sary. No dramatic writer of his age has more battles or ghosts. His representations abound with the usual appendages of mechanical terror, and he adopts all the superstitions of the theatre. This problem can only be resolved into the activity or the superiority of a mind, which either would not be entangled by the formality, or which saw through the futility, of this unnatural and extrinsic ornament. It was not by declamation or by pantomime that Shakspeare was to fix his eternal dominion over the hearts of mankind.

To return to Sackville. That this tragedy was never a favorite among our ancestors, and has long fallen into general oblivion, is to be attributed to the nakedness and uninteresting nature of the plot, the tedious length of the speeches, the want of a discrimination of character, and almost a total absence of pathetic or critical situations. It is true that a mother kills her own son. But this act of barbarous and unnatural impiety, to say nothing of its almost unexampled atrocity in the tender sex, proceeds only from a brutal principle of sudden and impetuous revenge. It is not the consequence of any deep machination, nor is it founded in a proper preparation of previous circumstances. She is never before introduced to our notice as a wicked or designing character. She murthers her son Porrex, because in the commotions of a civil dissension, in self-defence, after repeated provocations, and the strongest proofs of the basest ingratitude and treachery, he had slain his rival brother, not without the deepest compunction and remorse for what he had done. A mother murthering a son is a fact which must be received with horror; but it required to be complicated with other motives, and prompted by a co-operation of other causes, to rouse our attention, and work upon our passions. I do not mean that any other motive could have been found, to palliate a murther of such a nature. Yet it was possible to heighten and to divide the distress, by rendering this bloody mother, under the notions of human frailty, an object of our compassion as well as of our abhorrence. But perhaps these artifices were not yet known or wanted. The general story of the play is great in its political consequences; and the leading incidents are important, but not sufficiently intricate to awaken our curiosity, and hold us in suspense. Nothing is perplexed and nothing unravelled. The opposition of interests is such as does not affect our nicer feelings. In the plot of a play, our pleasure arises in proportion as our expectation is excited.

Yet it must be granted, that the language of GORBODUC* has great

[Rymer termed Gorboduc " a fable better turn'd for tragedy than any on this side the Alps, in the time of lord Buckhurst, and might have been a better direction to Shakspeare and Ben Jonson, than any guide they have had the luck to follow." Short View of Tragedy, p. 84. Mr.

Pope also observed, that "the writers of the succeeding age might have improved by copying from this drama, a propriety in the sentiments and dignity in the sentences, and an unaffected perspicuity of style, which are essential to tragedy." Yet Dryden and Oldham both spoke con

purity and perspicuity; and that it is entirely free from that tumid phraseology, which does not seem to have taken place till play-writing had become a trade, and our poets found it their interest to captivate the multitude by the false sublime, and by those exaggerated imageries and pedantic metaphors, which are the chief blemishes of the scenes of Shakspeare, and which are at this day mistaken for his capital beauties by too many readers. Here also we perceive another and a strong reason why this play was never popular*.

Sir Philip Sydney, in his admirable DEFENCE OF POESIE, remarks, that this tragedy is full of notable moralitie. But tragedies are not to instruct us by the intermixture of moral sentences, but by the force of example, and the effect of the story. In the first act, the three counsellors are introduced debating about the division of the kingdom in long and elaborate speeches, which are replete with political advice and maxims of civil prudence. But this stately sort of declamation, whatever eloquence it may display, and whatever policy it may teach, is undramatic, unanimated, and unaffecting. Sentiment and argument will never supply the place of action upon the stage; not to mention, that these grave harangues have some tincture of the formal modes of address, and the ceremonious oratory, which were then in fashion. But we must allow, that in the strain of dialogue in which they are professedly written, they have uncommon merit, even without drawing an apology in their favour from their antiquity; and that they contain much dignity, strength of reflection, and good sense, couched in clear expression and polished numbers. I shali first produce a specimen from the speech of Arostus, who is styled a Counsellor to the King, and who is made to defend a specious yet perhaps the least rational side of the question.

And in your lyfe, while you shall so beholde

Their rule, their vertues, and their noble deedes,

Such as their kinde behighteth to vs all;

Great be the profites that shall growe thereof:

Your age in quiet shall the longer last,

Your lastinge age shall be their longer staie:
For cares of kynges, that rule, as you haue rulde,

temptuously of this piece, and apparently without having perused it; since they supposed Gorboduc to have been a female, and the former calls it the tragedy of "Queen Gorboduc." See Scott's Edit. of his Works, ii. 118; and Biog. Dram. ii. 238.-PARK.]

*[If Shakspeare could not of himself find out what was natural and right in language and sentiment, Gorboduc might have taught him. But Mr. Warton supposes that what we now reckon a beauty and merit, was a strong reason why Gorboduc never became popular. Was not

this reason enough for Shakspeare, whose only endeavours were populo ut placerent quas fecisset fabulas, to take another course? Had Shakspeare ever stretched his views to fame and posterity, he would at least have printed some of his plays. But it is not easy to conceive how a man can write for a future generation. It is not in his power to know what they will like; though he may be able to please his contemporaries, by giving them what they have been accustomed to approve.ASHBY.]

