vulgar; and though he allows himself to be imposed upon, even by his miserable comrades, (perhaps only because they are men, and, if ugly, yet handsomer than himself,) he everywhere shows more prudence, which is only checked because he considers himself more powerful than he really is. Indeed, he stands far higher than Trinculo and Stephano." Opposed to him stands Ariel, by no means an ethereal, featureless angel, but as a real airy and frolicsome spirit, agreeable and open, but also capricious, roguish, and, with his other qualities, somewhat mischievous. He is thankful to Prospero for his release from the most confined of all confined situations, but his gratitude is not a natural virtue (we might almost add not an airy virtue); therefore he must (like man) be sometimes reminded of his debt, and held in check. Only the promise of his freedom in two days restores him again to his amiability, and he then finds pleasure in executing the plans of his master with a delightful activity. "We noticed in passing the featureless angel,' and it requires no further indication where to find such beings; for no one will deny that these immortal winged children (so charming in many old German pictures), with their somewhat dull immortal harps, and, if possible, their still more dull and immortal anthems, cause a not less immortal tediousness in the works of many poets. Shakspere did not fall into this error, and it is in the highest degree attractive to observe the various and safe modes in which he manages the marvellous. In the storm he achieves his object by the simplest means, while, as has been already indicated, he represents Nature herself, and certainly justly, as the greatest miracle. When he has once in his own gentle way led us to believe that Prospero, through his high art, is able to overrule Nature-and how willingly do we believe in these higher powers of man!-how completely natural and, to a certain degree, what merely pleasant trifles, are all the wonders which we see playing around us! These higher powers, also, are not confined to Prospero alone; Ferdinand and Miranda have, without any enchanted wand or any prolix instruction, full superiority over the wonders of Nature, and they allow them to pass around them merely as a delightful drama; for the highest wonder is in their own breasts-love, the pure human, and even on that account holy, love. “Even the pure mind and the firm heart, as they are shown in old Gonzalo, are armed with an almost similar power. With our poet, a truly moral man is always amiable, powerful, agreeable, and quietly wards off the snares laid for him. This old Gonzalo is so entirely occupied with his duty, in which alone he finds his pleasure, that he scarcely notices the gnat-stings of wit with which his opponents persecute him; or, if he observes, easily and firmly repels them. What wit indeed has he to fear, who, in a sinking ship, has power remaining to sustain himself and others with genuine humour? Shakspere seems scarcely to recognise a powerless virtue, and he depicts it only in cases of need; so everything closes satisfactorily. The pure poetry of nature and genius inspires us; and when we hear Prospero recite his far too modest epilogue, after laying down his enchanted wand, we have no wish to turn our minds to any frivolous thoughts, for the magic we have experienced was too charming and too mighty not to be enduring." CHAPTER IV. TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. THE original quarto edition of "Troilus and collection of 1623. The first quarto edition of 1609 contains the following very extraordinary preface :— "A never writer to an ever reader. "News. "Eternal reader, you have here a new play, never staled with the stage, never clapper-clawed with the palms of the vulgar, and yet passing full of the palm comical; for it is a birth of your brain, that never undertook anything comical vainly; and were but the vain names of comedies changed for the titles of commodities, or of plays for pleas, you should see all those grand censors, that now style them such vanities, flock to them for the main grace of their gravities; especially this author's comedies, that are so framed to the life, that they serve for the most their height of pleasure) to be born in that sea deserves such a labour, as well as the best In 1609, then, the reader is told, “You have common commentaries of all the actions of our with the stage. This, one might think, | the name, it is sufficient to know that for And here arises the question, whether the expressions in the preface "never staled with the stage never clapper-clawed with the palms of the vulgar,"-"not sullied with the smoky breath of the multitude,” mean that the play had not been acted at all, or that it had not been acted on the public stage. There is a good deal of probability in the conjecture of Tieck upon this subject: "In the palace of some great personage, for whom it was probably expressly written, it was first represented; according to my belief for the King himself, who, weak as he was, contemptible as he sometimes showed himself, and pedantic as his wisdom and short-sighted as his politics were, yet must have had a certain fine sense of poetry, wit, and talent, beyond what his historians have ascribed to him. But whether the King, or some one else of whom we have not received "The original story," says Dryden, "was written by one Lollius, a Lombard, in Latin verse, and translated by Chaucer into English; intended, I suppose, as a satire on the inconstancy of women. I find nothing ་ 4 of it among the ancients, not so much as the name Cressida once mentioned. Shakspeare (as I hinted), in the apprenticeship of his writing, modelled it into that play which is now called by the name of 'Troilus and Cressida.'" Chaucer himself speaks of "Myne Auctor Lollius ;" and in his address to the Muse, in the beginning of the second book, he says,― "To every lover I me excuse That of no sentiment I this endite, But out of Latin in my tongue it write." Without entering into the question who Lollius was, or