Frank. Fie, fie! why look, All questions of my journey, my stay, employment, But this request- What? so churlishly! You'll make me stay for ever, Of Thou art my husband, Death! I embrace thee Frank. Not yet mortal? I would not linger you, We cannot afford any more space for Mr. Ford; and what we have said, and what we have shown of him, will probably be thought enough, both by those who are disposed to scoff, and those who are inclined to admire. It is but fair, however, to intimate, that a thorough perusal of his works will afford more exercise to the former disposition than to the latter. His faults are glaring and abundant; but we have not thought it necessary to produce any specimens of them, because they are exactly the sort of faults which every one acquainted with the drama of that age reckons upon finding. No body doubts of the exist The churlish storm makes mischief with his bounty.ence of such faults: But there are many who Frank. Now, your request doubt of the existence of any counterbalancIs out: yet will you leave me? and therefore it seemed worth ing beauties; Sus. while to say a word or two in their explanation. There is a great treasure of poetry, we think, still to be brought to light in the neglected writers of the age to which this author belongs; and poetry of a kind which, if purified and improved, as the happier specimens show that it is capable of being, would be far more delightful to the generality of English readers Here the dog rubs against him; and, after than any other species of poetry. We shall some more talk, he stabs her! Tush! I fear none: To leave you is the greatest I can suffer. "Sur. readily be excused for our tediousness by those who are of this opinion; and should not have been forgiven, even if we had not been tedious, by those who look upon it as a heresy. (August, 1817.) Characters of Shakespeare's Plays. By WILLIAM HAZLITT. 8vo. pp. 352. London: 1817.* THIS is not a book of black-letter learning, | truth, rather an encomium on Shakespeare, or historical elucidation;-neither is it a me- than a commentary or critique on him-and taphysical dissertation, full of wise perplexi- is written, more to show extraordinary love, ties and elaborate reconcilements. It is, in It may be thought that enough had been said of our early dramatists, in the immediately preceding article; and it probably is so. But I could not resist the temptation of thus renewing, in my own name, that vow of allegiance, which I had so often taken anonymously, to the only true and lawful King of our English Poetry! and now venture, therefore, fondly to replace this slight and perishable wreath on his august and undecaying shrine with no farther apology than that it presumes to direct attention but to one, and that, as I think, a comparatively neglected, aspect of his universal genius. than extraordinary knowledge of his productions. Nevertheless, it is a very pleasing book-and, we do not hesitate to say, a book of very considerable originality and genius. The author is not merely an admirer of our great dramatist, but an Idolater of him; and openly professes his idolatry. We have our selves too great a leaning to the same super stition, to blame him very much for his error: and though we think, of course, that our own admiration is, on the whole, more discriminat ing and judicious, there are not many points on which, especially after reading his eloquent exposition of them, we should be much inclined to disagree with him. In the exposition of these, there is room enough for originality, and more room than The book, as we have already intimated, is Mr. H. has yet filled. In many points, howwritten less to tell the reader what Mr. H. knows ever, he has acquitted himself excellently ;about Shakespeare or his writings, than to partly in the development of the principa explain to them what he feels about them-characters with which Shakespeare has peo and why he feels so-and thinks that all who profess to love poetry should feel so likewise. What we chiefly look for in such a work, accordingly, is a fine sense of the beauties of the author, and an eloquent exposition of them; and all this, and more, we think, may be found in the volume before us. There is nothing niggardly in Mr. H.'s praises, and nothing affected in his raptures. He seems animated throughout with a full and hearty sympathy with the delight which his author should inspire, and pours himself gladly out in explanation of it, with a fluency and ardour, obviously much more akin to enthusiasm than affectation. He seems pretty generally, indeed, in a state of happy intoxication-and has borrowed from his great original, not indeed the force or brilliancy of his fancy, but something of its playfulness, and a large share of his apparent joyousness and self-indulgence in its exercise. It is evidently a great pleasure to him to be fully possessed with the beauties of his author, and to follow the impulse of his unrestrained eagerness to impress them upon his readers. When we have said that his observations are generally right, we have said, in substance, that they are not generally original; for the beauties of Shakespeare are not of so dim or equivocal a nature as to be visible only to learned eyes-and undoubtedly his finest passages are those which please all classes of readers, and are admired for the same qualities by judges from every school of criticism. Even with regard to those passages, however, a skilful commentator will find something worth hearing to tell. Many persons are