Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher Part 31

..."And for a leap Of the vaulting horse, to _play_ the vaulting _house_."

Instead of reading with Whalley "ply" for "play," I would suggest "horse"

for "house." The meaning would then be obvious and pertinent. The punlet, or pun-maggot, or pun intentional, "horse and house," is below Jonson. The _jeu-de-mots_ just below-

..."Read a lecture Upon _Aquinas_ at St. Thomas a _Water_ings"-

had a learned smack in it to season its insipidity.

_Ib._ sc. 6. Lovel's speech:-

"Then shower'd his bounties on me, like the Hours, That open-handed sit upon the clouds, And press the liberality of heaven Down to the laps of thankful men!"

Like many other similar pa.s.sages in Jonson, this is e?d?? ?a?ep?? ?de??-a sight which it is difficult to make one's self see,-a picture my fancy cannot copy detached from the words.

Act ii. sc. 5. Though it was hard upon old Ben, yet Felton, it must be confessed, was in the right in considering the Fly, Tipto, Bat Burst, &c., of this play mere dotages. Such a scene as this was enough to d.a.m.n a new play; and Nick Stuff is worse still,-most abominable stuff indeed!

Act iii. sc. 2. Lovel's speech:-

"So knowledge first begets benevolence, Benevolence breeds friendship, friendship love."

Jonson has elsewhere proceeded thus far; but the part most difficult and delicate, yet, perhaps, not the least capable of being both morally and poetically treated, is the union itself, and what, even in this life, it can be.

NOTES ON BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.

SEWARD'S Preface. 1750.-

"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 pa.s.sions. Hence he is, as it were, at once magnanimity and pride, patience and fury, gentleness and rigour, chast.i.ty 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 pa.s.sioning," &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 pa.s.sage 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 princ.i.p.al figure.

_Ib._ Seward's preference of Alphonso's poisoning in _A Wife for a Month_, act i. sc. 1, to the pa.s.sage 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 a.s.s.

_Ib._-

"Every reader of _taste_ will see how superior this is to the quotation from Shakespeare."

Of what taste?

_Ib._ Seward's cla.s.sification of the plays.

Surely _Monsieur Thomas_, the _Chances_, _Beggar's Bush_, and the _Pilgrim_, should have been placed in the very first cla.s.s! 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 quant.i.ty 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 quant.i.ty, 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, r.e.t.a.r.dation, and acceleration of the times of syllables according to the meaning of the words, the pa.s.sion 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, Ma.s.singer, for example, might be reduced to a rich and yet regular metre. But then the _regulae_ must be first known; though I will venture to say, that he who does not find a line (not corrupted) of Ma.s.singer'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 r.e.t.a.r.dation of acceleration of time-we have the proceleusmatic foot u u u u, and the _dispondaeus_ - - - -, not to mention the _choriambus_, the ionics, paeons, and epitrites. Since Dryden, the metre of our poets leads to the sense; in our elder and more genuine bards, the sense, including the pa.s.sion, leads to the metre. Read even Donne's satires as he meant them to be read, and as the sense and pa.s.sion 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 _regulae_, and according to these they are regular.

"Maid's Tragedy."

Act i. The metrical arrangement is most slovenly throughout.