ART. III.-Shakspeare Sermons.

MR. REFLECTOR,

:

I have a friend, who is so enthusiastic an admirer of Shakspeare, that the works of the poet may be literally said to be his Bible. Not that he is unacquainted with any better Bible, or has no religious feeling he venerates the sacred volume as the imme diate inspiration of Heaven, and respects our common English translation of it for the antiquity and beautiful simplicity of its phraseology: it was rendered, he says, by Shakspeare's contemporaries; and he has not unfrequently gathered from the language of that translation an insight into the meaning of his favourite poet, whom, with all possible respect to the holy penmen, he presumes to call an inspired writer too.

The other night, at a club to which we both belong, I saw my friend enter the room with his head and coat-pocket full of some. thing; and, after supper, he disburthened the latter of a manuscript, and the former of the following speech :

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Gentlemen, you know my veneration for the great poet, whose bust surmounts the mantle-piece of our club-room, and to whose immortal memory we, on every. 23d day of April, drink sack upon our knees out of a piece of his mulberry-tree hollowed into a cup; and you will not be surprised at the communication I have now to make to you. I was thinking the other evening that, next to the sacred volume, Shakspeare may be said to be the Bible of England; that we have as complete a concordance to his works as we have to the Bible; that we have almost as many useless commentators and fiery polemics on the one book as on the other; and that nothing is wanting to complete the resemblance, which has been so presumptuously endeavoured to be effected be. tween them, but that Sermons should be preached out of Shakspeare. Big with this idea, I sat down and wrote the short dis course, which I shall now take the liberty of submitting to your consideration: its text is a comic passage of our poet; but I am persuaded that, in the same manner that Mrs. Montagu considers " Shakspeare not only a poet, but one of the greatest moral phi. losophers that ever lived,' and that Mrs. Griffith, after her, calls him not only her poet, but her philosopher also,' and has filled a thick octavo volume with his morality, so, at least moral, if not religious, sermons might be with advantage preached from him, and if I had not thought it more congenial to this room and this hour to commence my design by enlarging on a passage of his humour, I should have endeavoured to prove my assertion by writ ing a grave moral essay on a passage of his sublime or pathetic.

I

I reserve this task for some future occasion, and proceed without further suspense to my 'Shakspeare Sermon.""

The whole club stared at each other, and my friend opened his manuscript without interruption.

"As this my first Sermon is on a ludicrous subject," he added, "I have taken the liberty to burlesque, as I proceed, the cant of methodist preachers, who connect passages of Scripture which have no relevancy, wire-draw their texts till they have no meaning at all, and find out meanings in them which they never meant, The sermons of the learnedly pious, of the zealous with knowledge,' are not more out of the reach, than out of the intention, of my feeble lash; let the gall'd jade wince; their withers are unwrung.'

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My friend then began to name his text with a puritanical air :—

But,

"In the fourth act of Much ado about Nothing, and at the latter part of the second scene, you will find it thus written: masters, remember that I am an ass; though it be not written down, yet forget not that I am an ass.' (A pause.)—-Much ado about Nothing, the fourth and second. But, masters, remem ber that I am an ass; though it be not written down, yet forget not that I am an ass.'" After another due pause, he entered upon the introductory paragraph of his Sermon, with that air of beginning a long and unavoidable task, which too many preachers assume. But I have obtained not only a copy of my friend's discourse, but his permission to submit it to the REFLECTOR, and had better make way for it at once, by subscribing myself

Your obedient Servant,

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, Act IV. Scene 2.-" But, masters, remember that I am an ass; though it be not written down, yet forget not that I am an ass."

"The sublimity and fancy of Shakspeare will never fail to ele vate and dazzle the reader; but what he will dwell upon with the greatest fondness, and recur to with the most undiminished delight, is the comic humour of the poet: and perhaps there is no passage throughout his works, the humour of which may be more dilated, or set in a greater variety of lights, than that of my pre sent text: the game, which is here started, it will not be easy to run down. "Come" then, my hearers, we will "go and kill us venison." (As you like it, the second and first). "But, masters, remember that I am an ass; though it be not written down, yet forget not that I am an ass.” You all. know

that

that these are the words of Dogberry, one of the constables of the night, who take up and examine Conrade and Borachio, in the comedy of Much ado about Nothing. The ignorant self-import ance of the constables cannot fail to inspire the prisoners with contempt, and Conrade does not hesitate to call Dogberry an ass. Dogberry, "proud" Dogberry, "drest in a little brief authority," (Measure for Measure, the second and second), "tow'ring in the pride of place," (Macbeth, the second and fourth), intoxicated with the insolence of office," (Hamlet, the third and first), conceives Conrade's contempt for the administrator of justice to be his worst offence against her; and expresses his keen regret that his fellow-constable, who took down the charges against the prisoners, has just left the prison with the book in which he wrote them: "O that he were here," he exclaims, " to write me down an ass!" and then he adds, in the words of my text, “but, mas ters, remember that I am an ass; though it be not written down, yet forget not that I am an ass."

By the word ass, Shakspeare intends, as does common par lance to the present day, fool: so, in the Tempest, the fifth and first,

"What a thrice-double ass

Was I, to take this drunkard for a god."