very sensible of the effect of fine poetry on their feelings, who do not well know how to refer these feelings to their causes; and it is always a delightful thing to be made to see clearly the sources from which our delight has proceeded-and to trace back the mingled stream that has flowed upon our hearts, to the remoter fountains from which it has been gathered. And when this is done with warmth as well as precision, and embodied in an eloquent description of the beauty which is explained, it forms one of the most attractive, and not the least instructive, of literary exercises. In all works of merit, however, and especially in all works of original genius, there are a thousand retiring and less obtrusive graces, which escape hasty and superficial observers, and only give out their beauties to fond and patient contemplation;-a thousand slight and harmonising touches, the mérit and the effect of which are equally imperceptible to vulgar eyes; and a thousand indications of the continual presence of that poetical spirit, which can only be recognised by those who are in some measure under its influence, or have prepared themselves to receive it, by worshipping meekly at the shrines which it inhabits. pled the fancies of all English readers-but principally, we think, in the delicate sensibility with which he has traced, and the natural eloquence with which he has pointed out that fond familiarity with beautiful forms and images that eternal recurrence to what is sweet or majestic in the simple aspects of nature-that indestructible love of flowers and odours, and dews and clear waters, and soft airs and sounds, and bright skies, and woodland solitudes, and moonlight bowers, which are the Material elements of Poetryand that fine sense of their undefinable relation to mental emotion, which is its essence and vivifying Soul-and which, in the midst of Shakespeare's most busy and atrocious scenes, falls like gleams of sunshine on rocks and ruins-contrasting with all that is rugged and repulsive, and reminding us of the existence of purer and brighter elements!-which HE ALONE has poured out from the richness of his own mind, without effort or restraint and contrived to intermingle with the play of all the passions, and the vulgar course of this world's affairs, without deserting for an instant the proper business of the scene, or appearing to pause or digress, from the love of ornament or need of repose!-HE ALONE, who, when the object requires it, is always keen and worldly and practical-and who yet, without changing his hand, or stopping his course, scatters around him, as he goes, all sounds and shapes of sweetness-and conjures up landscapes of immortal fragrance and freshness, and peoples them with Spirits of glorious aspect and attractive grace-and is a thousand times more full of fancy and imagery, and splendour, than those who, in pursuit of such enchantments, have shrunk back from the delineation of character or passion, and declined the discussion of human duties and cares. More full of wisdom and ridicule and sagacity, than all the moralists and satirists that ever existed-he is more wild, airy, and inventive, and more pathetic and fantastic, than all the poets of all regions and ages of the world:-and has all those elements so happily mixed up in him, and bears his high faculties so temperately, that the most severe reader cannot complain of him for want of strength or of reason-nor the most sensitive for defect of ornament or ingenuity. Every thing in him is in unmeasured abundance, and unequalled perfection-but every thing so balanced and kept in subordination, as not to jostle or disturb or take the place of another. The most exquisite poetical conceptions, images, and descriptions, are given with such brevity, and introduced with such skill, as merely to adorn, without loading the sense they accompany. Although his sails are purple and perfumed, and his prow of beaten gold, they waft him on his voyage, not less, but more rapidly and directly than if they had been composed of baser materials. All his excellences, like those of Nature herself, are thrown out together; and, instead of interfering with, support and recommend each other. His flowers are not tied up in garlands, nor his fruits crushed into baskets-but spring living from the soil, in all the dew and freshness of youth; while the graceful foliage in which they lurk, and the ample branches, the rough and vigorous stem, and the wide-spreading roots on which they depend, are present along with them, and share, in their places, the equal care of their Creator. Sometimes a thousand twanging instruments Will hum about mine ears, and sometimes voices, That if I then had waked after a long sleep, Would make me sleep again." Observe, too, that this and the other poetical speeches of this incarnate demon, are not mere ornaments of the poet's fancy, but explain his character, and describe his situation more briefly and effectually, than any other words could have done. In this play, indeed, and in the Midsummer-Night's Dream, all Eden is unlocked before us, and the whole treasury of natural and supernatural beauty poured out profusely, to the delight of all our faculties. We dare not trust ourselves with quotations; but we refer to those plays gen What other poet has put all the charm of a Moonlight landscape into a single line?-and that by an image so true to nature, and so simple, as to seem obvious to the most com-erally-to the forest scenes in As You Like mon observation ?