provided with above a dozen showers of snow, which, as I am informed, are the plays of many unsuccessful poets artificially cut and shredded for that use. Mr. Rymer's _Edgar_ is to fall in snow at the next acting of _King Lear_, in order to heighten, or rather to alleviate, the distress of that unfortunate prince, and to serve by way of decoration to a piece which that great critic has written against."

[21] On the play-bills of that day I find the modern dramas of _Cato_, _The Conscious Lovers_, and Cibber's and Farquhar's plays are simply announced, while the elder dramatists have accompanying epithets, which show the degree of their celebrity according, at least, to the director of the bills; and perhaps indicate the necessity he was under to remind the public, who were not familiar with the t.i.tles of these old plays. Thus appear "_The Silent Woman_, a Comedy by the _famous_ Ben Jonson;" "_Hamlet, Prince of Denmark_, written by the _immortal_ Shakespeare;" "_The Soldier's Fortune_, written by the late _ingenious_ Mr. Otway." Though Shakespeare bears away the prize among these epithetical allotments, I suspect that his _immortality_--here positively a.s.signed to him--was owing to the honour of the recent edition by Rowe.

In 1741 the theatre seems to have recommended the dramas of Shakespeare for the variety of their _historical subjects_. On one of these bills _Richard the Third_ is described as "containing the distresses of King Henry the Sixth; the murder of young King Edward the Fifth and his brother in the Tower; the landing of the Earl of Richmond, and the death of King Richard in the memorable battle of Bosworth, being the last that was fought between the Houses of York and Lancaster; with many other true historical pa.s.sages."

[22] "Tatler"--42.

[23] "Spectator"--39, 285.

[24] V. iv. 186.

[25] Pope said that "it was mighty simple in Rowe to write a play now, professedly in Shakespeare's style, that is, the style of a bad age!" He relished as little Milton's "high style," as he called it.

"The high style would not have been borne even in Milton, had not his subject turned so much on such strange out-of-the-world things as it does." Lord Shaftesbury would furnish a code of criticism in the days of Pope, when the "Gothic model" was proscribed by such high authorities. But Pope expressed unqualified approbation for the stately but cla.s.sical "Ferrex and Porrex," and occasioned Spence to reprint it;--a tragedy in the unimpa.s.sioned style and short breathings of the asthmatic Seneca.

[26] c.o.xETER, after a search of thirty years, faithfully collating the best of our old plays, tells us he happened to communicate his scheme to one who now invades it; but for what mistakes and confusion may be expected from the medley now advertising in ten volumes, he appeals to the "Gorboduc" which Spence had published by the desire of Pope; both these wits, and the future editor of "Old Plays," Dodsley, had used the spurious edition! c.o.xeter's judgment was prophetic in the present instance. "Dodsley's Collection" turned out to be a chance "medley;" unskilled in the language and the literature and the choice of his dramatists, he, as he tells us, "by the a.s.sistance of a little common sense set a great number of these pa.s.sages right;" that is, the dramatist of the dull "Cleone" brought down the ancient genius to his own, and, if he became intelligible, at least he was spurious. If, after all, some parts were left unintelligible, the reader must consider how many such remain in Shakespeare.

[27] A third edition lies before me, 1757. The preface of the first edition of 1733 was much curtailed in the second of 1740, as well as the notes--particularly those which Theobald describes as "rather verbose and declamatory, and so notes merely of ostentation." The candour is admirable. The third edition seems a mere reprint of the second. The first edition is also curious for its plates preserving the _costume_ or dress of the characters at the time.

[28] This was one of those literary secrets which are only divulged on that final day of judgment which happens to authors when, on the decease of their publishers, those literary cemeteries, their warerooms, open for the sale of what are called "their effects;" but which, in this instance of literary property, may be deemed "the ineffectual effects." At the sale of "the effects" of Tonson, the great bibliopolist, in 1767, one hundred and forty copies of Pope's "Shakespeare," in six volumes quarto, for which the original subscribers paid six guineas, were disposed of at sixteen shillings only per set.--"Gent. Mag.," lvii. 76.