Again, in the Merry Wives of Windsor, the second and second, "Page is an ass, a secure ass." And again, in Twelfth Night, the second and third, Sir Toby Belch says to the Clown or Fool, "Welcome, ass; now let's have a catch." And again, in Measure for Measure, the fifth and first, "You, sirrah, that knew me for a fool, a coward, an ass.” And again, in All's Well that

ends Well, the fourth and third,

"And it shall come to pass

That every braggart shall be found an ass."

And so in innumerable other places.

66 But, masters, remember that I am an ass; though it be not written down, yet forget not that I am an ass.”

The humour of this exquisite passage is threefold:

I. The humour of making a man call himself an ass, when he means to say only that another man has so nicknamed him, "Remember that I am an ass.”

II. The humour of making one man desire another to bear it in his mind that he is an ass. "Remember that I am an ass."

And III. The humour of the idea that though it may not apa pear as a matter of record, the man is not the less an ass, Though it be not written down, forget not that I am an ass." May some portion of the "spirit" of Shakspeare "reign in our bosoms," (Second of King Henry the Fourth, the first and first); while we thus attempt to illustrate his humour!

I. We

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I. We are to consider "the humour of making a man call himself an ass, when he means to say only that another man has so nicknamed him."-Shakspeare does not make Dogberry say, 66 you called me an ass," or, "I am in your opinion an ass,” but "I am an ass," thus making the constable assent to his traducer's aspersion, even when he intended to combat it the most violently, and to revenge it the most signally. Dogberry does not utter this in an ironical tone, as much as to say, "I am an ass, am 1? We shall soon see which has the longest ears: the pillory shall stretch your's." No: Dogberry is firmly convinced that nothing but its being "remembered in Conrade's punishment" can exonerate him from the imputation which has been cast upon him, and that, till that punishment has proved it otherwise, he really is an ass, since he has been so called: he repeats his conviction to this effect twice; "remember that I am an ass; forget not that I am an ass." As if he had said, "You have called me an ass, and though, in point of fact, I am a wise fellow, and, which is more, an officer, and, which is more, a householder, and which is more, as pretty a piece of flesh as any in Messina, and one that knows the law, go to, and a rich fellow, go to, and a fellow that hath had losses, and one that hath two gowns, and every thing handsome about him,' yet, since I have been so called, an ass I must be, till the law, by punishing you for the aspersion, says I am none." And this leads us

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II. To consider "the humour of making one man desire another to bear it in his mind that he is an ass ;" as if, in the case of Dogberry, a person who had once heard his loquacious malaprops, and attributed them to that conceited ignorance from which they sprang, could ever forget that he was an ass. Dogberry now says, Though I am a wise fellow,' and so on, and that you must have discovered by my conversation, yet you have called me an ass: there is nothing in my conduct that could warrant such an aspersion, but, in point of fact, you have cast it upon me. When we meet again, you may wish to retract, or to forget, your slan der; and forget it you easily may; for the same sensible demeanour which I have evinced to-night, I shall preserve then, and thus there will be nothing on my part to put you in mind that I am an ass, provided you do not wish to renew the imputation: but I will not suffer you to forget it; I myself will continually remind you of it, I will intreat your judge to remember it in your pu nishment; for I am determined that, as there is no pretence for calling me an ass, I will not be so called: remember that I am an ass.'" It is impossible here not to admire the admirable skill of the poet, who has thus ambiguously made Dogberry accuse himself in the mind of the reader, while he thinks he is defending himself in the mind of his interlocutors, and that by desiring the

latter

lätter to remember as a foul aspersion, what the former will never forget is the real truth. But our time flies, and we must hasten

to consider,

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The ideas

III. "The humour of the idea that, though it may not appear as a matter of record, the man is not the less an ass." of Dogberry flow thus: Though, from the circumstance of my fellow-constable's having left the prison, with the book, in which the charge against you is contained, your present opprobrious aspersion of my character can not be written down,' yet that shall not save you from the added punishment, which impends over your head on account of the aspersion; and though it is not at present under white and black' that I am an ass, it shall "not be forgotten to be specified when time and place shall serve, and, in the mean time, shall be written on the tablets of our memory,' (Hamlet, the first and fifth). I will do my best to remember it myself, and to remind you of it by telling you, in so many words, that I am an ass, however my conduct my fail to recall to you the circumstance. To prevent all accidents, though, I will take care to have it specified as a distinct charge against you when time and place shall serve ;' but "O," he exclaims as he quits the prison, "O that I had been writ down an ass!"

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(

Shakspeare doubtless intended by using the phrase, "though it be not written down, remember," and so on, to allude to the laws of England, the lex non scripta, or unwritten law, being there of equal force with the lex scripta, or written law; and it will be found that between these laws and the charges against Cofrade and Borachio, there is the most striking resemblance. The charge against them, for "calling Don John a villain, after receiving a thousand ducats to accuse the Lady Hero wrongfully, so that Claudio might disgrace her before the whole assembly, and not marry her," had been taken down by Dogberry's fellow constable, and was the lex scripta: the charge against them, for calling Dogberry an ass, had not been "written down," and con stituted the lex non scripta, which, as Sir William Blackstone tells 66 us, memoria retinebat, was remembered," "and not written down" till time and place should serve," when it was recorded by the decisions of Courts of Justice, and always remembered in punishment." "Though it be not written down, forget not that I am an ass."

Improve this subject,

I. By considering how many people there are in the world, whose conversation continually says, "I am an ass; though it be not written down, yet forget not that I am an ass ;" and how much more they would shew their self-knowledge, were they now and then to confess this in terms,not how much more they