— "See how the Moonlight SLEEPS on yonder bank!" Who else has expressed, in three lines, all that is picturesque and lovely in a Summer's Dawn?-first setting before our eyes, with magical precision, the visible appearances of the infant light, and then, by one graceful and glorious image, pouring on our souls all the freshness, cheerfulness, and sublimity of returning morning? "See, love! what envious streaks Do lace the severing clouds in yonder East! Night's candles are burnt out,-and jocund Day Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops!" Where shall we find sweet sounds and odours so luxuriously blended and illustrated, as in these few words of sweetness and melody, where the author says of soft music "O it came o'er my ear, like the sweet South That breathes upon a bank of violets, Stealing and giving odour!" This is still finer, we think, than the noble speech on Music in the Merchant of Venice, and only to be compared with the enchantments of Prospero's island; where all the effects of sweet sounds are expressed in miraculous numbers, and traced in their tion on all the gradations of being, from the delicate Arial to the brutish Caliban, who, savage as he is, is still touched with those supernatural harmonies; and thus exhorts his less poetical associates "Be not afraid, the isle is full of noises, opera Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not. *If the advocates for the grand style object to this expression, we shall not stop to defend it: But to us, it seems equally beautiful, as it is obvious and natural, to a person coming out of a lighted chamber into the pale dawn. The word candle, we admit, is rather homely in modern language, while lamp is sufficiently dignified for poetry. The moon hangs her silver lamp on high, in every schoolboy's copy of verses; and she could not be called the candle of heaven without manifest absurdity. Such are the caprices of usage. Yet we like the passage before us much better as it is, than if the candles were changed into lamps. If we should read, "The lamps of heaven are quenched," or "wax dim," it appears to us that the whole charm of the expression would be lost: as our fancies would no longer be recalled to the privacy of that dimlighted chamber which the lovers were so reluct antly leaving. It-the rustic parts of the Winter's Taleseveral entire scenes in Cymbeline, and in Romeo and Juliet-and many passages in all the other plays-as illustrating this love of nature and natural beauty of which we have been speaking-the power it had over the poet, and the power it imparted to him. Who else would have thought, on the very threshold of treason and midnight murder, of bringing in so sweet and rural an image as this, at the portal of that blood-stained castle of Macbeth? "This guest of summer, The temple-haunting martlet, does approve By his loved masonry that heaven's breath Smells wooingly here. No jutting frieze, Buttress, nor coigne of vantage, but this bird Has made his pendent bed, and procreant cradle." Nor is this brought in for the sake of an elaborate contrast between the peaceful innocence of this exterior, and the guilt and horrors that are to be enacted within. There is no hint of any such suggestion-but it is set down from the pure love of nature and reality-because the kindled mind of the poet brought the whole scene before his eyes, and he painted all that he saw in his vision. The same taste predominates in that em phatic exhortation to evil, where Lady Macbeth says, "Look like the innocent flower, But be the serpent under it." And in that proud boast of the bloody Richard "But I was born so high: Our aery buildeth in the cedar's top, And dallies with the wind, and scorns the sun!' The same splendour of natural imagery, brought simply and directly to bear upon stern and repulsive passions, is to be found in the cynic rebukes of Apemantus to Timon. "Will these moist trees That have out-liv'd the eagle, page thy heels, And skip when thou point'st out? will the cold Candied with ice, caudle thy morning tasto brook, To cure thine o'er-night's surfeit ?" No one but Shakespeare would have thought of putting this noble picture into the taunting address of a snappish misanthrope-any more than the following into the mouth of a mer cenary murderer. Their lips were four red roses on a stalk, And in their summer beauty kissed each other!" Or this delicious description of concealed love, into that of a regretful and moralizing parent. "But he, his own affections Counsellor, Is to himself so secret and so close, As is the bud bit with an envious worm Ere he can spread his sweet leaves to the air, Or dedicate his beauty to the sun." And yet all these are so far from being unnatural, that they are no sooner put where they are, than we feel at once their beauty and their effect; and acknowledge our obligations to that exuberant genius which alone could thus throw out graces and atractions where there seemed to be neither room nor call for them. In the same spirit of prodigality he puts this rapturous and passionate exaltation of the beauty of Imogen, into the mouth of one who is not even a lover. "It is her breathing that Perfumes the chamber thus! the flame o' th' taper Bows towards her! and would under-peep her lids To see th' enclosed lights, now canopied Under the windows, white and azure, laced With blue of Heaven's own tinct !