[29] See "Quarrels of Authors."

[30] Laharpe, in a paroxysm of criticism, had both to defend and to censure his great master, Voltaire, on the subject of the Marvellous in Tragedy; and, strange to observe, in the coldness of the Aristotelian-Gallic Poetic, our "monster-poet" carries away the palm.

The critic acknowledges that, though he is loath to compare "Semiramis" to that "monster of a tragedy"--"Hamlet," the Ghost there acts as a ghost should do, showing himself but to one person, and revealing a secret unknown to all but himself; while the Ghost of Ninus appears in a full a.s.sembly, only to tell the hero to listen to somebody else who knows the secret as well as the Ghost.--"Cours de Litterature."

[31] Much, if not all, that is valuable in this great body of varied information, has been alphabetically arranged in "A Glossary, or Collection of Words, Phrases, Names, and Allusions to Customs, Proverbs, &c., which have required ill.u.s.tration in the _works of English Authors_, particularly _Shakespeare and his Contemporaries_,"

by Archdeacon Nares, 4to, 1822: a compilation as amusing as it is useful, and which I suspect has not been justly appreciated. It is a subst.i.tute for all these commentators; and with this volume, at an easy rate, we are made free of the whole Shakespearian corporation.

[32] Monsieur VILLEMAIN, who possesses a perfect knowledge of our English writers on historical subjects, and many years since composed a life of Cromwell, has drawn up an elaborate article on SHAKESPEARE in the "Biographie Universelle." The perplexities of his taste, and the contradictory results of his critical decisions, are amusing; but it must have been a serious labour for a person of his strict candour. Our critic remains astonished at Johnson's preference of Shakespeare's comic to his tragic genius, which never can be, he adds, the opinion of foreigners. Monsieur Villemain is perfectly right; for no foreigner can comprehend the humour, not always delicate but strong, which often depends on the phrase, as well as on the character; but he errs when he can only discover in the comedy of Shakespeare merely a drama of intrigue, and not a picture of manners.

Our critic has formed no conception of the poet's ideal standard and universal nature; insomuch that to this day we continue to apply among ourselves those exquisite personal strokes of the comic characters of Shakespeare. Our critic, who cannot perceive that which perhaps only a native can really taste, is indignant at the enthusiastic critic who has decided that MOLIeRE only gave "a prosaic copy of human nature, and is merely a faithful or a servile imitator." I suppose this critic is Schlegel, a prejudiced critic on system. I beg leave to add, that it is not necessary to decry the French Shakespeare to elevate our own. Moliere is as truly an original genius as any dramatist of any age.

[33] This rare tract, which I once read in a private library which had been collected in the days of Pope, was apparently Voltaire's entire composition; for the Gallicisms bear the impression of a foreigner's pen, and of one determined to prove the authenticity of its source. "Voltaire, like the French in general," said Dr. Young, "showed the greatest complaisance outwardly, and had the greatest contempt for us inwardly." He consulted Dr. Young about his Essay in English, and begged him to correct any gross faults. The doctor set himself very honestly to work, marked the pa.s.sages most liable to censure, and when he went to explain himself about them, Voltaire could not avoid bursting out and laughing in his face!--_Spence._

Had Voltaire accepted the doctor's verbal corrections, or the opinions suggested by him, something else than the "laughing in the face" had been recollected.

[34] Two specimens of the criticism of Voltaire may explain his involuntary and his voluntary blunders:--

In _Hamlet_, when one sentinel inquires of the other--"Have you had quiet guard?" he is answered--"Not a mouse stirring!" which Voltaire translates literally--"Pas un souris qui trotte!" How different is the same circ.u.mstance described by Racine--"Tout dort, et l'armee, et le vents, et Neptune!" A verse Kaimes had condemned as mere bombast!