believing more than that "Lollius, if a writer of that name existed at all, was a somewhat somewhere,”* we at once receive the 'Troilus and Creseide' of Chaucer as the foundation of Shakspere's play. Of his perfect acquaintance with that poem there can be no doubt. Chaucer, of all English writers, was the one who would have the greatest charm for Shakspere. "The Rape of Lucrece' is written precisely in the same versification as Chaucer's 'Troilus and Creseide.' When Lorenzo, in 'The Merchant of Venice,' exclaims, "In such a night, Troilus, methinks, mounted the Trojan walls, we may be sure that Shakspere had in his And on the Greekés host he would ysee, And thence cometh this air that is so sote, * * * * * * The day go'th fast, and after that came eve, consideration of Chaucer's poem of 'Troilus the play of Shakespear we are here considering has for its main foundation the poem of Chaucer, and is indebted for many accessory helps to the books mentioned by the commentators. "We are not, however, left to probability and conjecture as to the use made by Shakespear of the poem of Chaucer. His other sources were Chapman's translation of Homer, the 'Troye Boke' of Lydgate, and Caxton's 'History of the Destruction of Troy.' It is well known that there is no trace of the particular story of Troilus and Creseide' among the ancients. It occurs, indeed, in Lydgate and Caxton; but the name and Mr. Godwin has justly observed that the actions of Pandarus, a very essential perShaksperean commentators have done insonage in the tale as related by Shakespear justice to Chaucer in not more distinctly and Chaucer, are entirely wanting, except associating his poem with this remarkable a single mention of him by Lydgate, and play:that with an express reference to Chaucer as "It would be extremely unjust to quit the his authority. Shakespear has taken the He looketh forth by hedge, by tree, by grove, * Coleridge's Literary Remains,' vol. ii. p. 130. story of Chaucer with all its imperfections and defects, and has copied the series of its | Criticism in Tragedy,' thus speaks of Shakincidents with his customary fidelity; an spere's performance :exactness seldom to be found in any other dramatic writer."* Although the main incidents in the adventures of the Greek lover and his faithless mistress are followed with little deviation, yet, independent of the wonderful difference in the characterization, the whole story under the treatment of Shakspere becomes thoroughly original. In no play does he appear to us to have a more complete mastery over his materials, or to mould them into more plastic shapes by the force of his most surpassing imagination. The great Homeric poem, the rude romance of the destruction of Troy, the beautiful elaboration of that romance by Chaucer, are all subjected to his wondrous alchemy; and new forms and combinations are called forth so lifelike, that all the representations which have preceded them look cold and rigid statues, not warm and breathing men and women. Coleridge's theory of the principle upon which this was effected is, we have no doubt, essentially true : "I am half inclined to believe that Shakespear's main object (or shall I rather say his ruling impulse?) was to translate the poetic heroes of Paganism into the not less rude, but more intellectually vigorous, and more featurely, warriors of Christian chivalry, and to substantiate the distinct and graceful profiles or outlines of the Homeric epic into the flesh and blood of the romantic drama,-in short, to give a grand history-piece in the robust style of Albert Durer."+ To Dryden's alteration of "Troilus and Cressida' was prefixed a prologue," spoken by Mr. Betterton, representing the Ghost of Shakspere." The Ghost appears to have entirely forgotten what he was on earth, and to present a marvellous resemblance, in his mind at least, to Mr. John Dryden. He says, "For the play itself, the author seems to have begun it with some fire; the characters of Pandarus and Thersites are promising enough; but,' as if he grew weary of his task, after an entrance or two he lets them fall; and the latter part of the tragedy is nothing but a confusion of drums and trumpets, excursions and alarms. The chief persons who give name to the tragedy are left alive: Cressida is false, and is not punished. Yet, after all, because the play was Shakspeare's, and that there appeared in some places of it the admirable genius of the author, I undertook to remove that heap of rubbish under which many excellent thoughts lay wholly buried." The mode in which Dryden got rid of the rubbish, and built up his own edifice, is very characteristic of the age and of the man :— "I new modelled the plot; threw out many unnecessary persons; improved those characters which were begun and left unfinished,- -as Hector, Troilus, Pandarus, and Thersites ; and added that of Andromache. After this I made, with no small trouble, an order and connection of all the scenes, removing them from the places where they were inartificially set.” The result of all this is, that the Ghost of Shakspere, in the concluding lines of the Prologue, thus enlightens the audience as to the dominant idea of the Troilus and Cressida : "My faithful scene from true records shall tell How Trojan valour did the Greek excel; Your great forefathers shall their fame regain, And Homer's angry ghost repine in vain." Coleridge says, "there is no one of Shakspere's plays harder to characterize." He has overlooked the circumstance that, when the "rubbish" was removed, it became a true record, a faithful chronicle, of the heroic actions of the Trojans,-our "great "In this my rough-drawn play you shall behold forefathers." With every admiration for Some master-strokes." Dryden, in his elaborate 'Preface to Troilus and Cressida, containing the grounds of Life of Chaucer,' vol. i. (4to) p. 315. + Literary Remains,' vol ii. p. 183. "glorious John" in his own proper line, we must endeavour to understand what Shakspere's "Troilus and Cressida' is, by comparing it with what it is not in the alteration before us. |