-on her left breast A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops His remarks on Macbeth are of a higher and bolder character. After noticing the wavering and perplexity of Macbeth's resolution, "driven on, as it were, by the violence of his Fate, and staggering under the weight of his own purposes," he strikingly observes, "This part of his character is admirably set off by being brought in connection with that of Lady Macbeth, whose obdurate strength of will and masculine firmness give her the ascendancy over her husband's faltering virtue. She at once seizes on of their wished-for greatness; and never flinches the opportunity that offers for the accomplishment from her object till all is over. The magnitude of her resolution almost covers the magnitude of her guilt. She is a great bad woman, whom we hate, but whom we fear more than we hate. She does and Gonnerill. She is only wicked to gain a great not excite our loathing and abhorrence like Regan end; and is perhaps more distinguished by her commanding presence of mind and inexorable selfwill, which do not suffer her to be diverted from a bad purpose, when once formed, by weak and womanly regrets, than by the hardness of her heart or want of natural affections."-pp. 18, 19. But the best part perhaps of this critique, is the comparison of the Macbeth with the Richard of the same author. "The leading features in the character of Macbeth are striking enough, and they form what may But we must break at once away from these be thought at first only a bold, rude, Gothic outline. By comparing it with other characters of the same manifold enchantments-and recollect that author we shall perceive the absolute truth and our business is with Mr. Hazlitt, and not with identity which is observed in the midst of the giddy the great and gifted author on whom he is whirl and rapid career of events. Thus he is as employed: And, to avoid the danger of any distinct a being from Richard III. as it is possible further preface, we shall now let him speak hands, and indeed in the hands of any other poet, to imagine, though these two characters in common a little for himself. In his remarks on Cym- would have been a repetition of the same general beline, which is the first play in his arrange-idea, more or less exaggerated. For both are ment, he takes occasion to make the following observations on the female characters of his author. "It is the peculiar characteristic of Shakespeare's heroines, that they seem to exist only in their attachment to others. They are pure abstractions of the affections. We think as little of their persons as they do themselves; because we are let into the secrets of their hearts, which are more important. We are too much interested in their affairs to stop to look at their faces, except by stealth and at intervals. No one ever hit the true perfection of the female character, the sense of weakness leaning on the strength of its affections for support, so well as Shakespeare-no one ever so well painted natural tenderness free from affectation and disguiseno one else ever so well showed how delicacy and timidity, when driven to extremity, grow romantic and extravagant: For the romance of his heroines (in which they abound) is only an excess of the habitual prejudices of their sex; scrupulous of being false to their vows or truant to their affections, and taught by the force of feeling when to forego the forms of propriety for the essence of it. His women were in this respect exquisite logicians; for there is nothing so logical as passion. Cibber, in speaking of the early English stage, accounts for the want of prominence and theatrical display in Shakespeare's female characters, from the circumstance, that women in those days were not allowed to play the parts of women, which made it necessary to keep them a good deal in the back ground. Does not this state of manners itself, which prevented their exhibiting themselves in public, and confined them to the relations and charities of domestic life, afford a truer explanation of the matter? His women are certainly very unlike stage heroines."-pp. 3, 4. tyrants, usurpers, murderers, both aspiring and ambitious, both courageous, cruel, treacherous. But Richard is cruel from nature and constitution. Macbeth becomes so from accidental circumstances. Richard is from his birth deformed in body and mind, and naturally incapable of good. Macbeth is full of "the milk of human kindness," is frank, sociable, generous. He is tempted to the commission of guilt by golden opportunities, by the instigations of his wife, and by prophetic warnings. Fate and metaphysical aid' conspire against his virtue and his loyalty. Richard on the contrary needs no prompter; but wades through a series of crimes to the height of his ambition, from the ungovernable violence of his temper and a reckless love of mischief. He is never gay but in the prospect or in the success of his villanies: Macbeth is full of horror at the thoughts of the murder of Duncan, which he is with difficulty prevailed on to commit; and of remorse after its perpetration. Richard has no mixture of common humanity in his composition, no regard to kindred or posterityhe owns no fellowship with others; he is himself alone.' Macbeth is not destitute of feelings of sympathy, is accessible to pity, is even made in some measure the dupe of his uxoriousness; ranks the loss of friends, of the cordial love of his followand of his good name, among the causes which have made him weary of life; and regrets that he has ever seized the Crown by unjust means, since he cannot transmit it to his posterity. There are other decisive differences inherent in the two characters. Richard may be regarded as a man of the world, a plotting hardened knave, wholly regardless of everything but his own ends, and the means to secure them.