For publique wealth, and not for private ioye,
Do waste mannes lyfe, and hasten crooked age,
With furrowed face, and with enfeebled lymmes,
To drawe on creepynge Death a swifter pace.
They two, yet yonge, shall beare the partedo regne
With greater ease, than one, now olde, alone,
Can welde the whole: for whom, muche harder is
With lessened strength the double weight to beare.
Your age, your counsell, and the graue regarde
Of father, yea of suche a fathers name,
Nowe at beginning of their sondred reigne,
When is the hazarde of their whole successe,
Shall bridle so the force of youthfull heates,
And so restraine the rage of insolence
Whiche most assailes the yong and noble minds,
And so shall guide and traine in tempred staie
Their yet greene bending wittes with reuerent awe,
As' now inured with vertues at the first.
Custom, O king, shall bringe delightfulnes:
By vse of vertue, vice shall growe in hate.
But if you so dispose it, that the daye

Which endes your life, shal first begin their reigne,
Great is the perill. What will be the ende,
When suche beginning of suche liberties
Voide of suche stayes as in your life do lye,
Shall leaue them free to random of their will,
An open prey to traiterous flattery,

The greatest pestilence of noble youthe:
Which perill shal be past, if in your life,
Their tempred youth, with aged fathers awe,
Be brought in vre of skilfull staiedness, &c."

From an obsequious complaisance to the king, who is present, the topic is not agitated with that opposition of opinion and variety of arguments which it naturally suggests, and which would have enlivened the disputation and displayed diversity of character. But Eubulus, the king's secretary, declares his sentiments with some freedom, and seems to be the most animated of all our three political orators.

To parte your realme vnto my lords your sonnes,

I think not good, for you, ne yet for them,

But worst of all for this our native land:

Diuided reignes do make diuided hartes,

But peace preserues the countrey and the prince.
Suche is in man the gredie minde to reigne,
So great is his desire to climbe aloft

In worldly stage the stateliest partes to beare,
That faith, and iustice, and all kindly* loue,
Do yelde vnto desire of soueraigntie,
Where egall state doth raise an egall hope,
To winne the thing that either wold attaine.
Your
grace remembreth, howe in passed yeres
The mightie Brute, first prince of all this lande,
Possessed the same, and ruled it well in one:
He thinking that the compasse did suffice,
For his three sonnes three kingdoms eke to make,
Cut it in three, as you would nowe in twaine :
But how much Brittish blod hath since been spilt,
What princes slaine before their timely hour,
To ioyne againe the sondred vnitie?

What wast of townes and people in the lande?
What treasons heaped on murders and on spoiles?
Whose iust reuenge euen yet is scarcely ceased,
Ruthfull remembraunce is yet rawb in minde, &c.c

The illustration from Brutus is here both apposite and poetical.

Spence, with a reference to the situation of the author lord Buckhurst in the court of queen Elizabeth, has observed in his preface to the modern edition of this tragedy, that "'tis no wonder, if the language of kings and statesmen should be less happily imitated by a poet than a privy counsellor*." This is an insinuation that Shakspeare, who has left many historical tragedies, was less able to conduct some parts of a royal story than the statesman lord Buckhurst. But I will venture to pronounce, that whatever merit there is in this play, and particularly in the speeches we have just been examining, it is more owing to the poet than the privy counsellor. If a first minister was to write a tragedy, I believe the piece will be the better, the less it has of the first

x natural.

y 'brutish,' edit. 1565. z'sithence,' edit. 1565.

'honour,' edit. 1565. bhad,' edit. 1565.

Act i. sc. 2. [If Norton wrote the first three acts of Gorboduc, as the title-page of 1565 sets forth, and the later edition does not contradict (supra, p. 290.), then the excellence of the speech above cited from act i. cannot have arisen from its being penned by a privy-counsellor. Could Richelieu write so good a tragedy as Corneille or Racine? asks Mr. Ashby, while he relates the following anecdote in reply. Queen

Caroline was fond of talking to learned
men. One day she was earnest with bishop
Gibson to tell her, which he liked best,
tragedy or comedy. The bishop parried
the question by alleging he had not read
or seen any thing of that kind a long while.
The queen still persisting in her inquiry,
he said, "Though I cannot answer your
majesty's question, yet your majesty can
inform me in one particular that nobody
else can." She expressed great readiness
to do so, and he added, "Pray, do kings
and queens,
when alone, talk such fine
language as on the stage?" This was
enough.-PARK.]

minister. When a statesman turns poet, I should not wish him to fetch his ideas or his language from the cabinet. I know not why a king should be better qualified than a private man to make kings talk in blank verse.

The chaste elegance of the following description of a region abounding in every convenience, will gratify the lover of classical purity. Yea, and that half, which ind abounding store

Of things that serue to make a welthie realme,
In statelie cities, and in frutefull soyle*,
In temperate breathing of the milder heauen,
In thinges of nedeful vse, whiche friendlie sea
Transportes by traffike from the forreine partes,
In flowing wealth, in honour and in force, &c.f

The close of Marcella's narration of the murther of Porrex by the queen, which many poets of a more enlightened age would have exhibited to the spectators, is perhaps the most moving and pathetic speech in the play t. The reader will observe, that our author, yet to a good purpose, has transferred the ceremonies of the tournament to the court of an old British king.

O queene of adamante! O marble breaste;
If not the fauour of his comelie face,
If not his princelie chere and countenaunce,
His valiant active armes, his manlie breaste,
If not his faier and semelie personage,
His noble lymmes in suche proporcion caste,
As would have wrapped a sillie womans thought,
If this mought not haue moued thy bloodie harte,
And that most cruell hande, the wretched weapon
Euen to let fall, and kisse him in the face,
With teares for ruthe to reaue suche one by death:
Should nature yet consent to slaye her sonne?
O mother thou, to murder thus thie childe!

Euen Joue, with Justice, must with lightening flames
From heauen send downe some strange reuenge on thee.

d within,' edit. 1565.

[Though the country is represented as fruitful, yet imports only are mentioned. This was precisely the case of England then. See Compendious Examination by W. S.-ASHBY.]

e. 'portes,' edit. 1565. f Act ii. sc. 1.

[This speech had before been commended as very much in the manner of the ancients by Mr. Hawkins, who adds: "There are few narrations of Euripides, not excepting even that in the Alcestis,