-Not so Macbeth. The superstitions of the age, the rude state of society, the local scenery and customs, all give a wildness and imaginary grandeur to his character From the ers, of the moral and political reflections which this author has intermixed with his criticisms. strangeness of the events that surround him, he is full of amazement and fear; and stands in doubt between the world of reality and the world of fancy. He sees sights not shown to mortal eye, and hears unearthly music. All is tumult and dis- shown the same penetration into political character "Shakespeare has in this play and elsewhere order within and without his mind; his purposes and the springs of public events as into those of recoil upon himself, are broken and disjointed; he every-day life. For instance, the whole design to is the double thrall of his passions and his destiny. liberate their country fails from the generous temRichard is not a character either of imagination or per and overweening confidence of Brutus in the pathos, but of pure self-will. There is no conflict goodness of their cause and the assistance of others. of opposite feelings in his breast. In the busy tur-Thus it has always been. Those who mean well bulence of his projects he never loses his self-pos- themselves think well of others, and fall a prey to session, and makes use of every circumstance that their security. The friends of liberty trust to the happens as an instrument of his long-reaching de- professions of others, because they are themselves signs. In his last extremity we regard him but as sincere, and endeavour to secure the public good a wild beast taken in the toils: But we never en- with the least possible hurt to its enemies, who tirely lose our concern for Macbeth; and he calls have no regard to any thing but their own unback all our sympathy by that fine close of thought-principled ends, and stick at nothing to accomplish ful melancholy. "My way of life Is fallen into the sear, the yellow leaf; In treating of the Julius Caesar, Mr. H. ex- Brutus. I will do so; but look you, Cassius- Antony. Cæsar ? Casar. Let me have men about me that are fat, them. Cassius was better cut out for a conspirator. His heart prompted his head. His habitual jealousy made him fear the worst that might happen, and his irritability of temper added to his inveteracy of pur pose, and sharpened his patriotism. The mixed nature of his motives made him fitter to contend with bad men. The vices are never so well employed as in combating one another. Tyranny and servility are to be dealt with after their own fashion: them, and finally pronounce their funeral panegyric, otherwise, they will triumph over those who spare as Antony did that of Brutus. "All the conspirators, save only he, Did that they did in envy of great Cæsar: He only in a general honest thought Of common good to all, made one of them. pp. 38, 39. The same strain is resumed in his remarks on Coriolanus. "Shakespeare seems to have had a leaning to the arbitrary side of the question; perhaps from some feeling of contempt for his own origin; and to have spared no occasion of baiting the rabble. What he says of them is very true: what he says of their betters is also very true; But he dwells less upon it.-The cause of the people is indeed but little calculated as a subject for poetry: it admits of rhetoric, which goes into argument and explanation, but it presents no immediate or distinct images to the mind. The imagination is an exaggerating and exclusive faculty. The understanding is a dividing and measuring faculty. The one is an aristocrati Antony. Fear him not, Cæsar, he's not danger-cal, the other a republican faculty. The principle ous: He is a noble Roman, and well given. [not: "We know hardly any passage more expressive of the genius of Shakespeare than this. It is as if he had been actually present, had known the different characters and what they thought of one another, and had taken down what he heard and saw, their looks, words, and gestures, just as they happened."-pp. 36, 37. We may add the following as a specimen of poetry is a very anti-levelling principle. It aims at effect, and exists by contrast. It is every thing the one above the infinite many, might before right. by excess. It puts the individual for the species, A lion hunting a flock of sheep is a more poetical object than they; and we even take part with the lordly beast, because our vanity or some other feeling makes us disposed to place ourselves in the situation of the strongest party. There is nothing heroical in a multitude of miserable rogues not wishing to be starved, or complaining that they are like to be so: but when a single man comes forward to brave their cries and to make them submit to the last indignities, from mere pride and self-will, our admiration of his prowess is immediately converted into contempt for their pusillanimity. We had rather, in short, be the oppressor than the oppressed. The love of power in ourselves and the admiration of it in others are both natural to man: But the one makes him a tyrant, the other a slave." pp. 69-72. There are many excellent remarks and several fine quotations, in the discussions on Troilus and Cressida. As this is no longer an acted play, we venture to give one extract, with Mr. H.'s short observations, which per fectly express our opinion of its merits. |